Matthew Westfall's Blog, page 5

Chasing Aguinaldo

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Cartoons of the Day

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Throughout the war, American newspapers ran a number of racist and insulting cartoons that depicted General Emilio Aguinaldo and his Army of Revolution as not much more than corrupt, cowardly dictatorship on the run. No doubt, the inability of the US forces to capture the rebel general, the ‘center of gravity’ to the insurrection, was deeply frustrating.

The Spaniards Capitulate at Baler

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On June 2, 1899, less than two months after Lieutenant Gillmore and his fellow sailors began their captivity as prisoners of war, the Spaniards under siege at Baler capitulated to the Filipino revolutionary force that had surrounded the church where they had taken refuge for eleven long months. The emaciated men were marched to Manila and repatriated to Spain, where they were lauded as heroes, the last holdouts for Spanish empire.

The Gillmore Party’s Trek Begins

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Another illustration from Gillmore’s story in McClure’s Magazine, published in 1900. Here, their captors are depicted as near-naked savages bearing spears and bows and arrows, while a chattering troop of crab-eating macaques swings in the trees above.

Into the Sierra Madres

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Fearing that the USS Yorktown would attempt to rescue Lt. Gillmore and his men, the Filipino rebels marched the prisoners of war away from the coast. They were hiked out of the valley and into the forbidding Sierra Madre Mountains, the domain of warring Ilongot headhunters.

To Die Like an Officer and a Gentleman

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Lieutenant Gillmore and the sailors who had survived the rebel ambush were lined up for execution along the banks of the Baler River. Gillmore, as the story was spun, then defied his captors and refused a blindfold, demanding he be allowed to die like “an officer and a gentleman“. At the last moment, a senior Filipino commander, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Tecson, arrived on the scene to halt the execution, and berated his men for both their both their short-sighted thinking and the potential violation of the rules of war.

Gillmore’s Record of Delinquencies at Annapolis

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Slapped with an increasing number of demerits for infractions ranging from skylarking to hazing to intoxication, Cadet Gillmore crossed the line in an alcohol-fueled incident on November 18, 1874 and was expelled from the Naval Academy. After the intercession of his family’s wealthy, politically-connected network of friends and business partners, however, Gillmore was taken back at Annapolis and given a final chance. The incident, and the associated demerits, were erased from his academic record, as seen above.