Robert Hale Merriman, a UC Berkeley graduate student studying economics during the early 1930s, was among the first Americans to give his life in the fight against fascism. During the Spanish Civil War, Merriman was a commanding officer of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, which consisted of over 3,000 volunteers—at least ten of them from Berkeley—fighting  to preserve the Spanish Republic. He disappeared after a battle in April 1938, presumably killed by General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces. Merriman was also notably the inspiration for Robert Jordan, the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. While attending Cal shortly before leaving for Europe, Merriman and his wife Marion lived in this apartment building.