Wolff, Milton

Milton (Milt) Wolff (1915-2008) was born in Brooklyn, NY to a working-class family. He left school at fifteen and worked in the New Deal 's Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1934. He later found work in a Manhattan garment factory and became politically active through membership in the Young Communist League. When the Civil War broke out in Spain he responded to a YCL appeal for volunteers and sailed for Europe, aged 21, in March 1937. He initially served as a medic and then saw action in a machine-gun unit of the Washington Battalion in the Battle of Brunete in July 1937. The depleted U.S. forces were merged with the Lincoln battalion and Wolf rose quickly through the ranks. He led his unit at Belchite and in the unsuccessful assault at Fuentes del Ebro, and was promoted to captain during the battle of Teruel in January 1938. As the Loyalist forces retreated across the Ebro, and regrouped for a final offensive, Wolff, aged 22, became commander of the Lincoln Battalion.

Wolff met Ernest Hemingway while on leave after Brunete, and forged with him an intense, lasting, and sometimes contentious friendship. Hemingway once described Wolff as being "as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg." On his return from Spain Wolff immediately became active in organizing support for Loyalist refugees and opposition to the Franco regime, and he remained active in a host of left-wing causes. Over the years he campaigned for civil rights -- and especially for the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers, organized aid to Cuba, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and joined with other Lincoln veterans to send ambulances to Nicaragua.

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