Cry Slaughter!

By Edilberto K. Tiempo

Cry Slaughter!, first published in 1957 is a fictionalized account of guerrilla life in the central Philippines during the Second World War. Filipino author E. K. Tiempo (1913-1996), himself a member of the Filipino resistance to the Japanese occupation, paints a vivid picture of life under the Japanese, and the difficulties faced in deciding to surrender to the Japanese or take to the mountains and form a guerrilla force. As Tiempo states in the introduction to the book, “Cry Slaughter! was based on actual situations, including the central situation of the shooting of the four envoys by the minister in the story. Many incidents in the novel were taken from They Called Us Outlaws, a non-fiction work which I wrote for the Seventh Military District of the Philippine resistance forces, as part of my work as officer in charge of the historical section. Parts of They Called Us Outlaws, (the Japanese labeled the guerrillas outlaws in those days) were used in the trial of Japanese war criminals in Manila after the war. The original manuscript of Cry Slaughter! was taken out of the Philippines in a submarine in 1943 under cover of a Philippine blackout; perhaps it was the only manuscript to successfully leave the Philippines” during the War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742743

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© Burtyrki Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

CRY SLAUGHTER!

E. K. TIEMPO

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

Author’s Note 5

CHAPTER I 6

CHAPTER II 22

CHAPTER III 32

CHAPTER IV 42

CHAPTER V 50

CHAPTER VI 59

CHAPTER VII 66

CHAPTER VIII 74

CHAPTER IX 84

CHAPTER X 94

CHAPTER XI 98

CHAPTER XII 106

CHAPTER XIII 113

CHAPTER XIV 122

CHAPTER XV 129

GLOSSARY 135

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 138

Author’s Note

CRY SLAUGHTER! was based on actual situations, including the central situation of the shooting of the four envoys by the minister in the story. Many incidents in the novel were taken from THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS, a non-fiction work which I wrote for the Seventh Military District of the Philippine resistance forces, as part of my work as officer in charge of the historical section. Parts of THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS (the Japs labeled the guerrillas outlaws in those days) were used in the trial of Japanese war criminals in Manila after the war.

The original manuscript of CRY SLAUGHTER! was taken out of the Philippines in a submarine in 1943 under cover of a Philippine blackout; perhaps it was the only manuscript to successfully leave the Philippines two years before liberation when the Philippines, according to Jap propagandists, was tightly ringed by Imperial Japanese might. The War Department in Washington, D.C., however, didn’t want the manuscript released then, and it was suppressed there throughout the war.

CHAPTER I

Camacho has a good strong back, Cortes thought, as the chaplain he was succeeding in the regiment stood before the congregation of short-trousered, khaki-clad boys. Camacho could truly stand on his feet. He had a secret envy for Camacho, not only for the administrative shrewdness of the man—he had left him little to do in the way of organization—but especially for his confidence and lack of hesitations, even in the sermon he delivered in pitiful English to the various-tongued group who came from different islands, by whom he strove to be understood in a language that sounded even more foreign and strange as he used it. In his native dialect Camacho would be a forceful speaker. He would be a happy man, if only because of his self-confidence.

Cortes looked at the faces of the soldiers. Were they listening? One young fellow was looking at the ceiling, perhaps idly counting the rows of parallel nipa shingles, brown and neat and slanting gently down to the eaves. Most of the boys had their eyes on the chaplain; did they really see him? One was looking above the heads of those in front of him to the clear sunshine outside the wall-less chapel, toward the hills that edged one part of the valley. He might be a farmer boy, probably thinking of rain softening the ground before it was broken for the corn season.

Cortes’ thoughts veered sharply from the boys to himself as he realized that as their future chaplain his identity was bound up with them from now on. Why am I here, myself? The question disturbed him as it had always disturbed him whenever it came to his mind. He wished he didn’t have to ask it, because he was not ready with a clear answer. Camacho, now, he was quite sure Camacho had long ago stopped such self-questioning. He concentrated on the boys, tried not to think of Camacho. The boys were uniform in their formlessness, their anonymity itself a kind of individualization of each one. He had not been used to this kind of gathering. The short khaki uniforms and coconut-fiber hats hanging on leather straps to their backs as they filed into this nipa-bamboo chapel with its hard smooth earth floor—he saw these as a symbol of the regimentation that persisted even here in the chapel. Were they here, listening to a chaplain, because it was the thing to do? No, he thought, they couldn’t all be listening to Camacho. Might not some one of them be thinking of the first contact with the enemy, of the first shot and assault, the first bayonet thrust, the first kill? In the mind of some of them, might there not be already a prescience of the first terror and the satisfaction? Satisfaction? How did it feel to kill a man, an enemy?

Possibly, only the dwarf Rufino would stand out. The protuberant eyes were like the opercula of agate-shells glued on his squash of a face. That face always startled him; it was big and old and seemed everlastingly angry at being contained on so short a person. Cortes remembered him in a long line at enlistment in the Cawayan cadre. Rufino was the object of interest. Even standing between two men of less than average height he was hopelessly short. But curiously the men did not tease him; it was probably his drum chest, the biceps swelling like fat mangoes; and the old angry face discouraged any flippant remark in the first place. When he finally stood before the medical officer, only his head and shoulders appeared above the table.

The doctor looked at him unsmiling. Sorry I can’t take you. Your height’s below regulation.

True, sir, but I’m strong. I can carry three big sacks of com, even four.

He could do it, too, Cortes thought now, smiling a little. A sack on each arm. And surely, that short stout neck could sustain the weight of two sacks on the head.

Another thing, sir, the dwarf had said gravely, I can’t be easily hit.

There was a burst of laughter.

I can’t take you.

I don’t see why. I want to be in the army and I’m strong enough. Cut out the pay if that would help me get in.

The officer looked embarrassed. He was a blunt man and was irritated and harassed at being in a situation where he suddenly found blunt words insufficient.

The dwarf went on, seeing the officer hesitate, You may take me on trial. If I can’t do what any recruit can do I’ll get out without being told.

For a moment the officer looked as though he would order the fellow out. The other men were silent, waiting, and the officer knew he could say only one thing. All right. You’ll be on trial.

Looking now at Rufino, Cortes thought of Jansalin. He couldn’t think of one without the other, for it was when the doctor accepted the dwarf that Jansalin presented himself again before the medical officer and suggested he also could be on trial. Three days previously the doctor had already passed him over to the next line of desks, but had called him back.

I notice that you limp, he said.

That’s really nothing, sir.

Let me see your feet.

Jansalin had a clubbed left foot.

That’s really nothing, sir. I can outwalk many of those you have taken.

I’m sorry, I can’t take you.

I am a driver. I can drive any kind of car. I may even drive a tank! That’s it, that’s what I’d want to do, drive a tank!

The doctor smiled and the men guffawed.

It’s too bad we have no tanks. I’m sorry.

The following day Jansalin again stood before the doctor.

I seem to have seen you before.

That’s quite possible, sir.

Name?

Felipe Mendoza.

Mendoza, the officer pronounced the name as though to listen to it. A smile broke on his face. Walk eight paces and back.

The doctor observed him closely as he walked. There was nothing wrong.

Take off your shoes.

Jansalin hesitated. The officer had never bothered about the applicants’ feet.

Your shoes. And make it snappy!

Jansalin bent down, unlaced both shoes and drew them off, looking defiantly at the officer. The left shoe was specially made, thickly padded at the heel.

You couldn’t see the difference, sir. Not with this pair on.

I’m sorry.

You’re going to need me when the Japs start coming. When Jansalin appeared before him the third time and cited the dwarfs precedent the doctor asked if he had a job.

My brother and I owned a truck which I drove myself when we went out to buy fish. The army got the truck a few days ago.

What do you do now?

We have a little store in the public market—my wife runs it. She is very dependable, sir, and my two kids can now help her. I want to be in the army. My foot doesn’t matter.

You could be in the quartermaster, Mendoza—is that your name?

Jansalin, sir. Mendoza is my mother’s maiden name. I was not really telling a lie. My full name is Marcelo Ignacio Jansalin y Mendoza.

You could be in the quartermaster—as a civilian. You could drive a truck again to buy fish for the army. That’s all I can do for you.

Cortes saw Jansalin now and then driving in with a truckload of fish. Jansalin always looked for the dwarf Rufino to give him some choice bit of sea food on the sly, a fat crab one day or a spiced tentacle of coral octopus another. It was only Jansalin who could say to him, without receiving an added flash of anger in the other’s eyes, Comusta, inaco. How is it with you, my little man.

Two rows behind the dwarf sat Gori. Nobody would have thought Gori’s father was a Japanese, for he had not a single Mongoloid feature on his face. When the war broke out, he was a college junior working his way by delivering mail on the campus. Instead of going home to Davao he joined the army. I hope I won’t be sent to Davao, he had told Cortes once. My father is a retired army officer. But he’s only fifty-seven and it’s possible he’d be called to fight. Gori’s father had been in the Philippines for thirty years; in that time had visited Japan only twice. To own land legally he had to marry a Filipino woman, and by her had had three children, .Gori the eldest and only son. When Gori finished high school his father wanted him to study medicine in Tokyo; after graduation he could easily secure a position in one of the Japanese hospitals in Davao. But Gori wanted to take engineering. That, too, was all right with his father so long as he studied in Japan. My father wanted to make a Japanese out of me. But he made a mistake starting me in the Davao public schools. I didn’t go to Japan. Don’t misunderstand me, sir. I am not in the army because of any personal grudge against my father. He is a kind man. He couldn’t love us any more than if my mother were also a Japanese.

In their uniforms, Gori, the dwarf, and all the rest looked quite different from the long line of men who had passed through a hasty examination by an army doctor six or seven weeks before. Men of varying ages, from fifteen to fifty, students, professional men, a liberal representation of the proletariat; the students distinguished by their youth and their undisguised enthusiasm, ROTC, dress parade, the drum-and-bugle, breaking through the multiple utility of bagasse, priority of codicils, hazy, unpretentious remarks on the concepts of Freud; professional men reassuring each other that army life wouldn’t disrupt their careers but rather give a new slant; laborers, fishermen, farmers, carpenters, stevedores unmistakable in their denim or khaki working clothes, the neatest dressed among them bulging with a combination of roughness and humility. The earlier calls at the cadres before the war had required more rigid qualifications; the physical examinations were more careful: X-rays of the chest, detailed eye-ear-nose-throat check-ups, blood pressure tests. Now seventeen-year-old lads lied about their age and so did almost everyone above thirty. A man of forty declared he was thirty-two. The doctor looked at him closely without comment and the fellow was suddenly uneasy and said he was a longshoreman and was always in the sun and so looked older than his years. Other men took their cue from him—they were woodcutters, sir, or they were abaca strippers, blacksmiths, cargadores. They might look old and weather-beaten but they were hardy. The under-aged had an easier time; those who were tall and sturdy could easily pass for twenty-one.

Chaplain Camacho stabbed the air with a closed fist. To Camacho, no doubt, this was just another congregation, another church where he could stab the air whenever he wanted. Another thing about him was the apparent ease with which he adjusted himself to this army life; this was one other thing Cortes envied him for. It wouldn’t take him long to take root anywhere. He seemed at home with the boys here; in the next regiment, and the next. Camacho would be at home. But he, Cortes, wouldn’t be, so easily. The scripture references he himself read to these boys and the sermons to which they listened could have been the kind he would give his Cawayan congregation. Yet there was a difference, and he was glad about it. They were young men here, the age group that had accepted his ministry in Cawayan, and accepted with enthusiasm. This would be the group in which Cortes would find himself and be most adapted because their minds were still open and had not developed deep-grooved prejudices. There were no old people here to check up on his heresies—Elder Andong and Deacon Punay wouldn’t hedge the word around with quotation marks, wouldn’t give him the consideration of a doubt that a line in the Bible might have more than one meaning. He remembered one Sunday, the Sunday for him, his seventh in Cawayan....

Cortes was gratified and a little amused at the brisker tempo in the singing of the congregation; the choir had been quick to take his hint. On his very first Sunday in the Cawayan church he had commented to choir members, Don’t you think our congregational singing lags a bit? You could remedy that—perhaps with a little dash of swing! The young people had laughed; Elder Tomas and Deaconess Siryay who had heard him were startled and looked at each other quickly. The second Sunday when the choir and the pianist set a livelier pace, the congregation was taken unawares and the singing dragged; Cortes had to stop it and tell the congregation to follow the choir. In the Sundays that followed there was continuing resistance from the older members, but now they seemed to have accepted the change.

The choir looked well in their gowns. When he suggested gowns at his first meeting with the church council, Elder Andong said the choir members would look like acolytes of the Catholic church. That wouldn’t do, Andong said; if they wore gowns, all they needed were cross staffs with lighted candles on them. But not all agreed with the elder. Mrs. Villalobos, the second deaconess, remarked, At least the gowns would cover the knees of the girls. This jerked laughter from Zosimo Valente. Why, I never thought of that! Valente, a lawyer with a moderate practice, was in his early forties and exuded good health. The lawyer’s laughter and his remark were probably responsible for the council’s approval of the gowns. The abstention of Andong and Elder Tomas from voting was their silent acquiescence to the wisdom of Mrs. Villalobos’ observation. On the minister’s fourth Sunday the choir appeared for the first time in gowns.

After service on the first Sunday his friend Fred said, some people think your polka dot tie disturbing. A sign of frivolity, and lack of high seriousness. I heard an old woman say you don’t look like a minister. He suggested Cortes wear his academic gown. When the minister mentioned it at another council meeting, Andong thought it was a further step to popery, that people would say the Protestant minister was imitating the Catholic priest. Elder Tomas and Deacon Punay agreed with Andong. Cortes pointed out that American and English Protestant ministers wore their gowns in church, and nobody thought there was anything popish about it. That was all right in England and America, Tomas said, because there the people were preponderously Protestants; it wouldn’t do in the Philippines, where the Catholics were in the majority. Andong added that even if Reverend Montesclaros had a degree he would not consider wearing a toga in the pulpit. Cortes thought there was no necessity to press his point.

Fred told him some more about the Reverend Montesclaros. Since the old preacher founded the Cawayan church thirty-two years ago, it had had no other pastor. He had baptized almost all of the three hundred members, including the council members except Elder Andong, and was familiar with their little idiosyncrasies. He knew, for instance, that Deacon Punay’s youngest son had two cowlicks, that old Siryay, the Sunday school teacher for the women, couldn’t do without pepper in her meals. Among the first Protestant converts in the country he was without any formal theological training, but the apostolic zeal he put into his work and his prodigious knowledge of the Bible made him a memorable character, loved by the old and respected by the young. To some outside the group, like Padre Saavedra, the Spanish friar, who never hesitated to take cracks at the pulpit, Reverend Montesclaros was the bringer of heresies, an incarnation