Delmer Berg, 99, is last survivor of American brigade that aided Spanish republic

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.modbee.com/news/local/article44932170.html

"COLUMBIA -Delmer Berg, 99, has outlived all of the Americans who joined Spain’s fight against fascism in the 1930s.

He was among about 2,800 members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which sought to defend an elected leftist government from a revolt led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Berg was wounded in a losing cause.

“I was a worker,” Berg said in a recent interview. “I was a farmer. I was in support of the Spanish working people, and I wanted to go to Spain to help them.”

Berg was born in Anaheim and spent part of his childhood on a farm near Manteca. He later lived in Modesto, where he took part in farm labor and other causes. He has been a communist most of his life, drawing notice from the FBI in the 1950s, and was the only white member of the Modesto chapter of the NAACP.

Berg served his own country twice – in the National Guard before Spain and in the East Indies during World War II. He later worked as a landscaper and then a stonemason. He used the latter skills on the house that he and his late wife, June, built of native stone and reused lumber north of Columbia.

Berg has trouble hearing, and he struggled with memory during parts of the interview, but his service is well-known to admirers of the brigade. It was part of the 40,000-strong International Brigades, which sought to counteract the air and ground support provided to Franco by fascist Germany and Italy."

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