Benjamin
The captain commanding Orwell's first position, born Levinski: a Polish Jew of about twenty-five who spoke French as his first language and terrible English as his fourth. He led the night raid on the Fascist redoubt and spent it pushing Orwell's head back down.
In Orwell's account, to get the job done and get his men back. He asks for volunteers rather than detailing them, spends the approach silencing the man beside him, and is the one who crawls forward alone to find out whether the parapet in front is friendly.
The book
At a glance
- Captain commanding Orwell's position, and leader of the April raid
- Levinski
- About twenty-five
- A Polish Jew, speaking French as his native language
- Short, with stiff black hair and a pale eager face, usually filthy
- Chapters 2 and 3, the raid in Chapter 7, and Chapter 12
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeBenjamin crawled out of a dug-out to greet George Orwell's company on their first day in the line above Alcubierre. His name was Levinski; everyone called him Benjamin. He was a Polish Jew who spoke French as his native language, a short youth of about twenty-five with stiff black hair and a pale eager face which at that period of the war was always very dirty. Asked where the enemy were, he waved a hand expansively and said "Over zere" — the Fascist parapet was seven hundred metres off across a ravine, and Orwell's first feeling on seeing it was disappointment. Benjamin grabbed the nearest rifle, aimed at two figures on the opposite slope and pulled the trigger. The cartridge was a dud.
He is the officer the book spends most time next to, and he runs on nerve. In April he asked for fifteen volunteers for the raid that had been called off once already, and led them out at midnight through beet-fields and irrigation ditches in sheeting rain. Creeping the last hundred and fifty yards, with every step audible on the sodden ground, he whispered fiercely into Orwell's ear every time his head came up, and once simply put a hand behind his neck and pulled it down.
When the sentry heard them and the parapet opened fire, Benjamin knelt in the open with an automatic pistol and shot carefully at the rifle-flashes, wearing what Orwell describes as a pleased, devilish sort of expression. He got the men over the parapet, looted the position, and found the boxes of ammunition that the raiding party — half of them with rifles jammed by mud — did not particularly want. Coming home in the dark, with nobody able to tell which parapet ahead was whose, he crawled forward on his belly through tall weed and challenged it himself.
How the book draws them
- How the book describes himA short youth of about twenty-five, with stiff black hair and a pale, eager face that at that period of the war was always very dirty.
- Two namesLevinski by birth, Benjamin to everybody in the militia. Born a Polish Jew, French his first language, and by Orwell's account the possessor of terrible English.
- "Over zere"His answer to the new arrivals asking where the enemy was, with a wave of the hand at a hill-top seven hundred metres away. He then borrowed a rifle to shoot at two distant figures, and got a dud cartridge. Orwell thought it a bad omen.
- "To keep ze head down!"Hissed into Orwell's ear at every raised glance during the hundred-and-fifty-yard crawl to the Fascist wire. When words stopped working he reached over in silence and pulled Orwell's head down by the neck.
- Under fireKneeling on one knee in the open once the parapet opened up, firing his automatic pistol deliberately at the rifle-flashes, with what Orwell calls a pleased, devilish sort of expression on his face. Then: "Forward! Charge!"
- The wrong lootHe staggered excitedly out through the ruined roof of a dug-out hauling an ammunition box by its rope handle, shouting that there was plenty of ammunition. A voice in the dark told him they did not want ammunition, they wanted rifles. Half of theirs were jammed with mud.
- The challengeLost in a muddy field before dawn with bullets coming from both sides and a captured hundredweight of ammunition to drag, the party found a parapet and had no idea whose it was. Benjamin crawled to within twenty yards of it through whitish weed and called out. The answer was "POUM!"
- GazettedWhen the militia officers were finally obliged to accept regular commissions, in the reorganisation that followed the May fighting, Benjamin was made a captain and Kopp was in the process of being made a major.