Itinerary: Cervera and Barcelona

John and Charles Hill were two Scottish combatants of the British Army attributed to the 4th battalion of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. Both were caught in the south of France after the occupation of the north of the country for the Nazi Army. They were able to cross the Pyrenees possibly helped from Marseilles by the Rd. Donald Caskie.

Once in Spain they were stopped and transferred to Cervera that the year 1940 was one of the centers of foreigners detention that escaped from the busy France. It was the previous step before passing to Miranda of Ebro (Burgos) and from there, into Portugal, to return to the United Kingdom to be reinstated to the front. The date of the arrived of the siblings Hill to Cervera is not known but it could very probably have been during 1941. John (left in the picture) died the day 10 of May 1941 (22 year-old age) and it was buried in the niche 894 of the cemetery of Cervera. Their brother Charles (right) it entered the day 11 of May in the civil hospital (current Residencia Mare Güell) and exit the day 20 of the same month going to the military hospital of Barcelona, where he would die the day 24 (26 year-old age). It was buried in the cemetery of Montjuich, group 13, department 4, knocks down 62.

The days 10 and 11 of May of 2007 received the homage coinciding with the day in the victims' of the Commonwealth of the two world wars memory. The British journalist Bob Yareham took charge of reminding them reading a fragment, traditional that day, of the poet Lawrence Binyon:

"They won't age in the same way as us we age.

The age won't tire them, neither the years they will condemn them.

To the setting of the sun and the dawn, we will remember them."

The history of the refugees of the II World War that pass the frontier and enter in Catalonia it is not only. In Cervera we have documented a thirty to final of 1940 in the prison of the judicial party, in the street Estudivell number 15, with a mortal victim more: the French Paul Pierre Lavadie that died died July 28 1940.

More information: http://www.mailxxi.com/guerracivil