ABSTRACT
Camped at Jarama, the men of the Lincoln Battalion read the news of what was happening almost as if it were another war, for they suffered more from the elements than from any human enemy. Their trenches ran along the crest of the hills two miles west of Morata, and the Lincolns looked through a grove of splintered olive trees and across the naked branches of a vineyard to the mounds of earth that were the enemy's position. Beside general conditions, there were also many specific things that bothered the men of the Lincoln Battalion at Jarama. The role of the political commissar in the Spanish Loyalist Army was unusual, and it has been much misunderstood. In a normal army, where the civilian soldier is fighting for his homeland, there is usually little need to explain the issues of the war; patriotism takes care of morale.
