(Excerpt)
Ken’s maternal grandfather, James, was known in Spain as Don Hymie
Chesney. He was a gentle giant with a laugh that threatened to topple
large buildings. He traced his family line back to a Dane named Rurik of
the Russ. The family history, beginning in Iceland, dates back to 746 AD
and was one of the first ever recorded.
Ken’s father had some trepidation about going to Spain, which had
remained neutral during the war but was tacitly on the side of Hitler.
He would have preferred going to neighbouring Portugal, which had remained
neutral but was in support of the British. Don Hymie had been
one of the most well-respected and well-known men in Spain before the
revolution. He was no friend of Franco’s and had worked behind the
scenes as an ambassador for Britain and the United States, trying to keep
Franco in Morocco.
The caravan of Rovers drove across France through a devastation none
of the passengers could have imagined. The roads were rubble, water
mains destroyed fields burned to barren ground houses reduced to
piles of stone, crumbled brick and charred timbers.
They passed through France and crossed the border into Spain, where
they climbed high into the Pyrenees before winding their way down to
the plain.
After settling his family in the ancestral home in Valencia, Ken Sr.
travelled to Portugal. One look was enough to tell him he couldn’t stay
in Spain. The country was broken. It had not been brutalized by others
but by its own people and that fact seemed to have affected the national
psyche on a deep level.
Libros Libertad 