The Dutch Communist at Lérida
An English-speaking Dutch Communist in the hospital at Lérida who heard there was an Englishman on the ward and befriended George Orwell, bringing him English newspapers. He had been terribly wounded in the fighting of October 1936, had settled at the hospital and married one of the nurses, and one of his legs had shrivelled until it was no thicker than Orwell's arm.
The book
At a glance
- A Dutch Communist and long-term patient at the hospital in Lérida
- Never given
- English, well enough to befriend an Englishman who could barely speak
- In the fighting of October 1936
- Living at the hospital, married to one of the nurses
- Chapter 12
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeThis man is not named. He was a Dutchman who had come to Spain to fight for the Republic, and by the time George Orwell met him he had been badly wounded, had stopped fighting and was living at the hospital in Lérida, a town in Catalonia about a hundred miles from Barcelona.
Orwell arrived there at the end of May 1937. A sniper had shot him through the throat at five in the morning at the front outside Huesca; he had been carried down the line, driven for hours over roads smashed to pieces by lorries and never repaired, and put on a hospital train. He was five or six days at Lérida. It was a big hospital where the wounded, the sick and ordinary civilian patients were more or less jumbled up together, and some of the men in his ward had frightful wounds.
The Dutchman heard that there was an Englishman on the ward, sought him out and brought him English newspapers. He spoke English himself. He had been terribly wounded in the fighting of October 1936, in the first months of the war, and had never gone home: he had settled down at the hospital and married one of the nurses. The wound had left one of his legs shrivelled until, Orwell writes, it was no thicker than his own arm.
How the book draws them
- How they metHe heard there was an Englishman in the hospital and came to find him. Orwell's voice had almost disappeared after the bullet through his throat, so the English newspapers the Dutchman brought were a well-judged present.
- Wounded in October 1936In the fighting of the first months of the war, before Orwell reached Spain. Orwell calls the wound terrible and does not say where or how he got it.
- He stayedInstead of going home to Holland he settled down at the hospital in Lérida and married one of the nurses there. Orwell records it in one clause and does not ask how it came about.
- The legOne of his legs had shrivelled from the wound until it was no thicker than Orwell's arm. That is the only physical description the book gives him.