Battle
The battle began while Lawton and his men were en route to San Mateo and received fire from Filipinos under the cover of dense jungle and secure trenches in the town. Very few of the enemy were even visible.
Lawton's forces dug in and engaged in a fierce fire-fight. A team of Filipino sharpshooters known as the "Tiradores del Muerte" ("Marksmen of Death") set up position 300 yards (270 m) away. Having shrugged off cautionary warnings from his officers, Lawton walked up and down the line, rallying his men. A sharpshooter shot Lawton and killed him instantly.
The death of their commander was a terrible blow to Lawton's men, who took scores of casualties without successfully retaliating. Part of the reason that they could not dent the enemy positions was that, as a Filipino rifleman fell dead or wounded, a large number of bolomen were ready to take his rifle and keep a steady stream of heavy fire. When they eventually withdrew, it took almost a day to bear Lawton's body through thicket and mud to Manila, for funeral rites at Paco Cemetery. Lawton is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Paye
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes 9:11.
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)