In February 1938, the rebel troops had occupied Teruel, and Franco then prepared an offensive on a broad front in Aragon with fifteen infantry divisions, in addition to the Italian Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (CTV). Reinforced by two hundred tanks and an artillery of approximately 750 muzzles, these armies advanced protected in the air by the Aviazione Legionaria, as well as by the German Condor Legion.
In just over a month, the insurgents carried out the most spectacular of their advances, even threatening Valencia and Barcelona. The attack began on March 7 against units of the Popular Army exhausted after the long battle for Teruel and whose soldiers often lacked even rifles.
The Francoist advance was almost a military parade. On the 10th, Belchite, occupied the previous August by the Republic, was reconquered. For the first time in the war, tanks were used in a concentrated way and as a spearhead, in accordance with the theories of the Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. Likewise, the enemy was harassed following the joint air-ground attack tactic developed by the Condor Legion, which prevented government supplies and ammunition.
On March 13, the Francoists occupied Montalbán. On the 14th, the CTV took Alcañiz. By the 17th, Caspe was also in the hands of the rebels. Between March 23 and 30, the uprisings took over the vast area of ​​Aragon that had been occupied in the summer of 1936 by the militia columns that had left Barcelona. Then Fraga fell and, after a week of resistance, the rebels occupied Lleida.
Meanwhile, in the southern part of Aragon, the Francoist divisions were advancing through the Maestrazgo plateau. To the north of Lleida they reached the Noguera-Pallaresa river, occupying the valleys up to the Pyrenean border and establishing bridgeheads at Balaguer and Tremp, which threatened the flow of hydroelectric current to the Barcelona factories.
Faced with the constant presence of aviation and the apparently unstoppable advance of the enemy, the Republican fronts fell apart: their divisions crumbled and the lines of communication with the rear guard were broken.
The rebel advance was based on high-level logistics, which came to complement the tactical and organizational superiority of Franco’s forces. Such efficiency and the experience gained in the wars in Morocco by the heads of its large units revealed the Achilles heel of the Popular Army: the insufficient training of its fifths and the inexperience not only of the low-ranking professional commanders, but also of the former militiamen at the head of brigades and divisions, loaded with responsibilities that exceeded their capacities and preparation.
A few days were enough for the rebels to occupy 7,000 square kilometers of territory, capture 10,000 prisoners and accumulate copious loot of war material, straddling the rivers that marked the border of Catalonia.
On April 15, 1938, the Navarrese brigades under the command of General GarcÃa Valiño arrived in the Mediterranean at Vinaròs, splashed in the sea and saluted triumphantly in front of the news cameras. By the 19th, the rebels already controlled 60 kilometers from the Mediterranean shore. The Republic had been divided in two.
Responsibility for the disaster was attributed to the Minister of National Defense Indalecio Prieto, who was forced to resign. On April 6, a new administration was formed under the presidency of Juan NegrÃn, who also held Prieto’s position, although it was the undersecretary, Colonel Antonio Cordón, and his collaborators who proceeded to the rapid reorganization of the government armies of the East. and Maneuver.
With men recovered from the best divisions –in general, volunteers who had been fighting since the beginning of the war–, the Ebro Autonomous Group was formed, which was nourished by mainly communist Army corps, under the command of militia colonel Juan Modest. This force would be the base of the future Army of the Ebro, which, in July 1938, would launch the last offensive of the Popular Army against the rebels.
At that juncture, Franco made an important decision, at a political and military level. Instead of invading Catalonia, he decided to advance south along the coast, perhaps out of fear of French intervention if his forces got too close to the Pyrenean border.
The president of the French government, Camille Chautemps, had given way to Léon Blum, the socialist who had wanted to send arms to the Republic at the beginning of the war and who had been blocked by various sectors of his country and by pressure from England.
In the spring of 1938, faced with the crisis caused by Germany’s territorial demands, Franco needed to tread carefully so as not to provoke massive French support for the Republic. For him, the alternative to an advance in Catalonia was to turn south towards Valencia, whose occupation would lead, perhaps, to the surrender of the Republican forces and a quick end to the war.
Fortunately for the government, Franco opted for that second alternative, that is, to make his way towards Valencia, advancing with the purpose of reaching Sagunt. However, his progress was hampered by a powerful line of fortifications and by the resistance of various units of the Popular Army, reorganized under the command of Colonel Menéndez.
In response to Franco’s lightning advance, the new government of the Republic called up five more classes of replacements. At the beginning of the war, government forces had consisted of volunteer militias, later militarized and incorporated into the People’s Army. There were also heterogeneous groups of units recovered from the garrisons where chiefs and officers had risen up, reinforced in different places by loyal members of the Civil Guard, assault guards and carabineros.
However, it soon became clear that replacements had to be called up, that is, men who had either already completed their mandatory military service or were nearing the time when they would have to report to the draft box.
Twenty-one years was the age at which military service was called up, but by mid-1937 both sides had drafted younger men into the ranks. As a result of the disaster in Aragon, the Republic decided to summon increasingly mature men and increasingly beardless young people.
In total, during the Civil War, the Republic placed up to twenty-seven reserve and fifth classes. In February 1938, the classes of 1929 and 1940 had already been summoned, that is, thirty-year-old men and eighteen-year-old boys. In April and May, the classes of 1927, 1926 and 1925 went to the ranks, that is, individuals over thirty years of age, often married and with families, as well as some twenty-seven thousand lads belonging to the replacement of 1941, some of whom they were under eighteen years of age.
These constituted the so-called fifth of the Bottle, according to statements by the former Minister of Health Federica Montseny, who, it was said, exclaimed at a certain point: “But many must still be still taking the bottle!”.
In reality, these were neither the youngest nor the oldest recruits of the People’s Army. In the Gaceta de la República of January 5, 1939, the incorporation into the ranks of the class of 1942 was demanded, as well as the classes of 1915 to 1921, that is, of men up to forty-five years of age.
The historian Pedro Corral, in his book Desertores, cites, for example, Juan Boix, born in January 1920 and belonging to the Quinta del Biberón. Fatherless and farm laborer, he supported his mother and his two sisters. Worried about the fate of his family, with a group of other kids his age he tried to flee to France to escape the conscription. However, he was stopped on the way by the police and spent the rest of the war in jail, until, when the rebels approached the castle where he was, he was released.
Like so many other young soldiers of the Republic, who, because they had not reached the regulatory age, had not completed their “military service” before the war, Juan Boix was forced to serve up to three more years in the post-war army.