The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Modern War Studies (Paperback))

The commander of the first expedition, Brig. Gen. Thomas M. Anderson, was a courtly, patient, and courageous officer.

On 25 May, Anderson led the 1st California and 2nd Oregon regiments and a battalion of his old regiment, the 14th Infantry—a total 115 officers and 2, 386 enlisted men—through a “mob of howling, struggling, cheering friends” to the San Francisco docks.30 One soldier was almost blinded when a well-wisher, moved by patriotic spirit, rolled up the flag he was waving and hurled it into the marching columns. As the troop transports steamed out of the harbor, hundreds of boats sounded their horns and an assortment of bands played patriotic airs.

No sooner had the shoreline disappeared than Anderson’s men learned that war was not all parades and cheering. The three transports were ocean packets that had been hastily converted into troopships. The officers’ quarters were comfortable staterooms, and their dining facilities were excellent. In these pleasant surroundings, Col. James F. Smith of the 1st California held classes for his officers and senior sergeants on discipline, regulations, posts and guides, sanitary duties, patrolling, and hygiene. In contrast, his 980 enlisted men and their supplies were crammed into a space 10 feet high, 425feet long, and 60 feet wide. Their bunks stacked four high, some men had to crawl over a half dozen bodies to get to their sweat-soaked, moldy straw mattresses. The transports heaved and pitched, there were too few toilets, and soon the lower decks were almost awash in vomit. The fresh meat spoiled within a week, and thereafter the men received little but fatty canned bacon, potatoes, coffee, and hardtack bread, wretchedly prepared and served so inefficiently that by the time a soldier had made it through the chow line the food had congealed to a cold, slimy, gray mass known as “slum.” The citizen soldiers chafed in poorly fitting uniforms, made all the more uncomfortable when their shoddy underclothes disintegrated after a few washings. During their brief two-hour turn on the upper decks, the troops worked off some of their considerable anger with calisthenics and boxing matches.

Discipline was poor. Unable or, in their soldiers’ eyes, unwilling to alleviate the miserable conditions of the enlisted men, the officers kept to themselves. By the end of the voyage most of the soldiers had been transformed into…

On 30 June, after more than a month at sea, the expedition finally arrived at Manila Bay, still guarded by Dewey’s small but proud…

The troops clamored for a chance to show the “Jack Tars” what they could do, but instead of leading them against Manila, Anderson put them to work as stevedores. They had to unload 440,000 rations, roughly 1,000 tons of food, and hundreds of boxes of ammunition, commissary stores, camp equipage, and cooking supplies. Since Cavite’s docks could not accommodate the transports, everything had to be loaded onto cascos—large, narrow, flat-bottomed barges of 50 to 125 tons capacity—towed by steam launches to the docks, and then dragged through the mud from the dock into decrepit warehouses. The troops toiled in monsoons and sweltering heat; when their work details were over, they collapsed in their tiny shelter tents, sleeping with their heads and feet out in the rain. Poor diet and exhaustion took their toll: just three…

This deference was reinforced by folk religion, wherein the powerful were imbued with supernatural powers or anting-anting (talismans), which secured divine protection.

In late summer 1896 the Manila authorities uncovered a conspiracy by as mall and obscure nationalist organization, the Katipunan.

Whatever the deal, [[Emilio Aguinaldo|Aguinaldo]] and several key followers soon left for Hong Kong.42