Original subtitles

This Spanish earth is dry and hard.

And the faces of the men who work that earth are hard and dry from the sun.

This worthless land with water will yield much.

For fifty years we wanted to irrigate but they held us back.

Now we will bring water to it to raise food for the defenders of Madrid.

The village of Fuentedue�a, where fifteen hundred people live

and work the land for the common good.

It is good bread stamped with the Union label.

But there is only enough for the village.

Irrigating the waste land of the village

can give ten times as much grain for bread,

as well as potatoes, wine and onions for Madrid.

The village is on the Tajo river

and the main highroad that is the life line between Valencia and Madrid.

All food for Madrid comes on this road.

To win the war the rebel troops must cut this road.

They plan the irrigation of the dry fields.

They go to trace the ditch.

This is the true face of men going into action.

It is a little different from any other face that you will ever see.

Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death.

The villagers in Fuentedue�a hear this noise and say...

"our guns".

The frontline curves north to Madrid.

These were the doors of houses that are empty now.

Those who survived the bombardment bring them to reinforce the new trenches.

When you are fighting to defend your country,

war, as it lasts, becomes an almost-normal life.

You eat, and drink, and sleep, and read the papers.

The loudspeaker of the People's Army. It has a range of two kilometers.

When these men started for the lines three months ago,

many of them held a rifle for the first time.

Some did not even know how to reload.

Now they are instructing the new recruits how to take down

and reassemble a rifle.

This is the salient

driven into Madrid itself when the enemy took the University City.

After repeated counter-attacks they are still in the "Casa de Vel�zquez",

the palace on the left with the pointed towers,

and in the ruined Clinical Hospital.

The bearded man is Commander Mart�nez de Arag�n.

Before the war he was a lawyer.

He was a brave and skillful commander,

and he died in the attack on the "Casa del Campo"

on the day we filmed the battle there.

The rebels try to relieve the Clinic.

Juli�n, a boy from the village, writes home:

"Papa, I will be there in three days.

Tell our mother".

The troops are called together.

The company is assembled to elect representatives to attend the big meeting

for celebrating the union of all the militia regiments

into the new brigades of the People's Army.

Enrique "Lister", a stonemason from Galicia.

In six months of fighting he rose from a simple soldier to the command of a division.

He's one of the most brilliant young soldiers of the Republican Army.

Carlos,

one of the first commanders of the Fifth Regiment.

He talks of the Army of the People.

How they are fighting for Spanish democracy

and for the Government they themselves have chosen.

Fighting together we shall win a new strong Spain.

Jos� D�az,

he used to work twelve hours a day as a typesetter

before he became a member of the Spanish Parliament.

Gustav Regler,

one of the fine writers of Germany,

who came to Spain to fight for his ideals.

He was gravely wounded in June.

Regler praises the unity of the People's Army.

The defense of Madrid will remind men always

of their loyalty and courage.

The most famous woman in Spain today is speaking.

They call her "La Pasionaria".

She is not a romantic beauty, nor any Carmen.

She's the wife of a poor miner of Asturias.

But all the character of the new Spanish woman is in the voice.

"Comrades of the 12th Flag,"

"Jos� Leiva speaking. Do you know me? I'm among my brothers of The People's Army..."

"...where I've been given an excellent treatment".

"Here you can't see the beastly treatment we are given in those lines".

Living in the cellars of that ruined building are the enemy.

They are Moors and Civil Guards.

They are brave troops or they would not have held out after their position is hopeless.

But they are professional soldiers fighting against the people in arms,

trying to impose the will of the military on the will of the people, and the people hate them,

for without their tenacity and the constant aid of Italy and Germany,

the Spanish revolt would have ended six weeks after it began.

This battalion goes on leave,

and Juli�n, who is with them, has three days leave to the village.

The Duke of Alba's Palace is destroyed by rebel bombardment.

Treasures of Spanish art are carefully salvaged by government militiamen.

Madrid, by its position, is a natural fortress,

and each day the people make its defences more impregnable.

You stand in line all day to buy food for supper.

Sometimes the food runs out before you reach the door.

Sometimes a shell falls near the line

and at home they wait and wait,

and no one brings back anything for supper.

Unable to enter the town, the enemy try to destroy it.

This is a man who had nothing to do with war.

A book-keeper on his way to his office at eight o'clock in the morning.

So now they take the book-keeper away.

But not to his office or to his home.

The Government urges all civilians to evacuate Madrid.

But "where will we go?"

"Where can we live?"

"What can we do for a living?"

"I won't go. I'm too old".

But we must keep the children off the street,

except when there is need to stand in line.

Recruiting is speeded up by the bombardment.

Every useless killing angers the people.

Men from all businesses, professions and trades

enlist in the Republican Army.

Meanwhile, in Valencia, the President...

Juli�n catches a ride on an empty truck and comes home sooner than he expected.

Juli�n drills the village boys in the evening, when they come back from the fields.

In Madrid, a future shock battalion of bullfighters,

football players and athletes is drilling.

They say the old goodbyes that sound the same in any language.

She says she'll wait. He says that he'll come back.

He knows she'll wait. Who knows for what the way the shelling is.

Nobody knows if he comes back.

"Take care of the kid", he says. "I will", she says and knows she can't.

They both know that when they move you out in trucks,

it's to a battle.

Death comes each morning to these people of the town,

sent from the hills two miles away.

The smell of death is acrid high-explosive smoke and blasted granite.

Why do they stay? They stay because this is their city.

These are their homes. Here is their work. This is their fight.

The fight to be allowed to live as human beings.

Boys look for bits of shell fragment as they once gathered hill stones.

So the next shell finds them.

The German artillery has increased their allowance for battery today.

Before, death came when you were old or sick,

but now it comes to all this village.

High in the sky and shining silver

it comes to all who have no place to run, no place to hide.

Three "Junkers" planes did this.

The Government pursuit-planes shot one "Junkers" down.

I can't read German either.

These dead came from another country.

They signed to work in Ethiopia, the prisoners said.

We took no statements from the dead but all the letters we read were very sad.

The Italians lost more killed, wounded and missing

in this single battle of Brihuega than in all the Ethiopian war.

The rebels attack the Madrid-Valencia road again.

They've crossed the Jarama river and try to take the Arganda bridge.

Troops are rushed from the North to the counter-attack.

The village works to bring the water.

They arrive at the Valencia road.

The infantry in the assault, where cameras need much luck to go.

The slow, heavy-laden, undramatic movement forward.

The men in echelon, in columns of six.

In the ultimate loneliness of what is known as contact,

where each man knows there is only himself and five other men,

and before them all the great unknown.

This is the moment that all the rest of war prepares for,

when six men go forward into death

to walk across a stretch of land

and by their presence on it prove

"THIS EARTH IS OURS".

The counter-attack has been successful.

The road is free.

Six men were five. Then four were three.

But these three stayed, dug in and held the ground,

along with all the other fours and threes and twos

that started out as sixes.

The bridge is ours,...

the road is saved.

The men who never fought before, who were not trained in arms,

who only wanted work and food,

fight on...

Subtitles by: OZY (2006)