This incredibly dramatic almost movie like scene where army soldiers were rescuing pinned down comrades along a narrow street in Marawi was described in great detail in ‘Marawi Siege: Stories from the Front Lines‘, the book i read last January.
So, two thoughts:
- While tremendously heroic and dangerous, so much as to make people want to sign up to become soldiers to do heroic acts themselves, you can’t help asking the inevitable question: why was ISIS allowed to become so powerful in that city to begin with? You might understand ISIS taking over a barangay but the whole city? And no one knew about it? They were armed to the teeth with powerful RPGs and anti tank weapons and had troops ready to sacrifice their lives in almost every large building. They booby trapped buildings, roads and bridges. Every government office, every hospital, ever business had to stop and either evacuate or be taken hostage. Christians were imprisoned or killed on the spot. Prominent Muslims leaders (the truly heroic people in this story) elected to stay at home to keep terrorists from invading it because they were hiding Christians in their basement, Terrorists wouldn’t touch them out of respect. Just like rich Germans hiding Jews in 1943. They risked getting shot at and had no power or water.
3 or 4 army battalions, while well armed and trained for jungle fighting had zero experience and were poorly trained to fight in a city. They therefore suffered numerous casualties and had no access to necessary equipment. Even their camouflage uniforms was wrong for the purpose. While useful if surrounded by greenery, it made them stick out on a street. Duterte poured millions and millions into cash and benefits trying to keep them motivated into fighting a war that took so long and cost so much.
So yes the soldiers were brave and courageous, truly worthy of their medals, but whoever dropped the ball in intelligence deserved to get shot. - The PNP says that body cameras aren’t fit for use in their job, and that ‘god can see and judge what they do anyway’, (or something like that). You know when someone is trying to hide or not deal with something when they invoke god in their reasoning. In any case, this is probably the best case for using a body cam that I have ever seen. Edited along with cameras around the area you get video and audio that is fit for a movie. So whatever the police are saying to avoid bodycams is clearly 100% BS. If these soldiers can wear them in an environment where you are being shot at by RPGs and AKs, they can wear them while doing regular police work.
I think the whole book is available via the link I posted above, but preferably please buy the book at national book store or amazon.