The Old Navy

by Daniel P. Mannix

  * There was a brief notice in the Philadelphia Inquirer that I was working on a book telling the story of my father’s life. A few days later I received the following letter from a Mr. H. Hertach. Part of the letter read:

  “We were anchored in Manila Bay at Cavite. I was a seaman aboard the USS Wilmington when on or about Oct. 27, 1907, a terrific typhoon blew up. We got orders from the flagship to let out all chain to the bitter end which was 105 fathoms. Winds of 70 to 80 miles per hour, sea running waves four to five feet high, storm course from east to west. At about 8:30 a.m. I was on the forecastle battening down hatches when on our port bow I saw the Rainbow steamer and a man swimming along side. My thoughts were ‘Man overboard’. I went aft to the Off. Deck and reported to the lieutenant. The answer I got was, ‘Oh, that’s Mannix at his morning exercise.’ He rounded our stern, then swam 600 yards against the storm back to the Rainbow. I watched him go up to the starboard gangway, not believing any man could have performed such a feat.

  “The report the next day was he bet a fellow officer $20 he could swim around the Wilmington and back in the middle of the typhoon. He won the bet. He was a great athlete and an incomparable, powerful swimmer. I’ve heard that later he was the first American to swim the Hellespont. Well, that’s the story of your father and another of his exploits.”

  Although the Philippine Insurrection ended “officially” on July 1st, 1902, the insurrectos didn’t know about it. The heart of the trouble lay in Mindanao, an island in the Malay Archipelago. This island was almost completely unexplored. However, a few heroic Jesuit missionaries had been there, and they reported that there were twenty-four distinct nations dwelling in this beautiful, mysterious spot. Seventeen of these tribes were placid pagan people who were content to live at peace with their neighbors, even tolerating one community of Visayan Christians, who clung fearfully to a precarious foothold on the northern coast.

  But shortly after Spain had discovered the islands in 1521, there had come a horde of warlike Moros, little brown men from Borneo with pipestem legs and arms and apparently frail physiques which entirely belied their really extraordinary strength and stamina. They landed first at Basilan and spread rapidly over the land to establish themselves near the great rivers and inland lakes and to force the supremacy of Allah and his fierce prophet on this new country.

  As they grew and prospered, not content with local conquests, they organized piratical forays against the people of the Central and Northern Islands. When the southeast monsoon began to blow they would assemble in their war praus in some sheltered bay, hoist their lateen sails colored with brilliant tropic dyes and, with outriggers nicely set to balance their frail craft through the deep ocean swells, they would dash out to sea.

  Like a flock of stormy petrels they skimmed before the gale, swooping on their single wings to deal death and destruction to peaceful Filipino farmer and haughty Spanish don alike.

  Then sensing, as the sea birds they resembled do, the first veering of the wind to the north, they would swing south again ladened with gold, silver, arms, women for their harems, and children to be raised as slaves in their villages, immeasurably strengthened by each wild flight in their belief that, with Allah’s power to back them, they stood invincible against the world.

  To force these warring alien peoples to live at peace with each other was the tremendous problem that America had to solve when our war with Spain ended and we took over these fertile isles. Our Army officers, appointed governors of the far-flung provinces, had had no experience in such an undertaking.

  Up to at least 1910, there was almost constant fighting on the southern islands, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another. Few of these fights were recorded in the American press, indeed there was seldom any mention of them in the Manila papers, but they went on just the same and people were killed in them quite as conclusively as people were killed at Belleau Wood or Pearl Harbor. As Kipling said: “It doesn’t make any difference to a dead man whether he was killed in a border skirmish or at Waterloo.”

  A lot of this irregular warfare was amphibious; Navy gunboats took part in it and Navy personnel served ashore. Also the Navy frequently transported troops and maintained lines of communication.

  In February 1908, rumors having reached Manila of goings on in the south, Admiral Hemphill decided to make a tour of inspection in the old Spanish gunboat General Alava; the Rainbow drew too much water to enter the smaller harbors.

  We left Manila on January 9th and arrived at Camp Overton on the northern coast of Mindanao February 4th. Here the Alava left us and proceeded to Malabang on the southern coast where we were to join her after visiting the inland garrisons.

  Naval officers at Mindanao; Lieutenant Mannix is at extreme right.

  Overton lay between the ocean and the great jungle, a small Army post where officers and men were quartered in nipa shacks. Nipa is a kind of dried grass through which any sharp object, such as a spear head, can easily be thrust. Our first lesson in jungle etiquette was an admonition never to lean against the walls while occupying these frail huts but to sit as near the middle of the room as possible.

  The local regiment lived in an eternal unrest ready to move on any foe in any direction at any moment, for here the famous “trail” began that wound gradually upwards through mountain passes to Camp Keithley on the shores of Lake Lanao and descended again to Malabang. For forty miles it cut through the heart of the jungle, this narrow path that formed the white man’s sole means of communication in the enemy’s country.

  While we were at Overton, the Army received a message from an American who was living with a Moro wife in the interior. He had always considered himself quite safe, but now he had sent a runner through to Overton asking for help. An expedition was formed to bring him out. Five of us Navy men asked to go along. It was decided that we would continue on along the trail and rejoin our ship at Malabang.

  At six o’clock on the morning of February 5th, we started out. There were a hundred troopers of the Sixth Cavalry commanded by Lt. Archie Miller who, several years later, was to become an aviator and be killed in a plane crash. Our cavalrymen were all young fellows in their early twenties whose rough campaigning had not left an ounce of superfluous flesh on them. They were not big men, about five feet seven or so, and they were so trained down that they looked positively gaunt.

  In ten minutes after leaving Overton the sea had disappeared and we rode through a primeval and apparently impenetrable jungle. On either side were dense tangled masses of green interspersed with vividly colored orchids and other gorgeous masses of tropic bloom. In many places the high trees met overhead reducing the light to a semblance of dusk. Riding through these twilight alleys we would be suddenly blinded by the full glare of the morning sun pouring through a rift in the branches.

  Once, as we were passing under a great tree whose huge branches stretched over the trail, the trooper next to me pointed out a long line of gray monkeys who were seated just above our heads. They squatted with their backs to us, arms around each other, tails hanging down in parallel lines, deep in weighty confab.

  As we advanced they turned simultaneously looking over their shoulders. Then they began to scream and chatter. Our Navy doctor was particularly annoyed by their behavior and, drawing his pistol, aimed it at the bobbing gray mass but, before he could pull the trigger, Miller had him by the wrist. “Don’t shoot,” he said. “The noise of it will bring down every hostile Moro within hearing.”

  We waited silently for a while to make sure the monkeys had not betrayed us. Then we continued on to a little clearing where stood the American’s nipa cabin.

  Not more than an hour before our arrival (so our Filipino scouts believed) the Moro tribesmen had crept out of the brush and, surrounding the little building, fired cross volleys through the nipa walls. Then, in a swift rush, they had closed in completing their hideous work with a typical but
chery.

  I shall never forget that clearing. The deserted home, walls smashed in, door sagging open on its one remaining hinge and, across the gaping threshold, the shocking corpse of the white man lying in a pool of blood. We never found his Moro wife nor knew her fate. Had she betrayed her husband, or, remaining faithful, been dragged off to torture in the heart of the jungle?

  A squad of troopers dismounted, hastily improvised a horse litter, placed the body on it and quickly swung back into their saddles. Miller issued a curt command against straggling and, putting spurs to the nervous horses, we plunged again into the somber forest. With the Moros “out” no loitering was possible; we had to reach Camp Keithley before sunset.

  The trail was just wide enough to allow two men to ride abreast. We could touch the vegetation on either hand but it was so dense we couldn’t see through it. A little further on, we heard the noise of some terrific battle in the brush.

  “Dismount!” shouted Miller. In a second we were all on our feet, ready for the attack. Nothing happened. Moving cautiously through the underbrush we found a six-foot lizard with his head jammed in an abandoned meat tin. He was rolling around on his prehistoric back clawing frantically at the tin like a kitten with her head in a milk jug, a most undignified exhibition for a descendant of the dinosaurs.

  We released the lizard and rode on. Only once did we see any humans. We passed a clearing where two Moros were at work. The soldiers hailed them and waved a greeting. The Moros, showing their pointed teeth, snarled like angry dogs. Evidently they were not a bit afraid of the soldiers in spite of our numbers and weapons. I don’t believe they were afraid of anything.

  Our way now began to slope gradually upward across the mountain chain that forms the backbone of this part of Mindanao. At times it became very narrow and excessively steep. As we approached these rises a shout would go down the line: “Remember the Maine” whereupon every man would lean forward, take a firm grip of his horse’s mane and rise in the stirrups to relieve the saddle of as much weight as possible lest it slip and deposit him in some deep ravine.

  The scenery grew indescribably wild and majestic; waterfalls dashed themselves into foam over the rocky sides of canyons whose massive walls were still covered by the relentless jungle. Just at sunset we had our first view of beautiful Lake Lanao lying like a blue cloud on the very top of the mountains. Keithley sprawled on its banks, the little nipa huts and frail barrios so dwarfed by the great lake and the isolation and menace of the trees it seemed impossible that for three long years they had maintained their foothold in this wilderness serving as a base for all the mounted troops.

  We were to see another example of Moro warfare that night. We made quite a party at the colonel’s table and among the guests was the newly appointed civil governor of Lanao Province. He was a Harvard graduate, a man with very positive ideas, well over six feet and weighing two hundred pounds. He had come to the Philippines a short time before with the fixed idea that justice and kindness were all that was needed in dealing with non-civilized peoples. He had evidently formed the habit of visiting outlying barrios and conferring with the natives without keeping the Military informed of his actions.

  The Army officers spent most of the dinner hour urging him to restrict his visits to daylight hours but he received their advice in a stubborn silence that showed quite plainly he meant to ignore it, so no one was surprised when later on he started off alone on one of his nocturnal strolls.

  It was a rainy night and he was tramping along a muddy trail with the jungle close on either hand, his only light a hand lantern when suddenly (as he afterwards told us) at the edge of the flickering yellow arc, he saw a shadow slip from behind a bush to crouch close to his path. Raising the lantern he saw a diminutive shape, completely enveloped in a dark cloak, huddled like a gnome at his feet.

  Without a moment’s hesitation he set his lantern on the ground, raised his right hand and calling, “Amigo!” took a step toward the eerie figure. The cloak swayed slightly, the bell-like muzzle of an old blunderbus appeared from beneath it, a flash illuminated the dim trail and with a roar the old weapon belched its charge of broken glass, stones, and rusty nails directly into his face at a range of ten feet.

  The noise was heard by us back in the camp and a scouting party soon located the governor lying face downward in the mud and water. They carried him back to camp through the wind and rain, slipping and sliding under his weight in the ooze of the trail. Curiously he had not been struck in the body but both arms and his right leg received severe wounds, and it was found necessary to amputate the leg.

  The following day was to be spent in rest before starting the long descent to Malabang on the south coast, but Keithley had one more thrill still in store for us.

  That night a hostile Moro slipped into the camp and crawled under one of the buildings used as a barracks. Lying flat on his back he thrust a spear through a crack in the floor; the spear pierced the canvas bottom of a soldier’s cot passing through the mattress into his body. The soldier screamed and his comrades woke to find him transfixed.

  Rushing out into the dark they saw the Moro, apparently unarmed, creeping from beneath the barracks. Two men attempted to seize him but found that his body had been greased and he easily slipped through their hands. Before the soldiers could leap out of reach he snatched a barong from his breech clout and, with a single sweeping slash which began with the withdrawal of the heavy knife from its sheath, he cut off the left arm of the man nearest him as neatly as a surgeon could have done it.

  The soldiers ran in every direction leaving a path clear to the jungle. Down it he fled followed by random shots, a wild black figure in the moonlight, only to fall within a few feet of the first trees dropped by a scattered volley from the hastily loaded rifles. He was immediately surrounded but, before anyone was allowed to approach him, a soldier with a long bamboo pole struck the barong out of his hand. He had received more than twenty wounds before he died.

  We were all glad when we were finally off on the last leg of our journey to Malabang, our backs turned on the beauty and tragedy of the mountains and our hearts filled with admiration for the Army of Occupation. We had hardly left the post when a horse shied violently at something concealed by the underbrush. Slipping their stirrups the flanking troopers dismounted and, deploying warily, entered the jungle but instead of the Moros they expected to find, they stumbled over a python nearly forty feet long. It was lying on the ground as though asleep and half way down its length a prominent bulge showed that it had recently dined. The bulge proved to be a fifty pound wild hog swallowed whole.

  As we looked I sensed that we were being watched by something or somebody in the jungle. Before I could put my thoughts into words there was a slight movement of the tall grass and, without the slightest sound, a group of men appeared.

  They wore the uniform of American soldiers except, instead of the campaign hat, their heads were covered, Mohammedan fashion, with a red fez. They wore wrap puttees, then regulation in the Army, but right there the American uniform stopped. They were all barefooted, hence the absolute silence of their movements. Looking at their feet, I could understand why one of the Moros’ deadliest weapons were sharpened bamboo spikes hidden under leaves along the trail although not even the heavy soled boots of the soldiers were much protection against the knife sharp, steel hard spikes.

  These were the famous Moro Constabulary; Moros who had formerly fought for the Spaniards and had now transferred their allegiance to us. When, a few minutes later, they resumed their march they seemed to fade into the woods; there must have been fifty of them but they made no more noise than a hunting cat.

  The soft tropic twilight was filling the woods with fantastic gray shadows and dimly glimpsed ghosts that flitted before and around us as we rode down the last slope to Malabang. Our horses were very restless, snorting and sweating as they picked their way out of the dense th
ickets into a partial clearing. Miller passed the word down the line, “There are Moros about. The horses can smell them. Prepare for an attack.”

  Suddenly my mount threw back his head in wild terror and bolted across the opening in a series of mad leaps. Miller yelled: “Fall off, fall off, don’t let him get you among the trees!” Off I went and into the jungle raced the horse. A crash of breaking branches, a rapidly diminishing clatter of hoof beats and he was gone. We never saw him again.

  “Keep close to us until we reach Malabang,” Miller told me. “Even a gun isn’t always a match for a barong. I saw a constabulary sergeant who was attacked by a Moro and tried to protect his head by executing the high parry with his rifle. The barong cut the steel barrel of the rifle in two and killed the sergeant. No, I wouldn’t have believed it possible either if I hadn’t seen it.” I kept close.

  Below us lay the sea and the twinkling lights of the little port; another hour of arduous scrambling down the steep trail and we were in her sleepy, dirty streets. At the end of a squalid alley we found the Alava anchored in the stream, her chain was at short stay, the gun covers off her 6-pounders, steam was up and she lay ready to slip out to sea the moment we reached her. The Moros were busy in more islands than one, the monsoon was moderating, and we were to depart at once for the ancient walled city of Jolo across the Sulu Sea.

  Jolo is only five degrees above the equator and within easy sailing distance of Borneo. Borneo was the stronghold of the Moros, and at the time of our visit the only part of the island occupied by Americans was the town of Jolo. The walls were loop-holed for defense and had three gates which were kept open only during the daylight hours.

  At each gate was a strong military guard, and when the country people entered the town to sell their fruit and vegetables they were carefully searched for weapons. This did not prevent certain fanatics from throwing their weapons over the wall before passing through the gates and afterwards recovering and concealing them. To prevent this, a considerable area had been cleared around the town and sentries were posted in watch towers but still some of the fanatics were able to elude them.