Suffer the Little Children

Warily a patrol of Philippine army soldiers sidled through the jungle in search of Huk guerrillas. In a clearing they saw something moving. It proved to be a scrawny eight-month-old baby crawling along the ground. Another patrol stumbled on a pair of year-old infants wandering through a coconut grove. A farmer out fishing heard a baby's wail, searched the bushes and came across two more babies.

Soon villagers arrived at the army billets with six more, ranging from eight months to 3 1/2 years old. They, too, had been found abandoned, ill and hungry, in the countryside.

Philippine army intelligence pieced together the story. A month before, the army had launched separate heavy attacks against the Communistic Huks who had been spreading terror through the provinces of Bataan and Laguna. Taken by surprise, the local Huk commanders ordered the guerrillas to retreat along narrow jungle paths into the mountains. All excess baggage had to be discarded On the way; that included children.

By last week, 25 of the abandoned babies had been found. Officers guessed that another 25 lay dead somewhere in the jungle brush. To care for the survivors, the army converted a quonset hut at Camp Murphy into a hospital. Doctors and nurses went to work to treat festering skin sores and cure malnutrition--but the marks that did not show were harder to administer to. The blare of bugles blowing reveille scared the Huklings so that they clutched at nurses in fear. The first sight of soldiers in uniform made them duck; they were so disciplined to silence that the slightest shush from a nurse stopped their crying. The girls shrank from dolls, the boys were frightened by toy cars.

Scores of Filipino families wanted to adopt the abandoned babies, but the army would not let them, hoping instead to restore the children to their real parents; in fact, the army hoped that concern for the Huklings might lure parents out of the jungle. Last week the army at last gave the children names instead of numbers, at a mass christening ceremony. One god parent: the wife of Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay, who gave a two-year-old girl her own name of Luz (which means Light).

"They are now learning to play, and one or two are beginning to smile," reported one army welfare worker. "But I have yet to hear one of them laugh."

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