DURING the search for material the author became aware of the fact that the general subject of the Philippine Constabulary had been sadly neglected by the writers of American battle memoirs. There was in existence no study of the Philippine Constabulary, and very little on the corps in the books devoted to the Philippine Islands.

During the research, the following volumes came to light, all of which have been used in comparative checks to make the material herein as accurate as was possible.

Bullets and Bolos, by Colonel John R. White, is an excellent account of the author's personal experience on Negros and Mindanao. Colonel White has a flair for narrative, and his book is rich in the color of the day.

The Phillipines, by Charles B. Elliot, has a brief mention of the organization of the Scouts and Constabulary, and a few footnotes on representative outlaw chiefs.

With this limited material available it became apparent that any account of the Philippine Constabulary must be the result of contact with individuals who had been present during those stirring days of its inception. A systematic attempt was made, therefore, to get into personal correspondence with retired officers, and to compile, from their personal accounts, the data concerning the corps. As a result of these personal interviews and a voluminous correspondence, the material was gradually accumulated over a period of fifteen months.

I should mention also the slender volume entitled Medal of Valor, by Major L. Baja, of Manila, in which is detailed a reprint of the General Orders awarding this medal to the individuals of the force who were so honored. Major Baja has made this compilation without comment, contenting himself with the setting down of the official orders as they emerged from headquarters.

Colonel Cromwell Stacey, Colonel Cary Crockett, and Captain A. E. Hendryx and Captain Jesse Tiffany contributed valuable combat material and much time to help in the preparation of this volume. I would have been unable to finish it without their enthusiasm and support.

In presenting these notes on the Philippine Constabulary, I do so feeling that the book belongs to the forty-odd officers who so generously co-operated with me in furnishing the material. I feel also that this stirring period of American martial history has been shamefully neglected. The characters who undertook the subjugation of the Philippines have received so little, in honor or in financial award, for the consummation of that very dismal business.

Therefore, blanket credit to the men who thumbed the leaves of their personal experiences to turn to me their personal records of those bloody days of the first decade of the century.

I wish to thank Mr. Perry Hiskin, a busy purser of the Dollar Line, for material he brought to me in the course of his various trips across the Pacific. And to Norrie Miles, of Manila, my thanks for the care with which he has attended to the numerous questions I have forwarded him. He spent much of his personal time in seeking the answers to questions that arose during the writing of the book.

In a volume detailing the frenzied activity of a force of jungle police over a period of almost forty years, there are certain to be errors and omissions. Many men worthy of pages in this volume have been misplaced by the years that have flowed to mist their activities. I have selected a campaign here and there, as representative of the jungle wars, in an attempt to bring to the reader a cross section of the bush and of the men who formed the background of the times. This is not so much a history of the Philippine Constabulary, as it is that cross-section picture.

Possibly some of the incidents have been slightly misdated. I have spared no trouble in the effort to keep the text accurate, but the reader should remember that this volume was written mostly from personal memoirs, and minds do not always agree on the relatively unimportant matter of "when." In all cases where the contributors failed to agree upon the date of an identical incident described by all, I have referred to the reports of the Chief of Constabulary and have taken the date therein specified. It was quite the common thing to pursue a bandit through pages of personal letters, notes of interviews, and printed combat reports, to find him respectively killed on Samar Island; captured and sent to Bilibid; hanged at Surigao; or escaping, scot-free, into the bush. In such cases, the Chief of Constabulary has been the argument settler.

In the main, I stand on the text as presented.

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Original publication © 1938 E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

This publication (HTML format & original artwork) © 2001 Bakbakan International.

Transcription courtesy of Ashley Bass.