Eileen writes of using ‘credit at 60 to the £’. At 60, 2,000 pesetas would cost just over £33; at 36, £55 11s. Presumably Eileen hoped for more than 60.

[368]

Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz

On 1 May 1937, Orwell wrote to Gollancz from Barcelona to thank him for his introduction to The Road to Wigan Pier, which he had first seen about ten days earlier. Since then he had been slightly ill and ‘then there was 3 or 4 days of street-fighting in which we were all more or less involved, in fact it was practically impossible to keep out of it’. He concludes:

I shall be going back to the front probably in a few days & barring accidents I expect to be there till about August. After that I think I shall come home, as it will be about time I started on another book. I greatly hope I come out of this alive if only to write a book about it. It is not easy here to get hold of any facts outside the circle of one’s own experience, but with that limitation I have seen a great deal that is of immense interest to me. Owing partly to an accident I joined the P.O.U.M. militia instead of the International Brigade,1 which was a pity in one way because it meant that I have never seen the Madrid front; on the other hand it has brought me into contact with Spaniards rather than Englishmen & especially with genuine revolutionaries. I hope I shall get a chance to write the truth about what I have seen. The stuff appearing in the English papers is largely the most appalling lies – more I can’t say, owing to the censorship. If I can get back in August I hope to have a book ready for you about the beginning of next year.

1. The International Brigade was composed of foreign volunteers, mostly Communist, and played an important part in the defence of Madrid. Its headquarters was at Albacete.

[369]

Orwell’s Wound

Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20 May 1937. He discusses the incident in Homage to Catalonia, pp. 131–3 [VI/137–9]. Eileen sent a telegram from Barcelona at noon on 24 May 1937 to Orwell’s parents in Southwold. This read: ‘Eric slightly wounded progress excellent sends love no need for anxiety Eileen.’ This reached Southwold just after 2 p.m. Orwell’s commandant, George Kopp, wrote a report on his condition on 31 May and 1 June 1937. When this report was lost (see Eileen’s letter to her brother, c. 10 June 1937, below), Kopp wrote another, for Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy, Orwell’s brother-in-law, dated ‘Barcelona, the 10th. of June 1937’ (see below). It differs slightly from the version given in Orwell Remembered, 158–61. Kopp illustrated his report with a drawing of the bullet’s path through Orwell’s throat; Bert Govaerts, who uncovered details of Kopp’s life, suggests that this shows his training in engineering drawing. Kopp’s report is in the British Library, Mss Add. 49384, and is reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees. The slight errors in Kopp’s English have been corrected.

Eric was wounded the 20th of May at 5 a.m. The bullet entered the neck just under the larynx, slightly at the left side of its vertical axis and went out at the dorsal right side of the neck’s base. It was a normal 7 mm bore, copper-plated Spanish Mauser bullet, shot from a distance of some 175 yards.