Vincent Doherty, an idealist and an adventurer

Vincent Joseph Doherty O’Loughlin (1909-1967) left Spain definitively at the end of March or the beginning of April 1937, seven months after enlisting as a pilot at the Republican airfield of Getafe (Madrid). He was 27 years old. Doherty was among the first group of forty or fifty British brigades who arrived in Spain of their own accord, not waiting for expeditions organized by communist organizations in the United Kingdom to fight fascism between July and September 1936. This could mean that Doherty was a capricious person, an idealist, an adventurer… or a confused mix of the three.

Why did he go to Spain?
There is not enough information to know what he thought or why he became a volunteer, neither are there any letters or documents to shed light on unknown factors such as his ideology or the reasons which led him to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic. Neither is it known whether he was a member of a British political party or union. His biography, however, reveals that from a very young age, he had a deep spirit of adventure. At the Getafe airfield he enlisted in the squadrons of the Breguet, Nieuport, Fury, Loire 46 and Dewotine D371 airplanes under the command of the legendary Republican pilot Andrés Garcia Lacalle. He fought until the 25 or 26 September when, after shooting down two Nazi or Italian fighter planes, he was wounded while piloting a Dewotine D371 and was forced to make an emergency landing close to the Cerro de los Ángeles, two kilometers from the Getafe Republican airfield. He must have had a great admiration for the squadron commander, adding Lacalle to the name of one of his two sons.

Siege of the Alcazar
A week before this incident, he had gone to Toledo and participated in the siege of the Alcazar. It is very probable that Doherty coincided with the French writer André Malraux, who also participated during these months in the Spanish civil war, organizing a squadron of Republican fighters in Madrid. Interestingly enough both travelled to their respective countries during the war to try and recruit pilots and buy airplanes for the Republic. As Doherty mentioned on a few occasions, he also had the opportunity of meeting another writer, the North American Ernest Hemingway who arrived in Madrid in March 1937.

British spy?
Another hypothesis is that Vincent Doherty was also a spy of His Majesty. The summary of an interview between him and Lieutenant Colonel Medhurst of the Intelligence Service of the Royal Air Force on 2 November 1936 has recently been uncovered. During the interview, Doherty updates Medhurt on the specific techniques, the combat strategies and the characteristics of the Nazi and Italian airplanes which Hitler and Mussolini had provided Franco, and against which Doherty had had to fight. This information was very relevant for the British, given the superiority of the German military aviation and the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe. Whether or not Doherty was a British spy will remain unknown. His personality, however, contained all the essential ingredients to successfully carry out a mission of this type. This could explain why he didn’t tell his wife about his trip to Spain.

More about the photographs
Research has confirmed that the fifty photographs correspond to mid-September 1936 during the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo. Others could be from 18th September, an important date in this chapter of the history of the civil war. The photographs, of excellent quality, were taken by a good North American or British professional. This can be deduced by descriptive texts in English and the author’s references on the back of the photographs. The initials S&G and ETF could correspond with the name of the still unidentified photographer who took them. Most of the photographs are of irregular soldiers, soldiers and assault guards in the environs of the Alcazar, the Zocodover Plaza and the Calle de las Armas (the Street of Arms), places identified on site by the local historian Rafael del Cerro Malagón.

The most pressing question is why Vincent Doherty took the photographs from Spain in 1937. The most obvious response is that he himself appears in some of the photographs and may have proposed to the author, an English speaker like himself, that he take them. It’s interesting to note that the person identified as Vincent Doherty always went unarmed, whilst those around him carried rifles, pistols, bombs and carabines. Among the many hypotheses, the most convincing is one of following: that he went to Toledo from Getafe either to witness the spectacle of the siege, in which he did not participate, as if he were a correspondent or a type of tourist in a war scene; or to obtain strategic ground information relevant to an eventual aerial attack on the Alcazar.

Conclusion: Robert Capa, Henry Buckley, Vincent Doherty
The photographs of Vincent Doherty, taken in Toledo during mid-September 1936, have been added to those taken by Robert Capa in the Penedes on the 15th January 1939 and those of the British press correspondent Henry Buckley taken in Catalonia between 1936 and 1939. Thy are all now classified in the Alt Penedes regional archive.

Sometimes coincidences happen which really seem to be the work of the gods (or the goddesses, to avoid offence). This is just an example, because Capa, Buckley and Doherty were in Toledo on 18 September 1936 during the siege of the Alcazar. Capa and Buckley also visited the Penedes on various occasions, while Vincent Doherty never did.

However, thanks to his granddaughter Anya, these three surnames will be linked forever to the specific history of the Penedes, to Toledo and the Spanish Civil War.

Who were the International Brigades?

The International Brigades were military units made up of anti-fascist volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. They fought against rebel Spanish Nationalist forces, led by General Francisco Franco, with the support of German and Italian forces.

The British and French International Brigades
From the second half of July 1936, coinciding with the military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, about 2.500 British men and women travelled to Spain as volunteers. Their arrival was spaced out until April 1938, reaching monthly maximums in December 1936 and January 1937 with two hundred and 180 British volunteers respectively. Many of them were militants of the Communist Party (British Communist Party), the Young Communist League and the Labour Party. This influx prompted the creation of a battalion, The Tom Mann Centuria, integrated into the 15th Brigade at the end of January 1937.

The 2.500 British volunteers were a small part of a total of 35.000 brigades from 54 countries. With the approval of the Comintern (Communist International) in August 1936, these brigades formed part of the Popular Army of the International Brigade. The largest contingent was the French one, with more than 2.000 volunteers, the majority, workers recruited by the French Communist Party and veterans of the First World War. The writer André Malraux is perhaps the most famous French brigadier who came to Spain. It is precisely his work Hope (L’espoir) which relates, among other events, the experience of the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo. This account correlates with Vincent Doherty's photographs. “I have learnt that life has no value, but also that nothing deserves a life”, Malraux concluded after his time in Spain.

There were British brigadiers at the front line on all the war fronts: Toledo, Madrid, Jarama, Brunete, Guadalajara, Belchite, Aragon, Ebro and Catalonia. Of the contingent of 2.500, about 800 were between 21 and 27 years old, the youngest, 16 and the oldest, 63. The largest group, according to age,was made up 23 year olds, about 160 in total. They came mainly from England (57%), 21% were Scottish, 8% Irish, 6% Welsh, 1% Cypriots and the rest from other countries of the British Empire.

Leaving Spain
At the end of October 1938 , in compliance with the order of the Committee of No Intervention of the Society of Nations, almost all the international volunteers who had survived left Spain and returned to their countries of origin. About 2.000 had died and had been buried.

Overview: Vincent Doherty's life (1909-1967)

Ireland, 1900
His parents, residents of Gurteen, an Irish village in the county of Sligo, emigrate to South Africa due to the situation of economic hardship of the time.

South Africa, 1900-1932
Vincent Doherty is born in Cape Town in 1909. His father starts the first concrete factory and a project of trams in Cape Town. His father dies at 47 and his widow takes charge of the family business. Vincent gets a civil pilot license.

United Kingdom, 1932
Travels to England and joins the Royal Air Force. He is sent to Singapore.

Singapore, between 1932 and 1936
Works as a RAF pilot. Meets Lorna Halliday who would become his wife. Lorna was a singer/dancer in a troupe from UK called The Bluebells.

United Kingdom, first half of 1936
Marries Lorna Halliday

Spain, end of August or beginning of September 1936
Without telling his wife, he travels to Spain and joins the international squadron of the Republican aviation based at the Getafe airfield, under the command of Andrés Garcia Lacalle. Despite being injured in the back and thigh during aerial combat on 25 or 26 September, he manages to land his Dewotine near to Cerro de los Angeles, two kilometers from the Getafe airfield.

United Kingdom, October-November 1936
Recovering from his wounds, he travels to the United Kingdom with the mission to recruit more pilots and buy military airplanes for the Republic. On 2 November he has a secret interview with the Intelligence Service of the RAF.

Spain, November or December 1936
He returns to Spain having recruited three pilots but without having managed to buy any planes. According to Doherty, he coincided with Ernest Hemingway. The North American writer arrived in Madrid in March 1937 so Doherty could have met him before leaving Spain definitively the following month.

United Kingdom, beginning of April 1937
He returns to the United Kingdom taking with him the collection of photographs which he would conserve all his life. He moves with his wife to South Africa

South Africa, between 1937 and 1943
He settles down in South Africa. Diana, Peter Jean Lacalle (Anya’s father) and Patrick are born of his marriage to Lorna Halliday. He enlists in the South African Air force as a monitor of pilots of Spitfire and Harvard airplanes.

North Africa, between 1944 and 1945
He pilots the British plane, the Spitfire, at the end of the Second World War

Klerksdorp, South Africa, from 1945
He sets up his own training school for pilots in Klerksdorp (now Matlosana)

Nyasaland (now Malawi), second half of the 1940s
He tries to set up a company of charter flights with a friend

Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), end of the 1940s
With another war friend, Jack Malloch, he sets up a company that organized tourist flights to Vilanculos and Paradise Island (Mozambique) and also the Victoria Falls. The legend of his great professionalism was that “he could bring a plane down on a handkerchief”. He was also the first pilot daring enough to fly passengers under the bridge which runs over the Falls.

Bechuanaland (now Botswana), mid-sixties
As member of Colonial Britain’s Development Office, he contributes to the creation of a farm for the breeding of cattle to provide meat

Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), 1967
He was running a Trading Station at Inyanga in Rhodesia when he developed cardiac failure and died in Bulowayo at St Annes Hospital on 31st December 1967, aged 57.

Why a blog about Vincent Doherty?

When my mother asked me to translate an article on the life of my grandfather, I decided to set up a blog instead. The first few posts are translated extracts of an article entitled Fons fotogràfic de Vincent Doherty (Vincent Doherty's Photographs) published in the newspaper 3 de vuit, Vilafranca del Penedès, Spain, 30 November 2007. The article was related to the handing over of a collection of unpublished photographs to the Regional Archive of the Alt Penedes of the Generalitat of Catalonia (Arxiu Comarcal de l'Alt Penedès de la Generalitat de Catalunya).