Henry Reeve was born and raised in Brooklyn (New York), on April 4, 1850, his father was a Protestant clergyman named Alexander Reeve and his mother Maddie Carrol; they formed a modest and hard-working family. At the age of 15, Reeve was part of the Army of the North in the Civil War that took place in his country from 1861 to 1865 as a drummer. He received a good education and at just 19 years old he worked as a bookkeeper in a bank in the city.
There he came into contact with the propaganda of the Cuban revolutionaries who had emigrated to that land. And attracted by the ideas they spread, in line with his own anti-slavery and liberal sentiments, he decided to support them in solidarity by joining the insurgents who were fighting tooth and nail in Cuba to free it from Spanish colonialism.
Participation in the war
To participate in the Cuban War of Independence, he enlisted in the expedition of the steamship “Perrit” under the name of Henry Earl and the position of orderly soldier of General Thomas Jordan. The first wound of the many that he received was in the combat they waged against a Spanish column upon disembarking from the Perrit, in the Canalito estuary, Nipe Bay, Holguín province, on May 11th, 1869.
Reeve was taken prisoner along with other companions and the Spanish forces shot them all and left him unburied, leaving them for dead. Because of all this Henry had four gunshot wounds but he had enough strength to crawl and was found by Cuban independence forces.
It is from then on that he was known among the troops as Enrique, the American and nicknamed “The Englishman” by Major General Ignacio Agramonte. Reeve participated in many actions under the command of Agramonte, including the rescue of Brigadier Julio Sanguily in October 1871. On November 29th, 1872, during the “El Carmen” combat, an abdominal wound forced him to rest for two months. Already in 1873 he stood out in the combats of “Ciego de Najasa”, “Soledad de Pacheco” and “Cocal del Olimpo”. He accompanied Ignacio Agramonte in the “Jimaguayú” combat, where the Mayor fell on May 11th, 1873. It is on that occasion that he took command of the division to hand it over, eight days later, to Sanguily.
In July 1873 he subordinated himself to the new chief of Camagüey, Major General Máximo Gómez, who on July 27th named him chief of the cavalry of the first division. On September 28th, 1873, when he was facing a Spanish cannon that wreaked havoc on the Mambisa cavalry, he received serious leg injuries, for which he was transferred to the Ciego de Najasa blood hospital. Because of this, he had a metal prosthesis fitted to the affected limb, which had become shorter. A device had also to be created to keep it firm on his mount.
Among the combats of 1876 are those of Aguacate, Guanal Grande and Río Hanabana, in this last combat, on July 25th, 1876 he was also wounded. On August 4th, in unequal combat, he ordered the retreat, and while he was covering his troops, he first received a wound in the chest and then another in the groin.
Knocked down from his horse, he received another on his shoulder and when the enemy killed his horse, without which he could not manage, his assistant offered him another horse but he refused it, ordering him to withdraw because they were going to kill him, and he continued to defend himself with a machete in the hand and in the other a revolver until, having exhausted his strength and ammunition, he shot himself in the temple so as not to fall alive into the hands of the enemy. When he died he was 26 years old, of which he dedicated seven of his youth to the cause of the freedom of Cuba.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
