First hunt in Spain for remains of Britons who fought against Franco in civil war: ‘My grandfather’s there’

Somewhere in a field in Spain, lie the remains of George Green.

Like about 2,500 other Britons, he left his family and job behind to fight against fascism in the Spanish civil war.

In 1938, when the International Brigade made a last stand against the advancing armies of General Francisco Franco at the Battle of Ebro in Catalonia, he lost his life when enemy troops overran his trench.

Nearly 90 years later, the whereabouts of his body, like hundreds of others, have never been traced.

For the first time in Spain, researchers in Catalonia are searching for the remains of International Brigade fighters, many of which were dumped in unmarked mass graves during the bitter conflict between 1936 and 1939.

The Catalan Democratic Memory directorate is appealing to the living relatives of these men and women to get in touch so they can match up their DNA to prove the link to their loved ones. They hope to match these people with their relatives and give them a dignified burial decades after they lost their lives in the struggle against Franco.

Researchers can send a DNA kit to families in Britain and other countries around the world. These relatives can give a sample of saliva which can then be used to link up with any remains which are unearthed.

Using hospital archives and military records which were sent to the Soviet Union after the Republican government lost the civil war in 1939, researchers in Catalonia can trace possible sites where International Brigade fighters fell.

Crispin Green, the grandson of George Green, is anxious to trace the remains of the grandfather he never knew.

George, a classical musician who was living with his wife Nancy and their two young children in London, was 33 when he left for Spain in 1937.

“George and his wife Nancy were committed communists. When Spain came up, he declared that that is what he had to do. The only way to save the world from fascism was to go to Spain and take a stand,” Mr Green, 70, a retired housing worker from London, tells The Independent.

George drove medical supplies to Spain in 1937 where he joined the International Brigade. His wife joined him shortly afterwards, leaving their two young children behind. Nancy Green had been convinced to help the war effort after a wealthy supporter of the International Brigades offered to pay for her children to go to school in Britain.

A year later, he was dead. Such was the chaos of war that his wife only found out six months later when she had returned to Britain.

“It would mean a great deal to me to find my grandfather. His death affected my father in deeper ways than he knew. He wrote an elegy for the dead who went to Spain,” says Crispin Green.

“You think ‘what would you do? Would you leave everything behind and go to Spain?’ I stand in amazement at my grandparents. They were two idealists.”

Crispin travelled to Spain with researchers to see Corbera d’Ebre, a village in Catalonia in northeastern Spain, where his grandfather is believed to have died during the Battle of the Ebro. Researchers have found a trench, and contemporary accounts suggest George was last seen there.

Crispin wonders wistfully what he would do if faced with the same choices as his grandfather who believed fighting fascism was his duty.

“Who knows what you would do if your back were against the wall and the lights are going out and the values you stand for are being threatened and a lot of autocrats are coming to power and you feel you have to fight?” he says.

Alfons Aragoneses, director of the Catalan Democratic Memory directorate, said that about 200 mass graves were believed to exist in Catalonia which have not been investigated.

“We are trying to investigate the whereabouts of 1,500 International Brigadiers who died or disappeared in Catalonia," he says. “We are trying to contact through associations in other countries the families of the people who died. We are asking for a DNA sample so that this could help us identify the remains which we discover.”

“It is easy to get in touch. If someone gets in touch with us through our website, which is in English, we will send them a DNA kit. They can send us a sample of saliva by post,” he adds.

Mr Aragoneses said researchers had not been able to contact any families of any International Brigade so far. Since the programme to find Spaniards who died in Catalonia started in 2017, it has matched only 30 families with those who died in the civil war. A map of mass graves – not just those potentially containing International Brigadiers – has been produced by researchers.

“I am pretty sure that this [search for the International Brigade] is unique, and this adds to its importance. We want other [Spanish] regions to follow,” Jim Jump, chair of the International Brigades Memorial Trust in Britain, tells The Independent.

“There were about hundreds of Britons who died in Catalonia. About 530 volunteers died in Spain. There are lots who are in mass graves.

“Certainly, some families would like to find out what happened. Hopefully, it will have a snowball effect and will gather momentum.”

For Crispin Green and other families like his, locating his relatives' remains would provide a kind of end to a conflict which started nearly nine decades ago.

“[George] is out there in a field somewhere. To find his remains would feel like closure.”