Shocked mailman, wife invited to presidential dinner

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

When I was a kid growing inside the camp of the Philippine Military Academy I wondered why every Saturday or Sunday there were cadets that ate lunch and spent their afternoon at the houses of our military neighbours.

FOSTER SISTER. Getting acquainted, Inah Felice had chit-chat with the
new cadets moments after the foster parent pairing at the military academy.
PHOTO CREDIT: TRIPOD

“They are foster brothers,” a young pretty female neighbour, who became a general in the nurse corps, said to me on the graduating first class cadets.

Many of these cadets came from dirt poor existence in the provinces but catapulted themselves to the elite military school because of their intelligence especially in math in high school.

Some of them married the daughters (their foster sisters) of officers and non officers who stayed at the PMA’s quarters.

One of the cadets, just to stop the inquisitiveness and loquaciousness of a five-year old boy, carried me on his lap to stop my blabber when my lady cousin Darcy invited them inside our house so some of them, who were Ilonggos, could meet and exchange pleasantries with my father who hailed from Iloilo City.

“That was Julius Javier (PMA Class 1970 who came from Negros Occidental), he is the goat (the cadet who graduated last in his entire class),” my cousin whispered to me when Javier and classmates bid goodbye.

Javier not only became one of the most popular Army men but became the living hero of the Black Panther Scout Ranger due to his tenacity in fighting the Muslim rebels and the Communist’s guerrillas. He became the commanding general of the dreaded elite commando whose life story was put into the movie "Scout Ranger" in 1979 starred  by Karate King Roberto Gonzales, Dante Varona, Philip Gamboa, and others.

Geez, I don't know that the PMYer daughter of General Javier
was the student of my brother Gabriel when he had stint as
military professor at the PMA. Here's the living and Scout
Ranger's tenacious hero Javier responce to this blog and to my
brother's query on the whereabouts of some of those cadets
who visited our house at RFC PMA in the 1970.

***

President Ronald Reagan and Bill Clark meeting with
 President Zia-ul-Haq (center) in 1982.

This PMA memory just popped out as I was reading about military officers from other countries who study for their career advancement at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, USA.

Here was the narration of then Major Colin Powell (former Chairman of U.S Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State) as told at page 127 of his 642 pages hard bound book “My American Journey” By Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico.

 “The townsfolk adopted these foreign officers, so far from home, some separated from their families. They were invited by Kansans of every station to picnics, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, birthdays, and baptisms. Years later, when I was serving as National Security Advisor to President Reagan, we faced a mini crisis during the visit of the president of Pakistan, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. When asked for the list of guests he would like (to be) invited to the White House’s State Dinner honouring him, Zia said he wanted Ed and Dollie included. Ed and Dollie? It turned out that when Zia was a major studying at Leavenworth, Ed, a mailman, and his wife, Dollie, had just adopted him. Zia was still filled with warm memories of his friends, and consequently, a somewhat astonished Ed and Dollie were flown to Washington for dinner at the White House”.

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, by the way,  toppled through a quo d’ tat in July 5, 1977 Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The junta  tried and executed him less than two years later for authorising the murder of a political opponent.

 Zia, as I read on the old Newsweek and Time magazines my father collected when I was in elementary grades, after being instrumental in putting down the Black September Insurgency  against Jordan King Hussein was appointed by Bhutto as Chief of Army Staff in 1976.

Bhutto was the father of later assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The pro U.S Zia, instrumental in the flushing out of the Soviets in Afghanistan, died in August 17, 1988 in a mysterious C-130 Hercules cargo plane crash near Bahawalpur, Pakistan with several of his top military officials and two American diplomats.

 Filipino leaders and politicians, who fling with Mainland China, should take a look what Wikipidea has said: “Many of Pakistan's political scientists and historians widely suspected that the riots and coup against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was orchestrated with help of the US Central Intelligence Agency  (CIA) and the United States Government  because United States growing fear of Bhutto's socialist policies which were seen as sympathetic towards the Soviet Union and had built a bridge that allowed Soviet Union to be involved in Pakistan, and had access through Pakistan's warm water port; something that the United States was unable to gain access since the establishment of Pakistan in 1947”.

The gist of the last paragraph was, if Uncle Sam finds that a country’s leadership gravitates toward the enemy, he would look to people like Zia and company to frustrate that gravitation in the name of U.S interest like the free navigation and air space in an area called the West Philippine Sea.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at P’nan Biggest News. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com )