His companion sat on his haunches nearby, his Garand rifle resting within reach against a tree.
Sentry No. 1 looked up at the sky, noting that the position of the Big Dipper indicated that it was about 3 o'clock in the morning of September 6, 1944.
As if talking to himself, he said: "Before the war, I used to wake up at this hour in our farm to milk our carabao."
But sentry No. 2 was not listening as he scanned the opposite bank. He had noticed some movement over there and whispered to his comrade: "I see shadows moving over there that were not there before." He stood up and the two of them peered intensely this time into the semi-darkness. Sure enough, the shadows had heads bobbing this way and that way and definitely crossing the river towards the two guerrillas doing sentry duty at that hour.
"Mga hapon (Japanese)!" said the sentry with the carbine, and the two promptly rushed towards where their platoon leader was sleeping in the shadows of the riverbank. "Sir, the Japanese are here."
2Lt. Amador Montero of the Regimental Combat Company had been expecting the enemy the past weeks after Col. Paul Marshall had told a meeting of his staff earlier that intelligence reports showed the Japanese intended to raid the guerrilla headquarters on the mountain barrio called Tumurok in the ghost town of Claver some 70 kms. from the enemy garrison in what is now Surigao City.
Their mission was to capture dead or alive the American colonel and his staff of Filipino officers and cripple the pesky guerrilla movement in the province.
The relatively narrow Baoy river rushes from the mountains to the lowland and on to the sea. It is as deep as a man's waist at certain points and chest-deep in other places. One had to keep his footing as the strong current threatened to sweep him downstream if he was not careful.
The narrow river zigzags downstream between boulders. All the enemy had to do was follow it several kilometers upstream to get to the guerrilla camp. It was Montero's responsibility to stop the enemy at the first line of defense at an embankment which had a good field of fire in front of the defenders.
With his men in their assigned places, Montero stationed himself on the embankment with his Thompson sub-machinegun at the ready. His men would hold their fire and allow Montero to fire first. As he crouched in the halflight of dawn, Montero could see the Japanese point men crossing the river in a broken line. He noticed that they wore buri hats instead of their usual caps, probably to delude the guerrillas into thinking the approaching column was made up of Filipinos.
Montero was not fooled however. He waited until there were about a dozen Japanese only a few meters in front of him -- then he started blazing away at pointblank range. The first burst knocked down several of the enemy's pointmen.
At that moment his 33 men opened up with their carbines, Garands, Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR), machineguns. The heavy barrage of fire caught the Japanese column by surprise. Unable to see the defenders in unfamilar territory, the Japanese panicked, firing sporadically but ineffectively in the general direction of the guerrillas they could not see, except for the flashes from the muzzles of their guns.
Montero could hear some of the Japanese, probably officers because they were on horseback, shouting orders as they retreated in utter confusion (days later one of the wounded horses was caught by civilians who feasted on its meat). There was no way of finding out how many of the enemy died or were wounded in the one-sided firefight.
One of the defenders, a certain Corporal Dandan was hit by a mortar fragment which lodged in his brain. The regimental medical officer, one Dr. Castro, did not have the kind of surgical tool required to remove the shrapnel. Cpl. Dandan died weeks later.
Having won the first round, Montero and his men waited tensely for the Japanese to regroup for a second try. Many of their casualties had floated downriver which they eventually retrieved near where the river and the highway crossed.
The Japanese may have sensed that there were more than just Montero's force waiting for them upriver. Actually the RCC had 100 men but most of them were guarding other possible routes the enemy might follow.
The Japanese also realized by then that the guerrillas had more firepower than they expected judging from the volume of fire brought to bear on the attackers.
And why not? Only months before an American cargo submarine had unloaded thousands of brand new carbines, Garands, Thompson submachineguns, bazookas, mortars (81mm and 60mm), grenades, machineguns (30 and 50 caliber) and tons of ammunition along with crates of canned goods and field rations.
The expected second attack by the Japanese never came, for three days later, September 9, 1944, planes from an American carrier task group attacked the Japanese garrison in Surigao, sank dozens of transport ships and generally made life rough for the Japanese who in turn lost their appetite for punitive expeditions into the hinterlands where the well-armed guerrillas waited in ambush.
The Japanese were losing the war on all fronts at the time. Less than a year later, World War II was over.
When Lt. Montero blew into town recently, the war veteran sought this writer out by contacting a mutual friend. Montero and I met in a restaurant downtown. He returned my salute and we embraced like long, lost brothers.
Brothers in arms, actually.
It had been ages since we had last seen each other. Through the mist of half-forgotten memories, 2nd Lt. Amador Montero, 89, and Private First Class Maxey, 84, spent the next hour during lunch reminiscing about the war and about our comrades in the Regimental Combat Company (our C.O. 1LT. Dick Barton), 114th Infantry Regiment (Col. Paul Marshall), 110th Division, 10th Military District (Col. Wendel Fertig), United States Forces in the Philippines (USFIP).
Of the 100 of us in the RCC, I doubt if there are 25 or 30 still alive. After all, it's been 60 years since we were mustered out of the USFIP at Camp Alae, Bukidnon.
Amador Montero left yesterday for the U.S where he heads the Filipino War Veterans of Washington (FWVW). I wonder if we will ever meet again, even as I sometimes play back in my mind the sound of guns, many guns, reverberating among the hills and through the plains of such places as Doyangan Hill, Mahanub Junction, Bad-as Crossing, and that dawn-to-dusk battle (113th Inf. from Agusan and our own 114th) against the well-entrenched Japanese garrison in Surigao City which ended in a stalemate because the promised air support from Leyte with which to blast away at the Japanese tunnels and bunkers never came.
On orders of Cols. Marshall (114th), and Spielman (113th), all of about 2,000 men withdrew in the darkness and headed back to where they had jumped off for the attack.
Our 114th had two men wounded and one 50-caliber machinegun knocked out of commission while the 113th lost three men killed by snipers while crossing a wooden bridge.
All that's left are the war's treasured memories dimming with the passing of time, a few of them perhaps worth another column or two later, mindful as we all are that the final curtain may fall anytime, as it must. No one lives forever. Cheers anyway, to my comrades in the RCC -- alive, or otherwise.
