Chapter 136: Bottom Of The Barrel
In light of the bleak news from Luzon, the training in Landi resumed in earnest. It started as soon as the first Monday of April. The fear that I wouldn’t be fast enough to make a dent in this war was resurfacing, and I spent my nights haunted by doubts.
While enemy prisoners were being executed in Boac, 215 new recruits were gathered for their first day in the training fields. It was a significantly smaller number than I would have liked. But it would have been playing with fire to entirely withdraw the garrisons from the southern towns. Even a temporary absence could invite disorder or opportunistic Pulajanes remnants.
So, for the second batch of advanced training in Landi, I chose the remaining one hundred recruits garrisoned in Boac, and another one hundred from the Santa Cruz recruits temporarily under the command of Capitan Mendez.
Don Contreras had managed to build a well-organized civilian peacekeeping force to keep Boac somewhat secure, even without a garrison. Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz recruits needed to be trained, as they would soon be accompanying Don Suarez—now Major Suarez—to Romblon. The reason why it wasn’t squarely two hundred was that the additional fifteen were intended to replace the fifteen KIAs suffered by the first batch.
For this task, I would assign fifty soldiers from the first batch as the training cadre in Landi. The remaining thirty-five soldiers would help the escolta in Boac facilitate the training of new recruits—who, for the sake of conserving manpower, would now all be funneled to the cabecera.
Still, we were approaching the bottom of the barrel. With around 550 men already recruited from the province and 264 new enlistments pending, our manpower pool was visibly thinning. Entire barangays had already given all their able-bodied men. Recruitment officers were starting to receive more teenagers and older men with questionable fitness.
It was part of the reason I so readily accepted Don Suarez’s offer to venture into Romblon. We would soon need the full contribution of the other provinces in my military district. And after that, I was planning to make the trip to Mindoro myself.
But I couldn’t leave just yet. There was still unfinished business in Marinduque. One pressing matter was the return of Señor Lim.
We had recaptured most of the 150 rifles stolen by Sadiwa, and an additional 89 rifles had been seized from the Pulajanes. It wouldn’t be enough. Even arming our current pool of recruits was a stretch. If I were to raise more men in Romblon and Mindoro, I would need more rifles. Ammunition, too, was becoming a growing concern.