Last week I published part three of this series.  You’ll note there are links just above this sentence to let you navigate directly to the various installments of this article.  Enjoy.

A while back I published some articles on the ‘real Filipinos’ which pleased me, at least, greatly.  I recently came across some very well done biographical material, thanks to the US Army History Center, on one of my personal heroes and a Filipino whose life is worth knowing about, I think.  Sadly, you won’t find this material anywhere online in the Philippines … although there was never so much as a hint of scandal attached to his name, and although he was the only Filipino president to die without multiple mansions, wealth and prestige gained at the expense of his fellow Filipinos, there is little known or mention about Ramon (The Guy) Magsaysay in day to day life here.  You won’t even find him on a bank note,  the anniversary of his birth and death are seldom noted, and I personally think it’s a shame .. so rather than complain, I will inform … my readers can form their own judgment:

Ramon Magsaysay Secretary of National Defense

In his first twenty days as secretary, he took two other steps that directly affected the soldier in the field.

First, using money he acquired from U.S. military assistance funds, he increased pay from only 30 centavos to a full peso per day. Although the pay-scale seems meager, it allowed the soldier to purchase his daily ration from the local people rather than steal or demand it as had often been the case prior.

Second, Magsaysay equipped each patrol leader with a camera to document enemy casualties. As has so often been the case in guerrilla wars, accurate numbers of enemy casualties (body counts) proved difficult to verify. Without photos, government claims were not verified unless, as was sometime the case when the cameras broke, the patrol leader brought other positive proof back with him. This proof sometimes included Huk heads or ears strung on rattan cords.

Magsaysay stopped and spoke to the local people during each of his inspection tours. He told the people that the police and military forces were there to protect them and, that if they had complaints about his forces, they could tell him and he would take appropriate action.

To encourage this communication, Magsaysay authorized free telegrams from villagers and insured that each was answered quickly by himself or his key staff. With programs such as these it did not take long for word to spread about the new secretary and what he expected from his armed forces. Within just a few months, the entire outlook of the AFP was changing for the better.

Soon after becoming Secretary of National Defense, Magsaysay decided that government tactics needed drastic adjustment. Although he had originally favored large-scale conventional sweep operations, he changed his mind as he examined the results from these operations on both the guerrillas and the local populace who seemed to suffer the brunt of such large actions.

He was willing to try something new, something not in "the book." When he approached the president with his proposal to change their tactics, Quirino responded: "I have never heard of such tactics. General Castaneda (the Chief of Staff that Magsaysay fired) has never suggested anything like this to me."

"Of course not," answered Magsaysay, "Costanedo does not know anything about guerrilla warfare. He does not understand the kind of strategy that has to be practiced against the Huks if we are to defeat them.

(editor’s note: Kind of like Secretary of Defense Colin Powell advising president Bush that the war in Iraq was a disaster in the making. For his efforts, the soldier, with the field experience, got fired for his efforts, because he wasn’t giving the President the answers the President wanted to hear. I’ll let future historians judge who was right, I certainly believe I know.)

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