Virginia Cowles describes another visit to the front.
”The battle we watched was an offensive launched by the Republicans; it extended from Las Rozas, on the Escorial Road, through the Casa del Campo to Carabanchel. It lasted three days and in the end was repulsed with heavy casualties. The Old Homestead was a house which Hemingway found on the outskirts of the capital. The front had been ripped away by a bomb, so it provided an excellent vantage point from which to watch the battle. I was surprised to find how banal war became from a distance. Against the wide panorama of rolling hills the puffs of smoke were daubs of cotton and the tanks children’s toys. When one of them burst into flames it looked no bigger than the flare of a match. Against the great sweep of nature, man’s struggle became so diminutive it was almost absurd.
Hemingway, however, followed the moves eagerly. ‘It’s the nastiest thing human beings can do to each other’, he pronounced solemnly, ‘but the most exciting’.
We heard footsteps coming up the stairs and looked around to find Professor J. B. S. Haldane. He greeted us with his usual cordiality and looked around for a place to sit. The house was gutted with pulverised furniture, old clothes and broken pictures. From the debris he dragged a dilapidated red plush chair, placed it in the middle of the room, and sat down in full view of the battlefield. He put his elbows on his knees and adjusted his field-glasses. Hemingway warned him it was dangerous to remain exposed, but Haldane waved him aside. A few minutes later Hemingway spoke again: ‘Your glasses shine in the sun; they will think we are military observers’.
’My dear fellow, I can assure you there isn’t any danger here in the house.’
Ten minutes later there was a loud whistle as a shell plunged into a flat next door. Two more screamed overhead and we all went down on the floor – all except Haldane, who scrambled down the stairs and disappeared. We were shelled for fifteen or twenty minutes, and when at last we got back to the Florida we found him sitting in the lobby, drinking beer.
’Hallo, he called amiably, ‘let’s have a drink’. We did; and more than one.” (Looking for Trouble, Virginia Cowles)