CANADA AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
The opening few paragraphs of Chapter 9 of Michael Petrou's book called RENEGADES are about singing among the Canadian Brigaders.He says:
'Singing was a popular pastime among volunteers in the International Brigades, as it has always been for soldiers in any army. At night Canadians could occasionally hear Moors or Spaniards singing in the trenches opposite them. A few of the Internationals even had guitars and other musical instruments. Most of their songs were generic, if beautiful, odes to fighting fascism and working-class solidarity. Some were sung in Spanish; some were not. The American Finn Carl Syvanen recalls that in the predawn gloom before the internationals launched their attack on Brunete, a Canadian nicknamed K.O. because of his boxing talents broke the tension by shouting out the lyrics of Robert Service's classic poem " the Shooting Of Dan McGrew"." A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon," he sang reciting the story of a barroom shooting that happened one frozen night during the Yukon gold rush to several hundred men about to sweep across a scorching Spanish plain to attack a village bearing the familiar name of Canada. (Villanueva de la Canada)
None of this was particularly out of the ordinary in a war that had such an international character, and it certainly wasn't anything to worry the commanders and political commissars of the internationals in Spain. But some Caanadians imported songs that soon caused consternation among their political bosses, such as this marching song:
I want to go home,
I don't wanna die
Machine guns they rattle
The cannons they roar
I don't want to go to the front any more
Oh take me over the sea
Where Franco can't get at me
Oh! My! I'm too young to die
I wanna to go home!
Irving Weisseman, a political commissar and leading American communist in Spain, decided, along with his fellow commissars, that it was unacceptable for anti-fascist volunteers to sing such lyrics and tried to stamp out the song.
" We commissars had a hell of a time because we had to fight that song," he said. "At least we thought- we were very solemn and straight-laced - we thought we had to fight it... This song became the chant of the people who just felt, what the hell were we there for?" Weissman did not say if the commissars' censorship campaign had any success, but it seems unlikely.
In truth there was little seditious about the song. According to Weissman, it originated with Canadian soldiers in the First World War and was simply adapted to Spain.'