Reminiscence

Pass in Review

The Ateneo has large fields with green bermuda grass . The field at the back of the school was where the PMT( Preparatory Military Training) and ROTC ( Reserved Officer’s Training Corps ) made their pass in review and weekly parade drills ( I miss these, particularly ). Ateneans were proud of their military uniforms. Most often I would sit under the big Acacia tree and watch in awe the cadets pass by during their marching drills. I imagined myself in one of those crisp gray Air Force uniforms and indeed, several years later, I was donning the much coveted Air Force gray uniform with the rank of cadet 2nd Lieutenant. A year later, the gray uniform was discarded in favor of the green fatigue jungle uniform and PHILCAG hat.This was the kind of hat worn by Philippine Troops then in Vietnam in support of the U.S. forces.

Horrors of War

It was also in the 1970s when pockets of Muslim secessionists began their armed rebellion against the government .For us Christians, we consider them *savages”.For indeed they were. Nobody , I think, could really fault us for such perception for they beheaded and mutilated Christians . I remember passing by a morgue one afternoon after school with many people milling around , some with tears in their eyes, others hysterical, others simply watched silently in horror as dead bodies were unloaded from a truck . There , from survivors’ account, were tales of horror and rage. I learned that a passenger bus was stopped by armed men and separated Muslims from the Christians and then began to massacre the Christians. Some were beheaded, others mutilated.

The Muslims referred to Christians as Filipinos, which only showed that they never considered themselves Filipinos.

But that is altogether a different story which I would recount in my later memoirs( But I never did ).

( Picture above was scanned from my 1969 Beacon yearbook )