BELLS OF BALANGIGA

The Spanish American War on 1898-99, though short lived, produced enormous changes in the United States.  We now became overseers of Cuba and gained ownership of the Philippine Islands as well.  There was a faction in the islands that violently opposed that arrangement, mostly the Moros in the southern islands, Mindanao and Samar.
What came to be known as the Balangiga Massacre took place on September 28, 1901 in Eastern Samar.   Company C of the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment from Wyoming was ambushed by Filipino fighters from the village of Balangiga while eating breakfast, killing 48 and wounding 22 of the 78 men of the unit.  The villagers captured about 100 rifles and 25,000 rounds of ammunition.  An estimated 20-25 villagers were killed in the fight
General Jacob H. Smith ordered the village of Balangiga burned and any Filipino male over the age of ten bearing arms be shot on the spot.  Because the Catholic Church bells were used to signal the attack those three bells were taken as war booty. Two of these bells reside at what is now called F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Chyenne Wyoming.  The third bell went to the Madison Barracks Sackets Harbor  New York where the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment was stationed at the turn of the century.  That bell is now at Camp Cloud in Korea, their present station.
For some 15 years there has been an attempt to return the bells to the Philippines.  But as of now they remain where they have been for over 100 years............Medicineman!