“The volunteers, led by Cecil-Smith and Jim Higgins, the commissar for the trip home, marched onto the stage to thunderous applause.”
Really? It made sense to me that Edward Cecil-Smith would be leading. He was the battalion commander. But Jim Higgins?
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Today is my birthday. My 75th. I’m not telling you this to garner birthday greetings, but rather to reflect on the fact that Jim Higgins was 75 when he died. He’d been frail and failing for several years by then, and writing what is mostly the first draft of his memoir during that time was all he could handle.
Remembrance Day is different for me this year.
When I was a child, I didn’t understand anything about war. A friend had lost two older brothers in WW II, and I was curious about their photos on her family’s piano, but it all seemed remote; nothing to do with me. In my own extended family, I was aware of no one who’d been to war.
These oft-repeated words ring through the years as an emotional tribute to tens of thousands of people who left their countries, often illegally, to help the people of Spain in their fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
Continue readingThe historical record isn’t always straightforward. Take this photo of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion’s machine gun company.
I have no doubt that my Dad, Jim Higgins, was writing about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in early February 1939, while still on the boat back to Canada .
Major Cecil-Smith, a journalist before volunteering for Spain, was to be editor of a book about the Canadian volunteers who fought in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. He asked Dad to make some contributions; they wanted it out as quickly as possible.
It happened, first, in January, 2018. I was at a dinner party in San Miguel de Allende. The host had steered the conversation towards my plans to publish my father’s 1930s memoir.
I was telling the other guests a bit about him, when a fellow Canadian asked, “What was your father’s name?” I said, “Jim Higgins”. He replied, “I’m pretty sure I just heard about him on the news.” I said, “Impossible!”, and promptly forgot about it.