by Orlando E de Leon

Where I left off, I averred two things: 1) that I don’t consider our health workers as frontliners, and 2) that we mis-allocated some tasks. On top of these, I identified the family and the home as the real frontliners.

As a Marine General, I have always considered our medical personnel as part of our REAR ELEMENTS. In the thick of battle, we bring our casualties to a collection point for first aid, and are further transferred back in line for better medical attention. I never dreamed that my medical personnel, my rear, will fight for me. The implication being, that I have been overrun. My lines have been overrun by the enemy. I have failed. Time to commit hara-kiri.

Having said that, why are we in this very situation right now? Why is our rear fighting in front? Have we been overrun? I don’t think so, not at this point in time. My assessment is that we near-panicked that we failed to determine which and where our front and rear are. We scrambled to get a grip of the situation while innovating on the best course of action to take. To me this is very normal. So normal, in fact, that 80% of commanders would have similar reactions. I would have been in the same frame of mind considering that the enemy we have been confronted with is both INVISIBLE and INVINCIBLE. But we need to recover from near-shock and reassess, then reconsolidate, our position. This is where we are now.

As promised, I will answer two questions: 1) what type of war are we fighting? 2) how are we going to fight it?

The Siege Warfare
Never in my wildest dreams nor during the period of my retirement did I imagine that I will be fighting a medieval type of war in the frontlines—in defense of my FAMILY and the integrity of my HOME—in the face of THE SIEGE.

A siege warfare was a medieval operation involving the surrounding of a town, castle or fortress by an army in an attempt to capture it. The “besieged” are those inside holding fort. The main idea of a siege is to cut off all resources from coming in so that the defenders will be forced to venture out and be annihilated. However, the defenders can hold on long enough for the attackers to leave by storing all the resources they would need for the long haul. The latter would leave because of diminished ration and the inability to live off the land.

In short and simple language, whoever gets hungry first, loses. One question would be, are the besieged really confined to just waiting it out? The answer is a big NO. It is a question of survival. Food and other resources can only go so far. The average siege duration in medieval times was six to nine months. A besieged population sometimes ventures out during that time period to forage for food. That is when they become vulnerable to the enemy.

Haven’t you noticed that we are exactly in this kind of predicament? We are besieged by the virus to a point that we cannot move out of our perimeters.

When this Covid-19 problem erupted, my instincts told me that this is MASADA. The enemy is both invisible and invincible. This is a siege. Without anybody noticing it, WE ARE ALREADY INTO FIGHTING OUR SECOND SIEGE WAR. WE LOST THE FIRST ROUND.

How did we lose the first one? We allowed our enemy to enter our gates, our borders. We did not take advantage of our natural barriers (manmade moats in medieval times) in preventing the enemy from barging thru our doors. Our frontliners then were the Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Customs, Department of Transporation, Department of Foreign Affairs, and any other department or agency involved in protecting our borders. When these frontliners were overrun, we were in the first stages of preparation for a long fight. Sadly, the onslaught was so fast that it reached our rears. That, my friends, brought us into the thinking that our health workers are the frontliners.

Another sad thing about this whole Covid-19 war is that, we assumed that it could be defeated by employing maneuver warfare. A maneuver warfare aims to trap or bring your enemy to a battlefield of your choice for the coup de grace. How the hell (sorry for the language) would you trap an invisible enemy? Do you honestly believe you can prevent and detect them at checkpoints? Can a curfew really make a dent? Jesus H Christ, if we continue to believe in this kind of thinking, then we are doomed.

Checkpoints, actually, are the worst violators of social distancing. It is the fastest means of transporting the enemy along borders. We have become unwitting tools of the enemy.

Second, let us stop thinking that our health workers are fighting. They are not! They do not have the means to fight. What they are actually doing right now is healing the sick and tending to the casualties from the frontlines. By doing so, they become collateral casualties, too. Having this kind of understanding would now allow us to focus on the objective of preventing casualties from piling up. This means the front should be equipped properly, trained properly, so it can fight properly.

How Do I Intend To Fight This Enemy?
I will fight this Covid-19 enemy by acting on the following beliefs:

1. This fight is a siege warfare. I cannot see the enemy, therefore I should confine myself to the safest garrison available: my home;
2. My door, my doorstep, are the forward edge of my battlefield (FEBA). Any enemy who knocks on it, I will slay (please don’t take me literally. I just mean “decontamination” so that it will not breach my security);
3. I am the commander of my frontline (my home and my family); and
4. I will do everything possible to discourage and prevent any member of my family to go out and be exposed to the enemy unless necessary.

However, I can only be effective in the task of holding the fort if my superior commander at the rear brings forward the logistics I need. I have simple needs to fight this war. These include: (1) food, (2) armor or quarantine suit (PPEs, alcohol, other essentials, etc), and (3) reinforced knowledge of the enemy.

As you can see, the frontliner-families only need three things. Like in the medieval siege, the besieged family will only allow a member to go out on a necessity. However, he will be required to wear armor.

What is this armor that I am talking about? This armor is so designed in such a way as to PREVENT THE PERSON FROM BEING INFECTED AND LIKEWISE, PREVENT THAT PERSON FROM INFECTING OTHERS. Wear the armor at all times when venturing out. Requiring people to wear the armor has multiple advantages, such as the following:

1. Fixed checkpoints become irrelevant because it is by itself a control measure. Anybody not wearing armor can easily be detected. Any virus travelling with a positive person is confined to that armor.
2. Movement of people becomes easier to manage and monitor with a specifically designed armor.
3. Any manifestation of the illness will be confined to that armor. Likewise, the probability of infecting neighbors and friends becomes so small. Infections will be confined to a family thereby, easily traceable.
4. It can control the number of people venturing out by assigning just two armors per family. There would be no need for IDs and barangay passes anymore.
5. The required social distancing will not be an issue anymore.
6. The discomfort from wearing such armor alone would discourage people from venturing out.

We could go on and on, but the point is this: these measures will starve out the enemy into leaving us alone. Remember, in a siege warfare, whoever gets hungry first, loses the war. We don’t need to go thru the average siege time of six to nine months. With the little knowledge we have about our enemy, it appears that it gets hungry at an average period of 14 to 25 days.

This was posted as a Facebook status on March 31, and is published here with permission.