Guernica
Sir: As one who fought with the Nationalists, as a Carlist officer, on the northern front at the time of Guernica, may I make two points about its destruction (Letters, 7 January).
First, there is no doubt Guernica was bombed by Nationalist aircraft. It was an important communications centre, a divisional headquarters, and full of Republican troops: hardly an 'open town'.
Secondly, I believe the destruction of the town was the work, not of the retreating Basque Republicans, but of the Communist Asturian miners fighting with them. That was what happened to Irun, where the burning was witnessed by the international press from across the Bidassoa in France; and that was also the fate of other Basque towns like Durango, Eihar and Amorbieta, whose blackened ruins I used to pass on my way to the front. Betto of the Haves press and Harold Cardozo of the Daily Mail, who entered Guernica with the advancing Nationalist troops, both personally assured Inc that the inhabitants blamed the greater part of its destruction on incendiarism and dynamiting by the Asturians.
Peter Kemp 24 Radnor Walk, London SW3
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