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ism under fire that made it possible for us to survive the 21 hellish days of Brunete and go on from there.

Garland pulling the wounded Leo Kaufman off a hill and himself being wounded in the process, is a scene burned into my memory; him shouting for us to take cover as he lifted the frail Kaufman in his arms, a sniper peppering the exposed crest, bringing Leo safely into the waiting arms of Sanidad and then Walter tying a handkerchief around his own wound and leading us on.

There was nothing that Captain Walter Garland could ask of me that I would not have done straight-away. My greatest personal disappointment in Spain came when he was sent back to the States after Brunete. And after Spain that he disappeared from my life altogether.

And Doug Roach instructing us on how to dig into the soft sand of the dry river-bed where the bridge passed overhead to Canada: "Use your shovels today, comrades, and you'll be around tomorrow to use your guns." And so we did and remained unharmed, each one of us though the bombs rained down for what seemed an eternity of rolling fire and earth-shaking thunder. And when the smoke had cleared it was up to the front with the Maxims repelling the enemy stunned by the improbable intelligence that we had not all perished in the inferno.

And Vaughn Love patrolling the wide open spaces where our lines had broken, a Dicterov at the ready, ammo-pans hanging from his belt telling me, "I don't know where anyone is but we gotta hold this place." "Who? You and me?" I asked. "Well, he replied testily, "I don't seen anyone else around, do you?"

Tommy Page and Charlie Parker and Admiral Kilpatrick, I remember them not as Blacks but as strong, dependable comrades - men for whom this struggle in Spain was a continuation, not a beginning. In one way or another they had "been here before."

[[image - caption: International Brigade soldiers]]

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First Black Commander in U. S. Armed Forces History
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In early 1937, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) has been 120 days in the Jarama sector trenches of the Mdrid front.

He was the machine gun crew commander, promoted to Battalion Commander and rank of Captain. He was killed July, 1937 in the attack on Mosquito Crest at Villaneuva de la Canada front in the first Republican government offensive in Brunete.

HIS NAME: OLIVER LAW.

On February 23, 1937, at the Jarama front, Oliver was given command of the machine gun company. He was then in his early thirties. Oliver, like all commanders in the ALB, began his military leadership advancement in the ranks as a private.

Oliver Law has become the first Afro-American to command the first integrated military unit in the history of the US armed forces.

For six years, he served in the US segregated army and despite his talents, courage and leadership qualities there was no opportunity for him for advancement. He left the army as a private but after six months in Spain and under fire, he became Battalion Commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion with the rank of Captain.

This act becomes an historic event in the annals of Afro-American people's history, in the struggle against jim crow segregation and racism, in the struggle to eliminate the vestiges of the stink of the slave market which permeates the very depths of American society.

Oliver was a building trades worker, active fighter for free speech and Black people's rights in his native Chicago South Side. As an Afro-American and poor workingman he survived for seven years the brutal beatings visited periodically on the people of the ghetto by the notorious Chicago "Red" Squad police goons, who ruptured him in an attempt to kill him.

What the US fascist brutes did not succeed in accomplishing Hitler-Franco fascist killers did. He was killed on the fourth day of the Lincoln's action at the Brunete battle in the first major Spanish Republican army offensive July, 1937 in the Brunet sector, serving as Machine

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