Sgt. Jose Calugas, 1st Battalion, 88th Field Artillery Regiment, Philippine Scouts, 23d Division

[Subdeacon Joe]

Hero of the Philippine Liberation Former POW Honored with Medal of Honor

 

Sgt. Jose Calugas, 1st Battalion, 88th Field Artillery Regiment, Philippine Scouts, 23d Division, salutes the officer who presented him with the Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Bataan Death March.

At the age of 23, Calugas joined the Philippine Scouts of the United States Army and completed training as an artilleryman and served with different artillery batteries of the Philippine Scouts until his unit was mobilized to fight in World War II. After noticing one of his unit's gun batteries had been destroyed and its crew killed, he gathered several members of his unit together, dug in and attempted to defend the line. He was captured along with other members of his unit and forced to march to a distant enemy prison camp, where he was held as a prisoner of war. When he was released in 1943, he was secretly assigned to a guerrilla unit in the Philippines where he fought for the liberation of the Philippines from the Japanese.

Sgt. Jose Calugas' Medal of Honor Citation reach as follows:

The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Jose Calugas, United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with 1st Battalion, 88th Field Artillery Regiment, Philippine Scouts, 23d Division. The action for which the award was made took place near Culis, Bataan Province, Philippine Islands, on 16 January 1942. A battery gun position was bombed and shelled by the enemy until one gun was put out of commission and all the cannoneers were killed or wounded. Sergeant Calugas, a mess sergeant of another battery, voluntarily and without orders ran 1,000 yards across the shell-swept area to the gun position. There he organized a volunteer squad which placed the gun back in commission and fired effectively against the enemy, although the position remained under constant and heavy Japanese artillery fire.

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Source: US National Archives, army.mil and militarytimes.com