page_title: Lincoln Battalion
section_title: American Medical Bureau
hierarchical_section_title: Lincoln Battalion / American Medical Bureau
caption_attribution_description: English: American Medical Bureau (AMB) armband
context_page_description: The Lincoln Battalion was the 17th battalion of the XV International Brigade, a mixed brigade of the International Brigades also known as Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was organized by the Communist International with great care to conceal or minimize the communist character of the enterprise. Attractive names were deliberately chosen for the International Brigades, such as "Garibaldi" in Italy or "Abraham Lincoln" in the United States. The Lincoln Brigade was formed by a group of volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War as soldiers, technicians, medical personnel and aviators fighting for Spanish Republican forces against the forces of General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist faction. The Lincoln Brigade integrated white and black volunteers on an equal basis.
  Of the approximately 3,015 volunteers from the US, 681 were killed in action or died of wounds or sickness.
context_section_description: Organized by Dr. Edward K. Barsky, the American Medical Bureau (AMB) recruited doctors, dentists, nurses, administrators and ambulance drivers to support the Spanish Republic. In its fund raising events the names 'American Medical Bureau to Save Spanish Democracy' and 'Medical Bureau & North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy' were also used.
  In the United States the AMB staged events in order to try to shift public opinion away from supporting the aid boycott to the Spanish Republic imposed by the American government following the agreements of the Non-intervention Committee. In Spain the AMB was assigned to hospitals and medical centers of the Spanish Military Medical Services (Cuerpo de Sanidad), such as the Gómez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid, and also to front-line locations. AMB members, who also included women, treated both international as well as Spanish combatants.
  By the end of the war a majority of both the Spanish aid committees and the leadership councils of the AMB were women. Many women leaders in the aid movement were wives of either prominent American leftists or soldiers in the Lincoln Battalion. Katherine Duncan, wife to Governor La Follette's secretary, and Peggy Dennis, a communist party leader, were leaders in the active Madison, Wisconsin chapter. Marion Merriman, wife to Abraham Lincoln Battalion commander Robert Merriman (the supposed inspiration of Hemingway's hero in For Whom the Bell Tolls), was the chairwoman of the large San Francisco branch of the organization. She and one other woman, Fredericka Martin, hold the honor of being the only woman to receive officer commissions from the Spanish Republic. Evelyn Hutchins, an active member of the AMB, agitated for years to be a hospital driver on the front-lines, but Spanish Republican policies prevented women from serving on the front-line until 1938 when Hutchins won the right to serve on the front-line as a driver.
caption: AMB armband.
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