The devil you know

Matthew Westfall has plenty of roots in Manila. The author of The Devil’s Causeway, an account of a rescue mission gone awry and the first American prisoners of war during the country’s war for independence, has spent 30 years here, first in the Peace Corps, then as a development banker and documentary filmmaker. Not only that, his grandfather — a German-Russian — became naturalized here in 1921 and was a chemist for San Miguel Brewery. (His grandmother, also living in Manila, chose to relocate to California after her husband died in 1937 and the Second World War started brewing.)

So Westfall is more than just a parachute observer of the Philippines. His historical account feels woven into the fabric of life here. Set in 1899, just after Spain has surrendered and the US has paid some $20 million to “acquire” the Philippines, The Devil’s Causeway takes up the story of a rescue mission ordered by US Admiral Dewey: the “prisoners” were a batch of Spanish soldiers holed up in a Baler church (most Filipinos know that part) even after the war was declared over; what’s less known is how local Spanish Archbishop Nozaleda pleaded with the American admiral to retrieve them (fearing perhaps that angry Filipinos would set fire to the church). When the warship USS Yorktown was sent to mount a rescue, and its commander, Lt. James C. Gillmore Jr., ignored warnings and plunged upriver, the narrative took a nightmarish Heart of Darkness turn: the men were captured by rebels and held hostage. Another daring rescue needed to be mounted.

The story of that American mission — and the subsequent release of the American troops — makes for vivid reading, not unlike a novel or screenplay.

Not surprising, since one of Westfall’s interests, aside from working as a development banker, is writing screenplays. He’s pitched scripts to Oliver Stone, including one about an African-American who deserted the US Army to join the Filipino rebels during the Philippine-American War. The Devil’s Causeway received praise from three former Philippine presidents — Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo — as well as Publisher’s Weekly and other reviewers.

Gracing the cover is a remarkable photograph: the survivors of the “Gillmore Party” posed on a rock shortly after being rescued. Taken by Lt. John Lipop of the 33rd US Infantry on Dec. 18, 1899 along the Apayao River, the original photo was found at US Army archives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; it led Westfall to even more layers of research, tracking down primary sources, corroborating memoirs and accounts. Westfall looked into military archives, hired private researchers and even took a helicopter to get a bird’s eye view of his historical subject. All in all, he says, research took “about seven years, from a blank sheet of paper to a book on the shelf.”

I asked Westfall about the long trail that led to The Devil’s Causeway; it turns out that story is as interesting as the many turns the book takes.

PHILIPPINE STAR: You evoke the scenery of Baler and surrounding locations vividly. Did you actually retrace the journey of these soldiers?

MATTHEW WESTFALL: I attempted to physically visit all the places involved in the story. But I also went back to original maps and old photographs from the period.

Baler was central to the research, and the most important visit was by helicopter, with a photography team, to document the key sites from the air. With my daughter as my research assistant and guided by some extremely helpful people from Baler, we traveled on foot up the Baler River, where Lt. Gillmore’s Navy cutter met its fate, spent time in the wonderful Baler Church, and traveled to the Diatt River in nearby Maria Aurora, where the Naval Apprentice Venville lost his life to Ilongot headhunters.

What initially sparked your interest in this book?

 It actually started as a screenplay over a decade ago, and my desire to tell a story. As a filmmaker, I had been pitching stories in Hollywood, rather unsuccessfully. I then developed a screenplay about the Black American renegade Fagan who deserted from US Army lines during the Philippine-American War to fight on the side of the Filipino revolutionaries. I pitched it to Oliver Stone and a number of other production companies, but ultimately it languished in development hell.

So I began to look for a fresh story, and fell on the Siege of Baler. In the midst of this, I discovered the story of the failed American rescue — but there was literally nothing on it save for a few newspaper articles. And even those had none of the names right.

So I hired a researcher in Washington to get into the original military files, and to answer the question: Who were these American sailors, who among them died during the failed rescue at Baler, and what happened to the rest? Three hours of research turned into three days, and as we found one incredible document after the next — many unseen for well over 100 years — the research effort expanded. 

Then we found that photograph of the Gillmore Party on the Rock (used on the book cover). At that point, I knew this was an important, untold story, and that it had enough meat to support a long-form narrative nonfiction book. That photo, for me, as really the trigger: it put human faces to a list of names. It made it real.

Imagine, with all the research done on the Siege of Baler, we uncovered — for the first time since they were archived — original photographs of the priests held at the Baler church, General Funston’s arrival in Baler, the sentencing of the rebel kapitan Novicio, and residents of Baler who were part of these events. These were unnamed and unidentified in the files — one had to know the story, the imagery of Baler, and the church, to make any sense of it.

Where did you do the writing?

Most of the work — compiling, sorting, research, and then writing — was done in my garden basement office in Makati in the evenings and on weekends, where I would cloister myself in what I would call the “Den of Pain” to write.

On the walls were 20 or so 1:50,000 NAMRIA maps of Northern Luzon, riddled with pins and Post-It notes that traced the rugged geography covered by the Gillmore Party prisoners and the rescue. Surrounding the room were 15 large plastic bins of research files, on my desk maybe 100-plus CD-roms of digital files comprising a few terabytes of data, and on the bookshelves, a number of core reference books on Philippine history.

Since you’re an American, but also tied to the Philippines, does the book have a pro-American or pro-Filipino story?

People routinely ask me if it is a pro-American or pro-Filipino story, and I like to respond it is both those, but more importantly, it is about a character-driven narrative that is anchored on facts and solid research. I desperately tried to avoid making any broad political announcements, but rather hoped that the story, and the characters in it, would reveal some overriding truths.

Consider this: along the way, the prisoners were ambushed (with their comrades killed), mistreated by their guards, heralded by brass brands on arrival in some towns, banqueted at a luxurious wedding in another, ordered to face execution on two separate occasions (and spared both times), paid a daily per diem by the revolutionary government for food and basic needs (which also covered things like cigars, bibingka and liquor), healed by a compassionate Filipino doctor (who doped up more than one on opium, and after who one American prisoner, Lyman Paul Edwards, named his first son, in honor of the Filipino who saved his life), and then abandoned to their fate among headhunting Apayao warriors.

Where else but the Philippines could such a thing happen to a hapless band of prisoners of war?

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The Devil’s Causeway is available at Fully Booked.