"Surrender With Honor"

"Surrender With Honor"

"It has been axiomatic in this war that nothing can be learned with certainty unless one goes to the spot and sees with his own eyes." So last week wrote the only reporter yet to write a story from within the walls of Teruel, softspoken, impeccably groomed Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times. Following Leftist mopping-up squads right into the ruins of the Civil Government Building, he saw plenty:

"The building echoed deafeningly with rifle fire, pistol shots and grenade explosions. It needed some cautious maneuvering to recognize what corner not to go around. . . . The Rebels were on the floor below us, firing upward, while Loyalists shot down or dropped hand grenades. . . . Once a song floated upward amazingly from that doomed place below. A soldier next to me heard it just as he was about to draw the pin of a grenade. 'They're singing!' he said in a stupefied tone."

Quieter investigation by Correspondent Matthews cleared up many other points about this greatest battle of the war. Because Rightist planes won and kept control of the air throughout the battle, there had been no reports to contradict Franco's claims and for a week the press had been misled into believing that most of Teruel had been retaken by his troops. Actually, through the ten bloody days it lasted, the Rightist counteroffensive never touched Teruel itself, got no closer than four miles from the city. Evidence from other sources indicates that the three U. S. and British correspondents with Franco's army killed by shell fire at Caudete on New Year's Eve (TIME, Jan. 10) were not three miles behind the line, as they believed, but little more than a thousand yards from the fighting.

At the height of the Rightist counteroffensive Franco's forces were able to cut communications between the Leftist command in Teruel and its two wings. But neither side could bring sufficient reinforcements through the snow, and the Left wings held until the Rightist wave had broken.

Three days after Correspondent Matthews had returned to Barcelona to put his story on the wire the final break in the Rightist defense of Teruel's garrison came when the president of Teruel's Red Cross, Jesus Vinyas, sent a message asking that his wounded might be evacuated, Rightist civilians allowed to return to their homes or given passports to go abroad.

By telephone from Barcelona Leftist Defense Minister Indalecio Prieto granted all these requests except permission to leave Spain, and sent three companies of assault guards to Teruel to see that Leftist militiamen kept order, took no vengeance on Rightist soldiers and civilians "surrendering with honor." By evening, when most of the civilians had been evacuated from the besieged garrison, Lieut. Colonel Rey d'Harcourt, who with his garrison had been on the verge of starvation for six days, surrendered in person. Captives totaled 40 important officers, 2,450 other ranks and about 3.000 civilians. Among the last to surrender was the Church Militant in the person of Anselmo Polanca Fonseca, Bishop of Teruel. Conducted to a nearby railroad station, he signed a cautious statement:

"I take great pleasure in testifying that since my evacuation from the seminary at Teruel, until my arrival at the station at Mora de Rubielos, I have been treated with every sort of consideration and I am heartily grateful therefor."

The Battle of Teruel was over. It remained a Leftist victory no matter what might happen to the city in the weeks to come.

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