ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE SIERRA MADRE

I STOOD NAKED with 499 other “captives” on a cold and windy early morning of January 1989. My time in Tanay, Rizal is winding out in about two weeks. Infront of us are our sets of fatigue uniforms and combat boots piled high like a mountain on a road junction at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range.

I am assigned as pathfinder and I am issued a compass to lead 100 people back to Camp Capinpin during the escape and evasion phase. At a given signal, we are going to break free from our “holding area” in a deep valley and recover our clothes up here. I don't think I could do that in utter confusion. But I marked where my uniforms lay and I don't have to go far. I have to think fast.

Up ahead is a clump of grass surviving in the middle of the road going down to that valley. It is almost shoulder high and I believe no one could imagine that it could hide a big guy in there. But first, I would retrieve what my grandfather taught me many years ago: to sit still like a rock and harness my mind to confuse the “enemy” before I could reunite with my uniform and boots.

Then a rifle shot cracked in the air and everyone stampeded down the road. I ran with the other “captives” and crouched low when I ran past the grass. Stealthily, I eased back into its protection. More shots were heard and more footsteps came hurrying down until there were no more. Then silence.

I bent my head between my knees, closed my eyes and willed my mind to go blank. I heard nothing except the wind and crunch of heavy boots and one of the “enemy” came close. Then the grass danced before a strong breeze and it is reassuring.

I could feel an “enemy” standing just a meter beside me unmindful of my presence. Warm exhaled air lightly touched my skin pores as it is carried by the breeze but I am a rock today and I am invisible. Discovery meant hard butt strokes from an Armalite or from an M14 and indescribable disgrace.

The “enemy” took three steps forward and I heard a loud metallic action as a round is loaded into the firing chamber. Then a burst of gunfire is fired into the air. Warm empty brass shells landed on my head and my back. Another burst is fired again. The “enemy” gave last-minute instructions and I could understand it clearly well.

Once the transport trucks leave, I opened my eyes. I looked around the surroundings and cautiously approach the mound of uniforms in a wide circle and found my boots and my army fatigues. By the time I was tying up the shoe lace for my last shoe, the first “captive” arrived, followed by another until all 499 milled around the mound. Everyone were grabbing for himself clothes and shoes, fitting this and that.

I just could not believe two guys fighting over the same shirt and a sleeve almost got separated. Elbows flew. Raised agitated voices rang in the cold morning. Wrong pairs of shoes scattered everywhere. Pants seesawed back and forth. Discipline learned the hard way evaporated. It took almost an hour before the crowd settled down and donned their uniforms in the best way they can.

I regrouped my 100 and I stifled a laugh at their appearance. Each group is on its own and we are five in all. Then the whole 500 traveled as if it is one group and that is insane. I decide to break away for I know the “enemy” will be waiting and laughing. From here to the camp are “enemy” checkpoints and discovery meant physical humiliation.

Half of my group questioned my logic and it is torn apart. I am left with fellow “captives” from the Visayas and Mindanao regions, to include my Moslem brothers. My ragtag group evaded several checkpoints over a land that I am not familiar with. I led them by studying the terrain and chose where my route would take with a characteristic cunning taught by grandpa.

My group arrived first at half past noon inside Camp Capinpin undetected and I reported to my training officer. Half of my command is found missing during headcount and I bore the brunt of the punishment but that is nothing compared to the ignominy of being “recaptured” at the checkpoints which the rest were, several times.

Really, it is nothing for I found solace in the fact that I have outwitted the veteran Scout Rangers at their own game and turf.

Document done in Libre Office 3

Sketch in ballpoint pen by PinoyApache

REMEMBERING MY TIME IN THE GATEWAY OF THE SIERRA MADRE

THE TALL MARINE manning the gate gave me a hard punch in the solar plexus. I winced and retreated away when the Marine held his Armalite, butt first, towards me. I faked the hurt so I could evade his aggressive challenge and the impending rifle butt blow. I succeeded there but I bade goodbye to my dinner and my freedom.

I am stuck inside the Navy headquarters in Roxas Boulevard together with 240 others on the night of August 14, 1988. I hadn't prepared much at the last minute and I missed my dinner and tomorrow we will all be trucked to faraway Camp Capinpin. An empty stomach tonight wouldn't help me and I hope breakfast will be served early morning.

Breakfast did not came and it was a shock. Let's see what this kid is made of. I grew up very pampered by my grandparents and I taste life very differently from the rest of my neighbors my age although I get to do chopping firewood at the behest of my grandma and the rest of the time I could do as I please even playing basketball from sunup to sundown almost everyday.

I was in the prime of my youth then at 25 and I am quite reckless when my mind sets on to something. I don't know how my civilian hardheadedness would fare under the baton of the military, but, I have got to try and test my manhood. I loathed the military in the early years when Martial Law was imposed in '72 and I disdained uniforms and any vestige of authority after that. I decide to change all that.

I marched with 1,800 other candidate soldiers from the Army, the Navy, the Constabulary, the Air Force and the Presidential Security Group into the barracks of the Armed Forces' training facility inside Camp Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal after a whole day of toiling under the sun, without water and rest and a glorious stretch of an unimpeded roll down a high hill into a pond.

I cast my lot with the 8th Battalion after a head count and, at that moment, I was assigned as the provisional battalion commander because of my physique and height. Hell, if they only knew that I have never got a liking for the military's pomp and pageantry. If they only knew that the only field commands I know are in English learned during Boy Scout.

For one whole week I stuttered in Tagalog and got my head banged by my own steel helmet and my chest a target of enraged Tactical NCOs everytime I dished a wrong command until my throat gave way to sores and coughs and much more coughing weeks after that. It was a reprieve and a blessing in disguise as I was demoted to platoon sergeant then rose back to battalion staff owing to my pedigree – being a son of a policeman!

You are not allowed to sleep early, not until you hear the taps, which always came at ten in the evening and you are not allowed to stay in bed after 3:30 AM, for at four, the reveille¹ will start. Early morning in Camp Capinpin is very cold and thick fogs envelop the area. You just wear Army shorts, sneakers and a white shirt and try your damnedest best to heat your body up during the Army Dozen² to beat the cold.

After the reveille, the battalion then run as a group out of the camp and into a mountain road. It is not rare that other battalions would engage another in a test of strength and speed goaded behind by a Tactical NCO carrying a big stick. Honestly, my battalion always lose out every race to another and it is not a secret that our Tactical NCOs lose bets and gets the brunt of the taunts from their counterparts where, our battalion is forever bleached under the sun resulting from these losses.

Camp Capinpin lie at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range³. It is the headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Division. It is also the home of a detachment of Scout Rangers where we get to be taught by the finest and most battle-hardened instructors. This is the time where my senses are keen and I absorbed the instructions very well. Instructions that supplemented with what I learned from my grandfather and an uncle – all veterans of different wars.

I get to practice generosity in Capinpin by showing my Muslim brothers where to catch fish during a Ramadan season. I get to steep my endurance in an ever-increasing distance of uphill running into the Sierra Madre Mountain Range. I get to hone my courage by exceeding deeds beyond my expectations. Finally, I get to snare wisdom by outwitting veteran soldiers during practical soldierly undertakings.

I am a Cebuano-speaking rascal but I was able to get the sympathy and respect from my Muslim classmates – especially from the Tausugs – whom I considered as brothers of equal importance and skill. Aside that, I get to gain acceptance from the Visayan-speaking ethnics of Mindanao and from the higher-IQ residents of Metro Manila. Apart from them, I am but a promdi⁴ to others and my feeble diplomatic skills face a brick wall there.

During those road-running sorties up on the hills, my stamina increased each week. Of course, it is aided by the religious adherence to the exercise program which increases in repetition each day. Running also increases in distance from five kilometers on the first day until I get to run my first and only full marathon⁵ during the last week of training.

Courage in the face of threats and bodily harm, these I faced every day. Instead of wincing and feigning hurt, I get to show my full dignity as a warrior by absorbing all the blows without complaint and putting on a stoic countenance that discouraged unusually rude Tactical NCOs. My courage gets also tested by leading men onto unfamiliar territory and unimaginable success over extremely difficult situations.

One situation I couldn't forget is when our long-time tormentor, a PAF sergeant, caught my company in a different route and began butting everyone with the end of the rifle barrel on the abdomen. Since I did not wince, he dropped his rifle and started after me with a punch in full force at my solar plexus. But a lensatic compass hung over my neck and invisible from his view, got hit instead and he suffered from it that he let us go to save face.

Lastly, the lectures I had of with my grandpa and my uncle were of use during the escape and evasion practicals. While everyone were herded down the road, I decided to remain and become invisible in a patch of grass in the middle of the road. You couldn't imagine an awfully tall guy hiding among a surviving clump of grass between two furrows made by truck wheels? But I did. And just a few inches from my unknowing “captor” who let loose a magazine of 5.56-mm ammo at his “prisoners” in full daylight.

I have become adept at map reading and navigation but the best lesson I got is when I suffered from hypothermia right after crossing the Daraitan River. I am drenched and I shook for hours. I placed my palms right over a fire. I caught every heat of the fire inside my worn poncho, but I still shook. I ate a warm meal and the shaking is still there and I thought I might pass over. I took off my wet boots and socks and walk over every warmed up pebble everywhere and it was gone.

After that, I climbed my first mountain in my life, in Mount Daraitan, which is part of the Sierra Madre, and hit small targets during live-fire exercises. Then I crossed the Daraitan River once again, this time crawling over a 2-inch thick rope⁶ and, one last time, drifting along a makeshift raft of poncho, pole and dry grass. I get to meet a lot of Dumagat⁷ people along the way and felt kinship with them.

December in the Sierra Madre is very cold and the fog just as thick. Proper military courtesy is practiced to the fullest even in zero visibility else you bump an officer and suffer for it by producing sweat⁸ to top off a Coke bottle. Discipline is never given a slack even during Christmas. Not even the flu will give you that chance to stretch and lie on your bunk except after taps. On the other hand, the best cure for this sickness is by “sweat patrol” under the heat of the sun in full combat gear wearing your poncho.

I have good memories of Camp Capinpin and I am proud to be one of those who toiled as the “lowest mammal”. I ate, slept, ran, crawled, climbed and got whacked to feel the hardships that accompany entry and acceptance into the most noble of profession – the profession of arms – and I shared these all with my batchmates, with whom I know not anymore of their whereabouts. Most of them may have joined their Creator in the fulfillment of their duties and I cherished their memories as only a warrior could do for another. For the rest of the living ones, my fervent prayers of protection.

This journey of the heart took me more than twenty years to make and I take this to writing to demonstrate to the reader that there is such a place called Camp Capinpin – the gateway to the Sierra Madre - that bred unknown patriots who give life and limb for our country, our freedom and our way of life. They have shunned the unregimented civilian life just so they could provide something for their families. These are men of steel grit and they are humans to a touch. They are soldiers.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer

Images by Eduardo David Pardo, Philippine Army website and Philippine Navy website

Ballpoint pen sketch by PinoyApache

1Early morning exercises.

2A set of early morning exercises which consist of twelve (12) different figures to be completed in four (4) counts and several repetitions each which increase in intensity every week.

3A mountain range in Eastern Luzon that extend from Quezon Province in the south to Cagayan Province in the north.

4A discriminatory slang or acronym derived of “from the province” instituted by Manilans against those that came from the countrysides.

5A 42-kilometer run from Camp Capinpin to Tanay proper and back with Armalite rifle, combat boots, steel helmet, fatigue uniforms and a 10-kilo rucksack which I finish in less than eight hours.

6Commando crawl. You balance atop a swinging rope and crawl over it from end to end.

7A Southern Luzon indigenous tribe who live on the hinterlands of Rizal, Quezon and Nueva Vizcaya.

8Physical punishment wherein you do repetitive exercise and the sweat adhering on your shirt is wrung repeatedly to and collected inside of an 8-ounce bottle until it is full. This is rather difficult during cold weather and you have to exert more effort.