Mark Twain didn’t know he was ridiculing a future winner of the Medal of Honor.
When the popular author read news accounts of a March 5-7, 1906, battle in the Philippines, one name caught his eye: U.S. Army 1st Lt. Gordon Johnston.
Day after day, the papers described how Johnston, on March 7, was wounded heroically in action. In the papers, Johnston was spelled “Johnson,” without the “t.”
Like ‘Humpty Dumpty.’ “Too much Johnson,” wrote Twain, who opposed the 1898 U.S. annexation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
“Apparently Johnson was the only wounded man on our side, whose wound was worth anything as an advertisement. It has made a great deal more noise in the world than has any similarly colossal event since ‘Humpty Dumpty’ fell off the wall and got injured.”
Despite his private contempt, Twain took his doubts about Johnston to the grave. Twain told his secretary not to publish his comments on this part of the Philippines insurrection.
Civilian deaths. Twain was disgusted by the battle, but not because Johnston was wounded and at least 15 Americans were killed. He was horrified because the violent clash atop Mount Dajo had all the markings of a one-sided massacre of 600 to 900 Muslims, called Moros.
Many of the dead Moros were women and children.
Johnston was wounded badly. A slug passed through his right shoulder, possibly from the artillery blast that blew him from the parapet of the “cotta,” the Moros’ moutaintop hideout.
‘Historical’ telegrams. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a telegram to Johnston, formerly one of Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders”:
“How are you?”
Johnston cabled back:
“Fine, thanks.”
Twain wrote sarcastically about the five-word exchange: “This is historical. This will go down to posterity.”
‘Weaponless savages.’ In his unpublished papers, Twain said Johnston’s wounds must have been inflicted by fellow Americans. He noted that few Moros had rifles or anything similar to artillery.
“Heretofore, the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual trade-muskets, when they had any….
“[T]o pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights above, was no brilliant feat of arms.”
The 1910 award. Twain died April 21, 1910, having left instructions that his notes on Johnston and the Mount Dajo battle were “not usuable yet.”
Seven months later, Johnston was awarded the Medal of Honor for “distinguished conduct” at Mount Dajo.
The citation that went with Johnston’s Nov. 7, 1910, medal reads:
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Signal Corps. Place and date: At Mount Bud Dajo, Jolo, Philippine Islands, 7 March 1906. Entered service at: Birmingham, Ala. Born: 25 May 1874, Charlotte, N.C. Date of issue: 7 November 1910. G.O. No.: 207. Citation: Voluntarily took part in and was dangerously wounded during an assault on the enemy’s works.
‘Morro rifle pit.’ The Medal of Honor was recommended by the 6th Infantry’s Maj. Omar Bundy, who reported:
First Lt. Johnston “voluntarily joined me on the trail at daybreak ... before the advance began and accompanied me to the last trench below the cotta. While waiting to complete the dispositions for the charge, he asked and obtained permission to advance to the base of the cotta. This he did under a hot fire from the Morro rifle pit to our left. He was among the first to reach the cotta. When the charge was ordered, while gallantly raising himself up to gain a foothold to climb up in advance of the others, he was severely wounded. This especially brave action ... distinguished his conduct above that of his comrades.”
The Americans fought the rebels to give U.S. authorities the years they thought needed to prepare the Philippines people for democratic self-government.
Two-phase insurrection. The Moros’ rebellion was the second phase of the two-act Philippines insurrection. In the first wave, from 1899 to 1902, U.S. troops defeated Christian Filipinos led by Gen. Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo in Luzon and in the Visayas. In the second phase, “Mohammedan” Moros loyal to the Sultan of Sulu tried to chase U.S. forces from the southern Philippines.
To U.S. forces under Gen. Leonard Wood, the Mount Dajo assault was a decisive victory against the militant Moros, who had staged eight months of suicide knife attacks on villages of cooperative Moros. [The attackers would slice their way through a crowd until they were shot.] The militants also stubbornly refused to accept modern civilization and its taxes, or an end to such practices as piracy and slavery.
On the first day of the Mount Dajo siege, Americans fired 40 warning shots, giving unarmed Moro civilians a chance to escape. Few left, however. Women eventually joined the men in suicide charges, using children as shields. Even the wounded struck out at American medical workers trying to help them.
Twain’s words. What did Mark Twain say about the battle? In succeeding decades, many of his private papers were made public. It’s not clear exactly when Twain’s Philippines notes were first released and published, but here they are. [It appears this was published in 1924 by Albert B. Paine as “Incident in the Philippines,” in the two-volume Mark Twain’s Autobiography.]
Monday, March 12, 1906.
This incident burst upon the world, last Friday, in an official cablegram from the commander of our forces in the Philippines to our Government at Washington. The substance of it was as follows: A tribe of Moros, dark-skinned savages, had fortified themselves in the bowl of an extinct crater, not many miles from Jolo; and as they were hostiles, and bitter against us because we have been trying for eight years to take their liberties away from them, their presence in that position was a menace. Our commander, Gen. Leonard Wood, ordered a reconnaissance. It was found that the Moros numbered six hundred, counting women and children; that their crater bowl was in the summit of a peak or mountain, twenty-two hundred feet above sea level, and very difficult of access for Christian troops and artillery. Then, General Wood ordered a surprise, and went along himself to see the order carried out. Our troops climbed the heights by devious and difficult trails, and even took some artillery with them. The kind of artillery is not specified, but in one place it was hoisted up a sharp acclivity by tackle, a distance of some three hundred feet. Arrived at the rim of the crater, the battle began. Our soldiers numbered five hundred and forty. They were assisted by auxiliaries, consisting of a detachment of native constabulary in our pay — their numbers not given — and by a naval detachment, whose numbers are not stated. But apparently, the contending parties were about equal as to number — six hundred men on our side, on the edge of the bowl; six hundred men, women and children in the bottom of the bowl. Depth of the bowl, 50 feet.
Gen. Wood’s order was, “Kill or capture the six hundred.”
The battle began — it is officially called by that name — our forces firing down into the crater with their artillery and their deadly small arms of precision; the savages furiously returning the fire, probably with brickbats — though this is merely a surmise of mine, as the weapons used by the savages are not nominated in the cablegram. Heretofore, the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual trade-muskets, when they had any.
The official report stated that the battle was fought with prodigious energy on both sides during a day and a half, and that it ended with a complete victory for the American arms. The completeness of the victory for the American arms. The completeness of the victory is established by this fact: that of the six hundred Moros, not one was left alive. The brilliancy of the victory is established by this other fact, to wit: that of our six hundred heroes only fifteen lost their lives.
General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been. “Kill or capture those savages.” Apparently the army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there.
The official report quite properly extolled, and magnified the “heroism” and “gallantry” of our troops; lamented the loss of the fifteen who perished, and elaborated the wounds of thirty-two of our men who suffered injury, and even minutely and faithfully described the nature of the wounds, in the interest of future historians of the United States. It mentioned that a private had one of his elbows scraped by a missile, and the private's name was mentioned. Another private had the end of his nose scraped by a missile. His name was also mentioned — by cable, at one dollar and fifty cents a word. Next day's news confirmed the previous day's report, and named our fifteen killed and thirty-two wounded again, and once more described the wounds and gilded them with the right adjectives.
Let us now consider two or three details of our military history. In one of the great battles of the Civil War, ten per cent. Of the forces engaged on the two sides were killed and wounded. At Waterloo, where four hundred thousand men were present on the two sides, fifty thousand fell, killed and wounded, in five hours, leaving three hundred and fifty thousand sound, and all right for further adventures. Eight years ago, when the pathetic comedy, called the "Cuban War" was played, we summoned two hundred and fifty thousand men. We fought a number of showy battles, and when the war was over, we had lost two hundred and sixty-eight men out of our two hundred and fifty thousand, killed and wounded in the field, and just fourteen times as many, by the gallantry of the army doctors in the hospitals and camps. We did not exterminate the Spaniards — far from it. In each engagement, we left an average of two per cent of the enemy, killed or crippled, on the field.
Contrast these things with the great statistics which have arrived from that Moro crater! There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded — counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred — including women and children — and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by soldiers of the United States.
Now then, how has it been received? The splendid news appeared with splendid display-heads in every newspaper in this city of four million and thirteen thousand inhabitants, on Friday morning. … So far as I can find out, there was only one person among our eighty millions who allowed himself the privilege of a public remark on this great occasion — that was the President of the United States. All day, Friday, he was as studiously silent as the rest. But on Saturday, he recognized that his duty required him to say something, and he took his pen and performed that duty. If I know President Roosevelt — and I am sure I do — this utterance cost him more pain and shame than any other that ever issued from his pen or his mouth. I am far from blaming him. If I had been in his place, my official duty would have compelled me to say what he said. It was a convention, an old tradition, and he had to be loyal to it. There was no help for it. This is what he said:
Washington, March 10. Wood, Manila: I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms, wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag. (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.
His whole utterance is merely a convention. Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights above, was no brilliant feat of arms — and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian America, represented by its salaried soldiers, had shot them down with Bibles and the Golden Rule, instead of bullets. He knew perfectly well that our uniformed assassins had not upheld the honor of the American flag, but had done as they have been doing continuously for eight years in the Philippines — that is to say, they had dishonored it.
The next day, Sunday, — which was yesterday — the cable brought us additional news — still more splendid news — still more honor for the flag. The first display-head shouts this information at us in the stentorian capitals: “WOMEN SLAIN MORO SLAUGHTER.”
“Slaughter” is a good word. Certainly there is not a better one in the Unabridged Dictionary for this occasion.
The next display line says: “With Children They Mixed in Mob in Crater, and All Died Together.”
They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word, “children”, falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness; and by help of its deathless eloquence, color, creed and nationality vanish away, and we see only that they are children — merely children.…
The next heading blazes with American and Christian glory like to the sun in the zenith: “Death List is Now 900.”
I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now!
The next heading explains how safely our daring soldiers were located. It says: “Impossible to Tell Sexes Apart in Fierce Battle on Top of Mount Dajo.”
The naked savages were so far away, down in the bottom of that trap, that our soldiers could not tell the breasts of a woman from the rudimentary paps of a man — so far away that they couldn't tell a toddling little child from a black six-footer. This was by all odds the least dangerous battle that Christian soldiers of any nationality were ever engaged in.
The next heading says: “Fighting for Four Days.”
So our men were at it four days instead of a day and a half. It was a long and happy picnic with nothing to do, but sit in comfort and fire the Golden Rule into those people down there, and imagine letters to write home to the admiring families, and pile glory upon glory.…
The closing heading says: “Lieutenant Johnson Blown from Parapet by Exploding Artillery Gallantly Leading Charge.”
Lieutenant Johnson has pervaded the cablegrams from the first. He and his wound have sparkled around through them like the serpentine thread of fire that goes excursioning through the black crisp fabric of a fragment of burnt paper. It reminds one of [William] Gillette’s comedy farce of a few years ago [1894], “Too Much Johnson.” Apparently Johnson was the only wounded man on our side, whose wound was worth anything as an advertisement. It has made a great deal more noise in the world than has any similarly colossal event since “Humpty Dumpty” fell off the wall and got injured. The official dispatches do not know which to admire most, Johnson’s adorable wound or the nine hundred murders. The ecstasies flowing from Army Headquarters on the other side of the globe to the White House, at a dollar and a half a word, have set fire to similar ecstasies in the President’s breast. It appears that the immortally wounded was a Rough Rider under Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt at San Juan Hill — that extinguisher of Waterloo — when the Colonel of the regiment, the present Major General Dr. Leonard Wood, went to the rear to bring up the pills, and missed the fight. The President has a warm place in his heart for anybody who was present at that bloody Collision of military solar systems, and so he lost no time in cabling to the wounded hero, “How are you?” And got a cable answer, “Fine, thanks.” This is historical. This will go down to posterity.
Johnson was wounded in the shoulder with a slug. The slug was in a shell — for the account says the damage was caused by an exploding shell which blew Johnson off the rim. The people down in the hole had no artillery; therefore it was our artillery that blew Johnson off the rim. And so it is now a matter of historical record that the only officer of ours who acquired a wound of advertising dimensions got it at our hands, not the enemy’s. It seems more than probable that if we had placed our soldiers out of the way of our own weapons, we should have come out of the most extraordinary battle in all history without a scratch.
Wednesday, March 14, 1906
The ominous paralysis continues. There has been a slight sprinkle — an exceedingly slight sprinkle — in the correspondence columns, of angry rebukes of the President for calling this cowardly massacre a "brilliant feat of arms," and for praising our butchers for "holding up the honor of the flag" in that singular way; but there is hardly a ghost of a whisper about the feat of arms in the editorial columns of the papers. …
At a luncheon party of men, convened yesterday, to God-speed George Harvey, who is leaving to-day for a vacation in Europe, all the talk was about the brilliant feat of arms; and no one had anything to say about it that either the President or Major General Dr. Wood, or the damaged Johnson, would regard as complimentary, or as proper comment to put into our histories. Harvey said he believed that the shock and shame of this episode would eat down deeper and deeper into the hearts of the nation, and fester there, and produce results. He believed it would destroy the Republican Party and President Roosevelt. I cannot believe that the prediction will come true, for the reason that prophecies which promise valuable things, desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind are like wars, fought in a good cause — they are so rare that they don’t count.
Democracy and protection. In 1907, the Philippines became the first nation in Asia to have a freely elected parliament, but the U.S. kept control of the islands for nearly 40 years more.
The justification for U.S. rule was the belief that the Filipinos needed more education for democratic self-rule, and that, without U.S. protection, the Philippines would have been swallowed up by the land-hungry Japanese empire, or possibly by the Germans or the Chinese.
Ironically, 20 years after the bloodshed at Mount Dajo, the Moros were the Americans’ best friends in the Philippines. They opposed an early independence to the Philippines because they feared abuse by the Christian majority.
Independence in 1946. Johnston became a colonel in 1929. An excellent horseman, he nevertheless died in a polo accident in 1934. U.S. control of the Philippines, interrupted by the 1941-45 Japanese invasion and occupation, ended after World War II. The Philippines was granted its independence on July 4, 1946.
A personal note: From 1960 to 1963, I was an Army brat living in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The Army Signal Corps, including my father, used a large portion of the fort, and I attended an elementary school named for the only soldier in the Signal Corps ever to win the Medal of Honor.
That was Colonel Johnston School.
Frank Warner
SEE ALSO: ‘The White Man’s Burden’: The Philippines was the early Iraq.
"...staged eight months of suicide knife attacks..."
There's something odd about that phrase. What did they do? ...attack with a knife and then use it to kill themselves?
;-)
Posted by: George | December 31, 2006 at 10:57 AM
A good question.
These militant Moros would go into crowded places, usually markets, and simply start knifing everyone in their paths. Such an attack was called "running juramentado" ("juramentado" meaning oath).
Someone would call for a soldier, who would try to shoot the militant. And if he was shot, the reports say, the mortally wounded Moro would keep coming, his tight clothing maintaining his blood pressure, and sometimes he would kill the soldier who shot him.
It was because of these suicide attacks that U.S. troops abandoned their Smith & Wesson .38 caliber pistols and demanded Colt .45's instead. The Colt .45's were shipped in.
Posted by: Frank Warner | December 31, 2006 at 12:56 PM
By not publishing, Twain was acknowledging that he didn't know the whole story. He was certainly brave enough to speak the truth, but knew at some level that things go on in the world that were beyond him. His cynicism was notorious, humorous and often justified. His experience of violence, however, was mostly of the drunken male entertainment variety. He knew of fanaticism, but mostly avoided it. He knew of cultural divisions and had traveled. He even wrote a book about his travels to the Holy Land. His interaction with Muslims was probably congenial. Perhaps he had met professional soldiers that were anything but congenial.
In the end, however, he held his tongue. Today, we can see the details of his thinking, and we get to quote things that he thought. He, himself, might not have agreed with those thoughts. It would have been interesting to have arranged an extended coversation between Twain and Col. Johnston, although I suspect that Johnston wouldn't have had much time or interest for such a meeting.
Posted by: jj mollo | January 02, 2007 at 12:18 AM
Good points.
One other thing I noticed in reading up on Twain at the time. He was exceedingly sympathetic to the voices calling for the overthrow of Russia's tsar. I assume he was hearing reports of Communists plotting revolution.
Certainly the tsar needed overthrowing. But I wonder if Twain had any idea the Communists would install a dictatorship much worse.
Posted by: Frank Warner | January 02, 2007 at 03:16 AM
I notice that, occasionally, this post is referred to by students doing research into the Philippines insurrection (and yes, I'm aware the period has other names).
One thing I'm curious about: What was Colonel Johnston's reaction to Mark Twain's harsh words when they were published in 1924? My guess is, Johnston was living in Washington, D.C., at the time. I'll have to check the old Washington newspapers.
Posted by: Frank Warner | June 19, 2007 at 03:45 AM
"And if he was shot, the reports say, the mortally wounded Moro would keep coming, his tight clothing maintaining his blood pressure"
That's an interesting report considering that bullets leave holes in fabric. In my experience, blood travels through holes.
"The militants also stubbornly refused to accept civilization and its taxes, or an end to such practices as piracy and slavery."
Apparently the militant women and children also refused to accept "civilization's" practice of slaughtering women and children inside craters.
Let it be said that their acceptance of that practice occurred Over Their Dead Bodies.
Posted by: I Am Dali | July 30, 2007 at 03:25 AM
The tight clothing apparently gave the suicidal killers a few extra seconds to continue their killing. It obviously did not prevent bleeding.
As far as the circumstances that would lead to the deaths of more than 600 Moros on one side and about 15 Americans on the other, it's hard to imagine.
It wasn't simply a clash of cultures. That's too easy. People made decisions. It would be interesting and helpful to see both sides of the story, in detail.
Posted by: Frank Warner | July 30, 2007 at 05:37 AM
Pretty much the first thing you do to someone who has suffered severe trauma is put pressure on the wound to slow down the bleeding. I don't see why tight clothing couldn't perform a similar task.
Posted by: Nicholas | July 30, 2007 at 06:40 AM
What is the source for the idea that Twain told his secretary not to publish the Moro materials until after his death?
Thanks.
Posted by: David | May 31, 2009 at 01:35 PM
Many accounts say that Mark Twain wrote "not usable yet" on "The Incident in the Philippines," but I'm not sure of the story's source. I'd like to see Twain's own handwriting on the manuscript, just to nail this down.
In any case, more information probably is available from the Mark Twain Library in Hannibal, Mo. http://www.marktwainmuseum.org/
Posted by: Frank Warner | May 31, 2009 at 03:47 PM
"Prophecies of this kind are like wars fought in a good cause-they are so rare that they count." What prophecy is Twain talking about? Could he also possibly be talking about something else, such as the kind of war thry were in?.
help me! can someone answer these?
Posted by: Vinci Eborde | February 04, 2018 at 01:53 AM
He was talking about the prophecy that, because the Mount Dajo assault looked more like a massacre than a battle, Americans would be so horrified that they would abandon the Republican Party and President Roosevelt. That is what Twain hoped for, but he did not believe the prediction would come true. He was right.
Posted by: Frank Warner | February 06, 2018 at 12:23 PM