Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1899-08-17

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A correspondent Of the New York
Evening Post who IL soldier with the
Eighth Brigade. now fighting Aguinai-
do In the Philippines, writes as fol-
lows: 4Dft 8l4sfs
When the situation Is understood 1t
will be seen that there has been but
little opportunity to take prisoners,
since In nearly every encounter all un-
injured Filippinos have been able to
escape. We have not been able to cor
ner them and compel a surrender at
any time, except In a few isolated
cases. The largest number captured
at any one time was 374, sent In by
the Washington regiment from Pasig
Mt the time Wheaton's flying column
swept through that region. These men
had no arms when captured, ana
claimed to be amigos" but their iden-
tity as soldiers was fully established
by the fact that they promptly fell in
to line when ordered to do so, the nom
commissioned officers in the rear. They
were sent to Manila and were subse-
quently released. Comparatively few
even Of the wounded or dead of the
enemy have fallen into our hands, ow-
ing to their custom of carrying them
from the field as soon as hit, their
work in this respect being even better
than our own, because their army Is
better organized for that purpose.
The Filipinos have not enough rifles
to arm the 10000 or more men on their
rolls, and so with each body o. rifle
men there goes body of bolo men.
The bolo Is the genuine native weapon,
n long, wide bladed knife, tapering to
n point and ground sharp on the edge.
1t is carried in n leather or wooden
sheath at the side. The natives are
quite skilled in its use, and In hand
to hand conflict or in street riot could
do much execution with it. They orig
inally expected these bolO men would
slaughter the Americans by the thou
sands, but in fact there have been but
few opportunities for them even to at
tempt the use Of this ugly weapon.
They have too wholesome a fear OF
coming into close quarters with the
American soldiers, since their sad ex-
perience of the attack upon Manila,
to render the bolo practicable
weapon in this war. However, use
less as these bolo men are for offensive
purposes, they are always on hand in
the trenches to carry the dead and
wounded to the rear and to keep their
guns and ammunition from falling into
our hands.
As soon as man is killed or wound
ed he is placed on a bamboo litter, or
taken between two men and carried at
once to the rear while his gun and
cartridges are seized by bolo man,
who becomes mt once transformed into
a rifieman. In this way regiment Of
n thousand men with ''fusils" and 400
with bolos can keep thousand rifles
in action all the time, even after two or
three hundred men have been hit. This
accounts for the comparatively few
rifles we have captured and the really
small number of wounded and dead
that fall during the last minutes of a
fight, when the enemy is hastily fleeing
to places of safety or to trenches far
Their back, are left, and I have seen
fleeing men stop and rush back to
grasp the guns Of men who fell In these
headlong flights and carry them away
in safety. 1t is easily seen that but
few prisoners can be captured under
such circumstances, the enemy almost
invariably deserving their trenches be-
fore our lines reach them. However.
occasionally email groups have been
surprised and captured, and l have
never heard of case of this kind
where the natives were killed If they
offered to surrender.