Soldier's death inspires siblings

Private First Class Normel Palado may have died too young. Though his career as a Scout Ranger was abruptly cut short, however, his four brothers want to continue what he started.

The 20-year-old native of Aurora province was killed in the liberation of Narciso Ramos Highway in Maguindanao last May 4. His body, the head almost severed by Muslim rebels, was recovered two weeks later and brought to his family in a sealed coffin only last May 21.

Normel, the second of four sons, is now consi-dered a hero after being buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani at Fort Bonifacio in Makati City.

Normel's death may have shocked his parents and relatives, but not his siblings who now want to be Scout Rangers like him.

"I also want to be a soldier," his brother Melchor "Bongbong" Jr. said in Filipino. The youngest of the Palado boys, the nine-year-old Bongbong is only in Grade 3. "I want to defend the people," he said.

The Palado siblings have unknowingly fought a different war since their birth. The enemy, which also oppressed their grandparents and parents, is poverty.

Having relied on farming for their subsistence all their lives, the Palado boys have no recourse but to leave the province and seek a better life elsewhere.

Normel did just that. In June last year, he entered Camp Tecson in San Miguel, Bulacan for a six-month training. He finished seventh in his class last January.

In one of his letters to his mother Norie before being sent to Sultan Kudarat last April, Normel said he was better off earning a couple of thousand pesos as a soldier than being a "istambay na walang trabaho" (a jobless bum).

"Please be patient. Eventually I'll be sending you money after I finish paying off the debts I incurred from my meals when I was a trainee," he said in the local language.

Normel was concerned about his brothers whom he promised to send some cash for their schooling. He assured his mother that everything would be all right even though he had been assigned to an area besieged by war.

A sharp shooter and an aikido blackbelter, Normel was made part of a platoon that led the assault on Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas controlling the long Narciso Ramos Highway in the last week of April.

It was his fifth combat experience, and according to his fellow soldiers who survived the battle, he managed to shoot dead a number of rebels.

"They were just cornered. They ran out of bullets and failed to retreat," said his mother who found consolation in the fact that Normel died fighting.

The grief-stricken mother, however, is now worried for her four other sons who seem hell-bent in following Normel's footsteps.

Her eldest son, Alvaro, 22, already took the Scout Ranger's entrance exam while her third son, Richard, who is only 13, has made up his mind to become a soldier some day.

"They say they're not afraid even of the bullets of the Abu Sayyaf," she said.

The Abu Sayyaf and the MILF are both Muslim rebel groups fighting for a separate Islamic state in Mindanao. Since hostilities between them and government forces escalated this year, more than 100 soldiers have been killed while about half a million villagers have been displaced.

Normel's mother could only wish for the war to finally end. "I already lost a son. I may die if all my other sons would be sent to Mindanao," she said.