YCL100: ‘The Defence of Madrid’ by Phil Gillan (1937)
Phil Gillan, a Young Communist League member from Glasgow, was the first of 549 volunteers from Scotland to join the Spanish Civil War. Fresh from the battlefield, he writes about his time training in the Tom Mann Centuria before serving within the Thälmann Battalion, and the realities of war against the fascists. After miraculously surviving a serious injury inflicted by German Nazis, he returned home where he told his story, and helped to recruit many others to join in the united fight for freedom
