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FORT RAMON MAGSAYSAY, Palayan City: No Baguio
vegetables but only ants and leaves of wild plants for salad. And
while there’s no energy drink for fighting soldiers, there’s
snake to squeeze.
Part of the ongoing military
exercises, some 100 American soldiers belonging to the 294th
Infantry of the Guam Army National Guard, Second Battalion and 200th
Infantry of New Mexico Army National Guard received lectures on
Jungle Survival 101 in the ongoing RP-US Balikatan exercises from
their Filipino counterparts over the weekend.
Elements of the Special Forces
based here impressed the US forces when they prepared salad out of
insects and leaves of wild plants as well as cooking food in a
bamboo tube in the mountainous portion of this vast military
reservation.
Major Fernando Loz Bañes,
spokesman of the Philippine Army’s Seventh Infantry Division which
is under Major Gen. Juanito Gomez, commanding general, said that
jungle survival is part of the exercises in addition to exchange of
tactical know-how and use of weapons.
The joint military exercises
being part of the bilateral agreement between the US and Philippine
governments ultimately aims to uplift the interoperability of the
two forces.
The Filipino soldiers also showed
US Army men the way they caught a snake using a yardstick and take
its blood and meat. To keep them from hunger, the soldiers also made
food from ants.
They also taught the US soldiers
in making weapons out of anything available in the forest, as well
as the so-called slide for life that uses twigs and ropes to cross
waters.
Los Bañes said Special Forces
really excel in jungle survival besides being known paratroopers.
--Armand M. Galang
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