My brutal actions could have backfired. The pulajanes could have seen through my bluff and waged a costly guerrilla war, striking and then melting into the many remote barrios nestled in the mountainous and rugged interior of the island.
Not only would that have caused many more unwarranted deaths among my meager force and drained what little resources we had, but it could have also successfully kept me pinned in Marinduque—far from any plans of joining the greater war effort in Luzon. I might have shot myself in the foot, replaying a miniature version of the Vietnam War, long before the Americans would ever suffer it.
Fortunately, it did not come to that.
The pulajanes pissed their pants.
