2023-12-02 05:32:55
The story of Manuel Ruiz de Huidobro y Alzurena, born in 1910, has been forgotten from history. As the military historian José Luis Isabel Sánchez explains in a very complete dossier on this character, the career of our protagonist began in 1932, when he joined the Corps of Engineers. After a more than rapid ascension in the military ranks – he soon became a sergeant – and with the arrival of the Civil War, he volunteered in Valladolid to fight in the Falange militias. From that moment on he was present in a good part of the most decisive battles for the capital; among them, Jarama or Brunete. At the end of the fraticidal confrontation he had already obtained four distinctions for his bravery and had earned a new promotion to captain.
Huidobro enlisted in the Blue Division in April 1942, when ten months had passed since Ramón Serrano Suñer’s legendary speech. The one in which he charged against the Soviet Union for the outbreak of World War II: «Comrades: this is not the time for speeches. But yes, that Falange: «Comrades: this is not the time for speeches. But the fact that the Falange is currently issuing its condemning sentence: Russia is guilty! Guilty of our civil war. Guilty of the Death of José Antonio, our Founder. And of the death of so many comrades and so many soldiers who fell in that war due to the oppression of Russian communism. “The extermination of Russia is a demand of History and the future of Europe.”
Like many other Falangists, Huidoro was deeply touched by that speech; He almost spurred him to direct his steps toward Russia and fight in World War II. Shortly after, Huidobro was assigned to the 262nd Regiment, where he was soon named captain. With this unit he was, back on February 10, 1943, on the Krasny Bor front. «That day, 38 Soviet battalions left Kolpino, the industrial district of Leningrad in front of which the Blue Divisionsupported by about eighty tanks, about 150 batteries and an undetermined number of ‘Stalin’s organs’, that is, projectile launchers,” highlights historian Xavier Moreno Juliá in statements to ABC.
Final battle
Huidoro covered with his company, made up of one hundred and twenty men, a front of about two kilometers on the Leningrad front. There they were going to have to resist the Soviet push. On the day of the battle that would become the Blue Division’s bloodiest, the captain received worrying reports. His scouts informed him that, in a forest near the positions of his company (the 3rd), he had heard noises that almost certainly came from tanks. The officer set out to corroborate what he feared most: the Soviet tanks were preparing for an attack.
But it wasn’t the only thing. Almost as if they knew they had been discovered, Stalin’s men began, within a few minutes, intense artillery fire on the Spanish defenders. “Huidobro moved to his company’s observatory, where he placed ten anti-tank men as a mobile reserve,” adds, in this case, Isabel.
With an attack looming, Huidobro prepared his men for battle the only way he could. He walked around the position calling on his soldiers to fight to the death and ordered them not to get up from the bottom of the trenches while the artillery fire continued. At that time the captain was still not aware of the total number of enemies that were going to attack them. Unfortunately for him, when the armored vehicles showed up he understood that it was going to be a herculean task to force them to retreat. The message he sent to his superiors indicates this: «The enemy attacks in large masses. Artillery barrier in front of the position and above the forest.
Attacks towards death
The two first Soviet assaults were stopped by Huidobro’s 3rd Company with difficulties, but successfully, at the edge of the forest. And everything, based on rifle and machine gun fire. The Soviets barely advanced. But the same did not happen with the third challenge. In it, Stalin’s men managed to breach the right flank of the Blue Division with flamethrowers. If the tanks had not been effective, the fire had been. Far from despairing, the captain toured the trenches encouraging his men to resist until the end. And not only that but, to serve as an example, he climbed to the top of the trench bare-chested. “That we are Spanish! That this is nothing! That they don’t pass through here!” he shouted.
Repatriated from the Blue Division in 1943 ABC
He remained there for a long time, according to Isabel. To be more specific, until two of his men convinced him to take cover. At that time the situation was looking very bleak for his company. Decimated, the Spanish saw how, in the following hours, the Soviets also overflowed their left flank and attacked the trenches with fixed bayonets. Little else could be done. Suffocated by the pressure of the USSR soldiers, and with only 25% of the men he initially counted on, Huidobro encouraged the surviving soldiers to launch one last charge. And it was in it that he lost his life due to an accurate gunshot to the neck. His soldiers stood firm for several more hours.
In 1945, the newspaper ABC made public that the Laureate Cross of San Fernando had been awarded: «As a result of the contradictory trial file, His Excellency the Tefe of the State v Generalissimo of the National Army, has deigned to grant the Laureate Cross of San Fernando to the deceased Infantry Captain, Don Manuel Ruiz Huidobro Alzunema. for his heroic action on the occasion of the events in which he met a glorious death.
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