Homage to Catalonia: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

For over a month, until late March, absolutely nothing happens and the only danger at the front comes from stray bullets. Shell-fire is ineffective and, as such, serves as a small diversion for the men, who watch their shells fall far from their parapet. Orwell becomes attuned to the sound of shells and learns to recognize instinctively how close each will fall. The shells are of terrible quality and often fail to explode.

At night, small patrols are sent into no-man’s-land to listen to the Fascist lines and try to deduce from the sounds of their activity what they are planning in Huesca. The men are told to pay particularly close attention to the sound of church bells, since the Fascists are said to be in the habit of attending mass before going into battle. Orwell reflects on the eerie feeling of having to cross no-man’s-land for field duty and walk through fields which should have been harvested but whose crops, due to the outbreak of war, have remained untouched. The peasants, he imagines, must resent both sides of the conflict equally for creating such a useless, devastating war. The militiamen often crawl into the nearby potato field to gather potatoes, a dangerous job in which the men have to hide from enemy fire.

Meanwhile, the soldiers are restless and constantly wonder when actual fighting is going to start. Despite the dangers of war, they are desperate to engage in battle rather than suffer the boredom of trench warfare. Reflecting on this period, Orwell believes that rumors in the press about upcoming battles are probably lies that were deliberately spread in order to boost the troops’ morale.

The only action that happens nearby is a Republican attack by a special unit called the Batallón de Choque (Shock Troopers) on the Manicomio, a disused building that the Fascists occupy as a fortress. Although Orwell considers the Shock Troopers one of the best groups in the Republican army, the attack fails because of gross incompetence. The captain of the troops that were supposed to support the Shock Troopers threw a bomb at the Fascists from too far away, thereby inadvertently warning the Fascists of their arrival. The man who threw the bomb was deemed a traitor and was shot dead by his men on the spot. Orwell approves of the execution. As a result, however, the Shock Troopers’ surprise attack failed entirely. Orwell harshly criticizes the failure, commenting bitterly on the fact that Republican attacks constantly fail because of human mistakes.

In the meantime, as the cold has diminished, Orwell and his companions begin to suffer from lice. Orwell describes lice as the universal symbol of war—one that is particularly unpleasant and ignoble. To fight off the lice, the men attempt to burn out the eggs and bathe in the ice-cold river as often as possible.

There are shortages of most things, including much-needed uniforms and boots. Orwell’s wife occasionally manages to send him tea, chocolate, and cigars from Barcelona, but even in the city things are running short. Toward the end of March, Orwell suffers from an injured hand, which forces him to stay ten days in the hospital. During that period, the hospital staff steals all his belongings, including his camera and photographs. Orwell notes that stealing at the front is extremely common and that hospital staff is notoriously bad in this regard.

Because of his wound, Orwell spends a few days resting at the hospital and walking around in the countryside. He visits Monflorite, the town where his hospital is, and when he walks into an empty flour-mill, he laments the fact that agricultural machines are left unused because of the war and that the soldiers have removed crucial pieces of wood from the mill to use as firewood. In general, Orwell notes that the buildings that the militias seize are always treated terribly, regardless of their historical or aesthetic value. Most rooms are generally used as latrines.

When spring finally arrives, peasants begin plowing again. Orwell does not succeed in figuring out what the official agricultural system is. He remains uncertain of whether the fields have been collectivized, but he notes that, whatever the official situation might be, the peasants seem happy to get back to work. He is impressed, in general, by their friendliness. However much the militia’s presence might impede the workings of everyday life, he concludes, the peasants must be grateful for the fact that the revolutionary militias helped kick out their former, wealthy landlords.

Occasionally, people seem to forget about the war. When Orwell asks an old lady who is carrying a small olive-oil lamp where he might be able to buy one, she replies, without thinking, that he should go to Huesca. When she realizes that Huesca is currently under Fascist occupation, they both laugh at her moment of forgetfulness.

Orwell comments on his shock at discovering the agricultural tools the peasants use, which are terribly out-of-date. Metal is so expensive that even common tools such as rakes and pitchforks are made out of wood. Orwell feels physically ill at the thought of the extreme poverty and the amount of effort that the peasants must have to exert to make such outdated implements work. As a result of these observations, he is moved by a renewed appreciation for industrialism, which he had previously viewed with a more critical eye.

When Orwell wanders into the town’s graveyard, he realizes, with shock, that in it he can find no sense of religious respect for the dead. All the plants are overgrown, human bones are to be found lying everywhere, and there are extremely few religious engravings on tombstones. In general, Orwell feels that this entire part of Spain is devoid of religious sentiment in the conventional sense. He concludes that the leftist, anti-Catholic revolution must have truly succeeded in annihilating the influence of the Catholic Church. Spaniards generally tend to see the Catholic Church as a fraudulent authority. Orwell reflects that Anarchism might have served a quasi-religious function for these people, replacing the age-old ideology of Catholicism.

On the day Orwell returns to the front, his company launches an attack to advance the line. The goal of this attack is to divert the Fascists while the Anarchists are attacking a more crucial target elsewhere. The conditions in which the soldiers find themselves are terrible: for seven hours, they have to lay in a horrible, smelly marsh, in the coldest night that Orwell can remember in Spain. However, the attack is planned and executed perfectly—a feat of organization that, Orwell concedes, the Spanish are occasionally able to pull off. In great silence, in the dead of night, the men build a large distance of parapet farther down the line and are able to surprise the Fascists with their advance in the morning.

The next morning, the Fascists discover what has happened and begin firing their machine-guns at the newly-built Republican position. The men hurriedly dig trenches while Orwell, who cannot dig because of his wound, spends the day sitting in the wet earth reading a detective novel. The company begins to suffer casualties, although far fewer than they would have if the militiamen had not built the parapet so efficiently during the night. Getting wounded soldiers out of the trenches is a complicated operation, and ambulances that come too close to the trenches are often shelled by the Fascists, a move that Orwell considers justified since ambulances often conceal ammunition. Five Fascist sentries, his company learns from a deserter, are shot for negligence as a result of this attack.

After spending the following night waiting in a filthy barn, the attack the men were supposed to participate in is canceled at the last moment. During the following days, the militiamen hear the sounds of Anarchist attacks on Huesca. Torre-Fabián, the militia’s cookhouse, is shelled by the Fascists but succeeds in producing food for the soldiers nevertheless, an exploit that Orwell admires. Meanwhile, on this side of the front, as always, almost nothing is happening. Orwell learns to distinguish the different sounds of guns and Fascist snipers occasionally manage to hit a few militiamen.