2023-09-14 08:12:21
All good things come; or so they say. On August 18, 1927, ABC published that the Cavalry Weapon had held a lavish party in honor of the recently awarded Joaquín Cebollino. The revelry arrived six years after the then commander – and at the time captain – had led a convoy of supplies to the surrounded position of Igueriben; the last before the rifeños transferred their defenders to gumía. “The commander thanked the tribute, dedicating a memory to all his comrades who succumbed in the fight,” the newspaper revealed. Thus the debt with one of the greatest rojigualdos heroes was settled; the umpteenth forgotten by the books.
Towards Igueriben
The summer of 1921 was a sweet one for the Spanish troops. The general commander of Melilla, Don Manuel Fernández Silvestre, undertook conquests that alleviated the pain of the loss of the old colonies in 1898; and he did it under the auspices of a monarch eager to remember military glories from centuries ago. But the hundreds and hundreds of kilometers advanced towards the heart of the Rif in just a few months were nothing more than a mirage. The sad truth was that the expansion had been done in a haphazard manner, without establishing efficient supply lines or erecting adequate defensive positions to resist. Only a few ‘blockhouses’ had been built, tiny forts with the capacity to house thirty men.
But defeat was not worth it for the general commander. The difficulty of sending supplies to these ‘blockhouses’, and of defending them against the Riffian tribes, did not prevent the Spanish Army from continuing its expansion. This is how, on July 7, commander Julio Benítez conquered, by Silvestre’s orders, the position of Igueriben, one of the most advanced to date on the Melilla front. This must have exhausted the patience of the Riffian leader Abd El-Krim, who, on July 15, attacked the convoy in charge of supplying water to this area. And from there, he surrounded Benítez’s men with an infinitely superior army: a contingent of between 8,000 and 10,000 Moroccans.
In Igueriben, Benítez was surrounded along with his 350 unfortunate people; and, as one, they prepared to fight to the last drop of blood. Don’t think it’s a cliché. During the following days, while they clamored for Silvestre to leave his camp in Annual and break the Riffian encirclement, they held out even though they lacked ammunition and the liquid element; because yes, the closest well had been outside the circle established by the enemy. According to one of the defenders, Lieutenant Married Escudero, during that madness the commander “raised the morale of the troops with his heroic example and his energetic words of encouragement.” He saw in him “an example of bizarreness,” but not all the gallantry on the globe seemed enough to wipe out thousands of natives.
Lieutenant Casado, the only survivor of Igueriben ABC
They painted coarse on July 17. Benítez, shouting, harangued his men from one side to the other of the parapet that covered his position on the hill. They died, but they also killed the unfortunate ones who tried to storm their position. In those cases, the solution given by Annual was to send a convoy loaded with food, water and ammunition to Igueriben. Necessary mission, which I do not deny, but also suicidal. The order fell to a seasoned man with a thick mustache and prominent hairline: Captain Joaquín Cebollino von Lindeman. With the help of the 3rd Squadron of Regulars from Melilla, arrived from Izummar, the man from Madrid prepared to leave Annual as soon as possible.
Road to hell
Chives started marching around two-thirty in the afternoon, with his men still without food. Time was pressing. The historian Antonio Bellido Andréu narrates in an article prepared for the Royal Academy of History that the convoy, the last one towards Igueriben, was made up of about sixty horsemen, two supply sections, one for artillery from the mobile park and another for the quartermaster. The route that was proposed to them was about five kilometers; short distance if it weren’t for the scorching heat, the rifles of the Riffians and the terrible state of the terrain. But the man from Madrid knew it was them, or nothing.
All hell broke loose at the same moment that the gates of Annual were opened, but it intensified when there were three kilometers left before the end of the march. It was then that the rain of lead that rained down on the column intensified. At the same time, and as Norberto Ruíz Lima – lieutenant colonel of the Army – explains in ‘The last convoy to Igueriben’, Cebollino ordered his men from the Tabor Cavalry of the Group of Indigenous Regulars of Melilla number 2 to return fire on the hills, taken by enemies. “The entire convoy was immersed in an infinite combat that, for them, was a labyrinth of attacks, shots, charges, attacks, toughness, a hand of steel to govern the mules,” adds the soldier.
Collection of bodies after the Annual ABC Disaster
Little is known about how on earth Chives managed to break through that nightmare siege. What we do know is that, during those last three kilometers, mules and red-gualdo fighters fell alike. In ‘Dying in Africa’, Luis Miguel Francisco collects the statements of one of the Cebollino soldiers in which it is clear that the fight reached hand-to-hand several times: «They snatch the horse from the indigenous soldier Brahim Ben-Alí, while “Another Riffian pays with his life for the attempt to take the carbine from him.” The same soldier revealed that the convoy made its way to Igueriben “in a pictorial maneuver of audacity and skill”; but he did not offer much more information.
The ‘Rif Telegram’, one of the newspapers that chronicled the fighting in North Africa in more detail, wrote that “the enemy tried to cut off” the caravan and “prevent it from reaching its destination,” but that ” “The escorts, positions and the aforementioned column frustrated such purposes, causing the dissidents many casualties.” ABC, for its part, revealed that Cebollino had arrived at his destination on July 20: “The high commissioner communicates that […] The rebels attacked the protective column of a convoy that was carrying supplies to Igueriben. “The fire lasted all day, with varying intensity.”
Round trip
Despite everything, Cebollino and his men arrived at Igueriben a few hours later. Ruíz Lima narrates that, when the officer glimpsed the entrance to the position, he ordered seven of his men to dismount, open the wire fences and remove the sandbags that blocked access. The defenders received them like May water. And this, despite the fact that a good part of the herds were injured and many others had lost their load along the way. But his work was not yet finished. After a miniscule rest, he ordered his men to undertake the second part of the plan: load the wounded who could, break the siege again and begin the journey again to Annual. Almost nothing.
But what if he did it, and at the cost of quite a few casualties, as stated in the ‘Official Gazette’ number 168, dated August 2, 1927: «After leaving the mules and their drivers in Igueriben, the interested party returned to join the bulk. of the convoy’s protective force, and to do so he had to break the enemy’s encirclement again. He collected all the casualties incurred in the combat (five dead, nine wounded, and two bruised), and with the force of his orders he joined the bulk of the column to follow Annual. That earned him the Laureate Cross of San Fernando and the respect of all of Spain. But, unfortunately, it was not enough for Benítez to hold on. Although that, as they say, is another story.
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