He Was There, Before the Others

Seventy-eight-year-old George Auvan of San Diego, looking sharp in his striped Princeton alumni jacket (Class of ‘31), is one of about 3,300 Americans who fought overseas without the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt before this country entered World War II.

This summer, he’s going back to Spain to celebrate and to be honored.

It’ll be a reunion of the so-called International Brigades, which formed in the fall of 1936 when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were working to overthrow the Spanish Republic in what came to be known as the Spanish Civil War.

People like Auvan were appalled that America and other allies were not coming to Spain’s support. He and 35 buddies in New York City tracked the advance of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s troops on a large map of Europe, hung on a wall of their union hall.

Finally, he said, “we decided to go over there, to fight the Fascists.”

Twenty-nine at the time, Auvan shipped himself overseas without telling his father where he was going and joined tens of thousands of fighting men--and some women--from 40 other countries around the world, from China to Finland, to defend the Republic.

In the war, Auvan, who earned a mechanical engineering degree from Princeton, was put to use designing and building water and eating systems as well as repair shops. He spent 20 months in Spain and experienced combat for only eight days, when he was pressed into service on the front to deliver food to the machine gunners and water to cool the weapons. He was shot twice in one day--once in the left arm, once in the right shoulder. It was also the same--and only--day he fired a weapon on his own.

The fight for the Republic was lost by 1939, when Francisco Franco took over the country.

Auvan says there are seven others, besides himself, living in San Diego who were members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain and who may also make the reunion trip to Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona.

Why is he so excited about going back? “Because we were among the first to fight the Fascists,” he said. “And, ultimately, we won.” So Much for the Image

Now that Maureen O’Connor has been sworn in as mayor, Bill Cleator is back to his own councilmanic self.

Cleator, you’ll remember, is a big supporter of the saddle shoe industry but was swayed by his mayoral campaign staff to wear somewhat more credible black wingtips. A lot of good it did.

Now Cleator’s back to his saddle shoes. “They’re more comfortable,” he remarked. “People are going to have to accept Bill Cleator as he is.”

Heavenly Message

Nobody, but nobody, really ever figures on getting a response after stuffing a message into a glass bottle and setting it afloat in the ocean. But everyone kind of hopes . . .

The other day, Mike Lockie of Escondido received a postcard that began, “Dear Mr. Mike, Surprise . . . I got your name from the bottle.”

Lockie, a 19-year-old chemistry major who’s home for the summer from the University of Colorado, was puzzled. What bottle?

Oh, yeah--the one he dropped from a cruise ship off Juneau, Alaska, in the summer of ‘82, when he was 15 and on vacation with his parents.

The bottle ended up in the hands of Father Vergie Valenzona, in Manila.

“I’ll write back to him,” Lockie promised. “But not by bottle.” Traffic Ins and Outs

On the road again . . .

- U.S. Customs officers at the San Ysidro border crossing expected a crush of traffic Sunday night, the close of a three-day holiday weekend. Apparently, Americans in Mexico expected the same, and it seems that many of them out-foxed themselves by coming home Saturday night to beat the crunch. Instead, they caused a two-hour wait at the border.

How bad was the border delay Sunday night? “We’ve got 22 lanes open and there’s no wait at all,” said one border officer at 8:30 p.m. “We can’t believe it. We’re all just kind of standing here laughing.”

- Leaving San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium Sunday afternoon after the Padres’ 2-1 win over the Cubs was an elderly, smiling couple in a Mercury Monterey with the bumper sticker, “Dodger Fan in Trunk.”

- Aerial traffic reporter Monica Zech of the Automobile Club reported Monday that messing up the morning commuter traffic on Interstate 5 near Via de la Valle was a 200-pound pig, “otherwise known as a road hog.” When the animal was snared, she had this follow-up report: “The highway patrol officer is bringing home the bacon.”

This is the same reporter who once said that sheep had gotten onto I-5 at Camp Pendleton and warned motorists to watch out “for ewe turns.”

- Finally, Vince Huntington sent us a Polaroid picture of one of San Diego’s 285 school buses. Yes, indeed, it’s right there in black-and-yellow along the side of the bus. The folks who teach us the three R’s forgot one of them when they stenciled the identification: “San Diego Unified School Distict.”