LUKBAN
The items may appear harmless , but to the Americans , everything looked suspicious . One or two bancas would look insignificant , but ten of these could feed and supply squads and companies . Exactly how many small boats the Americans seized , there are no existing records . 21
Two months after the blockade was put up in earnest in the waters around Leyte and Samar , Lukban was already complaining about food shortage early in July - and actual fighting had not even started yet . Beginning July , Lukban said , he and his men had been eating sweet potatoes in the morning , “ morisqueta ” ( boiled rice ) at noon and “ lugao ”( porridge ) in the afternoon . When they were lucky , they got harina de palmira ( flour from palm trees ). Rice was rarely available . Lukban ’ s army was not poor because it had money from hemp collections , but there was just nothing to buy because of the blockade . 22
This explains why he kept on repeating the order to plant rice , but to many farmers , hemp farming was a more lucrative enterprise . They could trade hemp for rice and other necessities before the blockade started . Food problem would hound Lukban and his troops in the coming months . In fact , many of his leaders went over of the side of the Americans because of hunger .
Preparing his arsenal
Lukban was not one to be bogged down by such issues though . Instead , he put his energies to developing his arsenal in preparation for the coming battles against the technically superior Americans .
The Filipinos ’ arsenal of guns was quite diverse . Their main weapons were those that they had seized from the Spaniards : Spanish M93 , also the standard infantry arm of the Spanish , and the Remington Spanish rifle . In addition to these were added Krupp , Hontoria , an Ordóñez gun , Hotchkiss , Nordenfelt , Maxim guns and Colt guns , and the Filipino lantakas , originally made of bamboo and later reinforced with steel . Moreover , they had improvised artillery weapons made of water pipes reinforced with bamboo or timber , which could only be fired once or twice .
This merry assortment of weaponry created problems rather than solutions for Lukban because that meant they had to fabricate all sorts of bullets in different shapes , which would dissipate their efforts . Each model had different cartridge shells to serve as mold to bullets . Practically each bullet would have to be handmade , indeed .
Their first arsenal was hidden somewhere in the mountains of Catbalogan . It was here that many a church bell was melted and transformed into bullets , while the cartridges were made using old
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