Robert Hale Merriman
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Robert Hale Merriman (1908-1938) was an American professor of economics at the University of California who joined the Republican forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and led the American Volunteers with the International Brigades.
Merriman was of poor origin and worked various odd jobs in order to make his way to the University of Nevada. To earn some extra dollars while at school, he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps where he got basic training with arms. A member of left-wing American groups at the University of California and friend of Robert Oppenheimer, he was chosen to lead the volunteers in Spain.
Merriman moved to Spain together with his wife Marrion early in 1937 and joined the training camp of Albacete. As very few of the volunteers had seen any military service he took over the training of the two American brigades, the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington . He was then appointed as their commander at the rank of Captain of the Spanish Republic. He distinguished himself during the Battle of Jarama where he was seriously wounded. Half of his battalion was decimated but he managed to keep the hills above the Jarama River and stop the encirclement of Madrid from the southeast until help arrived. A song out of this battle, the "Red River Valley," was adopted as the anthem for the American Volunteers.
Merriman was then temporarily moved to the headquarters with the rank of Major and was replaced by Oliver Law, the first African-American to lead white Americans in battle. Oliver Law died in the Battle of Brunete and Merriman returned to combat. The losses of the American battalions were so heavy that they had to merge under one battalion eventually named the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to become the Fifteenth International Brigade, including a number of English-speaking non-Americans. The titles of the forces did not correspond to their real strength but this was often the case in the Republican Army.
Merriman lead his troops again during the Battle of Teruel in Aragon, that ended in a full retreat under the constant charges of Panzer tanks and bomber planes in the only possible direction, Catalonia and its boundary, the river Ebro. On April 2, 1938, around the vineyards of the key city of Gandesa, twenty kilometers before the river, Merriman and his lieutenant Edgar James Cody were killed in battle.
Merriman's successor, Milton Wolf, led the Fifteenth International Brigade to this same point during the counter-offensive of the Battle of the Ebro on 27 June of the same year, while trying to recapture Gandesa.
[edit] Popular culture
Robert Hale Merriman and his wife were close friends of the author Ernest Hemingway and seem to be the persons who inspired the protagonists of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The environment of the story is the same as well as the names of the heroes in this book: Robert and Maria. But above all, Robert, the hero of this novel stays to die fighting for his own values in a land that is not his own. This is exactly what led Merriman and his volunteers, some 2500 in all, to fight against Franco.
[edit] Books
At present a book is available on him “AMERICAN COMMANDER IN SPAIN Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” written by his wife Marion Merriman and the professor of the Nevada university Warren Lerude, University of Nevada Press, 1986, ISBN 0874171067, OCLC: 13126515
