The great operation, however, concealed crucial weaknesses. The People’s Army supply services were not used to coping with such large numbers and the Segovia offensive had shown up the bad communications between commanders as well as their lack of initiative. This last defect, which was to prove so serious in the Brunete offensive, is usually attributed to a fear of making independent decisions among Party members. Such caution may seem surprising in aggressive 30-year-olds like Modesto and Líster. Yet among this new breed of formation commander only Modesto and El Campesino had seen service in Morocco as NCOs, while Líster had received some training in Moscow. Their first experience of military command had come during the sierra engagements of the previous summer. They had often shown themselves daring and resourceful at battalion level, but now they commanded formations with anything up to 30 battalions and had to cope with unfamiliar staff procedures. Azaña disliked the fact that these ‘crude guerrillas’, ‘improvised people, without knowledge’, pushed aside regular officers. Despite all their efforts, they could ‘not make up for their lack of competence’.15 But if the new leaders of the People’s Army were intimidated by their responsibilities or conscious of their limitations, they certainly did not allow it to show. As with the International Brigades at the Jarama, ignorance was hidden behind a bluff confidence sustained by a ferocious discipline.
The offensive started in the early hours of 6 July, when the 34th Division from XVIII Corps attacked Villanueva de la Cañada. The Nationalist resistance was unexpectedly fierce, and when the troops seemed reluctant to keep going into the assault, Miaja gave orders to ‘take Cañada at all costs and if the infantry will not go forward place a battery of guns behind our own troops to make them’. Though outnumbered by nine to one, the defenders held off the republicans for a whole day.
Líster’s 11th Division swung past this action and attacked Brunete, defended by a very small nationalist force and a handful of medical orderlies.16 He took the village on the morning of 7 July, but then failed to advance towards Sevilla la Nueva and Navalcarnero. He was concerned that El Campesino’s 46th Division had failed to crush the Falangist battalion defending Quijorna to his right rear. (A similar hold-up due to a brave defence occurred on XVIII Corp’s left flank at Villanueva del Pardillo.) Instead of advancing while the way ahead lay open. Líster and his Russian adviser, Rodimtsev, ordered their troops to dig in just south of Brunete, where they waited for El Campesino’s troops to finish off the Falangists in Quijorna. That took three days, partly because they had not surrounded it properly. This gave Varela time to send a Moroccan
In the meantime two republican reconnaissance soldiers captured by the nationalists admitted that Navalcamero was indeed the objective.18 The town had no defences and no garrison, save a handful of civil guards and supply detachments. Líster’s delay saved the nationalists. Within 24 hours of the offensive starting, Varela could count on Barrón’s 13th Division and the next day Sáenz de Buruaga’s 150th Division arrived from the north in several hundred trucks, acquired on credit from the United States.19
He ordered the 150th Division to attack between Brunete and Quijorna. This threat was met by Walter’s 35th Division, which filled the gap between Líster and El Campesino.
On the left flank 15th Division, supported by artillery and aircraft, attacked towards Villanueva de la Cañada and managed to take the village at ten o’clock that night, after heavy fighting against the nationalist division defending that sector. At the end of that first day the nationalist front had been forced back only in the centre, where part of Líster’s 11th Division advanced to within two kilometres of Sevilla la Nueva. Nationalist resistance around Quijorna and Villafranca del Castillo, held by no more than a
