Combat· Philippine-American War
Olongapo counter-insurgent operations
The grinding small-unit warfare that came to characterize the war after the conventional fighting ended.
From December 1899 into the new year, Captain H.L. Draper commanded a body of about a hundred and seventeen Marines in systematic patrolling around Olongapo and the villages of the Subic Bay area, hunting the insurgents through the countryside and breaking up their organization. Draper also set up a Marine-administered civil government in Olongapo, the Corps taking on the work of governing as well as fighting. The operations were typical of the kind of war the Philippine conflict became once the insurgents abandoned open battle for guerrilla resistance, a matter of constant patrols, small skirmishes, and the slow extension of control over a hostile countryside. This patrolling, rather than any single battle, was the daily reality of the Marine campaign in the Subic Bay region, the unglamorous and dangerous routine of counter-guerrilla war.
Podcast episodes on Philippine-American War
Record no. 486