Liam Turbett shares the story of Chrissie Wallace, the only Scottish woman who did not make it home from the Spanish Civil War.
In the early months of 1938, a typhoid epidemic swept through the Catalan city of Vic. Among the victims was Chrissie Wallace, a young Glaswegian nurse. She was just 23 years old, and had travelled to Spain to assist the embattled Republic as it neared the second year of its brutal civil war. There was no shortage of tragic events in Spain in 1938, yet Chrissie’s passing deeply affected those who knew her: the staff and patients of the hospital where she worked, the citizens of Vic, and the wider milieu of international volunteers in the region.
But the circumstances of the period – with the Nationalist victors in the civil war supressing any memory of the anti-fascist struggle, and the rapid advent of the Second World War – meant her story was lost for more than 80 years, even to her own family. Thanks to the diligent efforts of a Catalan historical researcher, Chrissie’s story has recently come to light. And, remarkably, her son – now in his late 80s – has also been able to learn of his mother’s fate, after a lifetime of searching.
In July 1936, Spain was plunged into civil war. A military uprising, led by right-wing military figures under General Franco and backed by Hitler and Mussolini, sought to overthrow the country’s elected socialist government. While the European democracies and the United States refused to intervene, enforcing an arms embargo under the guise of ‘non-intervention’, tens of thousands of volunteers on the political left answered the call of the besieged Republic, and journeyed to Spain in defence of democracy. The heroic contribution of the International Brigades, of whom over 500 came from Scotland, is rightly the subject of celebrations and remembrance to this day.
From the early days of the war, medical volunteers also travelled to Spain. Around 70 nurses are believed to have gone from Britain over the course of the war, alongside hundreds from elsewhere. Prior to the war, nursing roles in the country’s hospitals had largely been fulfilled by nuns, many of whom had gone over to the side of Franco’s Nationalists.
Chrissie had followed her husband, Simon (or Schmul) Bulka to Spain. Bulka, born in Poland to a Jewish family, was a medical doctor and a communist. He had lived in both London and Scotland at different times, and spent periods in Spain working at different field hospitals. In 1937, Chrissie and Simon had a son. They named him Walter, after the famed General Walter, a Polish Red Army commander who played a leading role in the International Brigade.
The following year, Simon was drawn back to Spain, and Chrissie followed. They arrived in the city of Vic, around half way between Barcelona and the Pyrenees, where an international hospital had been established to tend to the ever growing numbers of wounded from the front. It was here that Chrissie died.
On the day of her funeral, Vic came to a standstill. “Her passage intensely moved all of us who saw her,” an onlooker would write many years later, having witnessed the funeral as a child. “The body of the dead girl, dressed in white like a bride… was solemnly accompanied by hundreds of companions, with music, songs and flags, in the midst of the silence of the crowd that contemplated its passage. Never again have I seen a funeral as emotional as that one, so sad and beautiful. I still believe today that it was more than just a funeral. It was a true tribute to friendship, youth and beauty – and to their ideals.”
Shortly after the funeral, a note appeared in a local newspaper from Simon Bulka, expressing his gratitude to the people of Vic for the send-off that Chrissie received. A touching write-up of the events was also contributed by a Republican soldier who was on leave in the town for a few days. He said, stirringly: “And a day will come when the son of this woman, this fallen mother, is asked where and how the one who gave him his being died. He will be able to answer with noble and justified pride that his mother died defending the freedom of the people”.
That day would eventually come, but not for another 85 years. Walter Bulka, living with relatives in Glasgow, had his first birthday just a few days before his mother died. Raised as Bill Wallace, the first major shock for him came when he was 15. On applying to join the Royal Navy, he discovered that the name on his birth certificate was Walter Bulka, with his father’s address given as a hospital in Barcelona. Surprised to find out that his aunt and uncle were not actually his parents, he learned that his father had died in the Spanish Civil War, and that his mother had passed away soon after he was born – or so he was told.
Looking for Chrissie
How Bill Wallace came to be reunited with the story of his parents is a fascinating testament to the power of archival research and historical digging over many decades.
Manel Montero is a police officer in Vic. He was on duty one day when a young woman approached him and asked in English where she could find the grave of an Australian International Brigade soldier called Kevin Rebbechi, who she believed was buried in the local cemetery. His interest piqued, Montero began investigating Kevin’s story, publishing a book entitled Looking for Kevin in 2014. The publication was a success, provoking interest in Vic’s links to the International Brigades, and the stories of those who passed through – and in some cases passed away – in the city. He continued looking into the identity of the other international volunteers buried in the same common graves, and was struck by the moving account of the funeral of a young nurse he encountered in local records. This story could easily have ended there, if not for a fortunate turn of events.
Based in Australia since the late 1950s, Bill Wallace did not give up searching for his parents, and while progress was sometimes slow, he eventually made some key breakthroughs. While trips to the UK and Spain in the 1990s yielded little in the way of firm evidence about their fate, contact with academics led to the discovery that his father may have survived the Spanish Civil War, as records emerged of him as a prisoner in France during WWII, service with the British Army, and a marriage in post-war France. A link to Nice was established and, from there, a friend of Bill made a cold call to the only Bulka in the city’s telephone directory. It was answered by his half-brother. Bill learned that their father had not only survived both the civil war and the Second World War, but had lived until 1998, just a few years before his sons would make contact, and later meet.
Bill set all of this out in 2004 in an article for the Kosher Koala, the newsletter of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society. In a stroke of luck, the article has remained online since, waiting to be discovered 18 years later by the researcher in Vic, Manel Montero. After firing off an email to the Genealogical Society, within 24 hours he had heard back from Bill, with an “expression of gratitude from an 85 year old man” who had just learned the whereabouts of his mother. Bill sent on the one photograph that he has of his parents, taken in Paris in 1938, while Manel filled him in on all of the findings of his extensive research – a satisfying conclusion to a local history project.
The Politics of Remembrance
The efforts of those in Vic to remember and bring to life the history of the civil war in the city, including the role of International Brigades there, is impressive. Recently, Montero collaborated on a play performed in the building that was once the international hospital where Chrissie worked, in which she featured as one of its characters. The story of Chrissie and Bill Wallace even made television news in Catalonia.
These acts of remembrance have doubtlessly been aided by a supportive political environment in Catalonia. The regional government has established a specific programme to record and locate the remains of international volunteers, with living relatives invited to give DNA samples to allow remains to be matched during excavations of mass graves. A list of 86 anti-fascist volunteers from the UK who it is believed died or disappeared in Catalonia was published by the Catalan Government earlier this year, as part of its commitments under Spain’s Democratic Memory Law. This legislation was introduced nationally by the left coalition government in 2022 to address the “pact of forgetting” that underlay Spain’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s, which saw decades of fascist suppression brushed under the carpet.
Recent efforts to place on record the horrors of Franco’s dictatorship have been fiercely contested by the right. The conservative Popular Party have obstructed implementation of the Democratic Memory Law in regions where they govern, while the far-right Vox party have attempted to roll the clock back even further, bringing back street names associated with Franco-era figures.
In this context, it is all the more important that we remember the likes of Chrissie Wallace, the only Scottish woman who did not make it home from the Spanish Civil War – that “noble and justified struggle for freedom”, to paraphrase the tribute paid by her fellow Brigadista all those years ago. Despite the great volumes that have been written about the war, including from a Scottish perspective, it is remarkable that new stories continue to come to light, allowing the conflict to be seen through a fresh lens of both people and place. That this has allowed a man in his 80s, living on the other side of the world, to discover his mother’s final resting place is all the more astounding.
With thanks to Manel Montero for his research and translations of Catalan language material.
Liam Turbett is the author of Island Brigaders: Arran, Millport & the Fight Against Fascism in 1930’s Spain.