The
Spanish Civil War saw the death of a half-million people between 1936
and 1939, but outside of Spain, it gets little space in history books
because of World War II. That's also why many war crimes and shady
dealings did not get proper documentation or an adequate investigation
at the time. In the decades since, these mysteries remain. For example,
what really happened to Dick Sheepshanks?
Dick
Sheepshanks was a 27-year-old Reuters war correspondent during the
Spanish Civil War, and his life was the stuff of a Hollywood
blockbuster. Sheepshanks headed for Spain in 1937 with several other
journalists to cover Franco’s Nationalists, but he was killed in
December in the Republican shelling of the village of Cudete. When news
of his death reached London, Sir Roderick Jones (who headed the Reuters
News Agency and unknowingly shared a love interest with Sheepshanks)
paid him all the tributes as befitted a national hero.
Then
things get weird. According to some who had known him – including Jeanne
Stourton, the aforementioned love interest – Sheepshanks had become
suspicious of one of his fellow journalists, and the only one of the
group to survive: Kim Philby. If that name sounds familiar, it’s for
good reason – Philby went on to gain infamy as Britain’s most notorious
traitor during the Cold War.
According to Stourton, Sheepshanks
had grown increasingly suspicious of Philby’s motivations, and Philby
took it upon himself to take Sheepshanks out of the picture. A
comparison between eyewitness reports and photographic evidence has
raised a number of unanswered questions, and it’s been suggested that
Philby may have had a hand in the attack. What exactly happened to the
Reuters journalists remains undetermined, and the death of Ernest
Richard Sheepshanks has become a compelling Spanish Civil War mystery.
Read about five other such
mysteries from the Spanish Civil War at Urban Ghosts.
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