Philippine. During the Spanish-American War, the Philippines fell to then-commodore. By LTC Thomas D. Morgan U.S. Army retired

Transcription

1 U.S. Government Printing Office 52 ARMY September 2013

2 The Philippine By LTC Thomas D. Morgan U.S. Army retired Above, U.S. troops rest in a trailside camp on the Philippine Island of Mindanao. Opposite, clockwise from top left: U.S. ships pound the Spanish fleet in the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay; President William McKinley called for the benevolent assimilation of the Philippines; place names appear in Spanish on an 1899 political map of the islands; the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo led to the fall of the First Philippine Republic. Aguinaldo designed the national flag (center). During the Spanish-American War, the Philippines fell to then-commodore George Dewey in the quick and decisive Battle of Manila Bay in May Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States for $20 million at the Treaty of Paris later that year. Filipino independence leaders had been at war for independence from Spain before Dewey s arrival. The chief revolutionary leader was Emilio Aguinaldo, who was in exile in Hong Kong. Dewey brought him back to the Philippines, and Aguinaldo set up a local government centered south of Manila Bay at Cavite. Aguinaldo s revolution was political, not social, and his role was symbolic, not military. He did not announce a military strategy until later. In addition, the U.S. government brought in troops to occupy parts of the Philippines and start what President William McKinley called benevolent assimilation of the Philippines. September 2013 ARMY 53

3 U.S. forces use trenches to battle Filipino insurgents. Relations deteriorated as it grew clear that the United States would keep the Philippines rather than grant the islands independence. The Spanish-American War was initially fought by Civil War generals who were pushing the mandatory retirement age of 64, by the small Regular Army that had just finished winning the West, and by volunteer and state militia units. The units had regimental designations and were brigaded together under brigadier generals. Once in the Philippines, three regiments of troops were grouped under divisional organizations for administration, logistics and decentralized control. The U.S. regiments were much like today s modular brigades they had limited artillery, signal, intelligence and logistical support. Training for a Philippine deployment was simple: The troops were collected at assembly locations and were issued tropical-style uniforms (khaki trousers, wool/flannel shirts, wrap-around leggings or cavalry boots as appropriate) and new Krag-Jørgensen rifles with smokeless cartridges to replace the old Civil War Springfields. After a quick trip to a firing range to zero their rifles, they boarded transports for the 30-plus-day voyage to the Philippines. The officers were a storied lot. Many such as Generals Wesley Merritt, Elwell S. Otis, Arthur MacArthur (Douglas father), Samuel B.M. Young and Adna R. Chaffee had been boy colonels and generals during the Civil War and company grade officers for as long as 20 years after that, fighting Indians in the West before achieving high rank again in the Spanish-American War. MG Merritt s VIII Corps, composed of 11,000 men, arrived in Manila after Commodore Dewey s victory in Manila Bay; and in December 1898, President McKinley finally revealed his plan to annex the Philippine Islands under benevolent assimilation. When Merritt went back to the States to retire, President McKinley appointed his deputy corps commander, MG Otis, to be his military commander in the Philippines. Otis was a highly competent Civil War veteran and a Harvard-educated lawyer. He cleaned up filthy, disease-ridden Manila and established good government to replace the Spanish corruption, but that did not resolve the Philippine independence issue. Aguinaldo put together a Philippine government and created an Army of Liberation for the archipelago. Relations between Filipino and U.S. forces became tense. On February 4, 1899, a disturbance outside Manila resulted LTC Thomas D. Morgan, USA Ret., is a West Point graduate, former field artilleryman, Vietnam War veteran and military historian. His articles have been published in ARMY and other professional military periodicals. in a battle between Aguinaldo s troops and U.S. forces. Aguinaldo s forces were defeated, and U.S. soldiers marched into the interior of Luzon, splitting the Philippine army into northern and southern factions. On the Luzon plains, many of Aguinaldo s soldiers were killed, and he lost most of the modern weapons and ammunition that he had captured from the Spanish. After this, U.S. forces developed a strategy that had three parts: Benevolent assimilation was continued in order to show the Filipinos that Americans were there to help them. With the Treaty of Paris in December 1898, the war with Spain was over and Aguinaldo announced in February 1899 that the conflict had become a war for independence. The United States called it an insurrection, however, for two reasons: First, the Philippines was now a U.S. territory; second, most of the U.S. forces now in the country were National Guard and militia, which the Constitution allows to deploy only to deal with insurrections. The United States imposed a naval blockade that prevented Aguinaldo from shifting his troops from island to island and from receiving supplies. U.S. forces moved north along the main railroad in the country between Manila and Lingayen Gulf on the main island of Luzon to force Aguinaldo to fight a decisive battle. U.S. forces chased Aguinaldo but had trouble catching up with his lightly clad, bolo-armed soldiers. The American troops faced challenges such as disease and fatigue. Soldiers could not carry heavy loads without collapsing, and even their rifles were a burden. Soon, almost half the troops were out of action. Finally, in the fall of 1899, after regrouping and resting, the U.S. forces continued pursuing 54 ARMY September 2013

4 An 1899 lithograph illustrates the harsh measures that were taken against Aguinaldo and his guerrillas. Aguinaldo to Luzon, where he dispersed his army and became a fugitive in the mountains of that island. U.S. forces had also swept the insurrectionists all the way into southern Luzon and the Visayan Islands and had established almost 500 garrisons throughout the Philippines. Aguinaldo then announced that guerrilla warfare would be his strategy. As it is today, waging conventional warfare is much easier than suppressing guerrilla warfare. In March 1900, MG Otis created four departments/military regions in the Philippines: Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, the Visayan Islands, and Mindanao and Jolo. Each military region was commanded by a general officer, and most of the stateside Regular Army and militia regiments were sent to the Philippines on an annual rotational basis. As many as 70,000 U.S. troops were in the Philippines during the war years ( ), but the average was about 40,000. Of those, about half were unavailable for combat because of illness, travel and detached duty. Because there was no decisive outcome following months of initial battlefield victories, a policy of chastisement was developed using General Order (GO) 100, originally published in 1863 for the Civil War as Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field. GO 100 forbade looting, torture, needless destruction and disproportionate reprisals against the population. Known as the Lieber Code for its author, the German- American jurist and political philosopher Francis Lieber, it recognized that harsh measures would be necessary to counter guerrilla threats and acts of terrorism. GO 100 gave commanders the option to punish civilian supporters of guerrilla forces. Guerrillas would be granted protection as legitimate combatants only if they wore uniforms and were part of an organized, larger traditional army; those who did not were to be treated as criminals rather than soldiers. How GO 100 was interpreted and implemented was in many ways both commendable and reprehensible. Concentration camps were established, and aggressive policies of food and property destruction were used. When MG Adna R. Chaffee succeeded MG Arthur MacArthur Jr. as military commander in the Philippines, he believed that the Army had been too lenient, and he prescribed harsh measures for Batangas Province in southern Luzon and the island of Samar. What gave the U.S. forces their edge was not their numbers but their effectiveness. The Filipinos could not stand up to the U.S. artillery, machine guns or heavily armored gunboats. The open-order tactics developed in the Army in 1891 proved effective in rice paddies and jungles, and a highly effective amphibious capability was crucial to pacifying the coastal regions. U.S. forces fought the war with state volunteers, the Regular Army and U.S. volunteers, who were especially good infantry soldiers. The Philippine War became a difficult and controversial war by 1899; today we would call it a Phase IV military campaign. The counterinsurgency program in the Philippines is interesting when juxtaposed with the recent U.S. surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military personnel from the top down had both political and military duties. The United States turned increasingly to using Filipinos to fight the insurrection. The Macabebe Scouts were used by BG Frederick N. Funston in March 1901 to finally capture Aguinaldo. A group of U.S. soldiers pretended to be captives of the scouts, who were dressed in Philippine army uniforms. Once Funston and his captors entered Aguinaldo s camp, they immediately fell upon Aguinaldo and his guards and quickly overwhelmed them. In April, Aguinaldo swore allegiance to the United States. The capture of Aguinaldo resulted in the decline and eventual fall of the First Philippine Republic. Gen. Miguel Malvar took over leadership of the Philippine Republic and continued the war in the Batangas region of South Luzon. BG James F. Bell adopted severe tactics against the remaining guerrillas, forcing civilians to live in concentration camps, using water cure interrogation techniques, and implementing a scorched earth policy of destruction of homes and crops that took a heavy toll on the Filipino revolutionaries. Finally, Malvar surrendered on April 13, The Philippine War ended in July, when President Theodore Roosevelt declared the insurrection over. The military government was terminated, and President Roosevelt, who had succeeded to the Presidency upon the assassination of McKinley, proclaimed a full and complete pardon and amnesty for all people in the Philippines who had participated in the conflict. Although the war was officially over, some quasi-religious groups called pulajanes still fought against U.S. forces in Samar and other parts of Moroland. 56 ARMY September 2013

5 Photographed just as they lay down their weapons, a group of Filipino insurgents prepares to surrender. The Philippine War finally ended in July The island of Samar, located to the east of Leyte by a narrow channel of water in the Visayan Islands, was the last place where insurrectionists put up major resistance during the Philippine War. The insurrectionist leader there was Gen. Vicente Lukban, one of the original island presidentes appointed by Emilio Aguinaldo when he declared the First Philippine Republic in Lukban was resourceful and effective. The military governor of the Philippines at that time, MG Chaffee, sent BG Jacob H. Smith to pacify the island. Smith was another Civil War veteran who had been somewhat of a hero, but he was unethical and had used government funds to invest for his own business purposes. Court-martialed in 1885 for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, he was censured, but he was allowed to remain in the Army. Throughout his career, however, he had been careless with government funds and had been in trouble many times. Due to some quirk of fate in the War Department, he had been promoted to brigadier general to speed his retirement, but instead he was sent to the Philippines to command a brigade in the Visayan Islands. When one of his units was attacked by insurgents in its garrison at Balangiga, Samar, nearly 50 officers and men were killed, partly because of their own carelessness. BG Smith decreed that all Filipino males over the age of 10 were to be killed and that the island was to become a howling wilderness. Eventually court-martialed for that and other misdeeds, even though a copy of his infamous order was never found, he was finally retired. During this period, Samar also became notorious for actions taken by U.S. marines to avenge the Balangiga massacre. A marine major, Littleton W.T. Waller, led an ill-advised march across the island, and his men executed 11 Filipino porters on his expedition for supposed treachery. He was also court-martialed but basically was acquitted because of a jurisdictional matter between the Army and the Marine Corps. Finally, on February 18, 1902, a patrol of Filipino scouts captured Lukban. The last of Samar s guerrillas surrendered on April 27, and military rule on the island ended. The longest and most brutal pacification campaign of the Philippine War had ended. Samar cast a pall over the Army s achievements and for generations was seen by the public as typifying the Philippine War. * * * The Philippine War can lay claim to being one of the most successful counterinsurgency campaigns in American history. The counterinsurgency efforts involved the carrot and stick approach. The Army was the stick, and the U.S.-inspired civil government was the carrot once a province was pacified, but sometimes, fear proved to be a greater motivator than kindness. The impact of the Philippine War looms large in U.S. history, but it is sometimes called the unknown or forgotten war because it has been overshadowed by the splendid little Spanish-American War and World War I. The United States emerged as a global power, and by 1918 it held the balance that would win World War I. It also led to the United States being pulled into other military interventions over the years and being committed to a global presence with its military force as the stick. MG Adna R. Chaffee became military governor and commander of U.S. forces in the Philippines in September 2013 ARMY 57