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On Sept. 7 United Pressman Irving B. Ptlaum flashed from Toledo: "The ancient Alcázar fortress is being pounded to bits tonight." Added United Pressman Jan Yindrich on Sept. 8: "So terrific is it that, watching from a distance of 100 yards, I twice have been knocked down a flight of stairs by the concussion of explosions alone." Mr. Yindrich retired to a comfortable vantage point and "there, sitting in an arm chair, I saw the bombardment. . . . The shelling had blasted away quite half a tower of the Alcázar and the pile of rubbish in the patio had grown higher. . . . Suddenly there was one great explosion which shook the city. ... So terrific was its concussion that I was thrown backward from my chair and crashed head over heels downstairs to the floor below."
This, however, was not the explosion of "20 tons of TNT" but only an amateurish preliminary Red blast. On Sept. 9 the Madrid Cabinet sent a staff officer and onetime Alcázar cadet Major Juan Rojo, to Toledo. After some telephoning into the Alcázar he approached it waving a large white flag. Cadets let the Major in after blindfolding him, and he shouted the names of personal friends whom he thought might be in the Alcázar. None answered and on being led before Commandant Moscardó, Major Rojo begged him plaintively to surrender, crying at last "I offer to take three of your cadets on a personally conducted tour of the Guadarrama Mountains and the entire countryside around Toledo so they can return and tell you that no army friendly to you is anywhere in sight."
"We will hold out!" shot back the besieged Commandant as quoted by the Major afterward. "With our forces at the gates of Madrid you will be the ones to surrender. However you can send us a priest in case we need last rites."
The priest, also blindfolded, improved his visit to the Alcázar by whispering to those to whom he ministered that at least they ought to surrender the women and children. None of these raised a voice against the Commandant when he declared "No surrender! Whatever befalls myself and my men will befall us all." Same day three White planes darted out of the blue to hearten the Alcázar, dropped bombs on the City of Toledo and sent Mayor Pérez Agua dashing in such headlong flight that he tripped over two pigs in the courtyard of the City Hall. Few minutes later Toledo firemen found a cradle perched perilously on half a bedroom floor, the other half having been carried away by an air bomb, while the baby continued to suck contentedly a rubber comforter.
On Sept. 13 new Proletarian Premier Francisco Largo Caballero went down from Madrid for a look at the scarred but stubborn Alcázar, accompanied by Chilean Ambassador Aurelio Nuñez Morgado, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, who aspired to get into the fortress and make Peace. Said the Premier: "This is war!" Said the Ambassador: "If I am permitted to enter the Alcázar it will be the most emotional moment of my life." Relaxing his Dictator frown, Premier Largo Caballero told Ambassador Nuñez Morgado: "My Government wishes you luck."