Marcos a hero? Not for Ninoy

Bonifacio Gillego was among the first of political foes to debunk Ferdinand Marcos’s World War II heroism. In 1982 the retired Army officer researched the sitting martial ruler’s past. Gathering from primary sources that Marcos was a bogus hero, Gillego spread the news.

At that time Marcos had convinced Filipino voters that he was their most decorated soldier of all time. In For Every Tear a Victory: The Story of Ferdinand E. Marcos (1964), biographer Hartzell Spence credited him with 28 Philippine and US military awards. Supposedly when Gen. Omar Bradley in 1947 saw Marcos’s six rows of ribbons headed by 22 medals, he saluted him.

Col. Uldarico Baclagon hailed Marcos, in Filipino Heroes of World War II (1980), for guerrilla exploits. His section on “Heroes of Kiangan” listed the outstanding fighters of the 14th Infantry Regiment, US Armed Forces in the Philippines-Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL), in the jungles of Panupdupan, Ifugao. The bravest of the brave supposedly was Col. Ferdinand Marcos. Baclagon recounted:            

• On March 17, 1945, though ill at the Regional Command Post (RCP) infirmary, Marcos left his sickbed and single-handedly held at bay an attacking enemy battalion. When counterattack failed, Marcos with one enlisted man penetrated the enemy lines, forcing them to withdraw with “two loads of dead and wounded.” Saving 200 women and children and 20 patients, he earned the Distinguished Conduct Star.

• On March 25, 1945, Marcos, as head of the 14th Infantry’s combat and engineering companies, repelled a Japanese attack on Hapid airstrip. The several days of seesaw battles, marked by hand-to-hand fighting, saved the RCP from routing, meriting Marcos the Silver Star.

• In April 1945, Marcos with one enlisted man on patrol spotted enemy forces in well-camouflaged trucks only a kilometer away from RCP. Sending back the enlisted man to report the sighting, Marcos, with a Thompson submachine gun, forced the Japanese to retreat after 30 minutes of fighting. For that he got the Gold Cross.

• Also in April 1945 Marcos allegedly participated in the Battle of Bessang Pass. He intercepted a Japanese suicide force tasked to capture the USAFIP-Northern Luzon supply depot. Baclagon did not specify what awards Marcos earned that time; the latter claimed during the 1986 snap presidential election to have been the reason for General Yamashita’s subsequent defeat.

Gillego noted that Baclagon had culled the Marcos stories from belated Philippine military citations alone. These were prepared not by the commanding officer (CO) right after battle, as is usual, but by a politicized General Headquarters in 1963 nearly 20 years later. It was so unlike the US Court of Claims, Gillego wrote. That court in 1947 had rejected as unfounded Marcos’s claim for $594,900 war reparation for the US Army’s alleged commandeering of 2,366 heads of cattle from a nonexistent family ranch in Mindanao.

Gillego learned that 27 of Marcos’s 28 medals were awarded between 1948 and 1963. Spence’s account of General Bradley saluting Marcos’s 22 medals in 1947 was baseless.

Gillego sought out Marcos’s COs, Col. Romulo A. Manriquez and Capt. Vicente L. Rivera, 14th Infantry commander and executive officer respectively. Both by 1982 had retired from the service and taken up law in America. Manriquez was working at the US Veterans Administration in Washington, Rivera a Detroit Filipino community leader and author.

Shown the general orders for the issuance of the Marcos medals, Manriquez belittled these as “typewriter decorations.” These were based solely on affidavits made long after the events. Angrier was Manriquez when given General Willoughby’s book, The Guerrilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines. For there he is listed as one of the officers of Marcos’s “Ang Mga Maharlika” guerrilla force with the nom de guerre “Pigsa (Carbuncle).” He called the group fictitious.

Manriquez said Marcos had reported to him in December 1944 months after the Leyte Landing. Given his lawyer training, Marcos was posted as S-5 in charge of civil affairs. Marcos never was assigned to any combat mission or fired a shot at the enemy, Manriquez swore. One day a sergeant came running to RCP to report the sighting of an enemy patrol a mile away. Whereupon Marcos “ran to a nearby creek raising his .45-caliber pistol with a quavering hand.”

Rivera recalled helping incorporate the USAFIP-NL into a veterans association, and serving as chairman for awards and decorations. Never did he recommend Marcos for citation. On March 17, 1945, the day Marcos supposedly held at bay the attacking enemy, there was not much action. Except that, as recorded in Rivera’s memoirs, Marcos as Officer of the Day left for duty around the RCP perimeter. At around 3 a.m. the men were awakened by gunfire. Investigating, Maj. Arturo Dingcong reported that it was Marcos firing at rustling leaves he had thought to be Japanese snipers. A phantom force had earned him the Distinguished Conduct Star, Gillego exclaimed.

Rivera averred that Marcos never participated in the Battle of Hapid, where he gained the Silver Star, or the Battle of Bessang Pass. As for the sighting of camouflaged Japanese trucks a mile away from RCP that ensued in a firefight and the Gold Cross, Rivera cited geography to belie Marcos. The RCP in Panupdupan was half a day’s hike from the nearest road.

Gillego ended his research with a dig at Spence: “For every medal, a fakery?” He signed it under the title, “Marcos: the Hero of Kiangan Who Never Was.” The manuscript was cleared by first-hand sources Colonel Manriquez and Captain Rivera, who signed each of the 11 pages.

On September 2, 1982, Gillego met with opposition leaders Ninoy Aquino, Raul Manglapus, and the latter’s son-in-law Benjamin Maynigo. Over coffee at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, they reviewed the piece, with Manriquez and Rivera clarifying certain points. Then, Aquino and Maynigo too signed in concurrence.

Gillego entrusted the original to Manglapus. Manglapus’s son Francis rediscovered it two years ago in the father’s files.

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