CHAPTER XIX
The “fighting Twentieth”
| Malolos and Bocaue’s trenches know the Kansas yell; San Fernando and San Tomas the Kansas story swell; At Guiguinto’s fiercest battle yon flag in honor flew; What roaring rifles kept it, all Luna’s army knew; And high it swung o’er Caloocan, Bagbag and Marilao— “Those raggedy Pops from Kansas” ’fore God they’re heroes now. —Lieutenant-Colonel E. C. Little. |
Night had fallen on the city of Manila. Before it lay the bay whose waters lapped softly against pier and shipping. Behind it in the great arc of a circle stretched the American line of military outposts, guarded by sentinels. Beyond that line, north, east, and south, there radiated a tangle of roads and trails through little villages of nipa huts, past rice fields and jungles, marshes and rivers, into the very heart of Luzon. Manila was under American military government, but Luzon was in insurrection against all government, and a network of rebellious lines of enemies fretted every jungle, hid in every village, intrenched itself in every rice field, and banked its earthworks beyond every river. While Emilio Aguinaldo, the shrewd leader of an ignorant, half-savage peasantry, plotted craftily with his associates for the seizure of the rich capital of Luzon and dreamed of the autocratic power and heaps of looted treasure that he should soon control. For weeks in sight of the American outposts, the Filipinos had strengthened their trenches, and established their fortifications, the while they bided the hour of outbreak 312 and slaughter of the despised Americanos, and the seizing of the rich booty afterward.
Upon the Tondo road, running north from Manila to Caloocan, Thaine Aydelot, with a Kansas University comrade, was doing silent sentinel duty. The outpost was nearly a mile away from a bridge on the outskirts of Manila. In the attack imminent, this bridge would be one of the keys to the city, and the command had been given to hold it against all invaders at any cost.
Between Thaine and the bridge was a stretch of dusty road, flanked on one side by nipa huts. On the other side were scattered dwellings, tall shrubbery, and low-lying rice fields, beyond which lay the jungle.
Before the young sentinel the road made a sharp bend, cutting off the view and giving no hint to the enemy around this bend of how strong a force might be filling the road toward the bridge.
Thaine knew that around that bend and behind the rice dykes and in the nearby trenches were Filipino insurgents with finger on the trigger ready to begin an assault. But until the first gun of the first battle is fired, battle seems impossible to the young soldier.