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Completed	30 September 2007
Title	Homage to Catalonia
Author	George Orwell
Published	1938
Quote	"As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger. It was though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy. I hope he liked me as well as I liked him. But I also knew that to retain my first impression of him I must not see him again; and needless to say I never did see him again. One was always making contacts of that kind in Spain. I mention this Italian militiaman because he has stuck vividly in my memory. With his shabby uniform and fierce pathetic face he typifies for me the special atmosphere of that time. He is bound up with all my memories of that period of the war---the red flags in Barcelona, the gaunt trains full of shabby soldiers creeping to the front, the grey war-stricken towns further up the line, the muddy, ice-cold trenches in the mountains."
Review	I confess, everything I know about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), I learned from Hemingway. I never studied this war in school. So, this book, Homage to Catalonia, was of particular interest to me. The book describes Orwell's time in Spain, fighting on the front. Like so much war literature, the grim descriptions of war life are enough to break your heart. Does a war book exist that does not describe the horrible cold? The inadequate clothing? The hunger? The lack of sleep? The constant chill? One thing that I learned from my Master's (from the Department of War Studies at King's College) was that throughout history, most wars begin and end in either October or April. The whole concept of picking a fight in the middle of summertime (when the livin' is easy), or at Christmastime, simply does not exist. Orwell does such a great job of describing the cold, and the environment. "The weather was mostly clear and cold; sometimes sunny at midday, but always cold. Here and there in the soil of the hill-sides you found the green beaks of wild crocuses or irises poking through; evidently spring was coming, but coming very slowly. The nights were colder than ever. Coming off guard in the small hours we used to rake together what was left of the cook-house fire and then stand in the red-hot embers. It was bad for your boots, but it was very good for your feet. But there were mornings when the sight of the dawn among the mountain-tops made it almost worthwhile to be out of bed at godless hours. I hate mountains, even from a spectacular point of view. But sometimes the dawn breaking behind the hill-tops in our rear, the first narrow streaks of gold, like swords slitting the darkness, and then the growing light and the seas of carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were worth watching even when you had been up all night, when your legs were numb from the knees down and you were sullenly reflecting that there was no hope of food for another three hours." Orwell mixes his experiences with facts to give a good, overall view of what was happening in Spain at this time. It's interesting how he describes the militia system, which is incomprehensible to me, the daughter of a Marine. "The essential point of the [militia] system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and NCOs, but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society."

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