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Even West Point spirit has its limits of heroic possibility and this week things looked black for the Alcázar cadets and Commandant José Moscardó as the Madrid Cabinet in a frenzy of frustration took another "terrible decision." This was to order to Toledo thousands of gallons of gasoline, to be squirted by means of fire engines into Spain's West Point, and, by setting it alight, flood the Alcázar with searing flame until the last cadet, woman and child and the two babies born during the siege were burned out in Spain's most savage and futile farce.
Still busy according to latest despatches was the Ambassador of the Republic of Chile, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps. Telegraphed he to the Council of the League of Nations in Geneva: "The attack which is being carried out at this moment with dynamite, shrapnel and gasoline gives an infernal aspect to this operation of war. An armistice of 24 hours may mean the lives of the women and children. I beg His Excellency the Spanish Foreign Minister to have these women and children who in the Alcázar are locked on the brink of Death placed in the care of the Diplomatic Corps."
Meanwhile sociable United Press Representatives Ptlaum & Yindrich circulated in Toledo among "militia men and women mad with excitement." Cabled Ptlaum: "Everyone had a rumor. Nobody knew exactly what had happened, what was happening or what was going to happen.
Some of the youths and girls asked me if I had a camera and could take their pictures. They wanted to pose before the smoking ruins. ... A blonde militia girl came out cursing. . . . She looked beautiful in her blue trousers with her blonde hair, wet, falling over her shoulders." Yindrich meanwhile found a "pretty girl'' from Buenos Aires amiably acting as interpreter for a Soviet cinema cameraman who had arrived from Moscow to film the fall of the Alcázar for worldwide Communist purposes. According to Ptlaum and Yindrich, net result of the GRAND BLAST operation was apparently the death of not a single White, the deaths of some 50 militia.
Gasoline squirting by Reds began with a frantic will, for meanwhile a White army under Generalissimo Francisco Franco had at last decisively taken Talavera de la Reina (see p. 19) and, advancing five miles per day, was within 25 miles of the Alcázar when torches were applied and gasoline blazed high. Cheering wildly a Red column swept up the rocky base of the fortress—only to be driven back by sickening gasoline fumes while the blaze soon guttered out on the rocks. To save his Red face after this fiasco, General José Asensio of the Red militia started talking about how sorry he was for the White women and young cadets in the rock-hewn cellars of the Alcázar from which no Red efforts seemed able to dislodge them.
Added General Asensio as he sat with the other Militia officers in arm chairs placed in the street behind a barricade of sandbags: "We of the Government are taking great care to keep losses as low as possi- ble. They are now desperate men in the Alcázar fighting for their lives without food, water, or sleep—they'll have to surrender shortly."