Records in red

They wrote their records in red, with bolo blades and wavy-edged krises, on a shining white beach. But the tides came, and the tropic rains, and washed the records away.

Stealthy sorties through the high cogon grass; the skewering of men like beetles on the hafts of long-handled spears; the murderous flick of a crimson blade, severing a man from neck to crotch; the screams of the amuck and the juramentado Moro, weaving a twisting trail of death through the Constabulary encampments. Fallen tents a shroud for soldiers decapitated by the swish of the barong and campilane; long jungle nights -- terror haunted -- with every rustle in the grass a summons to the God of Battles. Kipling's "Things jumping up in the grass, to scurry away as you pass"

Vic Hurley, Jungle Patrol 1938