The historical record isn’t always straightforward. Take this photo of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion’s machine gun company.
This particular version of the photo is from Jim Higgins’ copy of The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion by Victor Hoar (with Mac Reynolds). It was the first book about the Mac-Paps and was published in 1969.
Jim Higgins, my father, arrived in Spain at the end of October 1937, and trained the month of November to be a machine gunner. The photo was taken a short time after, in December 1937, according to Alan Warren. *
The only person identified in the Hoar book version, is Niilo Makela.** Well, except for that mark pointing to the head of the short guy at the gun. Marks like that just happen to be my father’s characteristic way of pointing himself out in photos. There’s another in my last post about the Hoar book being “too late by 30 years”, where he circled his head.
That sure looks like my father in the machine-gun photo, and since he was a newly-minted machine gunner in December 1937, and since he’s the one who drew the red line, (and all the other marks in the book), I can only assume it is. He died in 1982, so he’d marked it sometime in the 13 years after 1969.
But in recent years, I’ve seen a different version of this photo, especially online; one with printed names running vertically from the tops of five of the 20-or-so heads. Above the head of that same soldier on the gun, is printed the name, “Oskar Huosianmaa”.
I think I first saw this version published on page 206 of the book The Gallant Cause by Mark Zuehlke, which was published in 1996. the image is credited to the National Archives of Canada (NAC) and numbered PA194606.
NAC is now Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and all I can find at the LAC website is a reference to the photo, with some of the hand-printed names listed. (It’s number 37 in the list when you click through.) I can’t tell if they have the ‘clean’ version that was used in the Hoar book. I’m pretty much a novice at searching archives, so perhaps someone who reads this, can dig deeper.
Here’s the thing about those names. They’re all in a different printing style. Was it passed around at a meeting of veterans decades after 1937? Perhaps, people did their best to recall who was who, and someone felt the soldier on the gun looked like Oskar Huosianmaa.
Have a look at their bios on the spanishcivilwar.ca website; Here’s Oskar Huosianmaa and here’s Jim Higgins. You will deduce from their birth dates that, in late 1937, when the photo of the machine-gun company was taken, that Oskar would have been 42 and Jim, 30. Below are their photographs.
At first, I thought my father had spoiled the images with his not-so-subtle marks, until a librarian friend pointed out that the photo below, of him and my brother at the first reunion of the Eastern Organization of Mac-Paps in 1977, was corroborating evidence of his habit of marking himself in photos.
I might also add that at one point in his memoir, Dad mentions his short height compared to most of the volunteers. He was around 5’6″, maybe 5’7″. So short. Like the guy on the gun.
So who is it, really? At the moment I’m pretty certain it’s my father; but I’m open to proof that it’s not. There is one thing I’m absolutely certain of; that Oskar Huosianmaa and Jim Higgins were both heroes for a just cause.
Let me know what you think. Do you have an opinion about who it is? Can you add anything that could clear things up.
© Janette Higgins
*Alan Warren, is a Spanish Civil War blogger, and tour guide for families of vets who want to visit sites where their loved ones fought and/or died. Alan was the one who directed me to a clip about my father in a Catalan film he’d worked on. Thanks for your part in keeping the memory alive, Alan.
***
NOW PUBLISHED: Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982), A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War (2020) is available worldwide from Independent Bookstores, Chapters-Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Kindle version on Amazon. Orders of three or more: Friesen Press.
I encourage you to obtain it from your local Indie bookseller or library. And if you can leave a review or “star” it somewhere, like Amazon or Goodreads, that would be much appreciated!
Fighting for Democracy by Jim Higgins is the latest book about the Mac-Paps, Canadians in the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion, which was part of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Other books about Canadians in the Spanish Civil War include Not For King or Country by Tyler Wentzell , Mac-Pap by Ronald Liversedge with David Yorke and Renegades by Michael Petrou.
I think your theory on how the names were written on the image in the Zuehlke book is credible, so not guaranteed to be accurate.
I spent a long time looking at all the images in this post. Jim has a “high” hairline, Oskar’s hat could easily be hiding one, and the gunner probably has one too. But look at the 7th guy from the left, in the back row, in Hoar’s book (cropping is not identical in the 2 versions). To me, he looks more like Oskar, with the prominent cheekbones. Check out the guy on the far right of Hoar’s photo. He is cropped out of the other version. Could that be Jim?
I wouldn’t swear that the guy behind the gun is Jim, but it would seem that he was there when the photo was taken, and he marked it with the red pen, consistent with what he did with pictures he appears in. I think it’s most likely Jim.
Good eye, Susan! I think you could be right about Oskar being the 7th from the left in the back row of the Hoar version. Not so sure about the one on the far right in Hoar; he seems a bit too tall.
Janette,
I think the ID’s in that photo that was at LAC may have been done by another Finn and it may well have been Jules Paivio. Looking at the photo, I think I found that the dark haired man to the right of “Huosianmaa” was Scout Jack Fowle. The man beneath him was identified as Paave [sic, Paavo] Koskinen and that makes sense since he took over the Machine Gun Company when Makela was killed. I think the man to the right of Fowle is Jules Paivio.
Unfortunately, none of these men has a WWI military file that I can find. In those, we would have their heights which might help.
The man directly behind “Huosianmaa” is quite a bit younger than “Huosianmaa”. Could that be Jim Higgins and perhaps he just mispointed the arrow?
Thanks for weighing in, Ray. I think both marks are definitely pointing to the man on the gun; that whoever made them made no mistake who they intended to point to. In my father’s case, his elongated scribble comprises four vertical lines pointed directly to the middle of the top of “his” head.
As far as I can tell from his memoir, my father did not fight with the Finns. Unfortunately, if Dad wrote about Teruel, the battle they were in after that photo was taken, it was amongst the parts of his memoir that went missing when he sent things out for typing.
What do you think about my sister, Susan’s observation in the comments, about the possibility of Oskar being the 7th man from the left in the back row of the uncropped (or at least less cropped) Hoar version?
I might also throw out a general question. Who, among you, has trouble identifying your adult self in a photo, even if it was taken decades ago? And especially if the occasion was a significant one in your life. For myself, not only can I identify my adult self, I can also identify my child self.