The Angel of Intramuros

Wars are started by rulers and politicians. Ordinary working men and women do the fighting and killing. It is also ordinary working men and women that do the dying, along with the poor and innocent children. There are no two sides to a war, there is only one because all of mankind suffers. Whether you willingly participate, are forced to participate or are just an innocent bystander, you suffer. Rulers and politicians do not understand all will suffer when they start a war. 

Manila, 1945. The city burned as the Battle of Manila raged between American forces and the Japanese Imperial Army. Streets once filled with life had become graveyards of shattered homes, bloodied rubble, and the cries of the dying. It was in this chaos that Sergeant James Calloway, a U.S. soldier, stumbled upon a scene that would haunt him forever.

Through the smoke and ruin of Intramuros, he saw her—a young Filipina girl, barely a teenager, clutching a lifeless infant wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. She was barefoot, her dress tattered, her eyes hollow with grief. Calloway rushed to her, but she did not react. She simply stared ahead, as if she had already accepted death.

 

Gently, he lifted her into his arms. She did not resist, but her lips trembled. “Nanay… Tatay… nasaan sila?” she whispered in a weak voice. ("Mother… Father… where are they?")

 

A nun rushed past them, cradling another child, her face streaked with tears. The convent had been bombed, and the orphans she cared for were either missing or dead. The girl in Calloway’s arms had been one of them.

 

As he carried her through the wreckage, stepping over bodies and smoldering ruins, Calloway felt the weight of war crushing his soul. This wasn’t victory. This wasn’t liberation. This was tragedy.

 

Reaching a makeshift medical station, he laid the girl down. A medic checked her pulse and gave a solemn nod. She was alive, but barely. As Calloway turned to leave, she gripped his hand.

 

“Will you find them?” she asked.

 

He wanted to promise her, to tell her that her family would be waiting. But he had seen the massacre at Intramuros. He knew the answer.

 

Instead, he knelt beside her and whispered, “I’ll stay with you.”

 

She smiled weakly before her eyes fluttered shut.

 

Decades later, Calloway, now an old man, still remembered that moment—the war, the girl, the broken city. He never learned her name, but in his heart, she remained the Angel of Intramuros, a symbol of the innocence lost in war, and the reminder that some wounds never heal.

 

Photo credit: John Tewell