Ph Town Fêtes its West Pointer

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

When a young Army First Lieutenant learned that I came from M’lang, Cotabato Province, he told his fellow officers who worked at the Tactics Office of the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City in the late 1980s that the people there were dazzled  by a four digits military name tag sewed on the left breast part of their fatigue or khaki uniform.

For example:      Regla, JC

                         2LT  O-4321
(Note: "O" stands for Officer then the four digits)

“Iba doon bok, big deal sa kanila ang four-digit (Its different there classmate, four-digit was a big deal for them),” he quipped to fellow officers who are now mostly retired generals.

“Many Muslim mayors there would doff their hat when they saw a four digits battle weary Army Captain and his battle scarred soldiers who entered his village while chasing the rebels,” one of them retorted.

HAILED  - U.S Army 2Lt. Eli Eichenberger (USMA Class 2018) and his mother Fely graced the recent celebration of the country's Independence Day upon the invitation of M'lang, Cotabato Province Mayor Russel Abonado. Eli just graduated at the United States Military Academy in New York. His mother Fely Arzaga is a daughter of  the rustic town. PHOTO CREDIT: TAGGY TAYONG  

What’s the magic of the four digits that the knowledgeable, the machos, and the wide-eyed made a big fuss in Mindanao?

The four digits showed primorldially that the officer is a frigging graduate of the elite Philippine Military Academy and not some graduates of FEU or Faaralang Elementarya ng Ulongapo and PAMMA or Pangasinan Merchant Marine Academy who took an ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) course under the tutelage of inferior reserve military instructors and became a military official.

The four digits whose members were and are mostly graduates (some are non-PMYers but members of the regular force they derisively called “Sundalong Kanin (Rice Soldiers) like doctors) from the Long Gray Line in Barangay Kias, Fort del Pilar in Baguio City means not only being an officer and a gentleman but epitomize youth, vitality, and wisdom.

 When a son of a poor farmer, a businessman, a public school teacher, or a sergeant passed the tough PMA entrance examination that emphasized on mathematics, hurdled the three months beast barracks training at Camp Aquino in then Tarlac town (where I worked as a clerk there when it folded in 1989) and Fort del Pilar, and survived the almost four years (more if the cadet became a turn-back or repeater because of academics deficiency) rigorous academics and regimental trainings, folks in our town, overawed son of a gun, would talk highly about the cadet or the officer.

WEST POINTER

In this internet era where news all around the globe can be accessed to a mobile digital phone, people not only in our town but of the country relished with pride as shown on the comments and countless of thousands of hits or reads in the stats of my blog when they learned that Eli Arzaga Eichenberger, 22, a son of Mindanoan woman Fely, would be graduating at the United States Military Academy in West Point New York last May 26.

When I wrote a blog cum column in our newspaper titled: These LGUs should honor new West Pointer, Mom, the Man Friday of M’lang Mayor Russel Abonado messaged me last Monday at Face Book:

“Toto Mortz, puwede ko maka pangayo complete name sang West Pointer ta and the mother, or where ko sila puwede kadtoan. Kay I just talked with Mayor Russel and pabasa ko write up mo. Gusto niya e invite ang mag-ina tomorrow in our Independence Day program and didto namon sila e recognize (Toto Mortz, can I asked for the complete names of our West Pointer and the mother where I can personally give their invitation. I talked with Mayor Russel and showed to him your column. He wanted to invite the mother and son in our Independence Day’s celebration tomorrow where we would give them recognition)”.

 Eichenberger, center, poses with the members of the Philippines National Police based in M'lang, Cotabato Province.

I told Mr. Tayong about the whereabout of Fely Arzaga and her son Eli whose furlough he spent in the rustic town of his maternal grandparents - who were a carpenter and a housewife.

Taggy, the nickname of Tayong, told me that Second Lieutenant Arzaga- Eichenberger even spoke at the proud crowd as they celebrated the Independence.

The Independence Day, to those who skipped school, was a historical event that took place more than a century ago when Filipinos declared in June 12, 1898 at the iconic balcony of the ancestral house in Kawit, Cavite of Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo that the Filipinos were already free from the shackles and bondage of Spain.

 That declaration culminated after the Mock Battle of Manila Bay in May 1, 1898 led by Commodore George Dewey whose Asiatic Squadron of the U.S Navy defeated the inferior naval power of the Spaniards.

 “Salamabit, at least the Independence did not come after Filipino soldiers clashed with West Pointers like Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr. (USMA 1861) who became the Governor-General of the occupied Philippines in 1900 (Arthur was the father of Philippine Liberator from the Japanese Five-Star General Douglas (USMA Class 1903),  and other Yank generals like  Major General Leonard Wood  and Major General Tasker H. Bliss who fought the brave Moros in the early 1900s in the huge Moro Province that composed Mindanao, Jolo, and Tawi-Tawi,” I told myself upon hearing that the town officials of M’lang acquiesced to my exhortation that they honor a son of the daughter of the town just like what we were doing in Pangasinan to our new graduates of the PMA and war heroes.

MOTTO - M'lang Mayor Russel Abonado, a lawyer, shows the memento
with USMA's motto Duty, Honor, Country given by Lieutenant Eichenberger.

The most notorious American general assigned in the Philippines was General Jacob “Howling Jake” Smith. 

When Filipino guerrillas massacred in a surprise attacked 51 American soldiers in the town of Balangiga, Samar Island, Smith ordered his soldiers “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States," he barked to Major Littleton Waller.

 Smith’s soldiers killed between 2,500 and 50,000 civilians.

His kill orders included all boys from age ten above because it was the belief of the Yanks that the Flips, er, Filipinos were born with bolos in their hands.

That incident in Samar I taught in my History Class in a university was called “ The Howling Wilderness”.

In Jolo the Yanks .38 caliber pistols and the .30-40 Krag rifle could not knock out the rampaging Moros who were impervious with the barbed wires that slice their skins.

For these “Jurumentados”, who tied some parts of their body, the most important thing was to decapitate with their Kris the heads of these infidels who wanted to impose a civil service style of governance vice their obeisance to their revered datus.

The Moro hero of this war against the Yankees, er, the .38 caliber and the Krag was Panglima Hassan in the Hassan Uprising who fought to the death the Americans who shot him dozens of times with their useless weapons but the sannamagan would not easily die.

 Because of the inefficiency of that guns, the Colt Corporation invented the double-action with a lethal stopping power .45 caliber against the Tausogs that included some women who fought to the death using only kris, kampilan, arrows and some musket rifles where some they wield with bayonets.

Because of the sheer number of the Muslims who came to the succor of the fleeing comrade-in-arm who entered the kuta or fortress, the Americans during the governorship of Generals Wood and Bliss resorted to a crude but funny method of psychological warfare that the pale faced big eye, as what the Indians described the Yanks in the Indian Wars in 1600s, used with success.

According to Daniel Mannix in his book The Old Navy, the Americans used to outwit the Moros by exploiting their religious vulnerability.

 Rear Admiral Mannix, who fought the Moros as a young lieutenant from 1907–1908, said that the Americans exploited Muslim taboos by wrapping dead Moros in pig's skin and "stuffing [their] mouth[s] with pork", thereby deterring the Moros from continuing with their suicide attacks.

The juramentado attacks were materially reduced in number by a practice the army had already adopted, one that the Muhammadans held in abhorrence. General John J. Pershing (USMA 1886), the soldiers’ soldier if you asked generals and West Point’s alumni with a surname like Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and MacArthur and even my town mate Eli Eichenberger, in his autobiography wrote that cadavers were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig. It was not pleasant to have to take such measures but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins, the general, where West Point’s cadets  contemptuously called him Nigger Jack because of his strictness as instructor, said.

The only president of the Philippines that wanted to emulate this piggy war stunt was President Joseph Estrada through his soldiers brought lechons and truckloads of beers and drank them inside the Mosque after they drove away the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s soldiers, according to MILF vice-chairman for political Affairs Ghadzali Jaafar.

Jaafar told ABS-CBN’ ANC that then President Estrada decided to attack the MILF's Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao in March 2000 "brought one truckload of beer, started drinking there and then brought lechon and ate pork inside a mosque."

 

Then West Point's First Class Cadet Arzaga - Eichenberger

 Here’s what Taggy, the Market Supervisor and the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office’s chief, narrated to me in a video chat when the first class thriving town feted its son Eli and his mother Fely – our neighbor in the middle of 1970s and early 1980s in M’lang after she and family evacuated from Barangay Minapan, Tulunan, Cotabato Province during the height of the Muslim-Christian War.

He said before the start of the 6:30 am program the mayor, a lawyer, and the Eichenbergers that included his sister were already there.

 “Eli was introduced by the emcee Ms Ruthchele Malacad. In his speech, nagpasalamat siya sa hospitality sang taga M’lang, sa iya nanay nga nag instill sa ila sang pamatasan sang Pinoy, nga dako gid nabulig why naka graduate siya sa West Point (Eli was grateful with the hospitality of the town's people, the mother who instilled to him the Filipino attitude that helped that strengthen him to hurdle West Point)”.

Taggy said Mayor Abonado was the last to speak before the town officials and the folks telling the Eichenbergers that he was grateful they reciprocated his invitation to recognize them.

“Bata sang aton kasimanwa kag tumandok gid sang Mlang. Dako nga bugal gid ini para sa banwa sang Mlang (the son of our townmate a native of M’lang. It is a big pride to the town of M’lang),” the mayor stressed as Taggy told me.

U.S Army 2Lt.Eli Eichenberger (USMA Class 2018), 3rd from Left, poses with the officials of the burgeoning town of M'lang. Eli's mother Fely Arzaga Eichengerger is 4th from left. Taggy Tayong, my contact at the local government unit of M'lang, is at extreme right.

WEST POINTER meets WAR VET - US Army 2nd Lt. Eli Arzaga Eichenberger (USMA 2018), a Fil -Am, poses with my father retired Air Force Lieutenant Marcelo C. Ortigoza in a dinner held at our place in Mindanao. My father, a paratrooper, was sent to the Korean War in the early 1950s with another West Pointer then Lt Fidel V Ramos who later became the Philippines president. Eichenberger's mom was our neighbour in Mindanao during the height of the Christian -Muslim War in the 1970s.


(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)