25. Fighting the Fascists
While in China, Edward Allen Carter developed a taste for leftist politics, and when the Spanish Civil War erupted, it drew him like a magnet. The war pitted fascists under Francisco Franco, generously backed by Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany, against an elected leftist Republican government. An antifascist to the core, Carter traveled to Europe to fight on the Republican side.
He made it to Spain, and enlisted in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade – an American volunteer unit composed primarily of leftists, that fought as part of the International Brigade against the fascists. Unfortunately, the bad guys won, and as Franco’s fascists surged to victory and the Republican government collapsed, Carter and the rest of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were forced to flee to France in 1938. From there, he made his way back to America.