Robert Merriman

Robert Hale Merriman (1908 – April 2, 1938) was an American professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Republican forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and commanded the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Merriman led the battalion again during the Battle of Teruel in Aragon. Under heavy attack by Nationalist tanks and aircraft, the battalion was forced to retreat in the only available direction, Catalonia and its boundary, the Ebro River. On April 2, 1938, around the vineyards of Corbera d'Ebre, near the key city of Gandesa, 20 kilometers before the river, Merriman and his lieutenant, Edgar James Cody, were either killed in action or captured and executed some hours later.

Milton Wolff succeeded Merriman as commander of the Lincoln Brigade.

Literary comment
Merriman is posthumously referenced in chapter 18 of Hitler's War. Although he was alive at the initial POD, which affected the Spanish Civil War directly, Merriman's death and succession by Wolff seem to have happened on the same basic schedule as in OTL.