Theo Francos, 68 years with a bullet attached to the heart

Theo Francos vivió 98 años, los últimos 68 con una bala alojada en el tórax, a escasos milímetros del corazón, que le dispararon en la II Guerra Mundial, en Holanda, en un pelotón de fusilamiento. “Oí el comienzo del tableteo de las metralletas y me dejé caer. Todo se volvió negro. Entonces se produjo el milagro. La bala que debía haberme tocado el corazón fue amortiguada y desviada por una insignia metálica de paracaidista que llevaba en el uniforme. Gravemente herido, caí en la fosa con mis compañeros muertos”, relató a la fotógrafa Sofía Moro en su libro Ellos y nosotros. “Los alemanes no nos remataron ni nos cubrieron de tierra y cal, sino que decidieron dejarlo para el día siguiente. Segundo milagro. Antes de su llegada, al alba, se produjo el tercer milagro. Una pareja de campesinos holandeses pasó por delante de la fosa para empezar su jornada de trabajo en el campo. Eran de la Resistencia. Sorprendidos, descubrieron la carnicería y observando los cuerpos vieron que uno entre ellos se movía todavía un poco. Era yo”.

That couple hid and took care of him until he recovered.Franks never wanted to get the bullet.He was afraid.Every three months a review passed to verify that it had not moved.He used to say that his vitality came from the metal that this projectile was managing to the blood.He was traveling until recently: to an exhumation in Babia Piedrafita, to Cuba...His family embroidered on the shirts the phone number because, when Francos was out, he always forgot to call and feared something happened to him.

Son of Spanish emigrants, he was born in Fontihoyueuelo (Valladolid), in 1914, but lived almost all his life in France, in Bayona.There he went to school until the age of 12.At 16 he joined the communist youth.With 22 he arrived in Madrid to fight in the civil war on the side of the Republicans.He joined the fifth regiment, with other French and also Belgians, many athletes arrived on July 17, 1936 to Barcelona to participate in the popular Olympics organized in response to the boycott that in the Berlin Olympic Games had made the anti -fascist athletes.His first action was the defense of the port of Somosierra, to close the passage to General Mola.

Later, he joined the XI International Brigade, where he became a political commissioner.The first commission was the defense of the University City of Madrid.“It was a terrible combat, melee, building per building, staircase by ladder.You threw a partition and found a moro in front.The first one who threw was the one that was saved.We spent a lot of fear, ”Franks said in the book they and us.There they wounded him for the first time, in an arm, for a shrapnel of a grenade.

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Already recovered, he returned to the front against the Francoist offensive in the East of Madrid, on the Jarama River, where thousands of brigadistas died.I was going through the river to pick up a partner, an American pianist to whom a grenade had started an arm.Both met in 1986.With his only hand, the brigadista who had saved life touched on the passage of the Ebro, a song that used to sing the days before combat.Francos remembered this reunion with emotion.

Then came the battle of Brunete, that of Belchite, Teruel, the Ebro...Until the international brigades received order to withdraw.In October 1938, the passionate fired them in Barcelona: “You can go proud.You are the story.You are legend.You are the heroic example of solidarity and universality of democracy.We will not forget ".In his Bayonne bedroom, on the headboard of the bed, Franks had a portrait of the Passion, to which he decided to disobey that day.He didn't want to leave.He joined the 65th Shock Brigade of the Republican Army, and in March 1939 he ended up in the port of Alicante, the great mousetrap where the losers of the war waited for foreign ships that never arrived to evacuate them to evacuate them.There he witnessed the suicides of companions who preferred to take their lives before falling prisoners.He was sent to the Portacelli prison, where he was tortured, and then to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp from which he escaped and was captured again several times.

The torture were terrible.He saw how the Francoists cut the hand to many Republicans: "Let's see how you greet now with a closed fist," he recalled that they were told.In 1940, thanks to the Red Cross, he was released.I thought he returned home to rest, but returned to another war.And decided to fight fascism again.On June 21, 1940 he embarked on England to enter the Manchester Parachute School.In 1942, they sent Libya, where he had to finish off his best friend, wound.

On September 15, 1944, it was launched in Paracaídas on Arnhem, in Holland, with another 36 men.They fell prisoners.They took them to a pit and fired.That is the bullet that still kept in the thorax.They all gave him dead.His mother, whom he had not seen nine years, was already mourning.His fiancee had not lost hope and both married in Bayonne in 1946.She died a few years ago.He a few days ago, with 98 years, a bullet at a few millimeters from the heart and a bad habit: he never stopped smoking in pipe.