The party recruiting office was crowded. Giles Romilly and I were soon accepted, but others were an obvious puzzle. Plenty of enthusiasm but hardly one who could fire a weapon. All were taken on. They would be taught. I had a strange meeting with Bert Overton, who had been a close friend of mine in the Guards. I had not seen him for nearly four years. He had been a brilliant Guardsman, but that was in peacetime. However, he still looked the part. Over some tea in a Lyons we talked of our army days, and now Spain. It did not seem to me that Bert's political motives amounted to much; there were personal reasons, but that could be said of any of us. We agreed to meet in Paris.

The Moroccan troops retreated out of range, which brought to an end the first day of the battle of Jarama. The British Battalion had endured seven hours of heavy losses, and "Out of the 400 men in the rifle companies, only 125 were left. Altogether less than half the battalion remained."' The remnants of the battalion gathered at the battalion headquarters on the sunken road, or the cookhouse next to the farm, desperate for food and water. After dark, Jason Gurney was asked by the battalion commander, Tom Wintringham, to reconnoitre the sunken road which ran across the plateau, near its forward edge. Here Gurney made a horrifying discovery; about 50 injured men were lying on stretchers, where they had been left and forgotten in the chaotic and desperate times during the day. By the time Gurney discovered them it was too late; most were dying or already dead."

During the night about 30 stragglers from No. 3 Company were found at the cookhouse by the battalion political commissar, George Aitken. Where possible, Aitken cajoled them to return to the line but, as he freely admits, on occasions he forced some volunteers back to the front under threat of his pistol.''' However, Aitken never actually used it; like most of the other senior figures in the battalion, he was vehemently opposed to the shooting of deserters. Aitken claims that he was approached at Jarama by higher officers, "and a civilian", with the idea of trying, and possibly shooting, some of the deserters. Aitken resisted it and states that he remained totally opposed to the idea of shooting men who had volunteered. He later stated categorically that "there was nothing of the kind while I was there." However, coerced or not, the volunteers were a desperately needed addition to the front line.

The second day of the battle was to be no less terrifying for the shocked volunteers. The battalion commander,Tom Wintringham, prepared the depleted forces as best he could. Harold Fry's (No. 2) Machine-Gun Company was kept in a forward position, overlooking the valley and river below them. No. 4 Company, under Overton, was placed to the right and No. I Company was facing the open left flank, now under the command of Andre Diamant following the death of Kit Conway. Stand-to was at 3 a.m. Dave Springhall, the assistant brigade commissar, brought orders from brigade headquarters that the battalion should prepare for an advance on the Nationalist forces, which he said would be supported by tanks and another International Brigade.

When dawn broke Fry's company was able to see a number of rebel soldiers who had moved up in the night between the ridge and Suicide Hill and drive them back with concentrated machine-gun fire. But as the day progressed the Franco-Belge and Dimitrov Battalions on the right were gradually pushed back and the British Battalion found itself once again surrounded on three sides. By late afternoon Wintringham was aware that a rebel assault on Fry's position was imminent, as small groups of Nationalist troops could be seen working their way forward to Fry's right, where Bert Overton's No. 4 Company was situated. At this point the nervous Overton finally panicked and withdrew his company right back to the sunken road, as he had been begging the political commissar George Aitken to allow him to do all day. This left the Machine-Gun Company's flank totally unprotected, and rebel forces quickly took advantage of the situation and surrounded them. Tom Wintringham wrote a desperate note to Fry requesting that the Machine-Gun Company hold on, but before the note could be delivered they were overrun by Nationalist forces. As many as 30 members of the Machine-Gun Company, including its commander, Harold Fry, and his number two, Ted Dickenson, were captured.

I got back to Wintringham's HQ and relayed the Brigadier's orders. Runners were sent out to 1 , 3 and 4 Companies to order the advance. I went up to No. 2 Company's trench to observe their movement and report back. William Briskey's No. 3 Company on the Casa Blanca hill was the first to move down the hill from its summit, followed shortly after by No. 1 Company under Kit Conway. But I could see no sign of Overton and No. 4 Company as they were concealed from me by a fold in the ground. Suddenly, and without any warning, all hell broke loose under a storm of artillery and heavy machine-gun fire. It concentrated first on the Casa Blanca hill, which became completely obscured in clouds of smoke and dust. Gradually it spread right along the line of our forward positions. The barrage was continued for about three hours. From my position in Harry Fry's trench I could see the chaos of Casa Blanca hill, where some of the men were working away with bayonet and tin helmet in an attempt to produce some sort of fox-hole in which to hide. None of the Colts or shossers were firing, and very few rifles, but the enemy were lying in concealed positions and had not yet started to advance. Our men seemed to be fascinated by the little white house which was already in ruins. They kept moving towards it, presumably because it was the only solid cover in the district, and seemed undeterred by the fact that the enemy were using it as a ranging mark, and that it was there that the shelling was heaviest. No. 1 Company seemed to be a little better off in their position on the knoll. They had a nucleus of experienced men, under Kit Conway, and found a certain amount of cover on the reverse slope. But from both positions there was a continual trickle of walking wounded and stretcher-bearers making their way back from the Front. Some distance away, we could hear a tremendous battle going on to the north of us, but there appeared to be no action on either of our immediate flanks and we got the impression that we had been left on our own to fight a private war. Our prospects didn't look very encouraging. We knew that ahead of us was a con¬siderable force with a far greater fire power than we could muster, and the situation started to lose some of its field-day light-heartedness.

During a lull in the firing, Wintringham sent me down to the Casa Blanca hill to get a situation report from Briskey as we had received no word from him since the barrage started. I went along the sunken road and made my way across the dead ground in the rear of the hill. The firing had died down considerably but was still heavy enough to be frightening. When I reached the crest of the hill, the scene I found was really horrible. Briskey was dead and No. 3 Company had lost more than half of its total strength, either dead or wounded.

The survivors seemed to be in fairly good heart but very angry. Some of them were trying to scratch some sort of cover for themselves and cursing the lack of any tools; others were trying to clear jams in the wretched shossers - spare magazines had become hopelessly clogged with dirt and had to be emptied, cleaned and reloaded. Everyone was asking for water. The situation in Overton's Company was worse. They had had equally heavy casualties but seemed to be making a much less serious attempt to prepare for the attack which must surely be imminent, and I could get no coherent sense out of Overton himself. He had a list of totally impossible requirements: reinforcements, artillery support, food, water and God knows what beside, but seemed to be making no real effort to keep the Company together. I had just got back to the sunken road when there was a storm of musketry. The enemy had started their advance.

On the night of 27 and 28 April, Bert Overton's actions during the battle of Jarama were raised in a battalion meeting. The meeting was chaired by Bert Williams, who had replaced George Aitken as battalion commissar on 23 March, when Aitken was promoted to brigade commissar. During the meeting it was also alleged that, further to his conduct on 12 and 13 February, whilst in hospital Overton had promoted himself from sergeant to captain and had since been claiming the pay." Bill Alexander recounts that "all were allowed to speak" at the meeting, though (apparently without any sense of irony) he states that Overton was not present to make his own defence. At the official brigade court martial which followed shortly afterwards, Overton was charged with desertion, promoting himself to captain and drawing the pay, and sentenced to work in a labour battalion. Overton was later killed "by a shell while carrying munitions to a forward position". As James Hopkins points out, several brigaders have hinted darkly that Overton was, if not actually murdered, certainly sent deliberately, "into harms way ...[as] ... an expedient means of getting rid of a soldier who had become a dangerous embarrassment".

There was a dip in the ground that was completely invisible, and through which the enemy could have walked and popped up in front of us. It wouldn't have been too bad if we had a right flank, but our right flank was empty because Bert Overton's No 4 Company had deserted and run back to the sunken road. We had eight Maxim machine guns (usually we had around five because they jammed and we sent them back to the armourers on the sunken road). Two Maxims and 12 riflemen should have been taken out and sent to the right flank. The Franco-Belgian Battalion further on the right had been forced back 300-400 yards, so we were exposed.

After continual enemy artillery bombardments and heavy machine-gun fire, which lasted all day long, there was a complete cessation of fire on the enemy side. You think, what's the enemy doing? He was attacking, because they didn't want to hit their own troops. We saw men running down the side of a hill, and we mowed them down. But the enemy was grouping in the blind spot and eventually we were surrounded and captured.

I was exchanged in mid-September 1937 and crossed into France. I wanted to go back. But then Jimmy Rutherford was executed and they wouldn't let anyone who had been captured and exchanged go out again. So I worked for the Spanish aid organizations

After about the third day at Jarama when we went into action, there was very little defence. We were out in the open and people were standing up when they should have been taking cover. They were being shot down and we were losing quite a number of men and right to the front of us, about 500 yards away, there was a big white house. We were hoping to capture that white house but we never got near it. Our commander, Bert Overton, came over to me and said: "I have forgotten my binoculars." I was a runner then, a messenger, and I said I would go back for them. He said, "No, I will go". I said you can't go and leave the company, but before I said anything else he walked off and he was gone. I didn't think too much more about it. I thought that maybe he had been killed. So many people got killed, especially officers, at that time.

It was about six months later, at Mondejar, that I met Peter Kerrigan, the commissar, who was a very stern and severe but good commissar. He did things for everyone's good. He says to me, "There is a battalion trial, go and get the prisoner". So I went in and there was this bloke sitting there. It was Overton. I looked at him, sort of remembered his face, told him to come along and marched him in. I remember Kerrigan and a fellow called George Aitken were sitting there. Overton was asked about this and he told them the same story as he had to me: that he had left his binoculars and he went back to fetch them. He was accused of cowardice, taken in front of the battalion, stripped of his officer epaulettes and was dishonoured. That was the last I saw of him. I was told he went off to another front and died there. After the trial I did say to Peter Kerrigan that because Overton had given my name as a witness I should have been allowed to step forward. I couldn't have made any difference. I would have told the same story, but it seemed a bit unfair to me. Kerrigan said he was a coward and that men had died.

Bert Overton may have suffered a somewhat similar fate. The brigade court-martialed Overton, an ex-Guardsman who failed abysmally as a company commander at the Jarama, costing the lives of many because of his fear and incompetence. He was then sent to a labor battalion. At Brunete, he was killed while carrying ammunition "to a forward position." Some wondered if putting Overton in harm's way wasn't simply an expedient means of getting rid of a soldier who had become a dangerous embarrassment.