To the Death, Amic — John Bryson

A novel written true to the histories, and true to the memories of Enric Torres i Barbo, whose life and philosophies this novel takes for its guide.

 

Twin boys Enric and Josep, at ten years of age, served as spies and couriers in the Resistance by the Republican Spanish against the invasion of Fascist forces in Spain, then from Italy and Germany during the Civil War.

 

In Catalonia the war begins in Barcelona.

 

THE MAZE of alleys and passageways of the old city as we passed through were not at all quiet. The closer we came to the Ronda Universitat the more gunfire we could hear. Not only from the direction of the Placa de Catalunya, it bounced from a building behind us, which made us crouch and whirl, and then from laneways where there was no one, as if the sound of war could stalk the town of its own accord.

 

The twins will go on, for the Resistance, to gather intelligence, to running propaganda leaflets and contraband across the French border, to guiding fugitives over the Pyrenees.

 

Of this time in his childhood Enric has said, 'It was so cold up there, I tell you, I pee icicles.'