Spanish Civil War jackets 1937-38

The decidedly ragtag uniforms of the Spanish Republican forces (Loyalists or Antifascists) sometimes included a flight-type jacket of the "zippered A-1" design. These were common amongst the Lincoln-Washington Brigade, volunteers drawn primarily from New York City. Others, especially officers, wore a more European type jacket, hip length and double-breasted.


Gustav Kleiger, L.W.B., Nov. 1937.

Sgt. Gerald Cook, L.W.B., May 1938.

Sgt. Joseph Taylor, "Lincoln-Washington activist, especially distinguished." April 1938.

Dr. Mark Strauss, Sanidad (Health), 15th International Brigade. May 1938.

Dr. Strauss with 1938 Ford ambulance donated by NYC college students.

First innovative thread started in a long time.

This jacket just rang a bell with me. I know Paul Mantz and Amelia Earhart wore it. I think Air Associates sold them, tho of course there may have been others.

I turned up the photo archive while looking for a jacket on the FL with a Spanish name on the zipper.

I like those A-1 styled jackets. So are they US made jackets brought to Spain by the volunteers ?

The first few are very similar to the Amelia Earhart jacket. Half way between an A-1 and A-2.
Good thread.

zoomer said:

Dr. Strauss with 1938 Ford ambulance donated by NYC college students.

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Oh never mind jackets.

What a wonderful Ford commercial, Type 820 112-inch Panel .... I used to have the truck.

Few more chaquetas de cuero for y'all.


Capt. Leonard Lamb, Howard Goddard, Edwin Rolfe, Lincoln-Washington. Darmos, May 1938.

David Gordon, Maurice Goldstein. Marca, June 1938.

Capt. Leonard Lamb (wearing what looks like a civvy A-2 -z), Lieut. William Digges. March 1938.

Chauffeurs Dusty Miller, Kaye Alexander. Dec. 1937.
(The hip jackets may have been Soviet issue. Much Loyalist gear was after '37. Look at those dress caps!)

Intendencia (supply corps). Mondejar, Dec. 1937.

Frank Ryan and John Robinson, Irish volunteers. Oct. 1937.
More about Ryan here. A one-time IRA man, he later spied for the German Abwehr during WW2.

Meyer Levin of "Esquire" visits Lincoln-Washington Battalion at Alvares, Dec. 1937.

Nurse Irene Goldin. Oct. 1937.
One of 80 women to volunteer with the Internationals, she married an Austrian volunteer who had been under her care. Both served in the Vienna resistance during WW2. Irene died in 2004 aged 94, one of the last surviving women volunteers.

Paul,
Those are great photos of some really interesting jackets. I had always assumed these styles to be of American origin rather than European. Some of them could be definitive A-1 precursors.

You're probably right about the American origins. Most of the pictures you see here are of American volunteers (altho not "mostly" from NYC as I wrote earlier, that was the largest single group.)

This indeed is a good thread ,the Spanish civil war was a first for many things .It was the first war to be followed by journalists and reported in news papers ,first war for color photos etc etc .Looking in to this civil war makes me interested because there is so much I do not know ,New York citizens made a major contribution to the cause along with other parts of the US and of course other countries .Ernest Hemmingway even volunteered and went to fight .Here is a link to a photographic essay of the Spanish civil war .

http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/scw/photessay.htm

All the best an thankyou zoomer Rgds Jeff .

Excellent thread Zoomer.

I've a few images of some British brigaders and a few Spanish Anarchists/CNT, if I get the opportunity I'll upload some but only those with interesting jackets of course.

I always make sure I get down to the remembrance day for the IB volunteers on the South Bank in London each year to honour their selflessness, as can be expected the original members numbers sadly dwindle each year.

.

One of the most moving films I have ever seen concerns the Spanish civil war. It's called "Land and freedom" by the English director Ken Loach. If you haven't seen it, it's a must.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_Freedom

Hemmingway drove an ambulance, I think. George Orwell was a foot soldier. His account of his time on the line and of the internecine squabbles among the various factions is gripping. Of course. It's Orwell.

Re Hemmingway and the Spanish civil war

. When civil war broke out, Hemingway returned to Spain as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, serving, at times, with fellow journalist Martha Gellhorn, who would become his third wife.

While in Spain, Hemingway collaborated with famed war photographer Robert Capa. Capa's photographs of Hemingway during this period are now part of the Hemingway Collection's extensive audiovisual archives of more than 10,000 photographs.

Hemingway's coverage of the war has been criticized for being slanted against Franco and the Nationalists. In a 1951 letter to Carlos Baker, Hemingway explained it this way. "There were at least five parties in the Spanish Civil War on the Republic side. I tried to understand and evaluate all five (very difficult) and belonged to none . . . . I had no party but a deep interest in and love for the Republic. . . . In Spain I had, and have, many friends on the other side. I tried to write truly about them, too. Politically, I was always on the side of the Republic from the day it was declared and for a long time before."

George Orwell (Eric Blair )
Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising. As a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party (of which he became a member in 1938), he joined the militia of its sister party in Spain, the non-Stalinist far-left POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), in which he fought as an infantryman. In Homage to Catalonia he described his admiration for the apparent absence of a class structure in the revolutionary areas of Spain he visited. He also depicted what he saw as the betrayal of that workers' revolution in Spain by the Spanish Communist Party, abetted by the Soviet Union and its secret police, after its militia attacked the anarchists and the POUM in Barcelona in May 1937. Orwell was shot in the neck (near Huesca) on May 20, 1937, an experience he described in his short essay "Wounded by a Fascist Sniper", as well as in Homage to Catalonia. He and his wife Eileen left Spain after narrowly missing being arrested as "Trotskyites" when the communists moved to suppress the POUM in June 1937.


"
Here is a link to film footage of the civil war Parts one and two
http://blip.tv/file/413689/
All the best Jeff

jack aranda said:

Hemmingway drove an ambulance, I think.

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That was in the Big War. Experiences led to A Farewell to Arms.

Chandler

It's no surprise the Loyalist movement was so fractured. Far left movements, by their intellectual nature, encourage ever finer dissent and splintering unless they're a) humanitarian or b) totalitarian.

The old New York Reds could never have started a Soviet in America because every one of them who could write a screed or make a speech had his own clique with his name and an "-ite" after it.