RECOGNITION FOR THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE VETERANS

Every one has seen the “Republican” Political action committee ads posing supposed veterans when those are not all veterans. With all the lip service paid by reactionary establishment leadership to freedom and democracy as they wave the American flag time and time again like trained monkeys, it is time to draw a line in the sand to expose their lies and deceit.

In regard to veterans first conned into the service by recruiting officers, then sent to war to be used as cannon fodder and then neglected in health care when they return they do not really give a damn, nor do they care about freedom and democracy for they follow a long established policy of deceit from which they derive their linage:

Between 1936-39 preceding World War II, while the conservative leadership of the so called free bourgeois democratic world (including President Roosevelt Prime Minister Chamberlain) appeased Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and the reactionary Roman Catholic Church hierarchy there was a group of Americans that gave up they youth, and lives to fight fascism called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade *1 they did not sit comfortably at home.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteers were part of the International Brigades a greater effort comprising tens of thousands of anti-fascist volunteer combatants that went to Spain to defend the democratically elected government of Spain against Franco fascists in league with the German Nazis and fascist Italian troops in support of American interests. While the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy bombed Spanish cities in support of Spanish fascism, the great liberals foundations of the Industrial world sat by and did nothing or collaborated with the fascists.

Members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade came from many walks of life and different political progressive political backgrounds left without the approval and consent of their government returned to be label premature anti-fascists and communist when they weren’t.

Whereas the Flying Tigers received the approval and recognition of the US government and Roosevelt five years after the start of the Spanish conflict, the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade never received such recognition, nor were they accorded pensions, benefits, or allowed into the US military when World War II started.

Whereas European members of the resistance were accorded honors by their respective governments all Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans should be given, or posthumously receive all honors and benefits as American (US) veterans of World War II would of received.

*1 Abraham Lincoln Brigade - In the Spanish Civil War, a brigade consisted of four to six battalions. [1] American volunteers mostly joined the two battalions (the Lincoln Battalion and the Washington Battalion) within XV International Brigade. The XV International Brigade was made up of six battalions of volunteers from nations around the globe, topped up with Spanish conscripts. [2]

As time went on, the name Abraham Lincoln Brigade became used loosely, in the United States, as shorthand to describe any unit with an American component. Volunteers from the United States also served with the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion; the Regiment de Tren (transport); and the John Brown Anti-Aircraft Battery. North Americans also ran a very well-organized and well-equipped field hospital (funded and staffed by the American Medical Bureau to Save Spanish Democracy).