Major Littleton Waller
LUKBAN
Major Waller of the US Marine Corps came on board Villalobos at about 6.30 PM west of Balangiga , With him were four companies of the First Marine Brigade from Cavite which were hastily assembled into a battalion , numbering 15 officers and 300 men . David D . Porter and Hiking Hiram Bearss were his principal captains . Among his officers who were to prove important later were 1 st Lt A . S . Williams , 2 nd Lt Frank Halford , and GySgt John H . Quick . Most of them had served with him in China . 15 Although Waller ’ s post was in Basey , his authority went beyond its boundaries . That morning , he ordered Porter with 75 Marines to land near Guiuan “ to operate against the neighbourhood and destroy habitations .” 16
The subsequent reports about his exploits in the field would be reported by Waller himself from the garrison in Balangiga starting on October 31 , 1901 .
On his operations near Balangiga on the 26 th that month , he said he sent troops to trenches earlier occupied by insurgents but they were empty . Instead they burned the houses along the way , killed three bolowielding men and destroyed about 3,000 pounds of rice stored in the shacks nearby . But he admitted that “ it was impossible to capture natives .” In all likelihood , the natives fled to the nearby forests when his troops were around . They also found some equipment from the 9 th Infantry at the trenches , part of the loot of the victorious raiders of Company C in Balangiga a month earlier .
On the 28 th , Waller sent a raiding party eastward which destroyed a small village on the Paglaloanan point . He himself went to Balangiga on board the Villalobos , destroying two villages , killing one man and capturing another . The latter confessed that he was a coast guard , who was ordered to report the approach of gunboats to the teniente commanding the town of Alabas , on Point Capines . He added that there were 30 insurrecto soldiers stationed there , and these were armed with one Krag , two revolvers , and bolos or short , heavy daggers .
On the 29th , Waller took a detachment to the mouth of the river in Quinapundan on the USS Vicksburg . Upon his landing he was fired upon from the trenches on the opposite hill by three rifles ( in his estimate ), but there could have been more - in intermittent bursts at first , then gradually disappearing until the guns were silent . Then the hill was attacked by a group headed by Capt . Porter , but when he got there , the insurrectos had gone , leaving a Krag bayonet which was deformed . Waller and his troops then continued to Quinapondan , but they found no crops to destroy . Instead they killed one native in this expedition . On
118