By Art Villasanta
Philippine Daily Inquirer
In an astonishing act of humanity and selflessness, the Philippines
sent its soldiers to defend South Korea against a massive communist
invasion despite its having to contend with a communist rebellion of its
own and the painful challenge of rebuilding an economy crippled by
World War II.
The Philippines was the first Asian country to send combat troops to
the Korean War that began on June 25, 1950. Its soldiers protected South
Korea until 1955.
The first Filipino warrior set foot on Korea at the port city of
Busan (formerly Pusan) on Sept. 19, 1950. The 10th Battalion Combat Team
(BCT) was the first of five BCTs that would serve in Korea until June
1955 under the flag of the elite Philippine Expeditionary Force to Korea
or Peftok.
Over 7,400 officers and men of the Philippine Army served in Korea.
Five of these warriors—all in their 80s—recently returned to Korea for
the first time since the Korean War. The Korean government sponsored
their visit as part of the “Revisit Korea Program” for the Filipino war
veterans and their families.
These veterans were accompanied by 15 other Filipinos who were either
their children or grandchildren. Their host was South Korea’s Ministry
of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.
These veterans were all astounded at the massive progress Korea had
made over the past six decades. One veteran noted that our present
economic situation is the reverse of what it had been in the 1950s.
The Philippines then was Southeast Asia’s leading economic and
military power and Asia’s second largest economy after Japan. From being
one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1950s, South Korea is now one
of the world’s 30 richest in per capita gross domestic product.
Oldest war veteran
“I can’t believe how fast South Korea has improved since the Korean
War,” said Jesus Dizon, who at 86 is the oldest Korean War veteran among
the “revisitors.” “It’s a tribute to the Korean people.”
His unit was the 20th BCT, the second Filipino BCT deployed to Korea.
Dizon was a forward observer or FO, the most dangerous of allied
soldiers, whose job was to identify targets for the six 105mm howitzers
of the battalion’s field artillery battery.
FOs got their deadly job done with a field telephone; a pair of
powerful binoculars, maps—and a great deal of courage. They normally
occupied well-hidden positions on hilltops or other dominating terrain
near the enemy and spent days searching for enemy activity. The power of
life or death held by an FO was terrifying.
In North Korea one morning, a large number of communist Chinese
soldiers suddenly appeared below a ridgeline Dizon had been observing
for some time. Dizon located the enemy unit on the grid map spread
before him.
He calmly picked up his field telephone and called in the target
coordinates to the battery’s fire direction center of the battalion’s
artillery battery emplaced a few kilometers behind him.
“Fire!” he ordered.
A single high-explosive 105mm round exploded away from the Chinese
unit. Dizon noted the fall of the ranging round through his binoculars.
He reported the adjusted range over the phone and commanded the entire
battery to open fire.
Six 105mm howitzers manned by Filipinos unleashed shell after shell
into the Chinese. Dizon saw the bewildered Chinese engulfed by
horrifying explosions as murderous blasts tore apart their unit.
The inferno was over in about a minute. A dirty
pall of dust and smoke from the barrage lingering over the tragedy
served as the gravestone for dozens of dead Chinese.
Wounded in action
“All of this was flat,” exclaimed Luminoso
Cruz, referring to the thriving and crowded city of Suwon, 30 kilometers
south of Seoul. “It was flat and gray. This city was totally
destroyed.”
Suwon was where Cruz’s unit, the 10th BCT,
spent its first Christmas in Korea. That was in 1950 and the 10th was
the first of the five BCTs that served in Korea.
Cruz, a member of Recon Company, was the gunner
of an M24 Chaffee light tank armed with a 75mm cannon. He took a
shrapnel wound to the head along the banks of the Imjin River and was
visibly moved as the bus crossed the river north during his visit to the
Demilitarized Zone.
“This was where I was wounded,” he said, pointing to the bank of the Imjin, while holding back his tears.
He fought in a two-man foxhole at the great Battle of Yuldong, which he recalled as a night of incredible terror.
“The Chinese attacked us in waves all night. My
buddy and I just kept firing and firing our rifles,” he recalled of
this gory battle, which was fought on April 23, 1951.
He doesn’t know how they survived the murderous
hell of Yuldong. But his buddy had to be sent home afterwards. His
nerves had given way under the terror of too much savage combat.
They called it “shell shock” then. We call it “post-traumatic stress disorder” today.
The Battle of Yuldong was the greatest Filipino
victory in the Korean War. A mere 900 Filipino fighting men withstood
the night attack of an entire communist Chinese army that numbered
40,000 men at peak strength.
In standing their ground at Yuldong, the
Filipinos fatally slowed down the largest Chinese offensive of the war,
and probably helped prevent the destruction of the United Nations forces
and the communist conquest of South Korea.
One man’s handiwork
Amiable and talkative, Florendo Benedicto
served in both the 10th BCT and the 20th BCT. He decided to “re-up” or
reenlist in the 20th BCT because he loved combat.
Benedicto stands almost 6-ft tall. In the Army
at the time, tall men generally wound up becoming gunners in the belief
they could carry heavier loads.
Benedicto’s weapon was the M1919 Browning .30
cal. medium machine gun that could fire up to 600 rounds a minute. The
gun itself weighed 14 kilograms and it was Benedicto’s job to lug the
gun onto the battlefield and fire it at the communist enemy. He did this
on many occasions in two years of fighting.
He believes that South Korea’s enviable economic blessings are due mostly to the strong unity pervading South Koreans.
“Their national unity is worth emulating,” he
said. “Filipinos should learn from the South Koreans. We have to
establish love in the heart of every Filipino. We must love one
another.”
It is a startling transformation for a formerly
fierce warrior. It is all the more surprising if one knows what he did
in the Korean War.
“I know I killed about 200 Chinese,” he said
calmly when we talked about this. “I probably killed 300 more. I counted
their dead bodies.”
Benedicto’s feat is all the more astounding
since only 112 Filipino soldiers died in three years of combat in the
Korean War despite almost constant fighting.
Winter experience
Constancio Sanchez turned 24 on the historic
day the 10th BCT arrived by ship at Busan on Sept. 19, 1950, less than
three months after the start of the Korean War on June 25.
Knowing this, his officers allowed Sanchez to
become one of the first Filipino fighting men to set foot on Korean
soil. His mates then treated him to merienda at one of the restaurants
in the port city then being besieged by the communist North Korean
People’s Army.
Sanchez served in the Headquarters &
Headquarters & Service Company, the command group of the 10th BCT.
The battalion was founded and first commanded by Col. Mariano Azurin.
Col. Dionisio Ojeda replaced Azurin in the spring of 1951.
Of all the dangers he faced in the war, Sanchez
remains awed by that phenomenon alien to Filipino experience called
winter. It was December 1950 and the battalion was in Pyongyang when the
communist Chinese intervened and hurled the United Nations Command
(including the 10th BCT) out of North Korea.
The winter of 1950-1951 was Korea’s coldest in
two centuries but this did nothing to dispel the savage fighting that
actually intensified with the Chinese intervention.
“We were shocked when the Chinese came and
advanced so quickly,” he said. “We had to withdraw rapidly to avoid
encirclement and it was terribly cold.”
Things would have been far worse for the
battalion if the Chinese had attacked earlier, Sanchez believes. The
onset of winter a month earlier immobilized most of their motor
vehicles.
The intense subzero cold froze the water in
engines and shattered engine blocks. This paralyzed most of the
battalion’s vehicles, including those in the transport-heavy HQ & HQ
& Service Company.
Adding antifreeze to the water solved the
problem, however, so that when the Chinese came, the battalion’s trucks,
jeeps and armored vehicles kept running despite the intense cold.
“We probably wouldn’t have escaped from Pyongyang if we had to march on foot through the snow.”
Rediscovering God
Prudencio Medrano served in the HQ & HQ
& Service Company of the 19th BCT, the third Peftok unit deployed to
Korea, and re-upped for another year with the 14th BCT. And this was
because of his friends.
“I re-enlisted because we were ‘buddy-buddy,’”
he said. “Five of my buddies in the 19th BCT decided to extend. They
asked me if I wanted to extend and I did because they were my buddies.”
In both BCTs, Medrano served as a radio
operator of their battalion commanders—Col. Ramon Aguirre of the 19th
and Col. Nicanor Jimenez of the 14th.
With the 19th, Medrano recalled he was often in
the advanced command post with Colonel Aguirre. His job was to transmit
and receive voice messages and telegraph messages via Morse Code. Lives
depended on the accuracy of his messages.
Medrano rediscovered God amid the horror of the
Korean War. The long spells between action and boredom along the static
front line gave him time to reflect on things spiritual.
(Editor’s Note: The author is a historian
of the Korean War. Among his stories published in this newspaper is one
about the P500 bill being a memorial to the Philippines’ involvement in
that war. His Korean War website is www.peftok.blogspot.com.)
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