‘This is your boys’ war’

(The following is the first article filed by then 17-year-old The Manila Times reporter Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, Jr. in 1951, complete and unedited. He had been sent to cover the Korean War as a correspondent.)

Somewhere at the western front, Korea: There are four men probably five in this battalion today who are leaving [living] “on borrowed time,” when they escaped a Chinese box land mine by sheer luck last March 26 as the 10th was knifing deep into enemy territory to link-up with the 187th Airborne RCT at Uijongbu, Korea. They are: Lt. Col. Dionisio S. Ojeda, 10th Commander; Capt. Francisco Javier, S-2 Intelligence; T/Sgt. Raymundo M. Ganuelos, 36, married, of Bacnotan, La Unión; Cpl. Faustino Tumamak, 27, of Villalba, Leyte; and possibly Pfc. Félix Alfaraz, of Cabatuan, Iloilo.