On the Nationalist side, the most famous English-language poet of the Spanish Civil War remains South African poet Roy Campbell. Campbell was living in Toledo with his family when hostilities started. As a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church, Campbell was horrified to witness the systematic religious persecution and mass murder of Catholics by the Republican forces. A particularly chilling moment for Campbell was when he came across the bodies of Toledo's Carmelite monks, whom he had befriended, after Republican forces had subjected them to execution without trial. The monks' executioner's had then written in blood above their bodies, "Thus strikes the CHEKA." Campbell later retold the execution in his poem "The Carmelites of Toledo" and pointed out the role that the massacres of Toledo's priests, laity, and religious played in causing the city's Spanish Army garrison to turn against the Republic and to keep fighting during the Siege of the Alcázar. Of Campbell's other poems about the War, the best are the sonnets "Hot Rifles", "Christ in Uniform", "The Alcazar Mined", and "Toledo 1936".