War is Hell

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

I conversed today with my eldest son Jigger, I told him that Kyiev, Ukraine Mayor Vitali Klitschko helped kill six Russian soldiers.

Klitschko – a former heavyweight boxing champ - admitted in a news interview to killing six people while defending Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

The Hizzoner (play of words of the juxtaposed hishonorthemayor) is fighting on the frontline alongside his younger brother and ex-heavyweight world champion Wladimir after the pair chose to take up arms against Russian President Vladimir Putin's rampaging military composed of modern combat jets’ Sukhoi Su-57s and Su-25s, tank armada (marked with white Z that means “for the victory) of T-64s and T-72s in a 40 miles long convoy, trucks' carrying rockets, and other armaments.

Photo credit: imgur.com

My son could not imagine that Klitschko and his brother – who both entered the Guinness World Records as the pair of siblings with most world heavyweight title fights - could be enmeshed in a nasty war with the Russian military’s juggernaut.

“We used to watch him fought Lennox Lewis and Chris Arreola at the Staple Center (in Los Angeles in the United States),” cited by Jigger who is a zealous fan like me of the Marquess of Queens-berry Rules’ fisticuff.

As a former Assistant Professor of World and Philippine History, I told him that patriotism is the highest calling for a citizen to give to the Motherland to the extent one has to shed blood and even die.

I mentioned to him one of the three Filipino icons prominently stamp on the P1,000 bill of the Philippines currency:

“Isa diyan si  Chief Justice and Philippines Acting President Jose Abad Santos. Alam mo ba kung bakit naging hero siya?” I posed.

I narrated to him how Abad Santos, his son Pepito, Col. Benito Valeriano and two Pinoy soldiers were captured by the Japanese in barangay Tubod in Barili, Cebu while traveling by automobile to Toledo, Cebu. He identified himself  to the conquerors as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. He and his son were then taken to a concentration camp in Basak San Nicolas, Cebu City.

The Japs imputed to him, as acting President, the destruction of the bridges and other public works in Cebu Province that had been undertaken by the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) to delay the invasion of the island.

They were brought to Malabang, Lanao in Mindanao, arriving on April 30, 1942. After two days' confinement at Japanese camps, he was informed about the order of his execution. Before he was subject to musketry, he talked to his son and namesake.

"Do not cry, Pepito, show to these people that you are brave. It is an honor to die for one's country. Not everybody has that chance," The acting Commander-in-Chief of the beleaguered Philippine government was executed at 2:00 p.m. of May 2, 1942, under a tall coconut tree near a river bank. He refused to be blindfolded and refused the last cigarette offered to him.

“Can you imagine that kind of patriotism of Jose Abad Santos? While political families in the country like the Aquinos of Tarlac and the Laurels  - one of them Jose served as the puppet President of the enemy - of Batangas chose the easy path of collaboration with the Japanese Imperial Army, Abad Santos would not even denounce the American and the Philippine governments. Who can do that in case the Chinese invade – ala Russia to Ukraine – our country?” I told Jigger.

War is hell, I told him while the television footages of CNN and Al Jazeera showed Ukrainian mothers and children cried inconsolably because of fear, hunger, and deaths as Moscow - that unleashed those battery of artillery - would not honor the pre-arranged ceasefire for them to abscond the war zones like in Mariupol, Calais, and Sumy and head to Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and other European countries.

I cited how 620, 000 of the United States population in 1861 have been killed when two factions of the Yanks belonging to the North and South of the peninsula killed each other on their Civil War (damn, the word “Civil” is a misnomer because war is gruesome and gory).

Those 620,000 Americans dead almost equaled the number of the Yanks killed in all the other wars the US has fought in World Wars I and II, Korean and the Vietnam Wars, and probably their invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

If the unleashing of Vladimir Putin of his “cavalry” against the militarily weak country and fellow Soviet’s state Ukraine because of the Kyiev’s government moist eye to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the American Civil War was not primordially on the emancipation of the Negro (that term "Negro" son of a gun is no longer politically correct to publicly mention nowadays) but President Abraham Lincoln intention to preserve the Union. The Southern states, under General Robert E. Lee, wanted to secede from the United States of America that resulted to those hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Fellow classmates, by golly, in the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York City (the copycat of the Philippine Military Academy) killed each in a pitched battle of that infamous unconscionable war when they found themselves either in the camp of the Union or Confederacy.

Book author James M. McPherson wrote: "If the same proportion of Americans to the total population were to be killed in a war to be fought today, the number of American war dead would be five million."

Doggone it! War indeed was hell be it in the Civil War and the present Ukraine siege.

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MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

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I am a twenty years seasoned Op-Ed Political Writer in various newspapers and Blogger exposing government corruptions, public officials's idiocy and hypocrisies, and analyzing international issues. I have a master’s degree in Public Administration and professional government eligibility. I taught for a decade Political Science and Economics in universities in Metro Manila and cities of Urdaneta, Pangasinan and Dagupan. Follow me on Twitter @totoMortz or email me at totomortz@yahoo.com.