Filipino Guerrillas Siege Catubig Against US Forces

Filipino guerrillas ambushed a U.S. infantry company and laid siege to Catubig in Samar province for four days beginning on April 15, 1900, inflicting heavy American casualties in some of the fiercest fighting of the Philippine-American War. The garrison at Catubig consisted of a small detachment of the 43rd Infantry Regiment, stationed in the town as part of the American occupation of Samar's interior. Filipino fighters under local commanders attacked at dawn, overwhelming the town's perimeter defenses and forcing the Americans into a fortified position where they held out for four days before being relieved by reinforcements from the coast. American casualties were significant for such a small engagement, and the tenacity of the Filipino assault demonstrated that resistance to the American occupation was neither dying out nor confined to the major islands. Samar would later become the site of some of the war's most controversial episodes, including General Jacob Smith's order to turn the island into a "howling wilderness" following the massacre of American soldiers at Balangiga in September 1901. The Philippine-American War, which began in February 1899 and officially ended in July 1902 though fighting continued for years afterward, was the United States' first major counterinsurgency campaign. American forces employed tactics that included the concentration of civilian populations, destruction of crops and livestock, and reprisal operations that generated criticism from anti-imperialist groups in the United States. The war cost over 200,000 Filipino civilian lives and over 4,000 American soldiers killed.