Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium.
-- Horace, Odes
MANUNG-GAL, was an obscure mountain not known to many until it crashed into world-wide publicity on 17 March 1957. On that day it became the scene of a disaster of national import, one which may have changed the course of Philippine history.The details of that disaster are known to everyone. On Saturday, 16 March, President Magsaysay flew to Cebu City aboard the Presidential aircraft (a converted army plane of the C-47 class) renamed the "Mt. Pinatubo" after a mountain in Magsaysay's home province of Zambales. With the President was a large entourage, including two men who were prominent in Education: namely, Gregorio Hernandez Jr., Secretary of Education, and Jesus Paredes Jr., Executive-Secretary of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP). After a round of commencement addresses, of parties and official calls, the President and his retinue proceeded back to the Lahug airport shortly after midnight. It was a moonlit night. The "Mt. Pinatubo" took off for Manila and was never heard from again. It disappeared in the night.
By afternoon of Sunday, 17 March, the extensive air search for the missing plane had yielded no results. But late that day a man suffering from burns in face, feet and hands was carried in a hammock to a hospital in Cebu City by men who had walked for hours from a distant mountain-top. He turned out to be a newspaperman, the lone survivor of the presidential plane. He had been rescued by Marcelino Nuya who dwelt on the mountain. Nuya had carried him on his shoulders down the steep slope to his cottage; then he and his neighbors carried the injured man in a hammock down the mountain to the Balamban River, up the Amaga plateau down the Kotkot ravine, and up and down again to Cebu.
The country's attention was now focused on Manung-gal. By noon of the following day (the 18th) the hitherto silent mountain became noisy with activity. A clearing was made for a helicopter landing. Officials came and went. The charred remains were carried away. A state funeral was held in Manila. An investigation was instituted into the causes of the crash. A statement was issued attributing the disaster to "metal fatigue". Finally, appropriate awards (or such as were deemed appropriate) were given: Nuya and his dog were both decorated -- he in Cebu City, the dog in Malacaņang Palace. Then silence settled once more, upon the lonely mountain-top -- until we came to disturb it some ten months later.
In the meantime, people turned their attention to other matters. The newspapers were once again engrossed in the elections and in the sensational details of the latest murders. Manung-gal was all but forgotten.
But it deserved to be remembered. Good men had died on that mountain, and deeds close to the heroic had been done by men who lived there. It was a mountain at once tragic and glorious. The Roman poet had talked of fountains; but his words (with the alteration of one letter) might apply to Manung-gal: Fies nobilium tu quoque montium -- You also shall become one of the world's great mountains.
Manung-gal is not very high: it rises to a height of some three thousand feet above sea level. It is long and narrow, lying across the island, hidden among the hills and plateaus in the rugged country north of Cebu. Its top is not serrated into sharp peaks like Montserrat in Spain, but gently undulates in a series of rounded knolls very thickly forested. It was upon one of these knolls a few feet from the summit that the "Mount Pinatubo" crashed. The Mountain
The mountainside had been thickly forested at one time, but they have been denuded by constant burnings (kaingins). The slopes are now either cogon-covered or are planted to corn and onions by farmers who, like Nuya, eke out a rugged subsistence from the steep mountain-side.
To get to Manung-gal we motored northwards from Cebu City early one morning to where the road ends at sitio Kabulihan near barrio Guba, along the proposed Talamban-Balamban highway. This road when finished will eventually make Manung-gal easily accessible. But at the time of our climb, the road ended at Kabulihan, from where the Mountain was a day's journey on foot.
Kabulihan is nearly a thousand feet above sea level, and it owes its name to the palm trees that grow there, which are called buli in Cebu (and buri elsewhere). There we collected our two guides and followed the trail as it plunged down to a stream (the Kotkot) some 400 feet below. There was little water at this time of year, and we crossed the stream on stepping stones. Then the trail climbed steeply up to the Adlaon plateau. A Village Store
The steep climb called for a halt to regain our breath. There was a neat wooden schoolhouse at Adlaon (an elementary school up to the sixth grade) which was the last outpost of the school-system in those hills. Beside the school-yard was an old house with a tiny store on the ground floor. There was no one about, except a ten-year old girl who was minding the store. Amazingly enough, whatever was for sale (and there was very little: a few canned goods and soft drinks) was available at lowland prices. Soft drinks were sold at ten centavos a bottle, despite the fact that the cases had to be carried on men's shoulders or on carabao-drawn sleds up and down the steep trail from Kabulihan. We bought some bottles of soft drinks and sat upon bamboo benches at the long bamboo table under a tree in the yard.
The yard was immaculately clean. The hard brown earth was well swept and it was bare of even a blade of grass. People in the barrios do not go in for lawns: they remove every blade of grass from the soil and sweep the bare yard as thoroughly as they sweep the floors of their houses. Barrio people would probably be amused to learn that in Manila (as in western countries) people pay good money to have grass planted on their front lawns. This is undoubtedly one reason why Philippine barrios look so drab while many European villages look so colorful. The green stretches of lawn and the flowers of the English countryside are not often seen in Philippine barrios.
Incidentally, the "barrios" along this trail are not the concentrated clusters of houses that one sees in the lowlands. Here the houses are few and far apart, and a "barrio" embraces many square kilometers. One or two houses were of solid construction, of wood and tin roofing; but most of the houses were of cogon and bamboo. The countryside was sparsely cultivated, the soil impoverished by decades of erosion and poor farming techniques. There were a few patches of tomatoes, a few coconuts, some corn; a few goats and an occasional cow.
From Adlaon the trail went westward to the brow of a cliff overlooking a deep valley. And there, away to the northwest was Manung-gal, stretched out in the early morning sun.
We soon lost sight of it, however, for the trail plunged steeply down along the face of the cliff to a stream 700 feet below. Happily for city dwellers like ourselves, the cliff was cogon-covered, affording the clumsy walker something to grab as he slid down the steep path.
It was only half-past ten in the morning when we reached the stream, but the sun was hot; we had been walking three hours; we were tired and parched, and there were coconuts nearby. So we bought six young coconuts and drank their juice and lunched on the bread and tinned meat that we had brought in our packs, and bathed our feet in the cool waters. At noon we resumed the hike.
It was of course a mistake to have lunched so early and we soon realized our mistake when we began to climb the opposite hill to the Tagba-o plateau. We were reminded of the wisdom of an elementary rule for hikers: never eat or drink before climbing a hill.
At Tagba-o was a neat little farm, owned (we were told) by a man named Doming. Within the fenced area were a number of farm buildings (a little wooden house, a granary, an open shed) built around an open space and a chapel. The open space in the center was used on Saturday nights for barrio dances to which the young people (and others not so young) flocked from all the neighboring regions. It must be at these open-air dances that the young men meet their prospective wives. The fact that there was a chapel meant that Doming's farm was both the social and the religious center of the region. It was there that the people gathered for Mass on those few occasions in the year when the priest could come to the hills. For a while, it seemed to us that this chapel at Doming's must be the last outpost of the Church in the hill-country: but we were wrong. We discovered later, upon gaining the mountain-top, that the Church was also there: for the Church is wherever Christians are.
From Tagba-o the trail again descended, this time to the Balamban River which is the gateway to Manung-gal. This river coils itself around the mountain, and then flows westward into the sea. At first the trail went along the right bank of the river upon a narrow ledge of arable land. Gradually the walls of the gorge closed in upon the river, and one had to walk along the river-bed. From there we climbed up the steep slope of Manung-gal. The River And The Mountain
It was of course an easy climb and no expert mountaineering was involved: it was merely a matter of walking up. But walking up can be hard on legs and lungs. I remember a remark made by an Italian Jesuit missionary in Miindanao who had grown up among the mountains of northern Italy. He said that in Europe the mountain paths ascend slowly, zigzagging uphill; but in the Philippines (he said) the mountain-paths go straight up.
That was the case in Manung-gal: an 1800 foot climb from river-bed to crash-site over ground that was slippery because it had been plowed up. Higher up the Mountain, however, the forests had been recently cleared: burnt-out logs lay crisscross upon the steep slope. These afforded a kind of ladder for the ascent. But at the very top, the forests were still untouched. And there, among the trees and underbrush, we saw the awesome sight: the wrecked plane, splashed as if by an angry hand against the mountain. The wreckage was scattered all over: the fuselage here, a wing there, the motor elsewhere, and all about were bits of burned metal -- not to mention bits of human remains, like teeth and pieces of cranium. It was ghastly.
It was sundown when we got to the site of the crash. We had left Kabulihan early in the morning: we had been eleven hours on the trail.
Night on a mountain top, in almost total darkness, gives a feeling of awe, heightened by the realization that only a few feet away from where one was camping were the remains of a plane in which twenty-five men, including the President of the Philippines, had died. The feeling of awe was somewhat dispelled by the best coffee we had ever tasted, made by boiling water from a mountain spring, mixed with instant coffee and powdered milk and served into our cups by someone holding a pot in one hand and a flashlight in the other. We were further brought back to earth by the stern realities of life, among which were the leeches which infested the place and which got at some of us despite precautions. After the stories of the camp fire and the rosary which was said for the dead, we slept, some on logs and some upon the canvas tents which we had brought (not setting them up but spreading them on the damp ground and sleeping on them). Night On A Mountain
It is an eerie feeling to be awakened in the middle of the night (or to be exact at 3:46 a.m.) by the roar of a plane passing almost directly overhead. It was presumably the early morning flight from Cebu to Manila, flying over the identical route that the "Mt. Pinatubo" had followed some ten months before, except that the "Mt. Pinatubo" had not flown high enough.
I was awakened one other time during the night. One of our younger companions had been lying upon a piece of canvas on the ground somewhat nearer the wreckage than the rest of us. This proximity to a site where many people had died may have worked upon his imagination. In any case he came to where I was sleeping upon a log and awakened me in some alarm. While he was lying (he said) and trying to sleep, an invisible hand had thumped him on the chest. He was soon persuaded that it was merely his imagination, and the rest of the night passed without incident.
Early in the morning we prepared for Mass. The ground slopes very steeply at the site of the wreckage and no level place could be found. But there were two large pieces of wood, boards that had formed part of the partition separating the plane's cabin from the cockpit. One of these we set on the ground to serve as a kind of platform for the priest to stand on. The other we wedged between the fuselage and a tree. There we set our small altar stone and the altar cloths we had brought along. Mass Upon Manung-gal
Upon this improvised altar we offered Mass.
There was another priest in our party, Father Henry Schoenig S.V.D., head of the biology department of the University of San Carlos in Cebu. Had this climb occurred after the Second Vatican Council, Father Schoenig and I would doubtless have concelebrated Mass together in the manner approved by the Council. But this was 1957, a few years before the great assembly of bishops at the Vatican. So we celebrated two consecutive Masses: Father Schoenig first served my Mass, and then I served his, while the rest of our party received holy Communion at my Mass.
But they were not the only ones present at the Mass: the whole mountain-side was there. Nuya the previous evening had sent word to all who lived on the mountain that Mass would be offered at the crash site at sunrise. They were all there by sunrise: Nuya and his family and his distant neighbors, some twenty-five persons in all. Many of these mountain-dwellers had not been to Mass for a long time; for some of them, this was probably the first Mass they had ever attended. Since they spoke nothing but Visayan, I gave a brief sermon in Visayan about the strange and mysterious providence of God, that guides even the fall of a sparrow, yet allows a plane-load of very important people to crash against a mountain. I also spoke of the Mass, and what a privilege it was for them and for us to offer the Holy Sacrifice of Calvary for the first time upon this mountain.
After Mass we all had breakfast together: the mountain-dwellers and ourselves. Our breakfast consisted of corn on the cob deliciously roasted, supplied by Nuya from his corn-patch. It was the perfect ending for a Christian agape. After breakfast we examined what was left of the "Mount Pinatubo" and took photographs of the wreckage.
From Nuya, and from his wife and son, we pieced together the story of how the wreckage was discovered. Nuya's Story
Nuya's house (it was little more than a cottage, with lumber siding and board floor but with cogon roof) was situated near the top of Mt. Manung-gal, 2079 feet above sea level, and some 873 feet below the place where the wreckage of the plane was found.
On Saturday night 16 March 1957, Nuya's eldest daughter had gone to some Saturday evening dance in some barrio near the mountain's foot (probably Doming's at Tagba-o) and had returned late. Nuya and his wife were therefore still awake when about an hour after midnight they heard the roar of an airplane directly overhead and seemingly flying low. Nuya's wife claims that the roar was irregular like the sputtering of an engine. Nuya however does not seem to have noticed anything peculiar in the airplane's drone. In any case, the plane headed for the mountain and the sound suddenly stopped. They heard no explosion. It was merely the sudden stopping of the engine.
"Nahuug ang aeroplano!" (The plane has fallen!) one of them said. But the other dismissed the idea as preposterous.
Later however they were awakened by one of the neighbors who claimed that there was a big fire (nagda-tib) in the forest atop the mountain. By this time they could hear explosions, such as those of gun bullets. "It must be the airplane we heard!" said Nuya.
Losing no time, he and one of his sons and the neighbor all scrambled up the steep mountain side and through the forest and out into the former kaingin clearing, now overgrown with tall grass. There they could hear from the nearby forest the shout of a man who was calling for help: "Tao! Tao!" (Man! Man!) They went in the direction of the voice, breaking their way through grass and tree until they came upon the flaming wreckage of the plane. Near it, supporting himself against a tree, unable to walk, was Nestor Mata. He was frantically pointing towards the fire, indicating that the President was there. But there was no rescuing anyone from that inferno. Only Mata could be rescued.
We looked about us, at the wreckage and the forest. It seems that the plane did not collide against the mountain itself but against a tree which stands at the summit, at an altitude of 3083 feet above sea level. Nuya identified it as an Ibalos tree. A few more feet and the plane would have cleared the mountain. Having hit the tree, it would seem that the plane immediately nosed down, exploding upon contact with the ground. The Wreckage
Apparently only the fuselage was burned. The fire must have been intense for it melted the metal and charred the bodies beyond recognition. On the other hand, the fire, though intense, was amazingly limited in extent for much combustible material in the tail and in the cockpit had escaped the fire. We found among other things a sheet from the pilot's radio message pad, though without message.
We were informed that in that part of the fuselage where the fire seemed hottest, seven charred bodies were found, one of them identified as that of President Magsaysay. (Reportedly, the identification was made from a wristwatch and a ring.) At this spot someone had set up a crude memorial, a semi-circular piece of Manila paper upon a bamboo frame, with letters pasted on, cut out of colored paper. The words were no longer entirely legible. It was at this spot, beside the burned-out fuselage, that we said Mass.
A little lower down the hill, but only a few feet away, other bodies were found, similarly charred beyond recognition. A few bodies partially burned were found nearby, one of them holding a gun. Farther away, by the engines, were the bodies of General Ebuen and Major Pobre. They were not burned but had died from injuries in the head. Lower down the slope, some distance from the rest of the wreckage was found the body of Major Nunag. The body was intact except for a head injury. The position of the body suggested that he had crawled out of the wrecked plane and then, feeling death near, had composed himself to die on the spot where his body was later found.
The extent and the manner in which the various parts of the plane had been scattered on the mountain suggested some sort of major explosion. The major parts had remained where they were found: one wing high up near the summit, another wing a hundred feet below; the tail at one place, the fuselage at another. But the innumerable little parts scattered on the slope had been carefully collected by Nuya and placed in a pile. On top of the pile he placed the parts of a cranium and some false teeth which had been found among the wreckage. Fortunately Manung-gal is so inaccessible that the airplane parts have not been looted. They are all there and should be allowed to remain there ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
From what we saw and from what we had been told, it was clear that a good deal of misinformation had been given out at the time of the disaster. Some of this misinformation may have been due to natural error, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a good deal of it was deliberate. Misinformation
To cite a trivial instance. Marcelino Nuya's dog was given a great share of the credit for the discovery of the lone survivor. The newspapers spoke of the dog as "heroic" and its exploits were romanticized. As a token of recognition the dog was flown to Malacañang and awarded a medal in a ceremony attended with more publicity than had been given to the dog's owner. Yet it was the owner (not the dog) who had decided to go up to the mountain-top to investigate. And it was the owner (not the dog) who had carried the lone survivor on his shoulders down the steep descent. The dog's role seems to have been over-emphasized by enthusiastic reporters and by others romantically inclined.
There was a bit of misinformation even more palpable -- trivial, certainly, but indicative of the techniques sometimes used by the dispensers of information. When the dog was flown to Malacanang to be conferred a medal, the dog was cited under the romantic name "Avante" (Advance!). This name is inscribed on the medal which we saw in Nuya's cottage upon Manung-gal. This was the name given to the dog in the newspaper accounts. But the dog's name was not Avante. Its owners did not know it by that name. The dog itself did not react when we called him by that name. It had gotten used to another name -- the only name that had been given to it by its owners. The dog's name was "Serging". The name "Avante" appears to have been invented to prevent possible embarrassment to a well-known political figure whom the mountain people admired and after whom the dog was named.
There were other bits of misinformation. We had been led to believe that the essential parts of the aircraft bad been taken to some laboratory or machine shop for a "thorough" examination. Such a supposition seemed implied in the investigators' verdict: namely, that the plane had crashed through "metal fatigue". We were not prepared for what we saw: the massive wreckage of the plane. The plane was all there. There were even human remains still left upon the wreckage: bits of skull and teeth.
I have since gotten used to the amount of misinformation given in the press. I myself have been reported to have said Mass upon a mountain-top "at ten o'clock at night" -- which of course I did not do. I have said Mass upon several mountains, and it was always during the day. But such an error is easily understandable and certainly unintended. It is when the misinformation seems deliberate that its discovery comes as a shock. Lindbergh has some very harsh things to say about the untruthfulness of the press. On the occasion of his famous flight in the "Spirit of Saint Louis", the press reported many things which were completely false. They also published fake photographs. For instance, they had wanted to photograph him kissing, his mother goodbye. When he refused, the reporters got two others to go through the motions, photographed them, and then superimposed the heads of Lindbergh and his mother.
So much for the transgressions of the press.
On the other hand, we learned many instructive things during our visit to Manung-gal. For one thing, the mountain's name is not Manungal, as the word is written in some maps and as it was uniformly spelled in the newspapers. If the word is to be spelled as it was pronounced by those who dwell upon the mountain and by everyone whom we met along the trail, then it should be spelled Manung-gal, with a double g and with the accent on the second syllable.
After the photographs of the wreckage were taken, we made the steep descent down to Nuya's house where we had lunch. We insisted that the lunch be provided not from Nuya's stores but from the ample supply that we had brought in our packs, and we invited all who were present to share the lunch with us, which they did to the tune of guitars; for Nuya's children were talented musicians. Marcelino Nuya
Marcelino Nuya was a remarkable man in every way. He was 46 years old, from the town of Compostela. He had never been to school and he had lived in mountains or small towns all his life, but there was about him that air of good breeding and that note of authority which seems to characterize the man born to command. His wife, from Liloan, was quiet and retiring, as were some of his children. But two of his sons (Francisco 16, and Glicerio 13) had that same ease in company and that same naturalness in speaking which mark the well-bred person. There were eight children. None of the children had been to school, and none of them had taken music lessons, though several of them could play the large and the small guitars like experts. All of which illustrates the often forgotten truth that education is not synonymous with schooling and that literacy, though a splendid acquisition, is often a misleading standard.
We stayed at Nuya's a couple of hours, taking photographs, admiring his medal and the dog's, and leaving the house for the descent at 2:29 p.m.
We encamped for the night in a cornfield near the Tabunan ford. It was a Saturday, and we were occasionally disturbed by Saturday night revelers returning in merry mood from Doming's in Tagba-o. Through these merry men we sent word to the neighboring farms that there would be Mass at our camp the following morning. Night In A Cornfield
I find in my diary an amusing bit of conversation that occurred at this time between Rodolfo Villarica, the organizer of our expedition, and one of the more convivial passersby internally lit with tuba. When the passerby was informed that there would be Mass the following morning, he was all in favor of it and asked if he should get firecrackers. "Pabuthan ta ba?" (Literary: "Shall we let things explode?") When he was told no, he was amazed. "Dili di-ay pabuthan?" he asked in shocked tones, which might be rendered, "What? No fireworks?" He was doubtless thinking of the fiesta when people celebrate with fireworks, and people get the only chance they have to hear Mass either in town or in the barrio chapel. And, as in the cities there can be no children's party without balloons, so in the barrios, there can be no fiesta without fireworks.
We had told the people that Mass the following morning (Sunday) would be very early -- sayo kaayo. They took us quite literally. They came so early that they found us still asleep. We hurriedly woke up and washed in the nearby river. Mass In A Cornfield
This has always been a source of wonder to me: the number of people who attend Mass at such short notice and in such unexpected circumstances. Late at night the word gets to them that Mass would be offered the following morning at such and such a place: by sunrise they are there (or in this case, before sunrise). That day actually happened to be a Sunday: but I have seen the same thing happen on weekdays -- as it did upon Manung-gal.
I was once on board a ship bound for Negros (a beautiful ship named the Doña Florentina). I had had the privilege of officiating at its inauguration, and so on one of its regular trips to Negros I decided to try the ship as a passenger. Hardly had the ship left the dock than I was asked if I intended to say Mass the following morning. The fact (and the hour and the location) was then announced over the loudspeakers. The following morning, more than seventy persons were present at Mass -- passengers, officers, members of the crew. The Mass was served by a crewman who had made the "cursillo". So many came up to receive holy Communion that I ran out of consecrated hosts (for, relying on poor information, I had consecrated only twenty).
That was a Wednesday, not a Sunday. Obviously there is in many a Filipino soul a deep desire for religious worship which expresses itself in this desire to attend Mass, even in circumstances where they would certainly not be obliged to do so.
There is also in the Filipino soul a great reverence for a priest. I remember one occasion when the body of a young Jesuit priest was brought to Manila by train from the Bicol provinces where he had died. The body was enclosed in a plain coffin, and at Paco station the coffin had to be transferred from the train to the waiting hearse. There were porters around, and others who were unemployed: they were hired to carry the coffin, and having done so, each of them was paid a certain amount -- a peso I think. They accepted the money: but before the hearse could start, the word had gotten to them that it was a priest's body that they had carried in that coffin. They came up and inquired if that was the case: and when told that it was, they returned the money they bad been paid. They would not accept money for carrying the body of a priest. A Gift Of Eggs
This reverence for the priest was now evident on this visit to Manung-gal. We were on a mountain-climbing expedition, and we were dressed accordingly: in civilian, not in clerical clothes. On our way to the mountain we were not recognized as clergy. But word spreads quickly in the hills, even though people live at such great distances from each other. On our return from the mountain (and more so on our next visit to Manung-gal a week later), people were on the look-out for us. They could not do enough for us. Men offered firewood for our fire, barks of trees for us to sleep upon (instead of the hard ground as we bad been doing). At one watering place a group of women offered to fetch water for us, an offer which we of course declined since we could more easily fetch the water than the women could.
One incident was particularly touching. At Amaga, there was a woman who lived with her family in a very poor house, with a tiny chicken coop nearby. She offered to give us three eggs -- probably the only ones in the chicken-coop. We thanked her but declined the gift. We said that the eggs would only break on the way if we carried them along. She offered to hard-boil them for us. Again we declined because we did not have the heart to take away from her what she and her family so obviously needed much more than we. But the look of disappointment on her face has often haunted me in after years. Looking back, I have often wondered whether it might not have been a greater kindness for us to accept the gift which was offered with such sincere desire to help. She and her children would have gone without eggs for their supper, but she might have felt happier if the priests had taken her tiny offering.
The people of Cebu carry this trait with them wherever they go. I have been to many settlements in Mindanao peopled by settlers from Cebu and other islands of the Visayas. The settlers (like the Trojans of ancient myth) carry with them their ancient customs. Some of these might be of doubtful value; but some are beyond all price. Among these priceless treasures of their heritage are their deep attachment to the Faith and their great reverence for God's ministers.
We broke camp immediately after Mass that morning, and walked back, arriving at Kabulihan by midafternoon. Two young Jesuit scholastics from Berchmans College (Cornelius Mahoney and Paul Limgenco) had come in a kombi to drive us back to Cebu City. When we arrived at Kabulihan they were already there, waiting for us. So we thanked our guides and paid them more than we had agreed upon, and we climbed into the car and were driven back to the city. Return From Manung-gal
It was the 29th of December. The following day (Rizal Day) was the 30th. Had Magsaysay lived, it would have been the last day of his administration. As it was, another President was taking his oath of office for a new four-year term.
Mountain Essays of Fr. Miguel Bernad