Orwell served on the Aragon front for 115 days. It was not until the end of April 1937 that he was granted leave and was able to see his wife Eileen in Barcelona again. Eileen wrote on 1 May that she found him, "a little lousy, dark brown, and looking really very well." At this point he was convinced that he would have the chance to see more action if he joined the International Brigades and fought with them on the Madrid front; his attitude was still one of exasperation in the face of the rivalries between the various factions. This "changed dramatically in the first week of May when he found himself and his comrades under fire not from the Nationalist enemy but from their left-wing 'allies'" in the fighting that followed the government effort to take control of the Telephone Exchange. The Spanish government was seeking to assert direct control on Barcelona which, as part of Revolutionary Catalonia, was chiefly in the hands of the anarchists. The government decided to occupy the telephone building and to disarm the workers; the anarcho-syndicalist CNT staff resisted, and street fighting followed, in which Orwell was caught up. The struggle was called off by the CNT leaders after four days. Large numbers of government reinforcements arrived from Valencia.