Britons in the Spanish Civil War: The King Street Crusaders

In the chilly dawn of February 11th, 1937 around 500 men from Britain, armed with rifles and machine guns, began clambering up a ridge overlooking the River Jarama, a few miles south-east of Madrid. For seven months Spain had been embroiled in a brutal civil war, sparked by an uprising of right-wing generals against the country’s elected government. The British were there as part of the International Brigades, a force of foreign volunteers who had come to fight for the Spanish Republic. Although some Britons had been involved in earlier battles, this would be the first action by a fully-fledged British Battalion and most of its members had never been under fire before.