Glorious Losers

Twenty-five years after Spain, the history of the Lincolns became of paramount concern. The 1950s had hurt the organization and many of the volunteers, but the era had also called their own past into question. Protecting what some have called “the last great cause” became a cause in itself.

In 1964, the Volunteer announced that veteran Art Landis had agreed to write “a comprehensive history of the Brigade,” after encouragement by the LA vets. “Many of the facts which he needs exist only in the memories of all of us,” the article stated; then, in capital letters: “THERE JUST IS NO OTHER AREA OF SOURCE MATERIAL AVAILABLE.” Veterans’ memories of the war were directly solicited. “We urge veterans to sit down and make tapes themselves. Get a friend to record you if you cannot do it yourself. Write if you have no other way. If you have manuscripts or stories—send them in. […] Even if you can describe only one event—it is important” [emphasis in original]. Landis's exhaustive, fascinating 1967 book, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, remains one of the most comprehensive military histories of the Americans in Spain.

The 1967 veterans’ convention established three committees, among them the Historical Commission, “one of our most important activities,” whose work was reported on at length in a 1969 memo by VALB national secretary Maury Colow. “Together we can set the record on the American Volunteers straight,” Colow stated toward the end of his long memo, “so that the very meaning of why we went to Spain becomes enriched, recorded and left for its proper evaluation by history.” Twenty years earlier, this community had had to remove their files from the New York office for fear they would be confiscated by the US government. Now, newly rejuvenated, it is not surprising that their own compromised history, so much of which existed “only in the memories of all of us,” became such a priority. Saving it became a conscious, active, committed, politically motivated process.