Jungle of Snakes Read online

  Otis worked very hard but wasted endless time supervising petty details. A journalist observed that Otis lived “in a valley and works with a microscope, while his proper place is on a hilltop, with a spy-glass.”4 MacArthur was even less charitable, describing the general as “a locomotive bottom side up on the track, with its wheels revolving at full speed.”5 Unfortunately, members of the Filipino elite living in Manila had the measure of the man and they told Otis what he wanted to hear, namely, that most respectable Filipinos desired American annexation. This fallacy reinforced Otis’s instinct toward false economy, to cut corners and win the war without expending too many resources.

  His plan to capture the insurgent capital in northern Luzon and destroy Aguinaldo’s Army of Liberation was akin to a game drive writ large. One group of Americans acted as beaters, herding the Filipinos toward the waiting guns of a blocking force that had hurried into position to intercept the fleeing prey. By virtue of prodigious efforts—unusually heavy rains flooded the countryside, reducing one cavalry column’s progress to sixteen miles in eleven days—American forces broke up the insurgent army, captured supply depots and administrative facilities, and occupied every objective. As if to confirm what the Manila elite had told Otis, soldiers entered villages where an apparently happy people waved white flags and shouted, “Viva Americanos.”

  An American officer, J. Franklin Bell, reported that all that remained were “small bands . . . largely composed of the flotsam and jetsam from the wreck of the insurrection.”6 Otis cabled Washington with a declaration of victory. He gave an interview to Leslie’s Weekly in which he said: “You ask me to say when the war in the Philippines will be over and to set a limit to the men and trea sure necessary to bring affairs to a satisfactory conclusion. That is impossible, for the war in the Philippines is already over.”7

  It certainly appeared that way to eighteen-year-old George C. Marshall. The volunteers of Company C, Tenth Pennsylvania, returned from the Philippines to Marshall’s hometown in August 1899. Marshall recalled, “When their train brought them to Uniontown from Pittsburgh, where their regiment had been received by the President, every whistle and church bell in town blew and rang for five minutes in a pandemonium of local pride.” The subsequent parade “was a grand American small-town demonstration of pride in its young men and of wholesome enthusiasm over their achievements.”8

  Victory enormously pleased the McKinley administration. Now benevolent assimilation could proceed unhindered by ugly war. The president told Congress, “No effort will be spared to build up the vast places desolated by war and by long years of misgovernment. We shall not wait for the end of strife to begin the beneficent work. We shall continue, as we have begun, to open the schools and the churches, to set the courts in operation, to foster industry and trade and agriculture.” Thereby the Filipino people would clearly see that the American occupation had no selfish motive but rather was dedicated to Filipino “liberty” and “welfare.”9

  In fact, Otis and other senior leaders had completely misjudged the situation. They did not perceive that the apparent disintegration of the insurgent army was actually the result of Aguinaldo’s decision to abandon conventional warfare. Instead, the ease with which the army occupied its objectives throughout the Philippines brought a false sense of security, hiding the fact that occupation and pacification—the pro cesses of establishing peace and securing it—were not the same at all. A correspondent for the New York Herald traveled through southern Luzon in the spring of 1900. What he saw “hardly sustains the optimistic reports” coming from headquarters in Manila, he wrote. “There is still a good deal of fighting going on; there is a wide-spread, almost general hatred of the Americans.”10 Events would show that victory required far more men to defeat the insurgency than to disperse the regular insurgent army. Before the conflict was over, two thirds of the entire U.S. Army was in the Philippines.

  How the Guerrillas Operated

  Otis’s offensive had been final, painful proof to the insurgent high command that they could not openly confront the Americans. Consequently, on November 19, 1899, Aguinaldo decreed that henceforth the insurgents adopt guerrilla tactics. One insurgent commander articulated guerrilla strategy in a general order to his forces: “annoy the enemy at different points” while bearing in mind that “our aim is not to vanquish them, a difficult matter to accomplish considering their superiority in numbers and arms, but to inflict on them constant losses, to the end of discouraging them and convincing them of our rights.”11 In other words, the guerrillas wanted to exploit a traditional advantage held by an insurgency, the ability to fight a prolonged war until the enemy tired and gave up.

  Aguinaldo went into hiding in the mountains of northern Luzon, the location of his headquarters secret even to his own commanders. He divided the Philippines into guerrilla districts, with each commanded by a general and each subdistrict commanded by a colonel or major. Aguinaldo tried to direct the war effort by a system of codes and couriers, but this system was slow and unreliable. Because he was unable to exercise effective command and control, the district commanders operated like regional warlords. These officers commanded two types of guerrillas: former regulars now serving as full-time partisans—the military elite of the revolutionary movement—and part-time militia. Aguinaldo intended the regulars to operate in small bands numbering thirty to fifty men. In practice, they had difficulty maintaining these numbers and more often operated in much smaller groups.

  The lack of arms badly hampered the guerrillas. A U.S. Navy blockade prevented them from receiving arms shipments. The weapons they had were typically obsolete and in poor condition. The ammunition was homemade from black powder and match heads encased in melted-down tin and brass. In a typical skirmish, twenty-five rifle-armed guerrillas opened fire at point-blank range against a group of American soldiers packed into native canoes. They managed to wound only two men. An American officer who surveyed the site concluded that 60 percent of the insurgents’ ammunition had misfired. Although the insurgents typically had prepared the ambush site complete with their guns mounted on rests, their shooting was also notoriously poor. Not only did they lack practice because of the ammunition shortage but also they did not know how to use both the front and back sights on a rifle.

  Insurgent officers were painfully aware of their deficiencies in armaments. One colonel advised a subordinate to arm his men with knives and lances or use bows and arrows. Another pleaded with his superiors for just ten rounds of ammunition for each of his guns so that he could attack a vulnerable American position. On the offensive the regulars carefully chose their moment to strike: a sniping attack against an American camp or an ambush of a supply column. After firing a few rounds they withdrew. On the defensive they seldom tried to hold their ground but instead dispersed, changed to civilian clothes, and melted into the general population.

  The part-time militia, often called the Sandahatan or bolomen (the latter term referred to the machetes they carried), had different duties. They provided the regulars with money, food, supplies, and intelligence. They hid the regulars and their weapons and provided recruits to replenish losses. They also acted as enforcers on behalf of the government the insurgents established in cities, towns, and villages. The civilian arm of the insurgent movement was as important as the two combat arms. Civilian administrators acted as a shadow government. They ensured that taxes and contributions were collected and moved to hidden depots in the hinterland. In essence, the network they created and managed constituted the insurgents’ line of communications and supply.

  From the insurgent standpoint, the decision to disperse and wage guerrilla war placed the fate of the revolution in the hands of the people. Everything depended on the people’s willingness to support and provision the insurgency. Guerrilla leaders well understood the pivotal importance of the people. They decreed it was the duty of every Filipino to give allegiance to the insurgent cause. Ethnic and regional loyalty, genuine nationalism, and a lifelong habit of ob
eying the gentry who composed the resis tance leaders made many peasants accept this duty.

  If the insurgents could not compel active support, they absolutely required silent compliance, because a single village in formant could denounce an insurgent to the Americans. The guerrillas invested much effort to discourage collaboration. When appeals to patriotism failed, they employed terror. A prominent revolutionary journalist urged the infliction of “exemplary punishment on traitors to prevent the people of the towns from unworthily selling themselves for the gold of the invaders.”12 One of Aguinaldo’s orders instructed subordinates to study the meaning of the verb dukutar—a Tagalog expression meaning “to tear something out of a hole” and widely understood to signify assassination.13 Thereafter, numerous orders flowed from all levels of the insurgent command authorizing a full range of terror tactics to prevent civilians from cooperating with the Americans: fines, beatings, or destruction of homes for minor offenses; firing squad, kidnapping, or decapitation for Filipinos who served in American-sponsored municipal governments. However, the revolutionary high command never advocated a strategy of systematic terror against the Americans. They wanted to be recognized as civilized men with legitimate qualifications for running a civilized government and so limited terror to their own people.

  As the war continued, civilians became the partic u lar victims even though most Filipino peasants actively supported neither the guerrillas nor the Americans. As long as neither side incurred their wrath via excessive taxation, theft, destruction of property, or physical coercion, they simply continued with their daily chores and hoped that the conflict would be played out elsewhere.

  The Policy of Attraction

  Aguinaldo’s decision to shift from conventional to guerrilla warfare forced American leaders to adapt a new strategy. During the spring and summer of 1900, northern Luzon served as a proving ground for an American counterinsurgency strategy based upon what planners called a policy of attraction. Here the military would prove that it could simultaneously implement civil government and fight the insurgency. The operating assumption was that northern Luzon was peaceful and the Filipinos accepting of American authority. This assumption was out of touch with reality. Because of insurgent terror directed against the inhabitants of towns and villages, the Americans received little useful intelligence about their foes. Thus they were completely in the dark about insurgent plans, movements, and strengths. Moreover, however peaceful the situation appeared in coastal urban areas, insurgents, criminals, and untamed mountain tribesmen dominated the interior’s jungles and mountains.

  Heedless of this reality, well-intentioned Americans conducted a large-scale program to eliminate smallpox by hiring Filipino doctors and providing them with vaccine. Believing that poor young men joined the insurgency out of economic need, the U.S. Army financed road repair projects to provide a legitimate income alternative. The construction of new schools served as the symbolic centerpiece of American benevolence. The emphasis on civic action meant that a second lieutenant in an isolated village or a major in a large town acted as administrator of municipal government in an alien culture. The officers fell back on what they knew. Just like the progressive reformers at home, they believed that republican institutions produced enlightened and free citizens. So they worked to alleviate society’s ills by giving more people greater economic, political, and social opportunities. Their labors made real differences. Medical and sanitation teams brought cholera, smallpox, and plague under control and reduced the incidence of malaria. New water and sewage systems also improved public health. But none of these efforts tamped down the insurgency.

  It became apparent that Otis’s victory claim was premature. As soon as the rainy season ended in northern Luzon the insurgents began a new offensive. During the next three months, they inflicted 50 percent more casualties on the Americans compared to any other time during the guerrilla war. They cut down vital telegraph lines faster than the lines could be repaired. They repeatedly attacked the rafts that provided the main source of American supply. When U.S. soldiers tried to clear the riverbanks they encountered significant guerrilla opposition. As alarming as all of this was—and it was sufficient to panic the district commander, Brigadier General Samuel Young, into writing his superiors that defeat might be at hand—perhaps worse was the ability of the insurgency to prevent Filipino cooperation with the American vision of civil government.

  A guerrilla armed with an obsolete firearm might not be able to engage the Americans on equal terms but his gun allowed him to intimidate unarmed civilians. Better still, in the interest of revolutionary justice, a collaborator hacked to death with a bolo in a village market made a powerful impression and saved scarce ammunition. During 1900 the Americans recorded 350 known assassinations and 442 assaults. The actual numbers were doubtless much higher.

  The ability of the guerrillas to terrorize anyone who contemplated cooperation with the Americans made it impossible for the United States to create a civil government. Among many garrison commanders, Major Matt Steele tried to implement his orders and dutifully called for elections. He candidly wrote his wife that he did “not expect a single person to vote” because “the edge of a bolo and the hand of an assassin are the price they would pay for taking that oath and holding office under American rule.”14 An insightful American colonel came to the realization that the “best assistance the Military authorities can now give to the schools is to guarantee to the towns a stable government and to the people personal safety.”15

  With a strength of some 60,000 men, the U.S. Army lacked the manpower to garrison enough places to maintain law and order. Furthermore, the units in the garrison and in the field could not obtain useful intelligence about the enemy. They lacked guides to lead them along obscure jungle and mountain trails. They did not have the language skills to communicate with the local people. Everyone appreciated that efficient Filipino auxiliary forces could solve these problems. Indeed, colonial empires from imperial Rome to British India had rested on the backs of native soldiers. But which natives to trust seemed unknowable.

  TWO

  Chastising the Insurrectos

  The Failure of Attraction

  THE U.S. ARMY THAT FOUGHT THE guerrilla war in the Philippines comprised regular infantry and cavalry regiments made up of veteran, professional soldiers. Supplementing the professionals were the National Guard and volunteer regiments, “the Boys of ’98,” commanded by officers who had distinguished themselves during the Spanish-American War. The equipment and training inadequacies that had hampered the fight against the Spanish in Cuba had been corrected. Notably, both regulars and volunteers now received rigorous training. Consequently, they were tough, capable soldiers. Although few enlisted men and junior officers had seen combat prior to 1898, they displayed one of the hallmarks of the American soldier: a willingness to learn by trial and error.

  The senior officers from regimental command on up were combat veterans, having fought in either the Civil War or the Indian Wars, if not both. The legacies of these conflicts blended to shape the conduct of the guerrilla war in the Philippines. The Civil War officers were prepared for stern measures. They remembered Sherman’s March to the Sea and Sheridan’s torching of the Shenandoah Valley. The Indian War officers were comfortable with small-unit warfare, a style of command that involved a high level of command autonomy and rewarded individual initiative and aggressiveness.

  For officers and enlisted men alike, the guerrilla war was sporadic and highly localized. During the entire war, no fighting took place in thirty-four of the seventy-seven provinces in the Philippines. In some of the contested provinces, the Americans operated with a light touch. In Albay, on Luzon’s southern tip, Filipinos were more concerned with their export economy than with revolutionary slogans. Their lack of firm resis tance gave the Americans time to disprove revolutionary propaganda. Contrary to that propaganda, Americans did not kill, enslave, or forcibly convert insurgent prisoners from Catholicism to Protestantism. Instead
, they offered peace, the prospect of economic recovery, and amnesty to insurgent fighters. True, the American soldiers often drank to excess, but so did many locals, hence this behavior was tolerable. Albay proved to be one of many places where the Americans merely had to demonstrate that they were better than the Spanish to become tolerated if not welcomed.

  Because the insurgent menace was initially slight in many places such as Albay, military service in the Philippines often featured a boring routine of uneventful guard duty interrupted by occasional, usually ineffectual, insurgent sniper attacks. Soldiers could leave camp to swim, forage, visit town, or even take horseback rides across the country without fear. But as Private Edwin Segerstrom of the Colorado National Guard observed, “You can’t trust them though, for in the daytime they may be friendly when you meet them and have your gun along, but in the night they are different I guess.”1

  In the unpacified provinces, American officers at all levels of command found themselves thrust into the unfamiliar task of establishing civil government as the occupation made the transition from military to civilian rule. Yet they still had to fight the insurgents. In order to accomplish this, the army dispersed into small garrisons. In November 1899—at a time when the insurgents were still trying to fight as a regular military force—some 43,000 American effectives occupied 53 dispersed bases (called stations in official reports). In response to the outbreak of guerrilla warfare, reinforcements arrived, increasing American strength to about 70,000 effectives. As of October 1900 they manned 413 stations.

  In other words, to contest dispersed guerrillas the Americans also had to spread out, and by so doing they encountered a classic counterinsurgency conundrum. To provide civilian security and find the guerrillas, the army had to operate in the most remote, inhospitable terrain. Garrisons in such places could not live without supplies from the main bases. Supply convoys, in turn, moved along narrow, unpaved roads through jungle and densely planted cropland. Numerous rivers and streams bisected the landscape, funneling the convoys onto primitive bridges, a natural choke point for ambushes. When it rained, which was often, the so-called roads dissolved into deep, cloying mud. Then, soldiers had to substitute themselves for weary draft animals to haul bogged wagons from the mud. All of these factors made supply convoys so vulnerable that they became the insurgent target of choice. In response, U.S. commanders had to increase the number of men providing security along the lines of communication, which took away from the number available to hunt for the guerrillas.