I photographed Milton Wolff at his home in 1995 for a cover story in the Sonoma County Independent. He passed in January 2008. What follows is taken from his obituary that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle© 1/19/2008.
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If there is a special charisma, a spark in the eye, that comes with dodging mortar rounds and machine gun bullets, Milton Wolff had it.
He was the last commander of the volunteer fighters from North America known as the Lincoln-Washington Battalion in the Spanish Civil War, a hero and friend to writer Ernest Hemingway and a legendary figure from that era.
A leftist who despised fascism, Milton Wolff spent his life fighting what Spanish war veterans called "the good fight," against the injustice he saw in the world, according to his friends and colleagues.
He finally laid down his arms on Monday at the age of 92, dying of heart failure at a nursing home in Berkeley.
Mr. Wolff, who lived in El Cerrito for many years, was never wounded in the bloody fighting to save the Spanish Republic from the fascist army of Gen. Francisco Franco, a war in which some 800 Americans were killed. He was named battalion commander when he was 22 and a major at age 23, the result of virtually the entire leadership being killed or wounded, according to a written account of his exploits by his friend Peter Carroll, who chairs the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives board of directors.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1915, Mr. Wolff was a high school dropout. During the Depression, he enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's many New Deal experiments. He also worked in a millinery factory in Manhattan and joined the Young Communist League, he later recounted in his writings.
He volunteered for the Spanish Civil War so he could provide the soldiers with first aid, which he had learned while in the Conservation Corps.
Six feet tall and thin, with a loud, gravelly voice, he had a commanding presence even then, Carroll said. Soldiers recognized his innate ability to lead, Carroll said, so instead of serving as a medic he was placed in a machine gun unit, which saw action in Brunete in 1937. Mr. Wolff recounted in his 1994 autobiographical novel, "Another Hill," how men inches away from him were being wounded and killed.
He also fought on the Aragon front and was soon commanding the machine gunners at Fuentes de Ebro. Mr. Wolff was named battalion commander in 1938 when a bomb destroyed the headquarters building and killed all of the group's ranking officers.
At Teruel, in January 1938, the Republican army was outflanked by Franco's forces, leaving Mr. Wolff and many others trapped behind enemy lines. Many men were captured and summarily executed.
"It was every man for himself," said Carroll. "He was on his own behind enemy lines for six days and nights."
Mr. Wolff moved and hid, avoiding capture and finally swam across the cold, swollen Ebro River to safety.
"You built this thing pretty low," the lanky commander reportedly deadpanned as he ducked his head to enter the shelter that was serving as battalion headquarters following his harrowing ordeal. "I guess you guys didn't think I was coming back."
Mr. Wolff met Hemingway while on leave in Madrid. Hemingway described him later as "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 un hit," Hemingway continued, "by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed."
After Franco declared victory in 1939, Mr. Wolff took charge of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a political activist group that leaned decidedly left. He was arrested in 1940 and served 15 days in jail after he and other Spanish Civil War veterans demonstrated outside the French Consulate in New York City to protest a plan by the French government to send war refugees back to Franco's Spain.
He was called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1940 and accused of being a Communist. His defense was that he had never joined the U.S. Communist Party, even though he sympathized with its views.
Mr. Wolff recruited Lincoln veterans to work for British intelligence and offered the services of the Lincoln Brigade after Pearl Harbor was bombed, according to Carroll. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He learned to parachute and participated in some fighting in Burma. He also helped establish an intelligence network among Communist partisans in Italy, according to various accounts.
After World War II, Mr. Wolff was under constant surveillance by the FBI, Carroll said. In 1947, the Department of Justice declared the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade a subversive organization .
Mr. Wolff helped defend the veterans before the Subversive Activities Control Board in 1954 and appealed every loss to the federal courts. He also worked for the Civil Rights Congress, a left-wing organization that defended African Americans dubiously accused of capital crimes, Carroll said.
He later led demonstrations against the Vietnam War and, at one point, wrote a letter to Ho Chi Minh offering the services of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He also advocated ending the trade embargo with Cuba and helped provide medical aid to a children's hospital in Havana, according to Carroll's account.
He was, according to his friends, a worldly, chivalrous man who had a gritty charm that drew people to him even in old age.
"He was famous for his personal courage. He was famous for his leadership and morality," said Carroll. "Women fell in love with him and men really respected him."
In 2004, Carroll accompanied Mr. Wolff to Spain, where he is a beloved figure.
"People would constantly come up and say, 'Thank you for coming,' " Carroll said. "He would say, 'Listen, if you guys ever get in trouble again, give me a call.' "
He is survived by a daughter, Susan Wallace of Vermont; a son, Peter Wolff of Connecticut; four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
A memorial is planned on March 29, but the location has not yet been determined.
His memorial will be one day before the planned unveiling of an 8-foot-tall, 40-foot-long monument containing photographs and quotations in honor of the Lincoln Brigade at the Vaillancourt Fountain on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
