First Battle of Bud Dajo

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The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Moro Crater Massacre, was a counterinsurgency action conducted by the United States Army and Marine Corps against the Moro people in March 1906, during the Moro Rebellion in the southwestern Philippines. During the engagement, 750 men and officers, under the command of Colonel Joseph Wilson Duncan, assaulted the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo (Tausug: Būd Dahu), which was populated by 800 to 1,000 Tausūg villagers. According to Hermann Hagedorn (who was writing before World War II), the position held by the Moros was "the strongest which hostiles in the Philippines have ever defended against American assault." Although the engagement was a victory for the American forces, it was also an unmitigated public-relations disaster. Whether a battle or massacre, it was certainly the bloodiest of any engagement of the Moro Rebellion, with only six of the hundreds of Moro surviving the bloodshed. Estimates of American casualties range from fifteen to twenty...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Pershing, John J. (John Joseph), 1860-1948., Public domain