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The Players. Most complete coverage of Spain to date has been by United Press, which has many Latin American customers who eat up as many as 10,000 words a day. UP has eight men in Madrid, four with the Rightist forces, 18 scattered through the country and six operating along the French border. Jean de Gandt, a French-Belgian, was head of UP's Madrid bureau but working in Lisbon, when the war started. So he hopped General Franco's trail and has been following him ever since. In Spain UP now has Irving Pflaumn. whose wife had a baby in Madrid early in the war, and Reynolds Packard, a veteran of the Ethiopian war. Other UP aces included Webb Miller and Henry T. Gorrell who had previously received "an invitation to leave" Italy.
Most colorful correspondent to develop during the war is Associated Press's Edward J. Neil Jr., a 200-lb. ex-sports reporter who once bested Jack Dempsey in a friendly wrestling bout. Neil, always on the scene of trouble, found excitement even in the capture of Santander when a truckload of gas shells caught fire just back of him and he was caught without a gas mask. International News Service's big gun is much-traveled Hubert R. Knickerbocker, whose brutal summary of the war is, "Vultures are the only ones with all the luck.''
Notable jobs done by other correspondents: Herbert L. Matthew's (New York Times) vivid descriptions of the bombing of Madrid and Brihuega; Frank Kluckhohn's (also Times) revelation that Italy and Germany were sending men. munitions and planes to the Rightists, (as a result he was expelled from Spain); Jay C. Allen's (Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate) sensational account of a Rightist massacre of 2,000 Leftists in a bullring at Badajoz.
Most unusual press departure was Pierre van Paassen (Toronto Star), one of the best reporters in Spain, who suddenly went anarchist, stopped writing, was reluctantly fired by his paper, and finally disappeared.