Anisa Najar
HONS 2011J
Final Essay
Professor Hernández-Ojeda
Volunteer Marion Merriman by Student Anisa Najar
Marion (née Stone) Merriman was born on August 18, 1909 in Reno, Nevada. She graduated high school at 16 and took up a secretarial job in order to save money for college. Marion’s mom, who had passed a few months ago, emphasized the importance of education to her 5 children. She hadn’t been highly educated herself, so she very much wanted her children to be.
When Marion was 18, she met her future husband, Robert Merriman, at a dance. Both were planning to enroll in the University of Nevada the next year, and they became much closer there. As both of their times passed at university, they became sweethearts, and eventually started dating officially. After essentially 4 years of dating, they got married right after they graduated in 1932; Marion got a degree in English, and Robert in economics. They moved to California as Robert went to the University of California, Berkley to continue his education in economics. Meanwhile, Marion got a job as a secretary at the Berkley office of the Federal Land Bank. All of the married women who worked there, however, were fired due to the Great Depression. Although they protested and tried to keep their jobs, they were still terminated. Marion’s two little sisters came to live with her and Robert in his first year at graduate school, which left little space in their apartment. They were being sent to convent, however, after their aunt was unable to care for them, so this was better than that. They also took in one of Roberts friends who was down on his luck, so their apartment was basically all beds. As Robert learned more about economics, both from books and from real life, he fought more for those who did not have and who were downtrodden. He also, like many others, became more interested in Russia, especially the economic system. In 1934 he applied for, and received, a $900 scholarship for a year of study abroad in Russia.
In 1936, the young couple took a vacation around Central Europe to see what else was out there. They went to Istanbul, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. While they had heard briefly of some sort of war beginning in Spain, they began to really feel the threat in Budapest. By the time they went to Vienna, they found that the mood of the people there was incredibly grim. There was increasing worry that Hitler and the Nazis would be spreading beyond Germany imminently. There had been a socialist movement against the growing threat of Nazis in Vienna, but the government had stopped it; Marion says that “the feel of fascism was apparent in the streets of Vienna” (Merriman and Lerude 64). After their little trip, they began paying more attention to the situation in Spain.
After their return, Robert began to take a more active role in his opposition to fascism. “It was no longer enough to merely oppose it in thought”, Marion writes (Merriman and Lerude 66). Marion, along with many of their friends, tried to dissuade Robert from going, however. They said he had more to offer as a scholar and a teacher. He struggled with this decision for several months, before eventually making up his mind around Christmas. He and Marion spoke at length about it, and he remained set on going to Spain to help the republican fight against the rising threat of Franco. While Marion still very much did not want him to go and risk his life, she knew she couldn’t tell him to not go. They planned what their next steps would be: Robert for his departure, and Marion for her to stay in Moscow. They separated at the train station on January 11, 1937; Marion writes, “I knew how miserable I would be, but I held back my tears” (Merriman and Lerude 73). She found a secretarial job with a Moscow correspondent for the New York Times and set about life without her husband. Although she had many friends in the city, she felt completely alone.
On March 2, 1937 she got a cable message telling her that Robert was wounded, and pretty much nothing else. She was in Moscow at the time and left for Spain. She emptied her apartment and sold all of her shit and just left. She went to Paris to try and go to Spain, but because of the international non-intervention committee, travel to spain was barred. She applied for a French visa to Spain, didn’t get it, and went back every day for a week to try and get it. Miraculously, she eventually did on her 7th day; the officer that she had gone to see every day must have pulled some strings. She immediately left for Perpignan to get on a plane to Barcelona and Valencia. With the help of a friend, Milly Bennett, Marion was able to locate her husband at a hospital in Murcia. When she arrived, his arm was in a large cast from his waist to his shoulder. Marion noticed that he was greeted as the commander of the Americans wherever they went in the hospital. The longer she stayed, the more she learned about the International Brigade and the volunteers from the United States (and elsewhere). “I came quickly to feel that I too had come to a place where I belonged”, she writes (Merriman and Lerude 76). At that moment, she decided to stay in Spain and help the Abraham Lincoln Battalion (often referred to at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade). She began working as a nurse’s assistant. Her duties included searching for wounded Americans, getting candy and gum for them, writing letters to their loved ones, and lending a listening ear (Merriman and Lerude 77). She officially joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion soon after, becoming a corporal and promising to “never, under any circumstances, try to get to the front lines” (Merriman and Lerude 78). Robert was soon appointed as second in command to James Harris, the commander of the Americans who were arriving to Spain and in need of training. Later, on February 13, he and Harris were told to bring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion to the front lines. Harris, however, was drunk, and Robert was appointed as the head of the battalion.
Marion began to get used to life in Murcia, going out with Robert to explore the city when they had a chance. Of course, the war was an ever-looming part of their life; there was always work to be done on that front. As mentioned earlier, one of Marion’s duties was to talk with hospitalized volunteers and help them write letters home in order to keep their lines of communication open. She also dealt with letters that were coming in, as well as typing manuals and writing stories for the newsletter published for volunteers.
In April, she went with Robert to Madrid to “represent the American volunteers in a broadcast planned by a number of American writers” (Merriman and Lerude 127). On their first day there, they went to see what the front lines looked like, since they were very close. While in the trenches, Marion describes feeling frightened and skittish as bullets and explosives flew overhead. On their way to the meeting with the writers, she describes Madrid:
“Streets and buildings were full of huge holes where shells had hit. Streets were barricaded. Blocks of rock and cement had been piled high, keeping clear some holes for rifles and machine guns. The people of Madrid were prepared to defend their neighborhoods from the invading Fascists of Franco, in hand-to-hand combat where necessary… The contrast of war and peace was extraordinary. Madrid was, without question, a city at war, a city of death. But it was, at the same time, a city of beauty.”
Even so, Marion describes how scared she was the entire time they were in the city due to the action that could be seen (and heard) from the frontlines. Seeing the constant bombardment of civilians in the middle of the city in broad daylight made Marion personally invested in the war; she went from simply wanting to help the Republicans’ cause to actively hating the fascists and everything they were doing.
The men of the battalion often flirted with Marion, despite the fact that they knew she was married. She would, of course, decline them as politely as possible. She would be more forceful when necessary. One night, however, while on a mission in another city with two men, one of them raped her. Naturally, she was shocked, terrified, and not sure how to move forward. She ultimately decided not to tell Robert, so as to not “trouble him further”. She does not write about the incident again after explaining that she told no one about what had happened, but it is still quite a harrowing incident to take in and learn about.
In October, Marion was sent on a speaking tour in the United States by Robert. She was to make Americans understand the severity of the war and what everyone involved is going through. Although she did not want to leave Robert, she understood that he just wanted to keep her safe and get her out of Spain as the fighting was getting more intense. She left Spain for Paris, where she booked a boat to New York. She was interviewed by many news outlets and radio stations about her experiences in Spain.
In March of 1938, while she was still in the United States, she got word that Robert had gone missing on a mission. She contacted as many people as could from organizations in several countries but could not figure out whether he was alright or not. In October, after months of searching, she finally accepted that he was missing and would not be returning. After the war ended, the Republicans lost, and the international brigades began returning home, she was resentful of those that had come back alive. In time, however, she realized that it was not their fault that they remained safe; they, just like Robert, had risked their lives for the same fight against fascism. Years later, after the war was long over, she became head of the San Francisco Bay Area Post of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. She also began an administrative career at Stanford University. She eventually passed away in 1991 in her home in Palo Alto, California.
Works Cited
Merriman, Marion, and Warren Lerude. American Commander in Spain. University of Nevada Press, 1986.
“Merriman, Marian.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 13 June 2020, alba-valb.org/volunteers/marian-merriman/.
Merriman, Robert, and Raymond M. Hoff. “Merriman’s Diaries: Exegesis.” Digital Tamiment · Robert Merriman’s Diaries: Exegesis · Digital Tamiment, Tamiment Library, Bobst Library, New York University., Jan. 2018, digitaltamiment.hosting.nyu.edu/s/digtam/item/5848.
Press, The Associated. “Marion Merriman Wachtel, Author, 82 (Published 1991).” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Dec. 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/12/12/obituaries/marion-merriman-wachtel-author-82.html.
Tofte, Susan, and Heather Mulliner. Guide to the Robert Hale Merriman and Marion Merriman Papers ALBA.191, New York University, 2007, dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/alba_191/bioghist.html.