They traveled to Europe for their honeymoon, where they visited several countries including Nazi Germany.
[1] They were about to embark to India, but heard about the uprising and the start of the Spanish Civil War.
Orr lived in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, where she was a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) female militia.
She and her husband, survived the Stalinist attack on the POUM in June 1937, after the fighting of the Barcelona May Days.
They were arrested on 17 June, the day after Andreu Nin Pérez and the POUM executive were arrested, but were released on 1 July and placed by the US consul, Mahlon Perkins, on a ship bound for Marseilles on 3 July 1937.