The soldier’s creed

One newspaper claims that Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes was "caught" by President Macapagal-Arroyo plotting a military coup against her government, and therefore was told to quit or be "fired". We’re a great country for conspiracy theories.

If you ask me, if ever a plot was being hatched in the armed forces it was more likely to have been hatched against Reyes – so let’s leave that harebrained theory alone.

It was even more weird, if it’s true, that GMA offered Reyes the Department of Public Works and Highways portfolio last Thursday, but he turned the offer down. Okay, let’s give Reyes the consuelo of making a grand exit: But it’s good he’s exited. He must not have anything to do with the military, or the planning of military budgets and affairs, from now on. Retirement will give him the opportunity to explore other options and decide the course of his new life.

What mystifies me, and it has perplexed me before, is why the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Gen. Narciso L. Abaya (PMA ’70, West Point ’71) has been keeping such a low profile. It is the Chief of Staff who runs the armed forces, not the Secretary of National Defense.

It was only the late Secretary of Defense (before he was elected President subsequently) Ramon Magsaysay, whose 96th anniversary of birth was commemorated yesterday, who converted the job of DND Secretary into a hands-on task. This is because Monching Magsaysay, who was plucked out of obscurity as a young Zambales congressman by the then President, Apo Elpidio Quirino, to head the DND, faced a grave emergency – the prospect of the Communist Huk rebels overrunning Manila and taking over the country.

Magsaysay revitalized a demoralized army and Philippine Constabulary, and sent these two contingents back into battle. His method was aksyon agad – immediate action, and the heck with the legal niceties. Funny, in the 1950s and 1960s very few people, even lawyers themselves, hesitated to ask: "What would the lawyers say?"

Magsaysay’s first move was to convince the people that they need not take up the gun to gain redress for injustice; that they did not have to turn to the Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan (People’s Army insurgents) to win an opportunity for a better life. Their government would defend them, and do all these things for them, Monching vowed.

He invented the "ten-centavo" telegram. He spread the word that if anyone had a grievance, or saw a wrong to be set right, all he or she had to do was go to the nearest post office and send a telegram asking for help. No matter how long the letter of complaint, the telegram would cost the sender only ten centavos. Magsaysay and his men would then set to work at once to try to do something.

He did not promise miracles – but he promised hope. He called on everyone in the government to do his best and on the people to do their best – and he brought out the best in all of them. His magic? The power of his sincerity. He lived a simple life and had absolutely no fear of danger – which often unnerved us who had to accompany him.

At the same time, he proved to the soldier on the battlefield that he, the soldier guardian of the nation, was the most important fighter in the defense of the Republic. In RM’s time, the soldier and the PC constable were taught to believe they were fighting for the nation, not for power or glory. This was a neat hat trick, but Monching accomplished it without a hat. He made sure the dead were buried with honor, and their widows and orphans immediately compensated. Sanamagan, delays in the disbursement of death benefits, pensions, and payments for the maimed and wounded were among the "gripes" brought out by the rebels in Oakwood on July 27, 2003. To be sure, over the intervening decades there has been grievous backsliding from the RM years.

Monching, in the pursuit of his goals, always accompanied his moves with drama. This was not contrived, but natural with him. Normally shy and even ill at unease with big audiences, he would undergo transformation at strategic moments into a showman. Once he rang me up to meet him at Nichols (now Villamor air base) within 30 minutes. It turned out we were going to the "front", which in these days was Pampanga, not far-off Mindanao. Our five-seater plane landed bumpily on a wet dirt road in the Candaba swamps, near the base of Mount Arayat which rises unexpectedly out of the Central Plain. Luckily, it was a moonlit night, and our pilot, Capt. Pobre, negotiated the landing perfectly. All around there were the shapes of hundreds, even thousands of soldiers, shivering in the damp trying to sleep. RM noticed they were without blankets and called for the commanding officer. A captain stepped up and saluted.

"Why do these men not have blankets?" Magsaysay roared.

The captain stammered that when the battalion had moved out, there had been no time to get blankets issued by the quartermaster. Monching told the flummoxed captain that he was being "busted" to lieutenant. He said in an indignant voice that "if you expect these boys to go up the mountain before dawn to assault those entrenched HMB positions up there – where they’ll fight and perhaps die – you have to treat them better than your own sons!"

The soldiers heard, of course, and the tale spread. The next time, no unit moved forward without all its equipment intact and ready. (Betcha, having made his point, RM quietly transferred the repentant and embarrassed captain, but didn’t really downgrade him in rank.)

In these times, those of us who knew him and saw him in action, fondly remember Ramon Magsaysay. He wasn’t brilliant. He claimed to be a "man of the masses", but in deed he was a man for everyone. One item in his pronounced credo was based on shaky legal grounds: "Those who have less in life should have more in law."

While his heart bled for the poor, and he strove to give land to the landless, education for the kapus-palad, a helping hand to those in need, he never encouraged squatting, or preached the gospel that, because they were poor, the poor could just take what they wanted. He knew that this was the wrongheaded preaching of the Marxists, Leninists, Maoists – the Communists who were his bitter enemies. He didn’t believe in something for nothing: The poor must be aided, but not spoiled by doles and limitless giveaway programs. They must be educated to help not just themselves but contribute something to the country’s progress.

In sum, Magsaysay was a practical man. He swung open the doors of Malacañang to rich and poor alike. He served basi (Ilocano wine) and salabat at Palace receptions. He wore a barong to his inauguration in the Luneta, a break in sartorial tradition for incoming Presidents – they’ve worn barongs ever since.

Yet these were just ceremonial. What counted was that RM dared to do things, didn’t temporize, never asked what the "polls" were saying. He knew in his heart that if he did his best, the Filipino people would do the rest.

Mabuhay, Monching! We sorely miss you!

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A couple of weeks ago, I referred to an incandescent essay by the late President of France, General Charles de Gaulle, on The Virtues of the Soldier.

De Gaulle (1890-1970), the son of a schoolmaster, was commissioned in 1914 into the 33rd Regiment, and after World War I wrote a number of books, the most outstanding of which was Vers l’armée de métier, 1933) which was one of the first advocacies of the advantage of the tank in battle – a theory adopted by the Germans when they formed their Panzerwagen. He led the forces of the Free French from North Africa back to Europe, to the liberation of Paris, with the help of the Americans, Brits, Canadians, Aussies, etc. and their other allies.

The redoubtable De Gaulle, soldier and statesman, declared in his book, The Edge of the Sword, that "the fighting spirit, the art of war, the virtues of the soldier are an integral part of man’s inheritance. They have been part and parcel of history in all its phases, the medium through which it has expressed itself. How can we understand Greece without Salamis, Rome without the legions, Christianity without the sword, Islam without the scimitar, our own Revolution without Valmy, the League of Nations without the victory of France? The self-sacrifice of individuals for the sake of the community, suffering made glorious – those two things which are the basic elements of the profession of arms – respond to both our moral and aesthetic concepts. The noblest teachings of philosophy and religion have found no higher ideals."

On leadership, De Gaulle added: "Great war leaders have always been aware of the importance of instinct. Was not what Alexander called his ‘hope’, Caesar his ‘luck’, and Napoleon his ‘star’ simply the fact that they knew they had a particular gift of making contact with realities sufficiently close to dominate them?"

Finally, the general eloquently explains what is both wrong and worthy about the profession of arms: "War stirs in men’s hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, bolsters tyranny. Because of its blind fury many of the noblest schemes have come to nothing and the most generous instinct have more than once been checked. Time and again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death. But, though Lucifer has used it for his purposes, so, sometimes, has the Archangel. With what virtues has it not enriched the moral capital of mankind! Because of it, courage, devotion, and nobility have scaled the peaks. It has conferred greatness of spirit on the poor, brought pardon to the guilty, revealed the possibilities of self-sacrifice to the commonplace, restored honor to the rogue, and given dignity to the slave. It has carried ideas in the baggage wagons of its armies and reforms in the knapsacks of its soldiers. It has blazed a trail for religion and spread across the world influences which have brought renewal to mankind, consoled it, and made it better. Had not innumerable soldiers shed their blood, there would have been no Hellenism, no Roman civilization, no Christianity, no Rights of Man and no modern developments."

Now you know why the "messianic complex" is not confined to those occasional putschists, RAMboys, Oakwood mutineers, and sundry coup plotters. Even the American Civil War – so bloody, so enshrined in song and legend – was one big mutiny, the rebellion of the seceding Confederate States against the Union of the United States of America.

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This reminds me of that anecdote dating back to the Pacific War. During the island-hopping campaign to win back Southeast Asia and propel the returning Americans towards Tokyo, their ultimate objective, General Douglas MacArthur was incensed when he landed at one atoll in the South Paci-fic and came upon a hut occupied by four US marines. On the front of the hut was a sign which said: "With the help of God and a few Marines, I shall regain the Philippines . . . Douglas MacArthur."

MacArthur reportedly had the four Marines court-martialed for the crime of "sacrilege". No, not for misusing the name of God, but for invoking the name of MacArthur in vain.