Marker of Filipino valor rises in Catubig, Samar

Few Filipinos know about the Catubig Battle in 1900, where Filipino guerrillas crushed the 43rd US Infantry Regiment in this Northern Samar town during the Filipino-American war. For more than a hundred years, the Catubig victory of the guerrillas (mostly natives of Samar) had remained unheralded. But on April 29, 2006, it finally found a place in Philippine history when the National Historical Institute (NHI) recognized it as a national historical event. On April 15, 2007, the battle’s 107th anniversary, the NHI, together with the great grandchild of Domingo Rebadulla, the leader of that famous siege, laid down a historical marker in honor of those who fought to take back the Catubig town from American colonizers. During the official recognition of the siege on April 29, 2006, Northern Samar Governor Raul A. Daza said “…we mark for the first time a glorious day in Philippine history. Today, we all proudly stand on the hallowed ground where it happened." One of the prime movers in efforts to give credit to the Catubig Siege is Leta Rebadulla L. de la Cruz, the great granddaughter of Domingo Rebadulla who led the guerrillas to victory against the Americans. The siege Prof. Cesar Torres, former University of the Philippines (UP) professor, and editor-in-chief of the Gugma Han Samar-Cyberspace Movement, who is now based in Richmond, CA, had told GMANews.TV that Mr. Quintin Lambino Doroquez was the first to write a substantive account of the historical find, which even UP historians have no knowledge about. Doroquez describes the Catubig Siege as a long and bloody battle between Filipino guerrillas and the American army. On April 15, 1900, the guerrillas launched a surprise attack on a detachment of US 43rd Infantry Regiment, forcing the Americans to abandon the town after the 4-day siege. A few days before the battle, the 43rd US Infantry Regiment arrived in Catubig to stop guerrillas from getting supplies from suspected sympathizers. This was a time when the conventional war in the Philippines had become ruthless guerrilla warfare. Members of the regiment were reportedly raw recruits, and had little experience in combat. In fact, they were only in the islands for four months. Armed with bolos, pistols, spears, and Spanish Mausers, hundreds of guerrillas rushed from surrounding hills and from the town itself in a surprise attack on the Americans. The guerrilla let loose a tremendous volley of gunfire that drove the entire regiment into the barracks. For two days, the regiment withstood a withering fire with a loss of two men. However, the guerrillas set the barracks ablaze with burning hemp. Unable to extinguish the fire, the US regiment fled the building and face the attackers. The whole regiment lost all co-ordination and broke up into two groups. One group ran for some boats on the riverbank and another for the rear of the barracks. All 15 men running for the boats were killed. Those who went to the rear of the barracks dug trenches with their bayonets. For another two days, they kept the guerrillas in check until the rescue party arrived from Lao-Aug aboard a steamer. The relief force saved the survivors and headed back to their base before the guerrillas could re-group and attack again. Twenty-one of the 31 soldiers of the regiment were killed and 16 were wounded. The Philippine losses were unknown. Some sources claim 150, but some believe the number of deaths could be less than that. Overlooked glory No one knows exactly the circumstances and the motives why it took the Philippine government 106 years to give the recognition befitting the Catubig victory. Mr. Doroquez offers one reason. He wrote that the battle of Catubig is an overlooked glory of Filipinos, which some observers attributed to the penchant of the US military at that time for spiriting away immediately to Washington, DC, any records of defeat in combat. Hence, he wrote, Filipino historians doing research in the Philippines—and writing history books with what they had—were left with incomplete information. The battle of Catubig had not appeared even in footnotes of Philippine history books. For the descendants of those who participated in that historic siege, the official recognition, even if given more than a century later, is a vindication of the sacrifices and deaths of their ancestors who fearlessly fought for the sake of freedom and won, putting to shame the mighty US Army. – GMANews.TV