General Who Saved France Had War Exploits in Mindanao

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Salamabit, if I got a three-day journey in a lorry from Mindanao to Quezon City in my four months’ lock down due to the lethal pandemic and where Truck Czar Jun Alba whisked me out from his truck yard of ten-wheeler trucks in the city thru his fast and slick Ford Raptor’s Pick-Up to Dagupan City in just two-hour, here’s Max Soliven on a General who was whisked out from Mindanao to save France:

"One of the gallant Frenchmen who joined General George Washington in America’s fight for liberty was the Marquis de Lafayette – dare I say the Galeries Lafayette super-department store was named after him, or from the boulevard that bears his name? In any event, the Americans returned the favor by sending hundreds of thousands of men to defend France and roll back the Germans in World War I. The charming legend is that when the leader of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing of Mindanao, arrived with his troopship, he went straight to the French Marquis’ grave to lay a wreath before sending his soldiers to help in the succor of France. Pershing said: "Lafayette, we are here!" "

The Americans' Moro War in Mindanao, Philippines. Photo Credit: UNC-Endeavor

HERE’S Your struggling columnist, who moonlights too as Mindanao fruits’ seller in the once great Kingdom of Princess Urduja (hey, the lady ain’t got a first name!), and his then blog/column’s Ph Town Fêtes its West Pointer on General Pershing Mindanao’s campaign in early 1900s:

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's 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."

Before the start of my one-on-one interview with then President Joseph Estrada in one of the towns in Pangasinan. At right is the "Eraption" Man Friday's Actor Rez Cortez. I forgot to ask the president if he indeed brought roasted pigs and truckloads of beers and drank them with Christian soldiers inside the Mosque after they drove away the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s rebels in Central Mindanao.

(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)