Comrades

A memoir of nineteen months in Spain by a volunteer

Concentrates on the daily hardships and danger faced by individual Brigaders, and the banter and grumbling which were necessary survival tactics in desperate military situations. This book shares with us the struggles of an idealist among the shifting politics and brutal realities of an ideological war' - John Sayles.The Spanish Civil War served as an ideological and physical battleground for visionary Americans wishing to combat the spread of fascism. Harry Fisher was one such idealist who became a solider in the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of international volunteers dedicated to defeating Franco's forces.

Fisher was one of the earliest American volunteers and one of the few to participate in all the major battles. Under a barrage of shells, bombs, and bullets for eighteen months, he lost his illusions about war's efficacy in solving political issues. To this day a despondence often overwhelms him when he recalls a family photograph he found jutting from the pocket of a slain fascist soldier. His involvement taught him that up close, the dead, whether fascist soldiers or his own fallen comrades, looked alike.

This is a war story, simply told. Yet it is also a complex story about a young man testing his ideology in the harsh realities of battle.