Bombing of Civilians
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MADRID, Sunday
   
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Continuation of the article MADRID, Sunday.

    The cap of the bomb is small and the excavation it makes by the impact with, for instance, the pavemant, is only a couple of inches deep and a few feet across.  On the other hand, the lateral explosion force is tremendous.  This is quite enough to tear apart a human body many yards away.
    At the same time the bombs are apparently filled with bullets on the model of the famous French 75 mm. shells.
    In every case which I examined walls near the place of explosion were scarred with bullet holes, as though from a machine-gun.
    Such bombs are designed principally for use against troops moving across open country, where the objective of the bomber is not the battering down of heavy defenses, but the mowing down of men.
    These are the types being used by the Fascists on the streets of Madrid.  One was thrown into a children's school, where those among the little boys and girls who were not literally torn to rags were perforated and chopped by the bullets.
This poster is dedicated to 25 April 1937 as a day of homage to the victims of the bombers of Barcelona.
Italian bombers were to play a major role in the bombing of civilians in Barcelona.
e-mail us on:  editor@spanishrefugees-basquechildren.org
why, oh why?
  For the seventh time in twenty-four hours enemy planes are flying over the open city of Madrid as I write.
    Late last night thirteen bombs were dropped in the city.  Earlier, a big Italian Caproni came down somewhat lower than usual over the east centre of the city, behind the central post office.
    Without being low enough to aim at anything in particular, the raiders opened fire with machine-guns on streets where children were playing and women standing in milk queues.
    The number of the dead in Friday's massacre has now risen to between 140 and 160.  The reason for the doubt in the figures is simple and ghastly.
    It is that in many cases groups pf people - particularly women standing close together in queues, sometimes with babies in their arms - were torn so violently to pieces by the bombs that it was impossible to be sure how many bodies were represented by the horrible, mangled and scattered remains of flesh and bones.   

Elegy on Spain

Dedication to the photograph of the above
child killed in an air-raid in Barcelona.

O ecstatic is this head of five-year joy -
Captured its butterfly rapture on a paper:
And not the purture of the right eye may
Make any less this prettier than a picture.
O now, my minor moon, dead as meat
Slapped on a negative plate, I hold
The crime of the bloody time in my hand.

Light, light with that lunar death of fate;
Make more dazzling with your agony's gold
The death that lays us all in the sand.
Gaze with that gutted eye on our endeavbour
To be the human brute, not the brute human:
And if I feel your gaze upon me ever,
I'll wear the robe of blood that love illumines.

The first two verses of a poem written in 1940 by George Barker from his Collected Poems published by Faber & Faber 1987.
   ...A day begun so quietly was to end in indescribable horror and dismay.
    'A raid's coming up,' said Jordan.  'Do you want to go down to the shelter?'  I shook my head, so we wnt outside.  Phil's ear had caught the sounds of bombers in the air, although there had been no warning.  Across the hills to the east the air was alive with Heinkels as wave after wave drove in from the sea.  They were followed by Junkers.  Horror-striken, the Basques amongst us shouted, 'Guernica! they're bombing Guernica!'  It seemed incredible that such a monstrous thing could

happen to this quiet little market town, renowned from time immemorial as the home of Basque liberation where, before the famous oak tree, rulers of Spain had traditionally sworn to observe Basque local rights.  Helpless to do anything we watched from the hills.  Until nearly eight in the evening, incendiary bombs and high explosives rained down every twenty minutes.  The town was open and defenceless; it was crowded with market day visitors and as people fled from the destruction they were dive-bombed and machine-gunned from the air.  The roads out of the town were jammed with dead and injured: 1,654 killed; 889 injured.
From an article by Leah Manning in the book  'With the Rearguard.'
Frank Capa encapsulates the horror and fear of bombing raids on Bilbao.
Horror-striken...
Civilian bombing
in Barcelona.

One place which I saw where a bomb fell near a milk shop there were bits of flesh and brains plastered against walls many yards from the actual scene of the explosion.
    Investigations made on the scene of a number of the explosions show that the bombs used are of a type which are designed not for the destruction of buildings - far less of any military objective - but for killing the maximum number of people.

Part of article 'Women and Children Blown to Pieces' from the Daily Worker, 2 November 1936.
A picture of an Italian CAPRONI AP.I.
These bombers are the most likely type which took part in the bombing of Madrid during the 1936 attack as depicted in this article.
Guernica, after the bombing raids by the Condor Legion.
Guernica bombed