THAT Â?SPLENDID LITTLE WARÂ?!

By Remé Grefalda
For a fictionalized re-creation of the “splendid little war” described by turn-of-the-century military pundits, Daniel Williams’ Insurrection is filled with believable dialogue and plot twists.
The pages bring the reader to map illustrations of sites occupied by American soldiers shipped all the way from the United States to claim America’s first colonial stake in Asia. Chapters unfold like scenes in a movie delineating the landscape and the strange aliens that peopled the land.
We take for granted from our current vantage point what impact the islands in Asia must have had on the arriving American infantry soldiers. Only years separate the end of the wars with the Indian nations. Soldiers called volunteers were eager to prove their patriotism and their mettle. How more when their mission was to assist a people in their fight for freedom against Spanish oppression! American soldiers were eager for action, and in the month following the Treaty of Paris, in the stifling heat of an unchristian, alien land, they were restless playing “wet nurse to a bunch of savages.” The stalemate ended with the first shot fired against the “niggers”.
Richmond, Virginia author, Daniel Williams trots out the military strategists from both sides in this “historical fiction”, paying particular attention to the motivations and strategies of the young president of the new republic, Emilio Aguinaldo and parallelling his movements with those of the American colonel, Frederick Funston, promoted while in command in the Philippines to Brigadier General. The procession of names are familiar to history buffs, Dewey, MacArthur, Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, Otis, Merritt, Anderson, Greene etc.
Insurrection as fiction offers readers an introduction to experience a war that Americans know nothing about. Who is to say that if perhaps the annals of this war were as documented for the public as World War II has been, the records of that “insurrection” from the War Department may have foreshadowed America’s similar involvement in another insurrection in Asia 60 years hence: Vietnam!