Woman soldiers join bombardment

PIKIT, North Cotabato – Sometimes it takes a woman to do a man’s job.

Two young female military officers played key roles in the government’s aerial and armor offensives last week against the combined forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Pentagon kidnap gang.

Ground forces of the Philippine Marines as well as the Army’s 602nd Brigade and 6th Infantry Division would not have succeeded in liberating 12 barangays here from the joint control of the MILF and the Pentagon if not for the help of pilots of the Philippine Air Force (PAF), among them 2Lt. Joycelyn Patrimonio.

Another woman who figured in the fierce battle last week with marauding MILF forces in Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat is 2Lt. Vanessa Saldaña of the Army’s Light Armor Brigade.

The 25-year-old Patrimonio, piloting an MG-520 attack helicopter, was among the crew that carried out a six-day "selective bombardment" of rebel positions here and nearby towns that resulted in the death of an estimated 178 MILF guerrillas.

Patrimonio and other male pilots who flew MG-520s, OV-10 Broncos and the improvised single-engine "Layang-layang" bombers flew more than a hundred sorties from Feb. 11 to 16, providing air support to soldiers that cleared the once impregnable rebel-held territories from occupation by criminal gangs.

Patrimonio, who graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1998, belongs to the Tactical Operations Group 12 (TOG-12), the PAF’s main operating unit in Central Mindanao. Her parents, Jose and Ofelia, are both enlisted members of the PAF based at the Edwin Andrews Air Force Base in Zamboanga City.

Among the objectives which the Army, Marines and TOG-12 jointly accomplished was the capture of the well-fortified residence of the MILF’s reclusive leader, Hashim Salamat, at the Buliok complex in North Cotabato.

Maj. Gen. Generoso Senga, Army 6th Infantry Division commander, was quick to acknowledge the role of the TOG-12, led by Col. Carlix Donila, in their successful six-day campaign against the Pentagon gang members who used the MILF enclaves as hideouts.

"They exemplified courage and professionalism in performing their jobs in support of our peacekeeping missions in this town and adjoining areas," Senga said.

Donila said it was also during last week’s bombardments where they tested the efficiency of improvised cluster bombs produced by PAF researchers, who also upgraded the indigenous Layang-layangs from light trainer planes to highly agile fixed-wing bombers.

Saldaña, meanwhile, commanded soldiers in two Simba combat vehicles that provided armor support to militiamen, who were led by local officials of Lambayong and soldiers of the 301st Brigade.

The government troops fought some 300 MILF rebels who snatched 20 civilians on Thursday, intent on using them as human shields to forestall military strikes against them.

Although outnumbered, the militiamen and only about four squads of combined combatants of the 47th Infantry Battalion, the Army’s Special Forces and the local police succeeded in blocking the rebels’ escape route with Saldaña’s Simba vehicles.

Forty-four MILF and Pentagon gang members were killed in a running gunbattle never before witnessed in the history of the nearly 40-year secessionist conflict in Central Mindanao.

The civilians who were held hostage were subsequently rescued by responding militiamen from neighboring towns half a day after they were abducted from their villages in Lambayong.

Officials of the 6th Infantry Division, including Senga, who rushed to scene of the firefight in Lambayong to verify reports of kills by their units in the area, found 29 bodies of MILF and Pentagon gang members who were slain as they tried to escape.

At least 15 more bodies of rebels who were wounded in the skirmishes and died while heading for Liguasan Marsh were found the next day by pursuing militiamen in a swampy area not far from the getaway watercraft waiting for them.

During the military’s restoration of government control over the MILF’s Camp Rajah Muda here in July 2000, it was also a woman — then 2Lt. Victoria Blancaflor, also a graduate of the PMA — who led a column of Simba and battle tanks that sent more than a thousand rebels positioned in the area fleeing for their lives.