"The Constabulary will patrol the country in their
vicinity by night and by day, as frequently
as the strength of the force will allow ..."
--Constabulary Manual
IN the later months of 1901, the islands of Samar and Leyte were ignited with a last flame of organized insurgency. The Filipino Generals Lukban and Guevera were there, fighting a final, desperate action, and General Malvar was in the field too, with a force of 3,000 Filipino soldiers.
The insurgent movement had spread to the Province of Batangas, on Luzon Island, and General Bell of the United States regulars began operations in that sector with a force of 2,500 men.
The orders that General Bell issued were ferocious in the extreme, and give a possible hint of the desperation with which the army faced this jungle warfare. "The men will operate in columns of 50 and will thoroughly search each valley, ravine and mountain peak for insurgents and for food and destroy everything outside of towns. All able-bodied men will be killed or captured."
It was decided that insurgents would not be entitled to the honors of war, but could be shot on sight. Protection was given the army lines of telegraphic communication. "The destruction of the wires will call down upon the area where the destruction occurs, complete devastation." It was ordered that all food supplies be concentrated to towns, to be rationed and guarded by American soldiers. This was to starve out the insurgents in the hills.
One of the largest uprootings of civilian population in American military history was accomplished in Batangas by these troopers of General Bell. One hundred thousand Filipinos were gathered forcibly into concentration camps to be guarded by regulars. A dead line was established, and anyone crossing it without a pass was subject to immediate shooting.
Fortunately, the bark of General Bell was far worse than his bite, for the campaign was conducted with an unusual humanity. One hundred and sixty-three Filipinos were killed by the whole army, 209 were wounded, and 3,626 were persuaded to surrender.
The real renegades remained in the hills, out of the reach of the army movements.
Down in Samar, General Smith was "remembering Balangiga." He is recalled chiefly today for his famous proclamation "to kill every male above the age of ten years on the island of Samar." General Smith was possibly not so bad as he was painted by the subsequent Senatorial investigations which resulted in his retirement from the army. There is much evidence to indicate that he was only following instructions. And possibly all natives above the age of ten were dangerous. But there can remain no question that General Smith went to Samar with the self-avowed intention of "making the place a howling wilderness." The memory of Balangiga was very strong.
The picture of our soldiers rioting across the face of Samar is not a pleasant one. They were fighting insurgents, and some of the measures taken there can best have a curtain drawn before them. War, at its best, is a grim business; at its worst, it becomes an horrible business. The army in Samar was no better and no worse than other armies of other nations have been in the course of the subjugation of unwilling, wild people.
These campaigns of Bell and Smith marked the last official operations in the Philippines of the army of the United States as a unit. True, the army performed noteworthy service against the Moros in Mindanao, and they collaborated in the final subjugation of Samar in 1904-1906; but as the mainstay of the peace, they went into the background of the Island scene following the campaigns of 1901-1902.
Only in the Mohammedan country were they to retain control of military affairs for a few years more while the Constabulary was growing to full strength.
General Lukban was captured by the regulars in February of 1902, on Samar, and the entire insurgent army of Guevera surrendered in April of that year. At the same time, General Malvar came in with 3,236 of his forces. The regular army rounded up some 10,000 insurgents in the final drive, all of whom were released after taking the oath of allegiance to the United States.
It was a grand clean-up, and the army deserves all credit.
And so insurgency in the Philippine Islands came to a virtual end. With the passing of the bona fide Filipino Generals, irregular bands began to assume control of the country.
The chilling era was now beginning.
The names of men who will become familiar in this chronicle begin to appear in 1902. The gang of "General" Rios becomes active in the mountains of Tayabas. Rios had been a Captain under Colonel Zurbano of the Filipino army. When the surrender had been negotiated it was not for Rios: he had tasted of power and of the glory of leading men. He sought the hills and there built a formidable semi-religious band of outlaws who were plentifully supplied with arms and ammunition.
In Rizal Province, Timeteo Pasay was terrorizing the countryside with a force of guerrillas. They were ragged little men; their tactics were fight and run; they had a facility for dissolving into jungle. The territory of Pasay overlapped that of Faustino Guillermo, whose band in western Rizal had headquarters at Diliman. Diliman was a few miles north of Manila, almost within sight of the office of the perspiring Mr. Taft.
There were others for the Philippine Commission to worry about as they sat in session. From the windows of their offices, they could look across the bay almost to Cavite, where five outlaw bands, totaling 500 men, were in active operation. Among the leaders here was the notorious Felizardo, slippery as an eel and as dangerous as a black panther, with him, Julian Montalon, whose renown among the natives was not measurable. In Sorsogon, not so far away, the fanatical sect of Anting-Anting was led by the outlaw chief, Colache.
In 1902, General Allen was engaged with the formation of headquarters troop in Manila. We are unaccustomed to thinking of cavalry operations in the Philippine jungle; but as a matter of record, some of the earliest operations of the corps were undertaken by mounted patrols.
In 1902, the mounted troop, less a detachment in Samar, was assembled at the old Santa Lucia barracks in Manila and its proper training and organization completed. Selected men, representative of the island tribes, were recruited and the officers were carefully graded. It was an honor to belong to the mounted patrol.
At organization, the troop was the Tower of Babel all over again. A dozen dialects were heard in its barracks; one man could not talk to another without an interpreter. Some months were devoted to the ironing out of the language barriers.
Being under the sartorially inclined eye of General Allen, the troop was better dressed and better equipped than other units of the Constabulary. The uniforms were tailor-made and the horse equipment was glistening. An officer writes of the period: "Off duty, in Manila, we climbed out of service uniforms and wore dress white exclusively--caps, shoes, everything--and mostly carried short swagger sticks. I fear we were dandies. I remember that I had thirty white uniforms and often used three suits a day. But as I look back, I wonder if we may not be pardoned that brief respite from killing and campaign."
In the beginning, the troop was mounted upon native ponies--beautiful little animals, but not strong enough to carry man and combat pack through the rice paddies in the rainy season. Also, being stallions, they made so much noise as to make secrecy of operation impossible. To replace them, Chinese ponies were imported; and these being wild Mongolians, a rodeo atmosphere was soon imparted to the barracks. Many men found their way to the hospital in their efforts to subdue their mounts.
The first polo in Manila was played upon these Chinese ponies borrowed from headquarters troop. Out on the old Luneta field, General Allen, Lieutenant Crockett, an artillery officer named Hames, and Langhorne, a cavalryman, started the game in Manila.
The little Chinese horses proved impracticable for military mounts, and an officer was sent to Australia, where some splendid Walers were purchased. These proved entirely satisfactory and were continued in service until the troop was disbanded for economic reasons.
It was a detachment from this mounted patrol that Lieutenant Crockett took into the field with orders to ride the Cavite-Batangas border to prevent the escape of fragments of Malvar's forces who were fleeing the regular army cleanup under General Bell.
The troop had innumerable small skirmishes and were responsible for the capture of more than 200 military rifles and a large store of military stores and hand arms. In combination with troops of the 3rd Infantry under Lieutenants Walker and Sharp, Crockett then led his patrol in indecisive operations against the insurgent chiefs Felizardo and Montalon.
These preliminary skirmishes had one very effective result. They brought to the attention of the administration the capabilities of the Constabulary, and resulted in slightly better equipment for the force.
In the middle of 1902, the Insular Police came into possession of a supply of cast-off .45-caliber Springfield rifles. These were old army guns that had been supplanted by the Krag magazine rifle, but they were better than shotguns. They were single-shot action but they had an effective range of several hundred yards.
With the Springfields, the Constabulary received a supply of Remington rifles, also single-shot, and adequate stores of .45-caliber revolvers and single-barrel shotguns. The official armament of the corps was established at 80 per cent Springfield rifles and 20 percent shotguns. All of the men carried revolvers.
The rifles came into immediate use.
Down on the west coast of the island of Leyte a small Constabulary post came into being some few months after the organization of the Insular Police. The tiny post was in an unsettled section; even for the Philippines, in 1902, Leyte was a bad island. We have view of this post, then, at one o'clock of the afternoon of March 27:
A small detachment of fifteen men is occupying a barracks near the seashore. There is no American officer present; the men are in command of Corporal Claudio Circio. They have been there for some weeks, on the edge of trouble. Nothing has happened to break the monotony of garrison duty. Then, this morning, a force of insurgents numbering more than 100, armed with seventy rifles and ten shotguns, and all equipped with bolos, breaks down from the hills and swarms suddenly over the little garrison.
At the moment of attack, six of the fifteen men of the post are outside the barracks. At the first blast of fire from the bush Corporal Circio and Private Paler are killed. The remaining four outside the station seek safety in the nipa huts of the town. They are unarmed. Of the four, two privates are overcome with weakness and flee to the bush. The other two leap into the sea and swim far out of rifle range to land again behind the barracks and hasten to aid in its defense.
The detachment is equipped with Remington rifles and a scanty store of ammunition. Under the spirited fire of the eleven defenders, the insurgents engage in a cautious, long-range siege. There is nothing for the beleaguered Constabulary privates to see as they peer through the loop holes to the edge of the jungle. The rifles of the insurgents are smokeless. There is really nothing for those privates to fight for either, unless one counts a few obsolete Remington rifles and a forty-peso station house. But they do fight--and manfully, against great odds. Once in a great interval of time, their Remingtons belch smoke at some indistinct figure in the bush.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, after two hours of siege, a lull comes in the firing, and a group of insurgents approach under a white flag. A private of Constabulary, elevated to command, takes the message. They are offered liberty to go free and 100 pesos for each of the rifles if they will surrender the post. This offer to a private, whose pay is twelve pesos each month!
The answer is a volley.
At six o'clock in the evening, the ammunition is ex hausted. The force waits silently until it is dark. Then they quietly abandon the post, move along the beach with empty rifles, and find a boat to make good their escape to Ormoc. They return to the post the next morning with reinforcements.
Meanwhile, at nine o'clock of the next morning, before the return of the Constabulary, the insurgents have moved up and fired the barracks. They do not know until the barracks is almost consumed that the detachment has made its escape.
When the supporting party under Lieutenant Crockett arrived on the scene, the insurgents were gone and the barracks a smoldering ruin.
For this defense Privates Gular, Ladrera, Moron, Sampere, Cobacha, Reposar, Clarido, Conllo, Salazar, Padro, and Pelo were awarded the Medal of Valor. The conduct of these Filipino enlisted men, sans white officer, contributed more to public confidence in the Constabulary than any single event of the year.
As the active insurrection had sputtered to a close, a spark of resistance had glowed in the southern provinces of Luzon and on the island of Leyte. General Capili was there on Leyte, and with him the insurgent Colonels Veyra and Pinuranda. It was against these forces that the Constabulary undertook its first major unassisted campaign.
In March, 1902, Colonel Wallace C. Taylor assumed command of all Constabulary operations in this district. The Constabulary, meanwhile, had grown up about him. The roster of the period shows the Constabulary occupying 202 stations with a force of 192 officers and 5,3 17 enlisted men.
Wallace C. Taylor, in the words of his junior officers, was a "wonderful fighting man," and like Chevalier Bayard, without fear and without reproach. Taylor, with Garwood, was the only fighting Assistant Chief of the early days. He was, (and is) a grand character. A man with "clear-cut aquiline features and a fighting nose," they said. He was the only Colonel not of the regular army, and his district of the Visayan Islands was, in 1901-1907, the liveliest of all. Taylor was the man for the district. Colonel John R. White writes of him, "I yield to him in the matter of field service and experience in fighting outlaws, Moros or anybody else."
In a letter of 1936, Colonel Taylor replied to a request for information with a wealth of material--about other men. Of himself, he writes, "My own service in the 1st Nebraska and in the 39th Infantry was of a lively nature, but not against the odds we had to face against the pulajans. The Constabulary service was more like the American Indian campaigns--if you lost there was no support. Your back was against the wall on every occasion. There were many expeditions which tested the vitality of men, many running fights--and a number in which small detachments were worsted. I have always regretted that I did not preserve copies of some of the original reports. I guess we were just young fellows, interested in getting results...."
But the picture of Colonel Taylor that I prefer is one that Gary Crockett gave to me:
"Exceedingly handsome man, very well built, ruddy face, blue eyes, blond hair inclined to curl, hawklike profile, yellowish mustache; utterly fearless. About average height; very trim in appearance and always smartly turned out. He visited my station once in Leyte and we went on a combined pleasure trip and reconnaisance, accompanied by two mounted orderlies only. Accidently, we ran into several hundred pulajans, well-organized, well-armed and well-equipped. Taylor galloped in on them, firing his pistol and we, of course, had to follow. They were taken by surprise and fled in all directions. We captured six beautiful horses and a brass band of over twenty pieces. Taylor had set his heart on killing the leader, who wore a fine uniform and carried a big bolo which looked like it was gold-mounted. I had great difficulty in getting Taylor back before they found out there were but four of us and came back on us."
And then a later picture of this fighting Colonel, snapped shortly after that dreadful fight in Samar in which Taylor had one side of his face almost shot away by a pulajan bullet. Crockett again:
"Taylor was two or three days' march in the interior when he was shot. I believe they kept him alive by feeding him raw eggs found in wild chicken nests. I was not present but I saw him a few days later. He insisted upon going riding with me and the wound opened. He nearly bled to death before I could get him to a doctor. I admired him greatly."
This was the man, then, who was in charge of the operations in Leyte. During the campaigns, Taylor had available the headquarters detachment at Tacloban--91 men under Captain Borseth and Lieutenant Barrett; another garrison at Dolores of 37 men under Lieutenant Waloe; to these were added platoons of the six remaining stations, totaling in all 233 men on station in Leyte. This force was augmented by relief detachments from other provinces to bring Taylor's effectives to approximately 400 rifles. Examination of the records seems to indicate that they were opposed by more than 1,000 insurgent soldiers. Among the insurgent commanders was the American renegade, Harry Long, who held a position of command in the Filipino army.
Split into their usual small detachments, the Constabulary went into immediate action over a large territory. Patrols were sent out under junior officers to scout the terrain and to make contact with the enemy. The army was following this operation with great interest; it was the first test of Constabulary strength and efficiency.
Under Taylor, the Constabulary movements were entirely successful. Patrols captured the insurgent fort at Ormoc, confiscating cannon, horses, and military stores. Between March 30 and June 4, Lieutenant Crockett engaged in eighteen operations against the enemy, accomplishing the killing of Long and the dispersal and capture of insurgent forces.
Long was a deserter from a Volunteer regiment. He had gone over to the natives and set himself up as "military commander" of the island of Leyte. He bushwhacked American forces with a great degree of military skill.
The night attacks of "Colonel" Long were morale-shattering affairs. They would begin with the scream of a sentry which ended in a gurgle as a cat-footed native slit the throat of the outpost. Then would come a fusillade of shots, and then that dreadful patter of bare feet in the dark that marked the advance of the bolomen. The sky would be lighted with long flashes as the Mausers spoke from the bush. The Constabulary camp would be misted with the smoke of black powder ammunition. It would be a slashing pandemonium of noise and clamor and death, with the Constabulary at bay before the bouncing, yelling shapes of the pulajans. At dawn, Crockett would take stock; two or three dead men, six or eight wounded, and possibly a man or two missing.
Such was the campaign after Long.
The chase ended with the killing of Long by his own men. His prestige had dwindled under the constant pressure the Constabulary brought to bear, and one morning at dawn he was shot down from behind.
Disturbed conditions of Leyte were largely due to the presence of a strong band under "Papa" Faustino, and a smaller band of outlaws under Juan Tomayo. A lack of sufficient Constabulary force had permitted "Papa" Faustino to build a strong fortification somewhere in the mountains near Ormoc and to inaugurate a formidable coalition of the movement of pulajanism. Of pulajans we shall speak later. Hibbard, Smith, Adams, and Crockett had engaged these brigand forces in the vicinity of Ormoc without discovering the location of Faustino's fortress. One hundred and twenty-five Constabulary were in the field here for a period of two months, and the fighting was ferocious and incessant.
The Constabulary was beginning to pay a price in lives for each patrol as the fighting grew more grim. At about this time, Lieutenant Neddo moved in with a few men, to Beliran Island.
He was an officer whose great physical courage was tempered by a too great humanity. Had he lived, he would have gone far in the Constabulary. He attempted the pacification of Beliran without bloodshed.
One afternoon, shortly after landing on the island, he made contact with a large force of pulajans; he ordered his men to stand at ease and he went forward alone to parley with them and to induce their surrender.
They rushed him and wounded him terribly before his men could rally and beat off the howling, frenzied fanatics. That night his men put to sea, faithful little long-haired Macabebes, carrying their officer with them.
Neddo died before the small boats reached Leyte, and the Macabebes recorded his last words. For the first time in his short life, this final great experience must have frightened Neddo with its nearness, for they said he raised his hacked body and said to them in Spanish, "Don't leave me, my children."
Neddo was an ex-noncommissioned officer of the Army, a slight, silent man who gave his life early for the peace of the Philippines.
But the expeditions all had final result, for, when orders came from Manila on June 4 to suspend hostilities to allow insurgents to surrender, Colonel Taylor was able to report that civil government had again been established in Leyte. On June 15, a few days after the armistice, the insurgent Colonels Veyra and Pinuranda surrendered to the Constabulary at Bay-Bay; and on June 29, at Maasin, General Capili came in with the remainder of his force.
Then in Rizal. . . .
A bandit, Timeteo Pasay, is casting a covetous eye at the arms of the ragged municipal police of the town of Cainta. He bursts from the bush to capture the Presidente and the weapons of the police. Then he scurries away to the hills. A tiny detachment of Constabulary leaves station to pursue him through the matted forests. Pasay flits away for a while, drawing the troopers deeper into the unfriendly bush. Then he turns and snaps at the flanks of the police detail.
A man goes down . . . another . . . Pasay gathers up the rifles that have fallen from dead hands and moves deeper into the jungle. One hundred Constabulary then take the field in co-operation with Philippine Scout troops; the campaign ends with the killing of Pasay and the dispersal of his band.
In western Rizal, the resistance consolidates under Faustino Guillermo, who has established headquarters north of Manila. Secret service operatives are sent to spy out his territory. Guillermo, the jungle fox, allows the men of the Information Division to enter his camps. As ragged as the insurrectos, these under-cover men live for days in the outlaw camp, as they prepare oral reports for their chief in Manila. About them, the mountaineers sharpen their blades and chant the chorus of the war chants.
One day a council is called. . . .
Guillermo mounts a shelving rock to exhort his followers. The secret service men press close into the ranks to hear what the outlaw chief will say. The ladrone leader has his moment then. "For the traitors who are men of the Constabulary," he calls, "what is the penalty?"
The forest rings with shrill clamor: "The death!"
Not death. The death. Days later, a Constabulary patrol parts the jungle fringe and gazes across a silent clearing. The shelving rock is there, but Guillermo and his men are far away. The secret service men have remained, buried to the neck in the center of the crawling, eager ants.
At Novaliches, Guillermo reorganizes and accepts the tenets of the secret society known as the Katipunan. Inspector Geronimo takes a small detail against him and is routed with heavy loss. The next day the Constabulary under Geronimo attack again. Guillermo withdraws to the hills.
We next hear of Guillermo on July 16. Late in the evening, attired in blue shirts and camano cloth trousers of the Constabulary that he has taken from the defeated detachment of Geronimo, he leads his force into the barrio of San Jose, where he completely surprises the Constabulary guard. He captures all of their arms and this time he observes the rules of warfare by releasing his prisoners, unharmed. He is joined here by one malcontent deserter from the Constabulary.
Assistant Chief Jesse S. Garwood then took charge of operations. In appearance Garwood was typical of the old bad men of the West. He was an expert pistol shot, and the possessor of the largest, most droopy mustache in the Constabulary. He was truly a man of arms, later serving as a member of the famed Pennsylvania State Police.
After twenty days of hard marching, the morning of August 14 finds the Constabulary force deep in the forest north of San Juan. The men are marching abreast at wide intervals when contact is made with the enemy. The left flank, twelve men under Inspector Reyes, is struck by a blast of rifle fire. Bolomen flit from the concealing bush and the flank collapses under the rush of cold steel. Guillermo then executes a rapid movement to surprise Inspector Domingo, who is preparing to go into camp with a platoon of ten men. Guillermo strikes, and withdraws after inflicting casualties.
At nine o'clock that same evening he bobs up before Inspector Warren, who is in camp with twenty-one men. The Constabulary soldiers are preparing their evening meal about the campfire when the paralyzing rush overwhelms them. Indian-fashion, they take cover in the dark forest and fight for their lives.
Warren and four men are wounded, and at dawn they bury the four privates who went down under that swift stabbing rush of bolomen.
Guillermo is away--not to be heard of again for months.
Jesse S. Garwood, the Assistant Chief who commanded this campaign, is richly worth remembering. He was a study in contrasts and contradictions. He will be recalled as one of the original Assistant Chiefs of Constabulary; he was the most colorful man of a colorful corps.
Garwood was a soldier of fortune, of a type that would have delighted Richard Harding Davis. He was big and blond and handsome, and the ladies thought he was grand; and he liked them all--black, brown, or white, rich or poor.
His memory is rich in stories. See him now, if you will, at a Filipino dance in 1902, as his fellow officers saw him. He has consumed the proper amount of good drinking liquor and is at ease, in a corner, talking things over with a plump, dark wife of the town Presidente. He twirls that enormous mustache in beguiling fashion. He leans across, to whisper confidentially in Spanish "Senora, if you will pardon a personal question, I should like to know why a beautiful and cultured lady like yourself should throw herself away on a shriveled-up, wrinkled little cuss like your husband?"
At first the lady bridles, and is properly shocked and very matronly, but as she thinks the whole matter over carefully (all the time under the ardent gaze of those flashing bright eyes), she decides that possibly she has thrown herself away and that the Major is a wonderful, observing gentleman.
And then, as Captain Higgins remarks, Garwood would spring the same thing all over again on the first lady of the next town. "Whereever I went in the district, the women would always ask when was Major Garwood coming?"
Gentle with the ladies all the time--that was Garwood. Higgins, who was a Senior Inspector in Garwood's district, speaks again: "I remember a horse-hike with Garwood around Mount Bulasan, taking about two weeks. Every night a new town would give us a reception and a dance. We would take our white uniforms, dirty and wrinkled, from our saddlebags and have them ironed out--no time for washing--and then we would dance all night. At dawn, Garwood and I would mount and ride all day. The next night the same thing. The man thrived on it. Believe me, a man had to be able to take it to trail with Garwood."
Garwood could be solemnly military on occasions. We see him giving an examination for promotion to this same Captain Higgins. Punctiliously, paper by paper, he goes over the questions, twirling his mustache as he waits for Higgins' ready answers. There is an air of great solemnity between the two as Higgins carefully goes through the examination. Higgins has been responsible for those examination questions; he has prepared them in Manila, six months before, as a duty assignment. He knows the answers backwards. But Garwood enjoys giving him the examination in a strictly military manner.
We see Garwood again, in General Allen's office, insisting on supplies he needs for his men. He sets one foot on the General's chair and gestures with a cigar beneath Allen's nose. The formal and ceremonious Allen cringes at such unmilitary behavior, but he can not well ask the Assistant Chief to put away the cigar and come to attention; certainly not an Assistant Chief who makes physical courage some what of a romantic gesture. If something was considered dangerous, Garwood would do it, whether it was worth while or not.
The Major was a two-gun man and the show pistol shot of the Constabulary. He wore a big .45 in his belt, and a Smith and Wesson .38 under his arm like a modern gangster. He liked to come into a hostile place and show confidence in his host by taking off his belted gun and hanging it on the wall with his hat. Then he would sit there, debonair and gay--twirling his huge mustache and hoping that somebody would start something. The .38 was handy--just in case.
He was indeed a marvelous pistol shot. He thought he was the best in the corps until Captain Harvey Neville, a very quiet officer, beat him in open competition.
It was Garwood's habit to shoot crows from the top of tall jungle trees with his pistol--or a cigarette from the mouth of an unsuspecting companion. He saved his empty whiskey bottles and was accustomed to treat his staff to rapid-fire exhibitions at these targets lined on the top of a wall. He had a specially trained houseboy whose head served as depository of the apple during Garwood's William Tell performances.
On one occasion, Garwood attended a banquet--his host, Ramon Santos, the Governor of Albay. As the party grew steadily more alcoholic the host said, "Major Garwood, nobody could be as good with a pistol as you claim to be."
Garwood eyed him for a moment. "Claim to be?" he said. "Governor, sure as shooting, you're going to see some shooting."
He whipped the .38 from beneath his arm. At the far corner of the room a row of canned fruit caught his eye. He fired rapidly, with that casual carelessness that made the feat a gesture. Tinned fruit leaped from the shelves--the contents spurting. Then Garwood played his ace. He pointed to the reflection of the governor in a full-length mirror. "Let's assume, Governor," he said conversationally, "that you are a bandit and I am after you. You watch yourself in that mirror." He replaced the gun beneath his arm, and then drew it with the speed of a frontier marshal. The mirror shivered as a bullet caught the reflection of the Governor squarely between the eyes.
It was escapades of this nature that forced Garwood's ultimate retirement from the Constabulary. His humor was too robust, even for the Philippines.
The personality of Garwood popped out at a listener. He had a fund of marvelous stories--to be told in the Garwood manner. He went one day to the Army and Navy Club in Manila to meet a group of officers of the 16th Infantry. Regular army officers sometimes snubbed Constabulary leaders. But Garwood became the center of attraction; he was full of wit and sparkle and they lionized him.
He owned a hundred pair of shoes and he carried them about with him in a special trunk.
We see him another time, en route to Albay to organize the Constabulary in that section. He has a sackful of guns, carried by an orderly; his orders, to organize a Constabulary.
"Just what," he had questioned General Allen solemnly, "does a Constabulary consist of?"
"Use your own judgment," Allen had said. He was unhappy at this levity.
So Garwood devised his own rules and regulations, and one of them was that all applicants should be able to read and write in English or Spanish. One day a Filipino applied. "Me soldado Americana," patting his chest.
"Ever been a soldier?" Garwood asked.
"Si. Me soldado Espanol. Guardia Civil. Me Sargento."
"Write your name on the paper," suggested Garwood.
The Filipino took pencil in hand and made a fruitless effort to write. Garwood inspected. Not Spanish, certainly; not English; not anything. "No write, no can be soldado," he said. "No write--no fight."
The Filipino pleaded to be made a soldier. Garwood remembered a bandit in the hills who was wanted for murder. "You kill Jose Tinto and I'll make you a soldado and give you one hundred pesos."
"Muchas gracias, Senor." The Filipino backed to the door. As far as he was concerned, it was a contract.
Some weeks later, the Filipino came back. "Me soldado now; catch one hundred pesos."
"How about Jose?" Garwood asked.
"So sorry, Senor, I no know which fellow Jose, so I bring both."
"Bring them in," Garwood said.
The Filipino went outside to return with a sack containing two severed heads. One was Jose all right. The Filipino became one hundred pesos richer and Garwood recruited a soldado.
During the fiscal year 1902-1903, the Constabuury conducted 2,736 expeditions. It was inevitable that so much action should result in occasional severe reverses. The occupation of more than 200 stations with a force of 5,000 men permitted an average station list of but twenty-five men. These isolated posts were under constant attack and were requited to hold their positions without reinforcement. At times, half of the station strength were performing regular duty while suffering from severe wounds. There was an ever-present menace of dysentery, cholera, and malaria. The best a patrol leader could expect was 50 per cent of his men in a state of physical health.
Surigao was an experiment. . . .
This town in northern Mindanao had been garrisoned long before the formation of any Constabulary district in the Moro Province. A detachment was there, under command of Captain Clark. They had seen service, for they held in confinement a dangerous prisoner named Encarnacion, who was a fanatical leader of the hillmen. By some means, Encarnacion contrived to escape from the custody of his jailers and had rallied a band in the hills.
The Constabulary were at dinner one evening when Encarnacion came back from the hills. Before the men were aware of any danger, the insurgents had rushed the station and gained possession of the cuartel where the arms were racked. The carelessness of Captain Clark caused his death. He was in his quarters, 200 yards from the barracks of his men, when the cries and groans announced the raid. Clark rushed to the scene, armed only with a small derringer pistol, and was cut down and killed.
The attackers came into possession of 148 rifles as a result of this sudden attack. Surigao was a supply station with an accumulation of arms for a section.
As the raid began, the Municipal Treasurer, Captain Kelly, with a few civilians, took refuge in the provincial building and stood off the insurgent attack until a telegram to Cebu brought 700 men of the 11th Infantry, under Colonel Meyer.
Following the raid, Colonel Wallace Taylor threw additional Constabulary into the area and succeeded in rounding up most of the attacking band, with the support of the army force.
The efficiency with which this work was accomplished is best shown by the records of the affair. One hundred and forty-eight rifles were lost in this attack, of which 102 were recovered. Of the 237 men who participated in the raid, 5 were executed, 57 sentenced to prison, 7 acquitted, 25 killed in the action that had followed, and 42 made their escape into the mountains.
At Oas, in the Province of Albay, a similar misfortune befell the Constabulary. For more than a year this section had been harried by forces of guerrillas under the commands of Ola, Sarria, and Toledo. On February 28, 150 men under Magno Revel, a lieutenant of Toledo, fell upon the Constabulary barracks at Oas. The attack resulted in the desertion of twenty Constabulary privates, the killing of those who resisted, and the capture of forty-eight rifles.
Patrols were despatched in immediate pursuit. On March 21, detachments under Captain Linsforth, supported by Lieutenants Fawcett and Grossman, met the band of Toledo in the woods near Buena Vista.
Lieutenant Grossman was in the advance. He pushed a point into the head of a deep, wooded valley. He was a perfect target against that background of green jungle, and the men of Toledo were very close. Grossman went down, shot through the hips with a Mauser bullet at a range of twenty yards. His men fought their way through the ambush and Grossman was carried from the field. He was completely paralyzed, and he died in the hospital at Sorsogon on May 12.
On July 25, men of the 31st Scout Company under Sergeant Nicholas Napolis beat off Ola's force of 310 men near Jovellar. Ola was then attacked in the rear by twenty-five Scouts under Lieutenant Sutherland and an equal num ber of Constabulary led by Lieutenant Sommers. A running fight raged across the face of the jungle. The Constabulary were out to avenge Grossman, and the aim of the little brown policemen was deadly. Toledo's route was marked by the bodies of his men. In this action, twenty of the outlaws were killed and thirty were found wounded on the field.
So many references have been made to the Philippine Scouts that it becomes necessary to explain this body of soldiery to avoid confusion. The Philippine Scouts are not to be confused with the Constabulary, although they are in certain respects a similar body. The Scouts were (and are) a force of native infantry, officered by white men, the difference being that they were soldiers and not Insular Police. The Scouts are a part of the regular army of the United States and, as such, are subject to Federal law. They were better paid than the Constabulary, and far better equipped and armed. They occupied more permanent garrisons, with comfortable barracks.
The Philippine Scouts, as an organization, antedates the Constabulary. They were organized in February, 1901, and from the first they proved themselves to be most excellent soldiers. Their numerical strength is about equal to that of the Constabulary; in 1903 they had 99 officers and 4,805 men. In common with the Constabulary, they have no regimental formations, having been also designed for small-scale operations.
Although the Constabulary and the Scouts have always been closely co-operative in the conduct of field operations, the personal relationship between the two corps has always been strained. On several occasions the amalgamation of the two groups has been considered, and always the union has been opposed by each faction. In 1903, this condition was aggravated by the order of the Civil Governor directing 29 Scout companies to report for duty under the orders of the Chief of Constabulary and his Assistant Chiefs.
General Davis, of the Army, went on record as opposing this shift of authority, stating that it placed army officers serving with the Scouts in a "mortifying position" to serve under the command of the head of Insular Police.
Nevertheless the order of transfer was confirmed, and Scouts and Constabulary engaged in joint operations for almost one year. By these provisions, the active force at the command of the Chief of Constabulary was temporarily increased by some 1,500 men.
All of these detachments were turned over to the Constabulary between February 13, 1903, and July 21 of the same year. The assistance of the native Scout troops, equally familiar with the terrain and the people and much better armed with repeating Krags, was of inestimable help to the Constabulary. It enabled large-scale operations against the last of the insurgent leaders, and permitted reinforcement of stations decimated by casualty and disease.
At Sorsogon, on southern Luzon, Inspector Swann of the Constabulary is at grips with the fanatical society of Anting-Anting, headed by the deadly Colache. This leader has swarmed down from the mountains to fall upon and slaughter the city police of Bulusan. Swann makes a forced march across the tortuous hills and the swollen rivers with a slender force of twenty men. After three days of reconnaisance in the hostile region, he finds, not a minor disturbance, but an uprising that blankets the entire coast.
With his twenty men, he remains in the field, fortifying a small post on the very fringe of the infected area. He sits down there to watch the activity and to await reinforcement. He detaches five of his men, who volunteer, and orders them to report the uprising to the station at San Vicente and to return with all available men.
Incredibly, they win through to San Vicente, but they find no reinforcements at that town. Without hesitation, they retrace their steps through the cogon fields and the gloomy forests.
They come to the head of a low, swampy ravine. Ambrosio Fruto, Gabino Dios, and Sergio Dellosa are marching abreast, trigger fingers curled as they scan each tuft of grass. Thirty paces to their rear, Eugenio Faraque and Fernando Filonia are covering their advance.
They approach a shallow creek and the men ahead cross safely. The jungle is very still as they begin the careful ascent of the steep slope that borders the stream. They hear the subdued splash as their comrades behind wade the small river.
A grass clump trembles. . . .
One hundred men of the force of Colache rise from the shelter of the cogon. A voice hails the Constabulary privates: "We are all Filipinos, comrades, and should be engaged in a common cause against America. Join with us or not, as you will; you have but to turn your rifles to us to go free."
Fair terms indeed, with the odds 100 to 5 ! It was Ambrosio Fruto who spoke for his companions; three words he said, that summed up in one short sentence the aims and the code and the creed of the jungle police. "We are Constabulario." Then he raised his Springfield rifle and the roar of black powder ammunition mingled with the crack of the smokeless Mausers.
The Filipino is essentially a fighter who prefers the cold steel. The insurgents fired a scattered volley and then rushed the Constabulary detachment, blades in hand. As the white smoke drifted through the trees, Fruto attempted to break through to the sea that lapped the shore fifty paces to the right. The scene was a melee of twisting, slashing figures.
For 300 terrible yards they fought their way. Fruto and Dios fell before the swirling blades. The survivors beat off another rush of the bolomen, but the head of Delossa went spinning from his shoulders under the flick of jungle knives. The two survivors leaped into the sea from a high cliff and swam out to be rescued by friendly fishermen. On the field behind them, seven attacking outlaws occupied the field with the dead Constabulary.
The next morning Swann found the bodies of his dead. From the toes to the top of the head, not one inch of the torsos were unhacked. The arms and legs were disjointed. The stomachs were laid open. Swann gathered his soldiers into sodden sheets and buried them at Bulasan.
Antonio Colache moved on to deserted villages--San Isidro, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. He occupied them briefly; he was constantly on the move, eager to pick off the isolated patrols. Swann, Burton, and Garwood engaged him in dozens of skirmishes, but always he evaded them.
Colache used every native strategy that the jungle had taught him. At night he posted sentries about the Constabulary camps. The bullets of his riflemen spurted the ashes of the campfires and ripped through the nipa shelters. His flanks were incessantly active; spearing a careless sentry; disemboweling a straggler who fell behind the columns. The Constabulary were aroused from stiffened sleep to repel the rushes of his bolomen.
In the darkness Colache would move in closely; he would stake a pig at the edge of the sentry posts and prod it into squealing activity with knife points. It is in that manner that a pig greets the coils of a great winding python. A sentry would approach cautiously, to kill the prowling constrictor.
A shadow would move at his side ... a blade would crunch on bone.
At dawn, the companions of the sentry would beat the bush and call his name. Then they would move on again, leaving his hacked body, unnoticed and forgotten, where it sprawled in the spreading roots of a mangrove tree.
In April, it was decided to lay a cordon, using native volunteers in co-operation with the Constabulary forces. Four hundred and fifty men were gathered from the loyal villages of Sorsogon, Bacon, and Gubat. By the nineteenth, the cordon was ready. Swann and Garwood divided their slender forces. Swann moved into the hills near Barcelong with twenty men; he was to strike Santa Cruz and move southward. Garwood deployed upon San Isidro and moved north to meet Swann near Santa Barbara. Colache was skulking there.
They met, as planned, but there was no Colache in the toils of the cordon. He had slipped away--deeper into the bush. Lieutenant Burton was detached, with fifteen men, to occupy the deserted town of Santa Barbara. Colache came to life suddenly, and harassed Burton all night in an action that took place in a vast hemp field. Burton maintained his position with serious loss to his command.
The rains came. The action dragged on through the dreary wet month. On April 21 Colache attacked in force, but was repulsed with a loss of ten men. May replaced April, and Swann was carried from the field delirious with malaria and dysentery. Finally, on May 24, Lieutenant Gerona rushed the steep slopes of the mountain retreat where Colache had come to bay and captured the bandit and most of his command.
In this campaign the Constabulary were in the field for fifty-six days, with a force of 153 men. The operations resulted in the capture of 249 prisoners and the killing and wounding of 30.
The most serious menace to the peace of the Philippine Islands in the years 1902 and 1903 was the insurgent General Luciano San Miguel. He was an extremely able soldier and the leader of the Partido Nacionalista movement.
The leader of this Nationalist party had been Doctor Dominador Gomez, who was a Filipino Spanish subject married to a Spanish woman. Gomez had at one time been a surgeon in the Spanish army, and after the Spanish American War his influence had extended until he had been elected to the presidency of the Nacionalista party, from which position he had edited his reactionary Los Obreros. At the height of his influence Gomez had controlled the informal armies of Felizardo, Montalon, and San Miguel. He was arrested for seditious activities and sentenced to four years' imprisonment; and with his passing, leadership was assumed by San Miguel.
About January 15, 1903, San Miguel was elected Supreme Commander of all existing insurgent forces, following his great activity in the wilder parts of the provinces of Bulacan and Rizal. On several occasions he had surprised and destroyed detachments of Constabulary, and his force had grown to a well-disciplined, well-armed army. In Bulacan, in January, he had attacked the command of Captain Warren, and later, in February, the company of Lieutenant Twiiley. On both occasions, the Constabulary had been soundly whipped.
Luciano San Miguel was well equipped for military leadership. He had been one of Aguinaldo's generals, and he had refused to swear allegiance to America. There was a certain honesty in his convictions, and he was respected by the army and Constabulary officers who pursued him. Crockett speaks of him thirty-five years later as a brave man and an efficient soldier.
When San Miguel took to the hills upon the surrender of Aguinaldo, he formed a new Katipunan party, which developed into the above-mentioned Partido Nacionalista movement, with himself as General-in-Chief in Charge of Military Operations. The document appointing him to command was found on his body when he was killed at Coral-na-Bato. When San Miguel died, the Nacionalista party suffered a great loss, for on the field at Coral-na-Bato with San Miguel there fell the General of Brigade Julian Santos and General Benito Santa Ana.
The month of February found every available Constabulary soldier in the Bulacan-Rizal area in the field in an attempt to locate San Miguel and destroy his force. Flying columns of Scouts and Constabulary, each one company strong, were dispatched with orders to contact his army and co-operate in massed attack upon his positions.
Among these forces was the Manila Company A, Philippine Constabulary, under command of Captain Gary Crockett. Crockett had earned for himself a position as one of the premier combat officers of the corps. He had been commissioned an officer on November 12, 1901, and had succeeded to a Captaincy and the command of his company upon the death of Lieutenant Neddo at Beliran Island. His company had been constantly in the field for more than a year and had a record of having never been surprised or defeated, of never abandoning a dead or wounded man, and of having never lost a rifle.
On the night of February 6, Crockett received a message from General Allen:
"San Miguel reported in vicinity of Bobosco. Costello's force of Scouts is ordered across the mountains and should reach Bobosco tomorrow. A mixed force of Scouts and Constabulary are moving out from Pasig via Antipolo to arrive Bobosco same time. Your company will proceed at once to strike Bobosco from the north and co-operate with other columns."
Crockett was on the march within a few minutes after receiving the orders, and late the next afternoon he came within view of the town of Bobosco. Leaving his force concealed in a ravine, Crockett entered the town with two privates and found the Presidente and the town officials huddled in the Town Hall. The head of the Presidente was bound with a bloody rag, and upon questioning him Crockett learned that San Miguel, with a large and well-armed force, had arrived at Bobosco the preceding day. His men had cut off the ears of the Presidente and beaten him with rattan sticks as a punishment for accepting a civil position under the American government. San Miguel had then crossed the river and taken up a strong position covering the ford and the trails.
There was no sign of other American forces in the vicinity, and it soon became apparent to Crockett that the expected reinforcement had gone astray. He scaled the church tower and surveyed the strong position of the insurgents through his glasses. He knew that he was outnumbered in the ratio of four or five to one, and his men were exhausted from the long forced march, but his orders were plain; and he decided to attack San Miguel.
Having decided upon the assault at dawn the next morning, he dispatched two native runners with a message to Antipolo:
"To any American Officer,
Arrived Bobosco February 7th without meeting other columns. San Miguel with force estimated at 400 men now entrenched on east side Marquina River opposite town. I will attack at daylight tomorrow. Advise Commanding General, Field Force, Pasig.
"Crockett"
Then, with two Sergeants and one of the Lieutenants, he reconnoitered the insurgent position and discovered a ford some distance below them. He decided to leave Bobosco at three o'clock in the morning, move along a circular route, and attack the insurgent position from the right flank.
At dawn his company was in position at the jungle edge about 800 yards from the insurgent trenches. Before him the ground was open and he had a clear view of the blue shirts and red blanket rolls of the troopers of San Miguel. They were facing away from him, intent upon the ford that commanded the town of Bobosco.
Crockett moved swiftly then, with orders to his men to hold fire until the range was 400 yards. Attacked suddenly in the rear in this surprising manner, the insurgents suspected the presence of a large force, and after firing a few shots they retired, leaving numerous dead. Crockett's casualties were two men wounded.
Crockett's campaigns throughout his seven years' service with the Constabulary were uniformly as successful. He had a genius for attack and a remarkable facility for extricating his men from tight places with small casualties. He was a man of quick and correct decision, and he was absolutely fearless. He was possibly, indeed, the best all-round soldier in the corps.
Certainly the final estimate of any man must come from the officers with whom he served. Colonel Stacey, of whom we shall hear much later, carried with him to France a picture of Cary Crockett in Samar.
Cromwell Stacey was a fine soldier--a regular army man who saw service in four wars. He is well qualified to judge the worth of a fighting man. In 1917 Stacey stood on a reddened field in France beside Crockett as they watched a young artilleryman trying to carry a message through a barrage. Four horses were shot from beneath the messenger. He limped to his feet as his last horse went down and hastened on foot through that Hell of shellfire.
Stacey turned to Crockett then: "Cary, I always said you were the bravest man I ever saw--but damned if that fellow out there hasn't you skinned." It had taken Stacey four wars to find a man to compare with Cary Crockett.
As he sat with the writer during one of several conferences, Colonel Stacey thumbed back over his martial memories, seeking for a time when Crockett had displayed the slightest emotion of fear. His face lighted up as he recalled an incident of the trail in Samar, in 1905. I read his expression correctly. "I take it from your expression," I said, "that you have remembered a time when Crockett was afraid?"
"He was scared stiff," Stacey chuckled, "and not that I blame him. There are limits to any man's emotional reserve. This was in April, 1905. Crockett, Juan Sulse, Wallace Taylor, Captain Green, and I were on a search for Dagujob's headquarters. We were in single file, on a narrow trail, and Crockett was in the lead. He passed a wall of rock that overshadowed the trail and all we saw was a blur of black and a swish as a cobra struck from the edge of the trail. The snake missed and shot across Crockett's shoulder like a spring, and a native First Sergeant killed it with a shotgun. Crockett halted the party and went to sit on a rock. His face was white as a sheet." Stacey chuckled again, "Scared? You're damned right he was--but it took something inhuman to do it."
The effects of the attack on San Miguel were far-reaching. They put the insurgent General on the move, which was precisely what the Constabulary and Scout forces desired. A few moments after the fight was over, the Scout detachment came over the hill and the pursuit was continued without respite for the harried San Miguel. Crockett retired with his exhausted troops, and on February 8, at Coral-na-Bato, Lieutenants Schermerhorn, McIlvaine, Geronimo, and Harris, with 107 men, struck San Miguel in a bloody engagement that lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes.
Here, a young and very blond Georgian gave up his life. Lieutenant Harris had been one of the first appointees from American military schools. He fell at Coral-na-Bato at the beginning of a career.
Lieutenant Schermerhorn, senior officer in this attack, was famous in Constabulary circles as a jungle scout. He is credited with the possession of an uncanny knowledge of the forest and of the ways of wild people. He was a tall frontiersman with a sweeping mustache, and he had great physical endurance. After surviving many bolo rushes without serious injury, he finally came to the end of his active service with the loss of most of one hand as the result of the sweep of a talibong blade. He was retired in 1906 for disability.
Following this brush with Schermerhorn, San Miguel took to the jungle, but in March he reassembled his forces at the same place, where he was attacked by the 11th Macabebes, Philippine Scouts, and put to flight with a loss of nineteen killed.
Later in March, a huge cordon was laid along the Pasig River by 400 Scouts and 200 Constabulary. Within its folds large bands of the insurgents and outlaws were trapped and killed.
The Constabulary operations against San Miguel were under the direction of Colonel W. S. Scott, who, before taking office in the Constabulary, had been a Captain of the 1st United States Cavalry. Scott was a kindly gentleman and a fine cavalry officer. He was a rather pallid man with smooth features and a stout figure. He was an excellent administrator, and was slightly bewildered at times by the rapid pace of the youngsters of the Constabulary. He was well liked--even loved--by his junior officers, to whom he assumed the benevolent and kindly attitude of a genial elderly patriarch.
Coral-na-Bato had a fatal fascination for San Miguel, and on March 27 he returned again to this scene of two previous defeats. The 1st and 4th Scout Companies under Reece and Nickersen hastened to engage him. Early in the morning, the force under Lieutenant Nickersen was moving cautiously along the bank of the San Francisco River when the advance point contacted the force of San Miguel in a region that was densely studded with towering bamboo. The out laws gave way and the Scout force moved in circular flank motion which encompassed the band.
The voice of San Miguel was heard as he discovered this enveloping movement. There was a patter in the long grass and the sound of a few desultory shots. When the point again made contact with the insurgents, it was to find them at refuge behind the stone walls of an old fort. This fortress, built at a bend of the San Francisco River, was composed of but two walls--the other two sides were protected by the river itself.
It was a formidable position, and Lieutenants Reece and. Nickersen paused in the shelter of the bamboo to prepare for the assault. A clang of metal sounded along the line as bayonets were fixed. "Attack" . . . the word rolled along the line and 170 men broke from the shelter of the bamboo to rush the stone walls. Halfway across the open field, Lieutenant Reece, who was leading the attack, stumbled as a bullet bit into his body. He recovered, and a moment later the entire force was hand to hand on the walls.
The rattle of the rifles ceased as bayonet opposed bolo. The Scouts swept over the walls, and in a moment the insurgents were in full flight. As the enemy retreated across the river, Lieutenant Nickersen rallied fifteen of his men and crossed in pursuit. His attention was directed almost immediately to several men leading an officer who appeared to be wounded. Nickersen directed his fire at this group. At the first shot from his pistol, one of the group dropped; the rest broke for the brush, leaving the wounded man to make his way alone.
A Sergeant from the 4th Scout Company raised his rifle and advanced upon the weary figure that weaved there groggily in the bright sunlight. The wounded insurgent raised his revolver and fired one wavering shot. Seeing the futility of further resistance, the lone officer raised his hands above his head as he cast his revolver away. "I am San Miguel," he said. A split second later came the retaliatory shot from the rifle of the Sergeant, and General San Miguel pitched forward, shot through the head.
The Scouts suffered fourteen casualties, among them Lieutenant Reece, who was severely wounded. The insurgents left thirty-five dead on the field. But the greatest loss to the insurgent cause that day was in the person of Luciano San Miguel, who lay huddled beneath a bamboo clump with a bullet through his brain.
A few months after the death of San Miguel, the town of Vigan, Province of Ilocos Sur, was captured and held for three days by an insurgent force, which included a number of Constabulary mutineers. A general uprising of the whole of northern Luzon threatened.
Colonel Scott ordered out Crockett's company and a Mac-abebe Scout company under Nickersen, and they proceeded north on a coast guard cutter to land twenty-five miles south of Candon. Within an hour after disembarking, Crockett, who knew the region, had established contact with the insurgents. The two companies attacked and defeated a larger force, recovering arms, U. S. mailbags and government property. Captains Crockett and Nickersen made a night attack following this victory, and succeeded in rounding up the entire movement. The surrender was made to Captain Nickersen. This operation was the final blow to insurgency in the vicinity of Vigan.
With the passing of San Miguel, the final heartbeat of the Philippine Insurrection sounded. His death was followed by the surrender of many minor leaders, and never again was the United States to encounter resistance from any legitimate leader. San Miguel must be rated a sincere insurgent and not a bandit. The leaders who followed him were bandits.
The remaining "generals" came in slowly to be amnestied or executed or imprisoned, and one of them, Salvador, was not apprehended until 1911. Another, "General" Noriel, was convicted of murder and executed in 1915, for a crime committed in 1903.
The Constabulary was facing ahead now to bitter resistance, which was little more than bushwhacking at the hands of bandits and ladrones who developed from the collapse of the insurgent movement.
As the Insular Police had advanced through the last phases of the insurgent campaigns, the organization was affected by the passage of much favorable legislation. On March 6, 1902, an Act of the Commission had provided for the creation of supply officers to supervise the branch commissaries that came into existence. Three months later, on June 9, the Commission authorized an increase in strength of the force to a maximum of 5,000 men.
Most important legislation of all was the passage of Act 568, dated December 23, 1902. As a Christmas present, the Constabulary officers received the dignity of military titles. Although we have hitherto called them Lieutenants, Captains, etc., to avoid confusion to the reader, actually, until December, 1902, they had all been Inspectors. Now the old First-Class Inspectors became Captains in fact; Second-Class Inspectors, First Lieutenants; Third-Class Inspectors, Second Lieutenants. The Fourth Class Inspectors had a title created for them; they became Third Lieuten ants. To the end, the Constabulary retained that title as the lowest rank of commissioned service.
In the first quarter of 1903, the Commission passed additional legislation providing for a fifth Assistant Chief of Constabulary; established disciplinary measures for punishment of torturers, insubordinates, men absent without leave, and for negligence on sentry duty, and made provision for suitable quarters for officers on station in Manila. In April, a sixth Assistant Chief was authorized, and the number of officers in each grade was increased by five. In June, four Majors were authorized, and the pay of ten Captains was increased to not more than $1,800, and of ten First Lieutenants to not more than $1,200.
Meanwhile, a system of competitive examination for Constabulary officers had been drafted by Captain E. R. Higgins on August 16, 1902. The subjects and their weight ratings were: spelling, 5; arithmetic, 5; letter writing, 10; penmanship, 5; paper work, 15; history, geography, and civil government, 10; Constabulary drill regulations, 15; Spanish and native dialects,10; general fitness for service, 25. Of the 138 officers examined, 23 failed.
At about this time, too, the Constabulary adopted the khaki uniform, with standard shoulder insignia and the red epaulets that remained their costume to the end.
There is a little town on the island of Catanduanes, which is off the coast of Albay. Virac is its name, and it is possibly much the same today as it was thirty-four years ago when Harrison O. Fletcher took his Constabulary to barracks there. It must have been a lonesome outpost for the few Constabulary soldiers who stared away across its strip of white sand to the swirling currents of the Gulf of Lagonoy.
It was the afternoon of August 13, 1902, and Fletcher and his men had returned from a routine patrol into the hills. The Lieutenant was seated in his quarters at the seashore, watching the steamer Dos Hermanos, which was at anchor two hundred yards from the surf line. As he scanned it idly, a chorus of shouts came from the small vessel; then a puff of smoke and the rattle of rifle fire. A moment later, figures flitted across the decks and cries of "Kill them--kill them all"--floated across the water.
Fletcher called two of his men and set out in a small boat to investigate the disturbance. As he pushed off from the sand he saw figures on the deck gaze in his direction; there was a rush of men to the bow and a frantic heaving of the anchor chain.
We turn to the reports of what Fletcher accomplished that day. There is something in this story that reminds one of the Texas Ranger tales of "one man for one riot."
The reports indicate that Fletcher stood up in his small boat and called out in Spanish to drop the anchor or he would open fire. For answer, a rifle bullet splashed in the water beside the bow of the dinghy. The Constabulary laid a blast of rifle fire along the deck then--if two riflemen operating single-shot rifles can deliver a blast. The men on the deck continued to haul at the anchor cable, and Fletcher's men laid down their rifles and paddled in under the quarter of the steamer. The Dos Hermanos was beginning to move in the direction of the open sea.
Covered by the fire of his two men, Fletcher seized a trailing rope and hoisted himself to the deck of the steamer. When he had cleared a place with revolver fire, his two men mounted to stand beside him.
Those three valiants fought off and cowed forty-five mutineers on the deck of that vessel! As the battle raged across the deck the shouts and cries of the barricaded passengers and ship's officers added to the confusion. The mutineers soon had enough of Fletcher's accurate, close-range fire, and they leaped over the rail into the sea to be captured by Constabulary who lined the shore in front of the barracks.
Fletcher found the Chief Engineer of the Dos Hermanos dead from ten bolo cuts; the Steward lifeless on the galley floor; the Captain, Second Mate, Second Engineer, and two passengers badly cut with bolos. It had been the intention of the crew to kill passengers and officers and make away with 15,000 pesos that was in the ship strongbox. Fletcher, with two men, accomplished the capture of thirty-five of the mutineers, killed three, wounded five, and permitted the escape of but two.
When news of this action reached Manila, the Medal of Valor was awarded Lieutenant Fletcher and Privates Victorio Penalosa and Ruperto Nolla.
Shortly after this Dos Hermanos affair, Lieutenant Fletcher engaged in one of the most dramatic single-hand combats that is recorded in thirty-five years of battle.
The old-timers call it the "affair of the bicycle". . . .
It was eight o'clock in the evening, and Fletcher was slowly pedaling a bicycle along the lonely, palm-lined road between Camalig and Guinobatan in Albay. He was heavily armed for a special mission, having a .38-caliber revolver and a Krag rifle slung at his shoulders. His road turned sharply and angled away through the gloom of a coconut estate.
He was rushed in the dark by twenty-three bolomen.
As the patter of feet sounded, Fletcher dismounted and hurled the bicycle in the path of the charging men. The rush was delayed, partially, but not before he had received several serious wounds. He wheeled in the very shadow of the slashing blades, drew his revolver, and fired until the click announced an empty weapon. The bolomen, who had paused momentarily in the face of that accurate revolver fire, re-formed and came back at Fletcher again as he clawed frantically for the carbine. It came into play just in time and under its rapid fire the outlaws wavered and retreated into the shadows.
As Fletcher crouched there in the road with blood streaming from his wounds, an almost incredible incident obtruded to save his life. He heard, in the distance, the voice of an American soldier from the regular regiment on station at Daraga, calling to determine who was being attacked.
Fletcher turned his eyes away from those lurking shadows that ringed him and made a quick decision. He watered his life on the belief that the lone American soldier would understand Spanish. He called in a loud voice, "Bring up your detachment and attack."
The single American in the distance not only understood the Spanish language, but was quick to appraise the situation. He advanced on the double, giving orders, "Load magazines, right by squads, double time." As he led his imaginary platoon to the rescue, the outlaws faded into the bush. Behind them, they left five dead and four wounded, as evidence of the accurate, under-pressure fire of Fletcher.
The year 1903 drew to a close. . . .
General Allen was destined to go far in his chosen profession of arms. It was to be his privilege, sixteen years later, to be summoned to the command of the American Army of Occupation in Germany. He was to see, in the later years of his military commands, thousands of young Americans die on the fields of France.
But as he sat in his office in Manila in 1903, to recapitulate the record of the corps he had brought into being, it may have been the most satisfying point of his long career. For he was living in a personal era. Achievement was a personal thing in those days. Death was a personal thing, too, in that small group of companions in arms. His corps had weathered a year of incessant fighting; the wonder was that the casualty lists were not longer.
But there was a brighter side to that record of a year and a half of patrol. His force had gathered in 3,019 firearms that would be no more a menace to the peace. His men had conducted 8,087 expeditions against the enemy on patrols of law and order that reached the impressive total of 332,923 miles. The men with red epaulets had killed 1,859 disturbers of the peace, and had captured 5,539 outlaws.
The Constabulary was fulfilling the expectations of the Philippine Commission, and more. They were on patrol from Ilocos in the north to the Mohammedan islands in the south. Theirs had been a life of daily contact with the enemy; such had been their idea of the duties of a policeman. More than 8,000 expeditions in eighteen months of existence!
Personalities were emerging from the fabric of the corps--gallant, half-starved personalities who were frayed by jungle. In their skimpy uniforms of gray they had been, unknowingly, creatures of a great romance as they had led their barefooted patrols deep into the bush. Now they were erect in khaki, and morale had come to the force, and a great confidence in their arms.
Already they had learned that in these desperate patrols, brute strength to brute strength could not be. They laid the foundation, in 1902 and 1903, for their code of arms. "To be outnumbered, always; to be outfought, never."
They substituted an acquired jungle cunning and an individual excellence, to make up for their lack of numerical strength and their single-shot rifles. The personnel of the force was combed relentlessly in this period to eliminate the unfit, the indecisive, and the ones who lacked in courage.
And their reach into the jungle grew longer.
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Original publication © 1938 E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.
This publication (HTML format & original artwork) © 2001 Bakbakan International.
Transcription courtesy of Ashley Bass.