"Under the Red and Gold, Notes and Recollections of The Siege of Baler." By Captain Don Saturnino Martin Cerezo, Commanding the Detachment. Translated and Edited by F. L. Dodds, Major, U. S. Army. The Franklin Hudson Publishing Co., Kansas City, Mo. Full cloth, $1.25.
This is an account of the heroic defence of the little town of Baler during an eleven months' siege by Filipino insurgents; it was written by the only surviving Spanish officer, who commanded the detachment during the greater part of the siege.
The following letter from General Funston, U. S. Army, to the publishers of the translation should be a sufficient recommendation:
FT. LEAVENWORTH, KAS., July 6, 1909.
The Franklin Hudson Publishing Co., Kansas City, Mo.
GENTLEMEN.—I desire to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a copy of Major Dodds' translation of Lieut. Cerezo's account of the Siege of Baler, which you were kind enough to send me.
This story was of especial interest to me for two reasons. I was at San Fernando, Pampanga, in July, 1899, when the thirty-two survivors of that heroic band of Spanish soldiers were passed through the American lines on their way to Manila, and seven months later established the first American garrison in Baler, and gazed with wonder and admiration on that little stone church, the scene of what was probably the most gallant defence of a position in authentic military history. For hundreds of yards on every side the earth was literally turned upside down with trenches, approaches and redoubts, some of the first being within forty yards of the church walls. As to the church itself, there was not on its sides or ends a spot the size of a man's hand that had not been struck by a bullet, nor a space a yard square that did not show the mark of a shell or solid shot. In this little room and within the ruined walls of the priest's residence adjoining, a little handful of heroes, less than fifty men at the start, with what at the ordinary rate of consumption would have been three months rations, held out for eleven terrible months against a force of Filipino insurgents which varied in strength from 200 to 800 men, with half a dozen pieces of artillery, one of them a modern field gun. During this time there was not a day's cessation of the storm of infantry and artillery fire. A Filipino officer, who participated in the siege, told me in 1901 that the Filipinos lost in killed and wounded during those eleven months six times as many men as the strength of the besieged force.
The clothing of the men of the detachment literally rotted off them, they made sorties to get grass and leaves to eat, but would listen to no terms of surrender. Finally, when Lieut. Cerezo, the sole survivor of the three officers of the detachment, was convinced by copies of Madrid newspapers passed to him by the besiegers, that months before the sovereignty of Spain over the Philippine Islands had lapsed, he agreed, not to surrender, but to an evacuation of his post, and was allowed to keep his flag and records and march out with honors of war, and with the stipulation that he should be passed through the American lines to Manila. The Insurgents, to their credit, respected these terms and carried them out, and the brave little band returned to Spain to receive merited honors, having given their country one of the most glorious episodes in its history.
I wish that every officer and man in our army would read this book. One who would not be inspired to great deeds by this modest and simple tale of heroism and devotion to duty must, indeed, have the soul of a rabbit.
Very sincerely,
FREDERICK FUNSTON,
Brigadier-General, U. S. Army.