Book Reviews

Even before I cracked open its pages, I already suspected that War wounded would explore ground never before covered — or perhaps simply ignored — by the rest of Philippine letters. To put to rest this nagging suspicion, I did a little cursory research before writing this review. The question I wished to answer: How many books prior to this slim volume have documented the stories of the modern Filipino combat infantryman?

The answer, sadly, is none. I confess that my search was not as exhaustive as I would have liked. I only got as far as Google Books and the Ateneo de Davao electronic catalog would take me. Perhaps there are other books out there that have covered the subject before. If so, I would be grateful if someone pointed them out.

The books that I did unearth tended to cluster around history, the Philippine Military Academy, or a dissection of political events. None of them dealt in any great depth on the lowly infantryman. When they do touch on the foot soldier, it is in terms of troop movements and casualty figures, aggregate and anonymous, humanity stripped away. If there are any personalities that figure in these stories, they are of officers and politicians and rebels.
Why is this so? Is it because Philippine intelligentsia is more closely associated with the Left? Or is it because the social existence of those who must bear arms is so far removed from those who can afford to take up the pen? Or is this all just the fault of my own skewed perceptions? I don't know. I think those answers are harder to get at.

In War wounded, though, we finally have a book that opens up the world of the hithertho-anonymous modern infantryman. Its stories are of the soldiers who have engaged the enemy in combat, who have seen their comrades die, and who have lived to tell the tale. War wounded, however, is not a book about the glories of war or the thrill of narrow escapes; its stories are of horror, pain, fear, anger, regret, shame, and lingering guilt that follow the survivors for months and years. There's heroism, yes, but not the blazing sort; rather, it's the heroism of dogged determination, of the will to slog on in the face of danger and fatigue.
To its credit, War wounded takes no sides in the political or cultural divide. The conflict is a given, and it attempts no explanations or justifications, much in the same way as soldiers approach war. In fact, War wounded is strongest when it is the soldiers who speak. The book is peppered with first-hand narratives from the soldiers, culled from the many interviews that Ilagan conducted over the course of her research. Though rendered in English, the translation largely retains the authenticity of what I can imagine as the original spoken Filipino. Ilagan preserves the cadences, the hesitation, and the lingo of the soldiers. In its authenticity lies the power of the stories.

...They were dying. The most painful one for me was my commanding officer, Lt. Paler. He was a good man. I was the aid man, at the same time I was the team leader of the leading team. So while I was treating him, he told me, "Don't leave me alone," so I told him, "Yes, Sir — I'll be here for you, Sir." But he died as we were withdrawing. He never got to Parang alive. The doctor there said he could have stood a chance had he gotten in ten minutes earlier. But we had a hard time withdrawing. We couldn't do it very fast. Too many...we almost couldn't get them all out.
Lt. Paler was hit...Heavy fighting...around 4:45AM until 1:00PM. Lt. Paler was hit around 10:00AM. It was quite some time that he could talk. Then he said, "Take care of me." I said, "Sir, I'll take care of you." And I did, Ma'am. That's why it's very painful when I remember.

...
He said, "Take care of me." I told him, "Yes, Sir, I won't let anything happen to you, Sir." But he couldn't walk anymore. I propped him against a tree by my side. Sometimes, I had to leave him to take care of someone else. And then the enemy fire would get intense again, and I had to help fight back. He'd say, "It's okay, Ben. Go." He still had strength. He still gave commands.

In a way, War wounded is as much the soldiers' book as it is Ilagan's. That 's why the book is groundbreaking and important: because it gives us a glimpse into the minds of the soldiers. In their stories, we comfortable privileged ones catch a glimmer of their humanity.

War wounded has dozens of stories, many of them are short, even anecdotal. But there are three long stories, which I think form the core of the book and take several chapters to play out. Two of the stories take place some six years apart, and would be otherwise unrelated until linked by the third.

The first story is that of Ben, a technical sergeant who was involved in Operation Dominance in Matanog in 2000. His company pinned down by heavy fire, Ben took over from his commanding officer after the latter was shot. He organized the remaining men during their withdrawal, rescuing several of the fallen while fighting off the enemy. The excerpt I quoted above came from Ben's narrative.

The second story is that of Raf, a staff sergeant whose team fell into an ambush while in pursuit operations in Monkayo in 2006. Raf narrowly escaped death when the land mine he fell on failed to explode. He took leadership of the surviving teams, and they fended off the enemy. However, it was another seven hours before reinforcement arrived to extract the wounded and dying.

Ben and Raf rated highly in the stress index, carrying the burden of the trauma and reliving the scenes over several years. They became part of Ilagan's therapy group. These sessions, built around torya-torya (literally, storytelling), were conducted in late 2009 with four other volunteer soldiers.

I don't know if Ilagan intended it as such, but the progress of the therapy sessions formed a complete story in itself. Ben and Raf's stories are interwoven into the narrative of the sessions; the sessions themselves act as a framing device with which the two stories unfold. Now and then, the volunteers chime in with their own experiences, which enrich our understanding of the mindset of the soldiers.

All the while, the narrative persona in this story — Ilagan herself, presumably — attempts to maintain clinical distance. After the soldiers' first-person accounts, the persona provides context and dissects the situation with analysis drawing from the established literature on psychotherapy. I say "attempts" because, despite the care with which the persona chooses the language, I cannot help but sense a permeation of the boundaries. It seems to me that within the narrator herself runs the thread of some inner conflict: On the one hand, the desire to remain professionally objective, and on the other, the effect that the interaction with these man have on her at a deeper personal level.

My suspicions to this end were confirmed when I reached the concluding chapter of the book. Ilagan admits:
As a practicing psychologist, I would like to think that I have a higher tolerance for all manner of responses to various situations that people choose. I had no pretensions of being the expert to soldierly experiences, but I also thought I knew what there was to know about what soldiers go through. But I was wrong. During the first session so, I got the shock of my life when Jam started talking about head counts. The image of heads rolling on the table popped into my mind and stayed there for some uncomfortable time. I came away from the first session not knowing if I'd have the guts to come back for second helpings of borrowed trauma.
With my objectivity compromised, my mentor Dr. Orange Lozada took over for the next two sessions until I could regain my balance and see the pilot run to its conclusion.

From the framework, the structure, and the language of the book, I surmise that Ilagan originally embarked on this project mainly as a clinical undertaking — certainly with the sincere desire to improve the plight of soldiers, no doubt about that, but nonetheless with the view toward achieving a professional end. Many parts of the book in fact read like an academic paper. At the end Ilagan puts forth some very sound proposals that the Philippine Army might adopt. As a layman, though, I find these to be the weakest parts. Ilagan does not enlighten us what the Mississippi Scale or DRS-15 are, though they appear frequently throughout the text. It is during these parts where I feel most distant as a reader.

Despite the flaws, I believe that this approach contributes to the overall strength of the book. The subtle tension between the personal and the professional in what should have been a purely objective narrative persona serves to highlight how deeply affecting the soldiers' stories really are. In showing restraint, the narrative persona serves to highlight the soldiers' stories by way of contrast.

In this respect, War wounded is truly unique. Not only does it break new ground that other writers have forgotten or ignored, but it takes a culture that is so utterly Other and gives it a human face that we can begin to relate to.

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