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What if Spain Joined the Axis

Discussion in 'What If - European Theater - Western Front & Atlan' started by Ironcross, Sep 9, 2007.

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  1. Ironcross

    Ironcross Dishonorably Discharged

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    What if Hitler agreed to Franco's terms, and spent 1941 equipping and trainning the spaniards?
     
  2. rainbowtrout

    rainbowtrout Member

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    I shall open my response with the preposterous claim that I am the one person on the planet that the question was posted for.

    IF Gen. Franco joined Spain to the Axis, then he would not have sent his brother, Ramon Franco y Bahamonde and his wife, Soledad (Jenny) Rodriguez, to the Philippines. Their son, Jesus Rodriguez Jenny Franco, born in 1920, Intermuros, Manila, Luzon, Philippines, would never have been born there, or possibly never born. If that happened his life wound not have crossed the paths of both my mother and my father on the evening /night of Saturday, 3 February 1945.

    Jesus Franco was a full Colonel in the Spanish Army, and a decorated, experienced war veteran. The Japanese did not care that he was an Axis ally by Spanish citizenship; he was a handsome white European and therefore he was taken POW and sent with the Bataan Defenders on the Death March. Col Franco escaped and joined the guerrillas. In January 1945, he was told the Americans would be landing at Lingayen and he went to meet them.
    Col. Jesus Franco was one of many famous guerrillas who met the US Army there, and then again when they met the 1st Cavalry Division's arrival. The guerrillas accompanied the Army to a location very near Cabanatuan, where where the Army Rangers and Juan Pajota's guerrillas took the Ghost Soldiers of Cabanatuan out by "ox" carts right beside them as they were assembling gear for their dash to Manila. Col Franco was one of those who helped lead the Flying Column to Manila.

    Outside the Gates of Santo Tomas an assembly of American officers and guerrillas talked in the north lane of Calle Espana. A Japanese guard lobbed a grenade over the gate, shots were fired. Captain Manuel Colayco, head of the Manila Allied Intelligence Bureau, was mortally wounded, his abdomen filled with pieces of the grenade. Col Hack Conners was wounded but stayed on the job. Col. Jesus Franco received a head wound and continued on the job until he was taken to the infirmary. Lt Diosdado Guytingco was uninjured and he took care of Capt Colayco.

    The order was given for the tanks of the 44th Tank BN, attached to the First Cav Div, to come forward to the gate; Battlin Basic's officer ordered the gate to be opened and it was not, the tank fired at the capstone and that gave clearance for the tank and it rolled up to the gates and pushed them open, doing damage at the same time, but not so much damage that the Americans could not shut them to make it appear the gates were still locked.

    The fighting inside Santo Tomas commenced. Colayco was taken into surgery. Guytingco took turns with Fr Hurley holding a single mantle Coleman lantern, the only light that night, over the operating field. During his break, Guytingco was in the "lobby" and saw the first two wounded Americans brought in. They had been at the battle at Far Eastern University. One had a chest wound and soon expired. The other had his foot blown off and his big toe dangling. Guyingco and Franco, who knew each other, saw one another. Lt Guytingco returned to the surgery. The soldier went into surgery immediately after Colayco's was completed.

    Col Franco was treated and sent to Sta Catalina, a hospital across Gov Forbes (street) from Santo Tomas.

    When the soldier awakened he saw the most beautiful angel standing by him, crying for him and he fell in love with her. She had already fallen in love with the handsome, unconscious, wounded American.

    Franco was at Sta Catalina a few days. Sixty years later he remembered a specific American army POW nurse who took care of him to positively identify her from B+W photographs of the nurses, and provide a "full color" description of the nurse.

    Guytingco searched 60 years to find that unknown American soldier with the foot blown off.

    My parents were the nurse and the soldier.

    Now the IF question's answer... My parents would never have met. I would never have been born. I would not be writing a documentary about the lives of the men Flying Column and all those who helped them because they would be the Unknown Soldiers instead of heroes of legend.
    And America would speak Japanese, German and Spanish.
     
    Za Rodinu likes this.
  3. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    At a loss for words!
     
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