A Moment of War by Laurie Lee

In the last weeks of 1937, violin-busker Laurie Lee staggers over the Pyrenees into Spain keen to join the war. But stamps in his passport from previous travels puzzle the Spanish, who toss him in a pit and consider him a spy.

Lee had been expecting a hero’s welcome and a glorious war. What he found instead was a muddle of logistics, ‘unwashed and tattered’ volunteers, and the company of ‘brave but bewildered amateurs.’

The people in the kitchen were a people stripped for war - the men smoking beech leaves, the soup reduced to near water; around us hand-grenades hanging on the walls like strings of onions, muskets and cartridge-belts piled in the corner, and open orange-boxes packed with silver bullets like fish. (3)

He washes in a bucket of snow, drinks liquor, and beds a murderess, but ultimately Lee is on the margins of the civil war, smoking and endlessly hanging around.

A Moment of War is a slender account, portraying tedium, fatigue, and hunger far from the distraction of action. I found Lee’s actual ‘moment’ of war unconvincing, more fantasy than battlefield encounter. When he recalls so many trivial details in sharp and brilliant prose, it is puzzling that his one clinch with the enemy be rushed away in a single, foggy sentence. The tension is much higher when he fears execution.

A Moment of War is preceded by the outstanding As I Walked Out One Summer Morning - one of my favourite reads this year, and a work of incredible literary beauty.