Gone Bamboo

In 1898, as an adjunct to the Spanish-American War, the United States seized the Philippine Islands from their ancient colonial overlords, then turned to subdue the natives who had long been fighting for their own independence. This war, dubbed an “insurrection” by the Americans, turned into a long and vicious struggle to force the peoples of the Philippines to accept their new, “benevolent” masters; the tropical quagmire first preoccupied Americans, who then largely tried to forget that it existed. Meanwhile our soldiers fought and died in jungles and in mountain wildernesses, and wiped out an estimated quarter of a million Filipinos in the process, through battle, privation, and disease.



Gone Bamboo tells the story of several of these American soldiers as they come to grips with the horrors of racial war in an undeveloped land of tribal hatreds. Follow Aut McNaughton, Poco Stubblefield, and Tullius Cicero Beckett in their fascinating journey from Texas to Luzon and beyond, as they come to know and love each other and to hate themselves through the harsh experience of an overlooked war that bears many parallels with the heartbreak of Vietnam.