Sandra Ruby Witch
Nick Armbrister
https://www.kobo.com/nl/nl/ebook/sandra-ruby-witch-1
Sandra Ruby Witch has an important job. She lives in the forest and protects the trees from greedy dangerous loggers. Her skills are varied and always lethal. Join Sandra up close with some loggers in a dingy bar in a remote town. How will she solve the problem? The trees need protecting. Mother Nature has a warrior woman.
I did my first 2022 hike up Mt Mataba. I had
previously planned to go to Clark area and see some battle sites up there but
it was cancelled due to CCP Virus restrictions. Maybe next month instead. I took
one of the front paths up Mt Mataba. I wanted to see the Japanese field
hospital tunnel again and photograph it. On the way up Mt Mataba I met a hiking
party the first I ever saw there. It was mostly girls with some guys and a
guide. We all climbed up together under the sun which was now warm. I set off
an hour later after a good sleep. It was their first time up here or hiking. We
parted ways and I went up to the main summit and radio aerial array. I went to
see my pals up there and see what war finds they’d found. I wasn’t to be
disappointed.
I took several photos from near the main summit of the
town and scenery below. Then went to my pals and guess who I saw? The hiking
team I met on the way up. It was a funny surreal moment for we knew the same friend.
Anyhow I got down to business and was shown varied war finds.
The square bomb piece I had seen before revealed a new
surreal trick. Remember this metal was off a detonated large warplane dropped
bomb. On the back side of the metal was residual high explosive. I thought it
was dirt but it wasn’t. It smouldered when lit and gave off grey acrid smoke
and bubbled. I’m not sure why it never detonated when the rest of the bomb went
off. I could only imagine the sleeping below ground shells and bombs still
waiting to go off.
Also there was a scattering of shrapnel and shell
parts from jagged one oh five or one five five millimetre artillery shell bits
to the nose fuse from what I think was a 20mm cannon shell plus the broken nose
cone part of a slightly bigger shell made of brass or copper. Not sure of the
calibre. There was also a spent fifty cal bullet slightly bent and a fired case
too; these were not together. They were probably from planes or tanks or troops
and from different firers. Yet when put together they were a full fifty cal
round.
Most interesting was the detonator train from inside a
big artillery shell. It included the part that was inside the fuse minus nose
cone and a long metal spike that went into the high explosive in the body. This
was triggered in the front and went down the tube into the body setting off the
main charge and fragmenting the shell.
There was an unfired clip of rounds from an M1 Garand
rifle. They were all green with corrosion and there was originally eight in two
sets of found. One case was missing a round and one was open allowing the
cordite crystals to be seen. I wondered which soldier dropped this and why he
never fired them. What was his name and did he survive the battle?
These war artefacts were found close by where the
locals live. Also there was something so different to be a total opposite and
give a very poignant meaning of Mt Mataba events. The only known open tunnel
was a field hospital. It was never blown shut like the others by the Americans.
A small brown glass bottle minus lid could’ve one held smelling salts. Plus a
medium size clear glass bottle/dish minus lid held either mosquito repellent or
antiseptic for cuts. Not to cure bullet wounds! I think these were form inside
the tunnel. I was told a local woman took a table and medical cabinet decades
ago. All the Japanese troops were killed in battle or buried alive in tunnels.
I was also shown Many Japanese fox holes and trench
positions all over the peak. This was a hard hike with a local with a bolo to
cut the brush back. I saw many positions all over the place plus three separate
huge warplane bomb craters dotting the mountain. I wondered at how many were
killed here and how close to where I hiked. And how many soldiers still
remained buried in graves, sealed tunnels and caves there? The real treasure is
finding brass Japanese soldier dog tags and bones. So they can be repatriated.
I never went into the open Japanese tunnel but saw
several suspected closed tunnels on a very steep but of hillside with large
bamboo thickets. I wondered if the big cave where the Japs hid from the bombing
was down there. It almost appeared so but I need to carefully examine it on a
future trip. Mt Mataba is slowly revealing the secrets. The ghosts and dead
remain silent. Their story needs to be told and the horrors of war never
forgotten. Soldiers of both sides died there atop and in the peak in awful
ways. RIP the dead.
After all that research and hours of hiking I said
goodbye to the other hikers and we talked more of the peak and events there. There
are many more stories to be told and discovered.
***
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09QHJ7NDW
https://www.xinxii.com/fiction-literature-1/short-stories-10/unmentioned-things-sarah-510656
An Awful Harvest
I went a hike up to Wawa in Montalban and up the
mountain roads. Here I was to go past the peaks of Mt Parawagan, Susong Dalaga
and Mt Lagyo plus others. The road had been improved by engineers with trucks
and plant equipment. I wanted to hike a big circle right back to the beginning.
This was possible a few months ago but not now due to the building of the
Pamitinan Dam. It will take four years to do this and flood a complete valley
near the peaks. A guard told me no entry by the construction site. I talked to
a head engineer and he told me more details. The dam will be eighty metres tall
or deep more than the Kaliwa Dam of sixty four metres. These are big
structures. Hikers wanted to hike from Wawa to Casili by the newly improved mountain
roads but the dam construction stopped this. In time a new road will be built
above the dam level replacing the old road. Even if the road is built in a year
the dam will still be unfinished so still no entry.
I saw a sign saying beware of UXO Unexploded Ordnance.
A local man told me about this, of how the military was looking for it and
would defuse any found. His details matched much of what I’ve heard before,
like finding shrapnel in the soil. The sign was for the road improvement and
dam construction. Sleeping shells waited to knocked awake and kill.
The digger, bulldozer and plant drivers need to be
paid danger money. No joke. The area they work on is a small part of a huge
World War 2 battlefield. An awful harvest litters the land with unexploded
ordnance being buried in the soil having not detonated. Mortars, shells, bombs
and other things; these all need locating and safely defusing by the military.
People live in the area and many have found live or
exploded shells. The live shells are complete and the spent ones are in varied
sized pieces. On my hike up there I was given a piece of one five five millimetre
shell from a local. This was in two parts, the biggest weighed many pounds. I estimate
between one in four and six fired never exploded. On the stone mountains like
Mt Lagyo the shells and bombs will explode on impact if the detonators are
triggered. In soil covered peaks the shells can just dig in and don’t go off. The
army went up to Mt Lagyo looking for unexploded ordnance. They found nothing.
The road that has been improved and widened would’ve
yielded many unexploded munitions. I’m curious how many were found and wonder
how many thousands still hide unfound. Sections of the trees/grass by the road
are taped off. This is for safety of any munitions and also due to the
steepness of the terrain.
The local people within the valley are being moved
away and compensated for thus upheaval. Their valley will be inundated by what
is now a small river in coming years. Any remaining homes and unfound munitions
or Japanese tunnels will be underwater.
Every time I hike the area from Wawa to Mt Mataba to
Timberland to Casili I read about or am told or shown evidence from the war and
battles; that old actions from 1945 has outlived the people of that time be it
locals or soldiers. History is not old and boring black and white photos. An rusty
Arisaka rifle with working bolt or blasted shell fragments tell more than any
story or photo ever could. Only fate and God knows the unnamed soldiers names
now.
When the dam is built I wonder how many unfound unexploded
ordnance and dead Japanese soldiers will be now forever unfound? I suspect many
thousand Japanese soldiers are buried on those peaks. Remember, these hills are
the first high ground above Manila. This was the start of the high ground
battles that went on for hundreds of miles at several huge mountain ranges. It was
Tier 1 fighting equal to anywhere involving hundreds of thousands of opposing troops,
of which tens of thousands were killed.
Now the 1945 legacy is coming back to bite us. Not just
buried shells on a dam construction site but the risk of them still exploding
when not even found. This is due to corroding fuses. Buried bombs in Europe
have self detonated several times. I’ve been told of two large unexploded
warplane dropped bombs, one near Timberland and the other near Mt Parawagan. Both
need to be found again and professionally defused. History is never boring; the
lethal harvest is a testimony to their dastardly deeds.
***
