Aged 11, he had been at the 'battle of George Square" or 'Bloody Friday' in 1919 when the police attacked a crowd of thousands of striking workers seeking a 40-hour week.
In 1936, Maley was one of 250 who gathered in Glasgow's George Square[1] to join buses and head off to the fight in Spain after hearing La Pasionaria on the radio.
[1][5] He was in the No.2 Machine Gun Company[6] when captured after hiding in olive groves for two days[2] after the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 when General Francisco Franco's nationalists were rebuffed in Madrid.
After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, Maley joined the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1941; serving in Burma and India.
After he was demobbed, Maley worked for the next dozen years laying tracks for British Railways, and, afterwards, as a building labourer for the Glasgow Corporation.
[9] The story of Maley's capture in Spain and the strange way that the family found out he was still alive inspired a play written by two of his sons, John and Willy, From the Calton to Catalonia.
James Maley died on 9 April 2007 in his native Glasgow from pneumonia, aged 99, survived by, in his immediate family, his wife, nine children and five grandchildren.