I´ll tell you III

The attack began on the first day of 1897, with unprecedented force; the defence was also disproportionate. This past, which was unravelled in quiet libraries flows back to us as we imagine Second Lieutenant Sans Huelin’s platoon climbing up whilst shooting at the enemy positions, whilst they take shelter from the hostile shrapnel with the movement, the order of combat which they have learned, and the mutual support in the advance. Now they are so close to the enemy that the wind carries to them all kinds of sounds and voices, as if they were just a stone’s throw away. The lieutenant, with the voice of a young man but determined in the attack, gives the order to set the bayonets for the final attack. In this moment he is wounded, in the shoulder, the leg and maybe the hip, he thinks. Because he cannot stand up by himself, he asks a comrade to help him stand up to continue with the attack, rallying and giving orders to his platoon.

And this is the image that will live in memory: that of a young Second Lieutenant Luis Sans Huelin supported by a comrade, who may have been a private, whose name this newspaper was unable to uncover. This comrade, who in combat held onto the injured body of his boss and, covering his injured flesh with his hands, obeys the second lieutenant’s orders so he can continue in spirit to complete the attack whilst rallying and calling his entire platoon to the bayonet, which sees how the boss, who is injured and being helped to walk by a comrade, is still carrying them into combat without faltering. Meanwhile, the defences of Cacarong de Silé continue to spew out shots, hidden inside their trenches.

They have almost reached the bayonets, when Luis takes a fatal shot to the chest and instantly drops dead. I hope that someone who reads these lines can tell us who was the soldier who carried his lieutenant to the summit of Cacarong, and if the same shots which ended Luis Sans’ life also ended his. Two brave men, one injured who asked to continue towards the attack and another who obeyed this order, when logic asked for different action to help his young second lieutenant. The platoon reaches the trenches, jumps on the enemy and with the blows from their bayonets, manages to clear them out. Everyone knows that, without the strength that their lieutenant gave them and without that colleague who, burdened with him, carried him swiftly, they would not have achieved this victory. Two facts which made this platoon from the 6th ‘Cazadores’ Expeditionary Battalion great, two men, two soldiers who together, one supported by the other, continued the attack until the end.

For his heroic behaviour, a process to see if he should be awarded the Cross of San Fernando 2nd Class, a laureate, began. He was awarded this prize by sovereign ordinance on the 18th of September 1900.

On the18th of November 1919, in the Infantry Academy in Toledo, in its Alcázar, his comrades paid homage to him, presided over by King Alfonso XIII, who unveiled a tombstone in his honour: “To the Second Lieutenant D. Luis Sans Huelin, first officer of the present Infantry Academy, who died gloriously on the battlefield. His comrades of origin. November 1919.”

Surely, Second Lieutenant Luis Sans Huelin would place next to this tombstone another, which to him would seem more important, with the name of the soldier who carried him to the top of the summit of Cacarong de Silé: “To the comrade who, obeying my orders until the end, helped me to carry my body and soul to fulfil the last mission.”