Salamanca Saga

A new chapter was last week tagged on to the saga of Harold E. Dahl, the U. S. aviator who fell into Rebel hands while fighting as a mercenary for the Loyalist Air Force in July 1937. Ambassador Claude Bowers, back from Spain for good, said that the famous letter Harold Dahl's pretty wife, Edith, wrote to Francisco Franco, enclosing an interesting picture of herself and begging clemency for her husband, never reached the very married Generalissimo. His staff officers handed the picture around and "passed judgment." according to the New York Daily News, "on this and that." Then they wrote her, over General Franco's signature, the likewise famous reply promising mercy and ending: Your obedient servant kisses your foot.

After a spectacular trial for "rebellion" again.t Franco's regime, Aviator Dahl was sentenced to death, immediately reprieved.

From then on, reported Ambassador Bowers, the Rebels' problem was not how to keep him in jail but how to keep him out. He was given the freedom of Salamanca, but kept getting into trouble because of red wine rather than Red ideology. The city just could not get rid of him. Once, just before he was to be exchanged back to the Loyalists, he announced publicly: "I don't give a damn about a cause. I'm fighting for money." The Loyalists took someone else. And ever since, Harold E. Dahl has been Peck's Bad Boy in Salamanca. Reason why he stays where he is definitely unwanted: he is even more definitely wanted in Los Angeles on charges of having passed eight bad checks.

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