PI Dangers

About the first or second night there, I was going back to my hooch and there was this Philipino guard walking around the hooches, I think that there were nine hooches. He was armed with a shot gun and wearing an insulated coat. I didn’t think anything of the shot gun but I thought why in the heck is he wearing a coat on a warm night like this. I just wasn’t acclimated yet and a year later I would understand.
Let’s talk about the guards walking around our hooches at night. When I was in the Philippines it really wasn’t a very safe place. I’ll give you some examples. They won’t be in any sort of order because I can’t remember the order.
One night I was awakened by some small arms fire. It sounded like there was some automatic weapons. The next morning I heard that some armed Pilipinos had entered a Nigrito village at the back gate to the base and killed some Nigritoes. King Alfons,king of the Nigritos, his wife and a Col. Loxamana were at a small Nigrito village in the jungle. They had spent the night there and when they got up the next morning King Alfons and his wife went down to the river to bathe. While they were gone some Philipinos armed with automatic weapons came into the village to kill King Alfons and started shooting things up. They killed Col. Loxamana and a couple of others. I was in the PI during their election. What an experience. I think their political system at the time was simple. Kill your opponent and he can’t run against you. One guy running for police chief was killed in the police station. Another gut running for something else was killed in a church. So that is why there were guards walking around the hooches. There were Communist insurgents called Huks in a small town not terribly far from the base called Tarlac. It’s kind of funny because where I work now, Joe, Jack and I interviewed a Philipino sergeant from Fairchild that was about to retire. We hired him as a environmental and safety guy. His home town was Tarlac. There were student demonstrations in Manila trying to get the Americans to leave the PI. So I think that should give you a pretty good picture of the situation there.
More later.