Paddy Donovan
Second-in-command to Benjamin, sent back for orders during the raid. He climbed over the parapet with the order to retire, refused to let Orwell go back for the captured telescope, and held the wire aside for him on the way out.
The book
At a glance
- Second-in-command to Benjamin in the P.O.U.M. militia
- Paddy Donovan at first mention, Paddy afterwards
- Orwell gives none, and no age or background either
- Chapter 7 only, during the night raid outside Huesca in April 1937
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freePaddy Donovan is in the book for one night, and everything he says in it is an instruction. He was second-in-command to Benjamin, the young captain in charge of George Orwell's position on the Aragón front, the line of trenches in north-eastern Spain where Orwell served in 1937. Both men were in the militia of the P.O.U.M., a small revolutionary socialist party that had raised its own column of volunteers to fight for the Spanish Republic against the army revolt led by General Franco. Orwell calls Franco's side the Fascists all the way through the book.
On a wet night in April 1937 about fifteen of them crawled a hundred and fifty yards across no man's land, cut the wire and took a Fascist position outside the town of Huesca. Once it was theirs they were shot at from three sides, and Donovan was the man sent back to their own lines to ask what they were to do next. He came back over the front parapet with the answer and shouted it: everyone was to retire at once, back to their own lines, double-quick. Orwell's account has men round him asking what and why while others were already climbing out.
The prize of the night was an enormous telescope in a leather case, four feet high and six inches across, with a folding tripod and a magnification of sixty or seventy. Orwell writes that such telescopes did not exist on the Republican side of the line and were desperately needed; the raiders cheered when they found it and stood it against the parapet to carry off later. In the rush to get out he had left it there and wanted to go back for it. Donovan, waiting at the parapet, told him to forget the telescope, because Benjamin was already outside. Then he held the barbed wire aside so that Orwell could climb through. The telescope stayed where it was, and Orwell ends the chapter by saying that the loss of it still worried him when he came to write the book.
How the book draws them
- Second-in-commandBenjamin commanded the position and Donovan was his deputy. When the raiding party had taken the enemy trench and needed to know whether to hold it, Donovan was the man sent back across the open ground to their own lines to find out.
- The order to retireHe climbed back over the front wall of the captured position and shouted that everyone was to retire at once. Men round Orwell asked what he had said, and then why. His answer was one word of explanation, orders, and then the instruction again: back to our own lines, double-quick.
- Leaving the telescope behindThe raid's best piece of loot was a large enemy telescope, and in the scramble to leave Orwell had left it standing against a wall. He said so. Donovan swore at the telescope and told him Benjamin was already waiting outside. It stayed where it was.
- Holding the wireThe enemy had laid two lines of barbed wire in front of their position. On the way out Donovan held it aside so that Orwell could get through, and the party then spent the rest of the night lost in a muddy field with bullets coming from both directions.