I don't have my copy of Homage to hand, but I seem to remember Orwell being in the POUM militia was more or less an accident of how he arrived in Spain and not

I don't have my copy of Homage to hand, but I seem to remember Orwell being in the POUM militia was more or less an accident of how he arrived in Spain and nothing to do with it being 'beloved'. As an aside, I once met a Spanish Civil War veteran from South Wales. I got the impression that he went to fight the fascists because it was the right thing to do ('If you tolerate this then your children will be next' was a famous slogan that made it into a song), not because of ideological indoctrination. He was a socialist in the British sense, but that should not suggest the slightest parallel with Stalinism