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Chapter 1:
Benevolent Assimilation
"Damn, Damn,
Damn, the Filipinos, Underneath the starry flag, Civilize 'em with a
Krag." -- U.S. soldiers' song
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, President
McKinley on April 23, 1898, called for 125,000 volunteers
to beef up the anemic U.S. Army of only 28,000 regulars.
Emil Holmdahl's older brother, Monty, was one of the first to join
up. With a yen for adventure and not wanting to be left behind,
young Emil also trooped down to the recruiting station.
Although tall for his age, the fifteen-year-old was told by a griz-
zled old sergeant to go back to the farm and do his chores for a few
more years. Even at this early age, young Holmdahl had a touch of
the confidence man. Undaunted, he took his small savings and went
to a different recruiting station, where he hired a man to pose as his
father and testify that he was of age.
The ruse worked and the slender, apple-cheeked farm boy was
sworn in as a rifleman with the 51st Volunteer Iowa Infantry
Regiment. After a brief training period, the Iowa boys lustily
singing, 'Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain, II were put on board a
train en route to San Francisco. There on November 3,1898, they
boarded the crowded troop transport Pennsylvania for a month-long
passage to the Philippine Islands. They arrived in Manila Harbor on
December 7. By' then the Spanish had surrendered and the
"Splendid Little War," so named by Secretary of State John Hay, had
ended.
If Emil was disappointed that he had missed action against the
Spanish army, he had not long to wait for his baptism of fire. For
there was smoldering resentment between the ragged, irregular
forces of the Filipino insur-
gent leader Emilio
Aguinaldo, who had been
fighting against the Spanish
since 1896, and the
American interlopers.
Most Filipinos main-
tained they had virtually
won their independence
before the Americans
arrived, and they rejected
the idea that they needed
American guidance. They
claimed, "When the
American troops reached
the Islands in 1898, there
was no anarchy and the
Filipinos were governing
themselves." [2] The idea that
Americans had single
handedly liberated the
Philippines from Spain was
a constant irritant to the Filipinos.
The Filipinos expected independence after the Spanish were
beaten, but found themselves merely trading colonial masters, as
President McKinley instituted a policy of "benevolent assimilation."
This term meant that the United States would control the islands.
No matter how benevolent the Americans were, Aguinaldo and his
men would have none of it.
The McKinley policy was not without opposition in the United
States. Republican Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed of
Maine, opposed the war with Spain and the acquisition of the
Philippines. When Vermont's Senator Redfield Proctor read a
report on the Senate floor favoring the war, Reed observed that the
senator owned large marble quarries. "Proctor's position might have
been expected," he said. "A war will make a large market for grave-
stones." [3]
Not only did opponents decry American imperialism, there were
financial concerns. After Spain surrendered and the United States
seized the Philippines, Reed cynically observed, "We have purchased
30 million Malays at 50 cents a head ... unpicked ... and nobody
knows what it will cost to pick them." [4] Acquiring the Philippines
would prove very expensive, both in money and in lives.
The growing disputes between the Americans and the Filipino
nationalist forces under Aguinaldo, however, were unknown to Emil
and the rest of the Iowa farm boys of the 51st. After a month at
sea they were yearning for the feel of solid earth beneath their feet.
From the decks of the now smelly Pennyslvania, they could see the
lights of the grog shops and bordellos of Manila and they were hot
for a little Asian debauchery. They would never get it.
After dayys of staring at the shoreline while the Army pondered
what to do with them, orders finally came through on December 24.
The Pennsylvania was instructed to proceed to Iloilo on the island of
Panay, where the troops would be landed and the Iowa boys would
take possession of the port to "prevent lawlessness." [5]
Panay, with a population of almost 800,000, was part of the
untamed and remote group of islands known as the Visayas. On
December 26, escorted by the cruiser Baltimoree, the Pennsylvania and
two other troopships sailed out of Manila Bay' into the South China
Sea, passed between the islands of Mindoro and Palawan into the
Sulu Sea, and finally dropped anchor off Iloilo.
As the ships swayed at their anchor cables, the Iowans panted on
deck under the boiling tropical sun while the high command
dithered over whether or not to invade the island, then under the
control of Filipino insurgents. On January 3, orders came through
to attack and capture the city. That night Emil and his comrades
sharpened their long bayonets and cleaned their old .45-70
Springfields (which when fired sent up a dense column of
white-gray smoke) with the nervous energy of green recruits about
to undergo a baptism of hostile fire.
The next morning the 51st, with units of the 18th U.S. Infantry
Regiment and Battery' G, 6th U.S. Field Artillery, clambered down
the sides of the transport into longboats and were rowed ashore by
strong-armed sailors. As they landed, they were greeted by insur-
gents barricaded along the docks with Mauser rifles at the ready.
The two forces glared ferociously at one another for a few minutes
until the American colonel in command decided against landing
more troops "under such conditions of hostility." [6]
In a scene more opera bouffe than military, the disgusted troops
were ordered to climb back into -the boats, and the equally disgust-
ed bluejackets rowed them back to the transports. Dithering
between the Panay Expeditionary Force and headquarters in Manila
went on for twenty more days, while the troops rocked uneasily in
the anchored transports in the stifling heat.
After almost three months aboard ship, the Iowans were so
enervated, filthy, sick, and dispirited that the Pennsylvania was
ordered
back to Manila on February 11, 1899. Returning to that port in mid-
February, they stumbled down the gangplanks and found them-
selves right in the middle of a shooting war. The Iloilo farce over,
they were to engage in vicious and grueling fighting on southern
Luzon Island as the U.S. army began its breakout from its Manila
bastion.
Of young Holmdahl's personal adventures in the Philippines lit-
tle is known, but one can best understand the conditions that mold-
ed the man by following the trail of his regiment. On the outskirts
of Manila, Yanks and insurgent soldiers had been exchanging insults
and sometimes blows, until on February 4, 1899, a Nebraska volun-
teer fired on a Filipino patrol, and the two forces went to war.
It would be a dirty and frustrating guerrilla war fought in steam-
ing jungles rife with malaria and other tropical diseases. The troops
were tortured by hordes of stinging and biting insects, poisonous
snakes, and an enemy that posed as friendly during the day only to
spread terror and death as soon as the tropical sun dipped below the
horizon. It would only be surpassed more than sixty-five years later
in the hell of the Vietnam jungles.
Into this cauldron marched the 51st Iowa farm boys, including
fifteen-year-old Emil. He was to celebrate his adolescence by wad-
ing through rice paddies, tramping along jungle trails, and soaking in
tropical downpours, all on a diet of rice and rotten fish when sup-
plies gave out. In the realm of nauseating food, Army-issue canned
salmon was king. Called "goldfish" by the troops the stuff was so
full of oily gunk that when it dried out and a lighted match was
tossed onto it, the can burst into flame. By comparison World War
II's K-rations so despised by G.I.s seemed a gourmet's delight. [7]
A typical order from a brigade headquarters ran as follows:
Men will carry guns with straps
and bayonets, belt, haversack, mess kit, canteen filled with water or
coffee. One day's field ration, 100 rounds of ammunition, poncho
hung in belt. They will wear brown canvas uniform including blouse
without blue shirt. Those not provided with blouses will wear blue
shirts.
Two days additional field rations,
200 rounds additional ammunition, one blanket for each two men and
necessary cooking utensils, tools, etc., will be transported in wagon
and pack train. Reveille will be at 3:00 a.m.; breakfast at 4:00
a.m.; and troops will be in assigned positions ready to start by 5:00
a.m. when each regimental commander will send a messenger to brigade
commander to that effect. There will be no bugle calls, loud
commands or shouting.
And as a very necessary precaution, the orders commanded:
Officers and non-commissioned
officers will prevent men from throwing away accoutrements, rations,
water and ammunition. [8]
In March 1899, Emil and the 51st were attached to the First
Division under the command of Major General H. W Lawton, who
was the "George Patton" of what became known as the Philippine
Insurrection. Lawton, at six feet, four inches, towered over his men
and must have seemed like an avenging giant to the slightly built
Filipinos. He was a soldier's soldier. With iron gray hair, bristling
mustaches, and a fierce gaze, he wore a white pith helmet and bright
yellow slicker, and was given to striding up and down the firing line
wherever the fighting was at its heaviest.
Bold and tough, he was often held back by the overly cautious
General Elwell Otis, who commanded the Philippine department
with all the bravado of a frightened rabbit. Balding with floppy
muttonchop whiskers, Otis was a desk-borne officer who Admiral
George Dewey once called "an old woman." [9]
An orphan, Lawton left school to enlist in the Union Army as a
private when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Always in the thick
of the fighting, by the time he was twenty'-one years old he was com-
manding a regiment of infantry as a brevet colonel. He won the
Congressional Medal of Honor for leading an attack against a
Confederate fortification at Atlanta.
After the war, reduced to the rank of Second
Lieutenant, he
spent twenty years fighting Indian hostiles. He was the man who
finally cornered the elusive Apache chief Geronimo, who, exhaust-
ed by Lawton's indefatigable pursuit, surrendered in 1886. He again
distinguished himself during the campaign in Cuba in 1898 and, by
then a major general, he was assigned to help break the back of the
Filipino resistance. While he was often in trouble with the high
command in Manila, the men in the ranks loved the fifty-six-year-old
general.
After the Americans fought their way' out of the environs of
Manila, the brigade, which included Emil and the 51st, also com-
prised elements of the 4th Cavalry, the 14th U.S. Infantry, and a reg-
iment of Idaho volunteers. After the breakout, they! slugged their
way fifty miles to the north toward the key railroad town of
Calumpit.
The town was enclosed in a rectangle formed by the railway that
ran from Manila to San Fabian on Lingayen Gulf and three rivers
that arched around the city flanks. Calumpit was well fortified with
trenches and loop-holed breastworks built along the river banks,
while the railroad" embankment was built up with parapets enabling
defenders to fire' in all directions. Confident, the Filipinos consid-
ered the town impregnable and their commander boasted "Calumpit
will be the sepulcher of the Americans." [10]
On the morning of April 23, the Americans approached the
Quingua River to the south of Calumpit and came under a fierce
and deadly fire from the dug-in Filipinos. As a regiment of
Nebraska volunteer infantry formed and advanced toward the
enemy, their Colonel, John M. Stotsenberg, one lieutenant, and two
privates were shot dead and thirty-one men wounded. Seeing the
Cornhuskers in trouble, Emil and his Iowans fixed bayonets and
charged forward with a shout. Firing and running, they stormed the
enemy and with rifle butt and bayonet, slaughtered the insurgent
forces within.
Panting, the Mid-Westerners flopped on the soggy ground,
sucking air into gasping lungs. After a rest, they marched into the
little suburb of Quingua where they made camp, and rations, such
as they were, were distributed as well as fresh bandoliers of ammu-
nition. "Get a good rest boys," they' were told, "Tomorrow we cross
another river under fire and by god, then we'll take Calumpit."
That night, as fifteen-year-old Emil rested his weary head on his
pack and looked up at the stars overhead, he must have realized he
was no longer an innocent farm boy. He had seen friends killed, and
he had tasted blood with both bullet and cold steel. He would never
be the same.
Before dawn on April 24th, the troops were awakened from
their uneasy sleep, ate a quick breakfast of biscuits and hot coffee,
and then fell in with extra bandoliers of ammunition looped over
their shoulders. By 5:00 a.m. the artillery was in place and ready to
fire. The night before, scouts had located a ford and the infantry
.was moved up and echeloned along its banks. At 5:30 a.m. the
artillery opened up a fierce barrage on the insurgent trenches on the
far side of the river.
The South Dakota regiment of volunteers dashed across a rick-
ety bamboo bridge, while Emil and his Iowans, along with the
Nebraska volunteers, charged into the ford, slipping, stumbling, and
sometimes sinking into the river's muddy bottom. Gone was the
boyish enthusiasm of the day before. They had seen too many bod-
ies on both sides crumpled into bloody rags from Mauser and
Springfield slugs. They now had the grim determination of veteran
troops, and they flayed the insurgents with rifle fire as shrapnel burst
on the enemy trenches ahead of them.
They were across the river by early light and had
through dense, thorny brush and thickets of bamboo. Trudging
along the road toward Calumpit in late morning and early afternoon,
they were continually harassed by snipers and by the retreating
insurgents. Reaching the Calumpit River, which was that town's last
defensive shield, the Iowans came under heavy fire from defenders
on the other side of the river. The American artillery, however,
blasted the enemy trenches with shrapnel so accurately that the
insurgents became afraid to raise their heads above the emplace-
ments to aim their Mausers.
Emil and the Iowans could see hands holding rifles appear over
the trenches and fire without aiming. As a result, their bullets flew
wildly, mostly over the heads of the Midwestern volunteers. The
American infantry, in turn, dropped prone and delivered such a
stream of accurate fire from their Springfields that it all but
annihilated the remaining defenders. Emil and his companions
crossed the river unscathed and marched into the town under an
eerie light from the Calumpit mission church, which had been set on
fire by the fleeing Filipinos.
After a few days rest, on May 2, the 51st, backed up by two field
pieces and a Gatling gun, was detailed as the brigade advance guard.
The troops marched along the railway running northwest to San
Fernando along flat land cut by steamy s\vamps and bayous, housing
myriads of insects.
As they moved up the road paralleling the tracks, they first
encountered the traps which during the Vietnam War were called
punjis. They were conical pits dug into the road, in the bottom of
which were planted sharpened bamboo stakes dipped in feces. A
light bamboo mat covered with dirt concealed the hole, and God
help the poor American lad who stepped on one of the devilish
stakes. Infection from the feces covering the stake often was more
dangerous than the wound caused when the sharpened
bamboo pierced a boot and drove up into a foot. Many died or lost
a leg through gangrene.
But if what had gone before was not bad enough, a few miles
south of their objective, in the market village of San Fernando, they
ran into rifle fire from a swamp near the town. To drive the enemy
from their flanking position, the Iowans were ordered to charge.
Dismayed but game, the 51st
waded into the foul-smelling mess,
floundering through the treacherous waters, often sinking up to
their armpits. Leeches sucked at their bodies; their water-filled
boots caused them to stumble and fall to the muddy bottom, while
they held their rifles and precious ammunition high over their heads.
There were a few grim laughs when one of the shorter men stepped
into a sinkhole and disappeared-leaving only his wide-brimmed hat
floating on the muck. One of the taller men quickly reached down
and pulled the sputtering soldier to shallower water, and they
ploughed on.
When they reached the shallows
theu opened fire and charged-
if wading and cursing in belt-buckle-deep water can be called a
charge. After routing the Filipinos and reaching the Bagbag River,
the Iowans constructed a floating bamboo footbridge. The men
stripped the loads from pack animals and shouldered them, hiking
unsteadily across the rickety bamboo while the animals swam across
the river. After scattering the remaining defenders, they marched
into San Fernando.
Emil's brigade had trekked more than 200 miles through hellish
terrain and fought more than thirty engagements. The cost was
high. In addition to many sick with various diseases, six officers and
forty-seven enlisted men were killed, with twenty-two officers and
331 enlisted men wounded. [11]
After resting a few days, the Iowans were ordered to Cavite for
garrison duty, and if it was duller work than fording swamps under
fire, no one complained. Sitting around the fires as the tropical sun
dropped swiftly below the tree line, they had a chance to catch up
on the gossip of this hastily assembled army of farm boys, leavened
by a few old Indian-fighting regulars.
The campaign had its share of characters. One of the most
flamboyant was Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler. Known as
"Fightin' Joe," his diminutive size (he was barely five feet, five inch-
es and weighed in at 120 pounds) belied his history as a hell-for-
leather Confederate cavalryman. It was Wheeler whose rapier-like
raids had frustrated, bedeviled, and raised general hell with General
William Tecumseh Sherman's Army of the West. A West Point
graduate, Wheeler's allegiance was to the South, and he rose to the
rank of lieutenant general in the Confederate army. At one time he
commanded all cavalry forces in the Army of the Mississippi, fought
400 engagements, was wounded three times, with sixteen horses
shot out from under him.
When the Civil War ended, "Fightin' Joe" was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives from Alabama. When the Spanish-
American War broke out, he offered his services to the U.S. army
and was commissioned a major general of volunteers. After charg-
ing up San Juan Hill with Teddy! Roosevelt and fighting courageous-
ly in Cuba, he was commissioned a brigadier general and took com-
mand of a brigade in the Philippines.
The sixty-one-year-old former Confederate officer proved
impetuous to the point of insubordination, always charging into
enemy positions regardless of orders. When his fighting spirit was
curbed by assigning him to command supply lines, he accused the
U.S. general commanding his division, one Arthur MacArthur,
father of young Douglas MacArthur still at West Point, of keeping
him out of the battle line for fear that a "Reb" general would show
him up. Since MacArthur was a hero of the Union forces during the
Civil War, perhaps "Fightin' Joe" had a point. One of the great
campfire stories endlessly' repeated by the troops was that in the
excitement of battle Wheeler would ride up to the firing line scream-
ing "Give them Yankees hell, boys."
After eight months of hide-and-seek, punctuated by intermit-
tent skirmishes with the ladrones, or thieves, the 51st Iowa was sched-
uled to return to the United States. They had served valiantly, but
not without blemish, as one soldier reported, "Talk of the natives
plundering towns; I don't think they can compare with the 51st
Iowa." [12] With or without plunder, the regiment departed Manila on
September 23, 1899, aboard the troopship Senator bound for San
Francisco. From there, they returned to the small towns of Iowa
where both the cornfields and their corn-fed "gals" seemed like
heaven after months of homesickness and hardship in the
Philippine jungles.
A few, among them Emil Holmdahl, who seemed to thrive on
jungle fighting, stayed behind. Conditions in Manchu-dominated
China were becoming more turbulent by the day. A wandering
mercenary soldier named Edmund F. English, sporting the title of
"General," drifted into Manila recruiting a foreign legion of experi-
enced soldiers. Their mission was to aid the aging Dowager
Empress of China, Tzu Hsi, in putting down a series of local rebel-
lions that threatened her rule. [13]
The "legion" was sponsored by the Chinese Empire Reform
Association, which consisted of Western-oriented Chinese both in
China and in California, and a group of well-heeled American busi-
nessmen. Their motives were ostensibly lofty. They "'Tished, they
said, to bring China into the new century as a modern, respected,
and independent state.
They realized that: "The Chinese, through long centuries of
heredity, are an unwarlike people, the Imperial government realizes
that the organization and disciplining of this army' must be done by
foreign officers." To find them, they looked to rugged American
veterans on the West Coast and in the Philippines. [14]
The regiment was to be known as the "Royal Imperial Guard,
Sinim Order of Dragoons" and would function both as shock
troops and royal bodyguards. What promises of gold and glory
General English made to the more naive young American soldiers
were never recorded, but to the teen-aged Iowa boy, soldiering in
China seemed to promise an exciting adventure. Holmdahl quickly
presented himself to the general with a snappy salute.
General English promptly commissioned the youngster as an
ensign, possibly because of Emil's exquisite handwriting and his flair
for expressing himself. Within days the general, his newly commis-
sioned farm boy ensign, and a motley collection of discharged sol-
diers, wharf-rats, and European freebooters set sail for China.
By the time their ship entered the harbor at Shanghai, the situa-
tion had undergone a drastic upheaval. Hatred for all "barbarians"
(anyone who was not Chinese), was at a fever pitch in the ancient
kingdom. Treaties forced upon the proud Chinese by Europeans
had robbed them of sovereignty over much of their own land.
Their ancient gods were humiliated by caravans of Christian mis-
sionaries who sought to turn them from their age-old religions.
Maddened by the actions of the Europeans and impoverished
by natural calamities when the Yellow River flooded its banks and
inundated more than 5,000 miles of fertile plain, the Chinese were
on the brink of total despair. Roaming shamans, soothsayers, and
chieftains of growing secret societies foretold the end of the world.
The sons of Han would only be saved, they said, if the European
"Big Noses," whose presence had angered the gods, were driven
from Chinese soil.
The hatred of the barbarians coalesced around masters of the
martial arts in Shantung province. Forming a loosely organized
society named i-ho-ch'uan, or the "Righteous and Harmonious Fists,"
called Boxers by the Europeans, they went on a rampage in 1900
destroying anything European. They beheaded foreigners, burned
missionary outposts and looted European trading centers. The
Boxers forced the Manchu Empress to sever any ties with the "big
noses with white faces." These events left General English and his
doughty band of warriors without a paymaster, and the Sinim Order
of Dragoons quickly disintegrated into a bunch of drifters in
Shanghai. Fortunately, young Emil had the price of a return ticket
to Manila. [15]
Arriving back in the Philippines in mid-1900, he found that the
hard-pressed regulars were offering a $500 bonus to those signing
up for more war, so Emil enlisted in the 20th United States Infantry
Regiment. If going from an ensign in the Royal Imperial Guard of
the Empress of China to a still underage private in the U.S. Army
bothered the young soldier, he kept it to himself.
There were some compensations for joining the regulars.
Paydays were guaranteed and, most important, the soldier never
again had to fight with the rifle issued to volunteer regiments, the
antiquated, faithful, single-shot Springfield .45 70, which kicked like
a mule. Worse, its cartridge used black gunpowder which when fired
sent up a pillar of smoke that gave away the shooter's position.
As regulars, the 20th was issued the modern, Danish-designed
Krag-Jorgensen bolt-action rifle with a five-shot magazine. It fired
the new high-velocity .30-40 caliber cartridge and, best of all, it used
smokeless powder. It had a range of 2,000 yards, although it took
an expert shot to hit a man at 1,000. Emil quickly qualified as one
of those expert marksmen who could take out a guerrilla at that
range. [16] And no doubt, he joined with his comrades in singing the
little ditty that began:
Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos,
Underneath the starry flag,
Civilize 'em with a Krag. [17]
It was to become more than a lyric-it became a reality.
The 20th U.S. Infantry was a big, tough regiment of regulars
who had won a multitude of battle honors during the Civil War and
had recently fought gallantly in Cuba. They more than lived up to
their regimental motto, Tant Que Je Puis (To the limit of our ability).
In November 1899, their muster rolls included forty-three officers
and 1,478 enlisted men. [18]
When they first arrived in Manila, the 20th was not given a fight-
ing assignment; its soldiers instead were detailed as military police.
The army, growing distressed by a series of drunken incidents and
an increasing rate of venereal disease, thanks to the multiplying
number of bars and whorehouses in that city, set a curfew of 7:00
p.m. It became the regiment's unpleasant duty to sweep the streets
of raucous soldiers every twilight. [19]
In 1899, before Holmdahl returned from China, the
regiment finally got into the fighting south of Manila in operations
along the Pasig River. They became, however, both saddened and
infuriated when their much admired General Henry W Lawton was
killed in late December at the town of San Mateo, eighteen miles
from Manila. Lawton, in the front lines of the fighting, was dressed
in his bright white pith helmet and his iridescent yellow slicker. His
six-foot, four-inch frame made a tempting target, and while he was
surveying the fighting through binoculars, a rebel bullet struck him
in the chest, killing him instantly.
When young Holmdahl joined the regiment, they were still
maddened by Lawton's death and had a simmering hatred for the
Filipinos. They were fighting in Luzon when Aguinaldo was cap-
tured in late March 1901. While much of the force of the revolu-
tion was broken by his capture, there was still heavy fighting to be
done and on April 5, 1901, the regiment fought a hot skirmish near
Salsona, Luzon.
In November 1901, in a command shakeup, Emil and his new
comrades of the 20th were put under the command of General J.
Franklin Bell, with orders to pacify any insurgents holding out in
southwestern Luzon.
The guerrilla war, like that in Vietnam, had become deadly.
Terrible atrocities were committed on both sides, and if young
Holmdahl in later years was referred to as a callous killer, perhaps
his inhibitions against shedding blood came from that youthful ser-
vice in Luzon. Not untypical was an order given by' Brigadier
General Jacob W "Hellroarin' Jake" Smith, who instructed a subor-
dinate commander to take no prisoners and kill anyone capable of
bearing arms. Anyone over the age of ten was old enough. [20]
Ley Fuga -- meaning law of the fugitive
-- which authorized cap-
tors to shoot escaping prisoners was very much in vogue. There was
a very bad joke about some "Tennessee Boys" who were ordered to
take thirty wounded guerrillas back to an American hospital. They
passed through a prosperous village, and when they finally arrived at
the hospital they had "a hundred chickens and no patients." [21]
With misguided Yankee ingenuity, the troops developed an
effective method of dealing with stubborn prisoners who refused to
reveal military information. Quaintly named the "water cure," it was
administered by stretching a prisoner on his back, prying open his
mouth with a stick or bayonet, and pouring large amounts of dirty
water down his throat until his stomach blew up like a balloon.
When the "patient" was full, one of the "doctors" would kneel or
stomp on his stomach until the water was expelled through a variety
of orifices. After the "cure," most surviving prisoners were more
than cooperative about answering questions.
For variety, there was also the "rope cure," consisting of wrap-
ping rope around the prisoner's neck and body a number of times
until it formed a sort of a girdle. A stick was placed between the
ropes and twisted until it smothered and garroted the victim. It too
was an effective cure for silence. [22]
The Filipinos, however, were not without blemish, and when
their bolo-men ambushed an American, not content to merely kill
him, they'often dismembered the body and carved it into small
pieces. As a mark of guerrilla humor, dead Americans were
propped up with their throats slit and their penises stuck in their
mouths. In other instances, American soldiers were found buried up
to their necks in red-ant beds. The ants considered eyeballs a deli-
cacy.
It was in this tortured environment that young Emil spent his
adolescence. Under those fighting conditions, one either went
insane or became very, very', tough. Emil Holmdahl became very,
very, tough.
Filipinos
maintained that American politicians in favor of
annexation deceived the American people into believing that only a
small faction of the native population supported the insurrection.
As the war dragged on, however, they were fond of quoting Genera]
Arthur MacArthur:
When I first started in against
these rebels, I believed Aguinaldo's troops represented only a fraction
... I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon ... was
opposed to us ... I have been reluctantly compelled to believe that the
Filipinio masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he
leads. [23]
They also quoted a dispatch from General A.R. Chaffee that,
"The insurrectionary force keeping up the struggle. ..could exist
and maintain itself only through the connivance and knowledge of
practically all the inhabitants." [24]
In an effort to moderate what had become a very nasty war, 325-
pound William Howard Taft was sent to the Philippines as high
commissioner. He affectionately referred to his Philippine charges
as "Our little brown brothers." The infantry out in the barrios
responded with a ditty:
They say I've got brown brothers
here
But still I draw the line
He may be a brother of Big Bill Taft
But the son of a bitch ain't no brother of mine. [25]
Officially the insurrection ended July 4, 1902, although intermit-
tent fighting continued for another decade. When the final count
was made, "benevolent assimilation" had resulted in the deaths of
more than 4,000 American soldiers, almost 3,000 wounded, and
large numbers enfeebled for life from tropical diseases. The insur-
gent army had an estimated 20,000 killed in combat. Worst of all,
200,000 Filipinos died either of famine brought on by the war or
from outrages committed by soldiers on both sides. [26]
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