Alvah and Sylviane Bessie among the ruins of Corbera, Catalonia, 1967 

AN INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE Bessie, who fought Franco in 1938, was invited, in 1967, to collaborate as writer and actor on a Spanish film about an American who fought Franco in 1938 and returned 30 years later! 

The film's producer fought against Bessie and the Lincoln Battalion in Catalonia; its director was born the year Franco rebelled against the Republic; its American star's first role in the movies (Mark Stevens, Objective Burma) was created by Bessie in 1944! 

What it was like to make the film (Espana Otra Vez), but more importantly to return after many years to his first tragidiove----Spain and the Spanish people . . . to visit sites where he had served as a combat infantryman . . . to find them exactly as he had left them . . . in ruins . . . . George Seldes: Among the great books which came out of [the Spanish] war was Alvah Bessie's Men in Battle . . . . 

If everyone who has read Men in Battle will read Spain Again he will be intensely interested . . ; and although Spain Again is a whole book, not a sequel, I hope the new generation will read both books: they are an en-lightenment—on the one hand of a noble episode in modern history in which some Americans played a noble part—on the other of political corruption much more tragic for millions than the immoral and illegal war in Vietnam. Ralph J. Gleason: I found Spain Againto be very moving and enlightening. . . It brings into focus . . a good deal of information about that terrible, sordid episode [the Spanish Civil Wad .... one of the very best things Bessie has ever done . . .