Spain Burns

While fury, smoke, explosions and death raged around her, young Rita held her camera steady...and clicked and clicked In Franco's savage onslaught on democracy, each day's Hour of Vespers saw freshly dead uncounted cohorts of Spanish men, women and children - lifeless. After the war ended, Franco stood 250,000 unarmed civilians before his firing squads - people who could not swallow fascism. But the men and single women of Madrid, mostly in the blue overalls of the Militia, most without military training, turned out in their tens of thousands. After lifetimes of hunger - After lifetimes of oppression - After lifetimes of not even knowing how to read or write - They bade their families farewell, convinced they were going to die - And as they trudged to the most powerful, most highly trained Army in the world, largely unarmed and already dead men and women in their minds, a feral savagery filled them. They prayed to the God of Battles for them to pick up a rifle from a dead comrade... they prayed to the God of Battles that they would take one Legionnaire or Moor with them before they fell. And the Lord of Battles heeded them.