The Angel Of History. Bruno Arpaia

were heading back to the ravine but we were advancing slowly. The Fascists had figured out it was a camp and were pounding it from the air. The caverns were full of soldiers and we must have been drawing too much fire outside. Mariano ordered us into an overflowing grotto. We stood at the entrance, almost outside, when a downpour of grenades and mortar fell on us. And where do you think the shrapnel got me? Here, on my right butt cheek. I felt a little pang and then nothing. I thought that I hadn’t even been hit, but I fell down in pain as soon as I tried to get up. Alfonso, Lech and Jimmie were right near me and they looked bad too. Mariano saw I was wounded and squinted. I thought he was going to come at me twisting his hair, but instead he tore the sleeve off his shirt and started bandaging me. Later on, when they were loading us into the ambulance he put his mouth up to my ear, grinned and said, ‘So you found a way, right, you figured out how to weasel out of this. I always knew deep down that you were a bed wetter.’

      He was teasing. But it’s true that my battle of Ebro ended there. I spent almost two months in the hospital after that, sharing a room with Jimmie and Alfonso. The shrapnel had gone all the way to the bone and had hit some nerves.

      ‘Amputate. Cut it off,’ said one French doctor, a blow-hard with a goatee. ‘If we don’t, we may risk total nerve damage.’

      Lucky for me there was another doctor there, an Englishman who was convinced he could save my leg. He operated on me cold, no anaesthesia – medical supplies were low. Hurt like the devil but may the god of medicine always protect that English doctor because you see my leg? I still have it and it works pretty well, almost.’