Battle
On the morning of April 15, hundreds of Filipino guerillas attacked them, well armed with bolos, pistols, spears, and Spanish Mausers. The guerillas let loose a tremendous volley of cannon and rifle fire that drove the entire regiment into their barracks.
For two days, the regiment withstood a withering fire with a loss of only two men, before their barracks were lit ablaze. Unable to extinguish the fire, they were forced to flee the burning building and face the attackers.
When they reached the open, the whole regiment lost all coordination and broke up into two groups: one running for some boats on the river bank and the other for the rear of the barracks. All 15 men running for the boats were killed, either cut down in the streets or shot in the boats. The others made makeshift trenches, dug with their bayonets, and for another two days kept the guerillas in check until a rescue party in the steamer Lao Aug came to their aid. The relief force managed to save the survivors under a hail of Mauser bullets, making it back to their base before the guerillas could regroup and attack again.
Read more about this topic: Siege Of Catubig
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we are marching into battle against an enemy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“One may confidently assert that when thirty thousand men fight a pitched battle against an equal number of troops, there are about twenty thousand on each side with the pox.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth ... and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)