Milt Wolff grew up with my maternal grandfather, George. They belonged to the Young Communist League in Brooklyn and Queens, alongside children of many other neighborhood immigrant families.
At the age of 22, in 1937, Milt travelled by ship to Spain where he volunteered in the struggle against the right wing Nationalists and their newly-made leader, Francisco Franco. Originally a pacifist, his intention was to work as a medic. His first job was as a stretcher-carrier.
He became a machine-gunner. Then a Captain. Within a year, Milt became the final Commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, taking charge of the 3,000-man unit in the 1938 Sierra Pandols offensive against Franco’s troops.
While on leave, Milt met Ernest Hemingway at the Café Chicote in Madrid. They remained life-long friends. Hemingway wrote about Milt.
"Twenty-three years old, tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed."
After the fascists won, Milt immediately enlisted in WWII for the British before the U.S. entered the war, and for the Americans under Major General “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS. In this capacity he worked with Italian Partisans fighting Mussolini. He also fought in India and Burma.
A decade later, hauled before the House Un-American Committee regarding his work with Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, labelled by Senator Joseph McCarthy as a Communist front organization, Milt explained,
"I am Jewish, and knowing that as a Jew we are the first to suffer when fascism does come, I went to Spain to fight against it."
Milt visited many times when I was a teenager. He was tall and lean, with messy white hair, everpresent handkerchief adorning his neck. He’d arrive in a fast convertible sports car. He was always with a different, beautiful younger woman. They seemed to have, to me at the time, boundless energy and undefeatable optimism. I’ll never forget Milt’s big smile as he drove down Rimmer Drive, on his way to another adventure.
Milt heavily influenced my father. His story, the story of the International Brigades’ struggle against fascist tyranny, and the music that inspired and came out of that struggle, found their way onto Charlie’s debut album as leader, Liberation Music Orchestra, recorded in NYC in 1969. This world was opened to him when he met my mother in 1964. As I've written in these pages, George, and my great Aunts and Uncles, had hidden away the music of the Spanish Civil War for fear of it being confiscated by the police, and of being arrested. Some of them went as far as burying the discs underground.
The first song on side two of Concierto Con Tambor Y Metralla, “Frente De La Libertad”, also known as "Einheitsfrontlied" or “Song Of The United Front” (with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht), is the second piece to appear on the first LMO LP.
Milt Wolff published two books in his lifetime. Another Hill: An Autobiographical Novel (1994, University of Illinois Press) and A Member of the Working Class (2005, iUniverse).
Milt contributed articles to numerous publications, including The Volunteer, Journal Of The Veterans Of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Milt was interviewed extensively for the Library Of Congress Veterans History Project.
Side one of Concierto Con Tambor Y Metralla is here.
I found this cassette in a box of hundreds of tapes documenting live performances, radio interviews, rough mixes of studio recordings, etc. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting the preservation of Charlie’s estate, as well as the writing of my book, by subscribing to this substack. Solid, Jackson. Thanks for listening.
Concierto Con Tambor Y Metralla, Side Two