Remembering Bessang Pass, remembering Dad
This year is a special year, with Bessang Pass Day serendipitously falling on Father’s Day weekend. The historic Battle for Bessang Pass and our father, Calixto Duque, will always be tied. For my siblings and me, the honoring is thus magnified and mandatory.
Bessang Pass was captured from the Japanese Imperial Army on June 14, 1945. The demoralized Japanese troops were left no alternative but to surrender, ending World War II in the Philippines. The United States Armed Forces in the Philippines, Northern Luzon (Usafip NL) not only breached Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita’s mountain fortress but also incapacitated his troops, demolishing their weapons and supplies and cutting off their contact with Japan.
What had taken three years to build and fortify, the Usafip NL destroyed in six months. Yamashita simply failed to realize that his seemingly impregnable fortress was actually a playground for Filipino guerrillas. G3 played an integral part in utilizing the intelligence gathered by G2 for the strategic and sound orchestration and effective execution of what military historians consider a most difficult battle.
Our father headed G3 General Headquarters of the Usafip NL and was in charge of planning all military operations. In our remembrance of him, the words “in charge” imply a brand of leadership that motivates, transforms and attains objectives, that is imbued with a desire to serve, and that sets self aside for the common good.
Dad chose the hard life of a guerrilla with a price on his head instead of the cushy one as governor which the puppet government had offered him. It was arranged that he would join the Usafip NL, travel on foot through treacherous terrain from Baguio to Kapangan, and then farther on to La Union, where the Usafip NL commander, Col. Russell Volckmann, had relocated.
At GHQ, even while Dad was assigned by Volckmann to head G3, he had to contend with imperialist condescension. But he simply ignored it. After all, he was 50 years old, and 26 of those years were spent in the military: 10 years in constabulary work, nine as an instructor in tactical science, and three in G3 work in the nascent Philippine Army.
But there were more nuances hard to ignore if one dug deeper. The Usafip NL commander was 21 years Dad’s junior and just nine years out of West Point. Volckmann was six years old when Dad graduated from constabulary school in 1917. When Volckmann was a teenager at Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, Dad was in tactical school at Fort Benning in Georgia. When Volckmann graduated from West Point in 1934, Dad was an instructor of history, English and tactics at the Philippine Military Academy. Dad was commander of Camp del Pilar in Fort Stotsenburg while Volckmann was at Fort Benning for the infantry officer advanced course. Dad completed officer training at the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, when Volckmann received his orders for an assignment to the Philippines in 1940.
GHQ Usafip NL therefore direly needed someone like Dad. Not only was he a genuine Ilocano, he also had more years of experience than those of the American commander, chief of staff and G2 head combined!
Five years after the war, our father became chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, succeeding Gen. Mariano Castañeda. Newspaper articles during his last year at that post tell of his zeal in ridding the military of corruption. He himself investigated reports of abuse and corruption among military personnel, dismissed guilty officers and men, and invoked command responsibility against any officer who tolerated or covered up abuses and misdemeanors. He was a hands-on leader, intent on arresting that which was threatening the integrity of the military.
Gen. Calixto Duque was very much in the mold of the Greek philosopher Onosander’s description of a general in the book “De Optimo Imperatore”—temperate, self-restrained, vigilant, frugal, hardened to labor, alert, free from avarice, neither too young nor too old, a father of children if possible, a ready speaker, and a man of good reputation. These traits also applied to him as a father, although home was never a mini military academy but a homestead.
When Dad retired from the service, planting and nurturing the sweetest tropical fruit trees became a hobby. It was actually a metaphor for how he lived his life, worked his chosen career, and loved his family and country. He watered, pruned, grafted if necessary; he was attentive to what he gave life to with a great deal of mindfulness—be it a tree, a military operation, or a child. Whatever served to impair the common good, integrity or flourishing, he sought to extract himself. Delegating the solution of problems to someone else was not his practice. He was a hands-on leader whose presence was felt. His office was not in some plushy suite but, rather, in the field, where he could best serve.
Dad penned his memoirs of the war. In the section where he wrote a short profile of each of the officers of GHQ Usafip NL, he wrote of himself: “Out of prudence, he shall not talk about himself. Let others speak of him.” And so we have, Dad. Your story is way too good to be left untold, especially in these times when forsaking arête has become the currency in Faustian bargains. Remembering Bessang Pass, remembering you, means sketching a portrait of integrity, courage and service.
That old soldiers never die is impossible. And they don’t just fade away either. Not for a soldier who is also a father. His children simply can’t let that happen.
Suzanne Duque holds a master’s degree in divinity from Harvard Divinity School and is an alumna of Wellesley College with a BA in both religion and psychology. She is back in Manila on research.
