Beyond the Call: Medal of Honor Stories

Welcome to Beyond the Call, where history, leadership, and heroism come alive. Today’s story explores Sergeant Jose Calugas at Culis on the Bataan peninsula, a powerful account of courage and responsibility in combat. If you enjoy learning more about military history and extraordinary individuals, you can find more articles, podcasts, and resources at Trackpads dot com. In early 1942, American and Filipino units were falling back into Bataan, trying to hold a shrinking perimeter against a determined Japanese advance. Artillery batteries, including the Philippine Scouts of the 88th Field Artillery, were the thin wall of steel that kept infantry lines from being overrun.

Before we continue, I want to mention the Medal of Honor book series that accompanies this work. These books tell the stories of America’s Medal of Honor recipients in a serious, readable, and historically grounded format, with each volume focused on a specific campaign, battle, or part of the war. They are available in color paperback, Kindle ebook, and matching audiobook editions. You can find them at Military Author dot me.

By January 16, 1942, that wall rested in part on positions near the small village of Culis, where gun pits, foxholes, and a hard working field kitchen shared the same battered ground. The air was thick with humidity and smoke as Japanese artillery searched for targets and aircraft circled overhead. Men moved between guns and supply points with water cans and ammunition, trying to ignore the constant whistle and crash of incoming fire. Beyond the Call is the Monday feature of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine. Inside this tense landscape, Sergeant Jose Calugas was focused on his duty as mess sergeant, getting one hot meal to his battery while the barrage crept closer.

The man at the heart of this story began life far from Bataan. Jose Cabalfin Calugas was born in 1907 in the farming town of Leon on the island of Panay in the Philippines. His family worked the land, and money was scarce, so he helped where he could from a young age. When his mother died, he left high school to support his younger siblings, taking on adult responsibilities long before most of his peers. Responsibility came early. The patience and endurance that grew from those years would later shape how he faced the worst moments of war.

In 1930, seeking steadier pay and a larger world, the twenty three year old enlisted in the Philippine Scouts, a professional force of Filipino soldiers in the United States Army. Training took him all the way to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he learned the precise craft of artillery: how to serve a gun, calculate ranges, and keep complex equipment ready in mud, heat, or rain. After returning to the Philippines, he served with the 24th Artillery Regiment at Fort Stotsenburg and later with the 88th Field Artillery. The work was steady. Over time he became a respected noncommissioned officer and eventually a mess sergeant, responsible not only for food but for the welfare and morale of the men who ate at his line.

As the 1941 crisis in the Pacific sharpened, the routines of garrison life gave way to rapid moves and combat drills. When Japan attacked the Philippines in December, the Scouts fell back with other units onto the Bataan peninsula, where rough terrain and narrow roads offered one last chance to delay the enemy. On the morning of January 16, the guns near Culis were already trading fire with Japanese batteries, and the field kitchen worked in their shadow. Pots rattled with each nearby blast while soldiers lined up for a quick meal before going back to their positions. Something was wrong. In the middle of this noise, Calugas noticed that one of the supporting guns had fallen silent.

News arrived in fragments. A forward gun position had been heavily bombed and shelled. The cannoneers were dead or badly wounded, and the gun that had anchored part of the defense no longer answered when fire missions were called. Between the field kitchen and that shattered position lay roughly one thousand yards of open ground that Japanese artillery already had under observation. Staying put meant doing exactly what his orders required, feeding his battery and staying under what cover he had. Crossing that ground meant stepping into a killing zone that had just claimed an entire gun crew. Every step could have been his last. Without waiting for instructions, he chose to go.

Calugas called for volunteers and quickly gathered a small group, some from kitchen duty, others from nearby positions. Together they left the relative protection of their area and began to run toward the quiet gun. Shells burst ahead of them, then behind, throwing up dirt and shrapnel that stung faces and tore at uniforms. The open spaces between patches of brush felt endlessly long, each sprint an invitation to the next explosion. As the group neared the target, some men were forced to ground or driven back by the intensity of the fire. Only a few reached the damaged position. The courage required cannot be overstated.

What they found there was a scene of chaos and loss. Bodies lay around the gun, and the cries of wounded men cut through the fading echoes of recent hits. Under fire, Calugas and the others first dragged the injured to what little cover they could find, calling for medics and stretcher bearers. Then his training as an artilleryman took over. He examined the 75 millimeter gun, checked the breech, and looked over the carriage and shield. The gun was scarred, but it could still fire. The gun lived again. He turned the remaining men into a scratch crew and set them to work.

Ammunition had to be hauled by hand, charges and fuses set by men who had spent the morning as cooks or drivers rather than gunners. Under his calm direction they learned each step, loading, ramming, and firing round after round at Japanese positions that had been pounding the line. Enemy observers quickly realized that the gun had come back to life and shifted more fire onto the revived position. Shrapnel hammered the parapet and showers of earth fell across the crew with every near miss. Yet the ad hoc team kept the weapon in action. He led from the center.

The effect rippled beyond the gun pit. Each shell that roared out under Calugas’s orders helped suppress enemy guns or disrupt preparations for ground attacks. The renewed artillery fire bought time for other units to strengthen foxholes, move wounded, and redistribute ammunition in safer ways. For infantry watching from their forward positions, the sudden return of friendly fire from that direction signaled that the line still held. Beyond the records of targets engaged and distances covered, there was a quieter impact in the way men felt about their chances of surviving the day. He gave them more than fire support.

Only late in the afternoon, when the intensity of the barrage finally eased, did Calugas step away from the recovered gun. He had spent hours under direct fire, exposed to lethal fragments and concussion, while keeping a complex weapon working with an improvised team. When he crossed the same dangerous ground back toward his own battery, he did not seek rest or ceremony. He went back to work. Returning to the field kitchen, he resumed his duty as mess sergeant, trying to put together food for men who had just endured another brutal day on Bataan.

The official Medal of Honor citation compresses that entire day into a few formal phrases. It notes that a gun position was bombed and shelled until its crew was killed or wounded, and that a mess sergeant from another battery voluntarily crossed a shell swept area of about one thousand yards to restore the weapon and fire it effectively. Each word carries weight. “Voluntarily and without orders” signals a deliberate choice to accept a risk that went far beyond his assigned task. The phrase “at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty” is the legal language that points toward the human reality of standing up under fire when every instinct says to stay low.

The story did not end with that single action. When Bataan finally fell in April 1942, Calugas joined tens of thousands of American and Filipino prisoners on the forced march that became known for its cruelty and suffering. Hunger, exhaustion, and disease claimed many along the route and in the camps that followed. Survival was a daily question. Even as a prisoner, he tried to protect others and kept quiet about his role at Culis, understanding that recognition might bring deadly attention from guards. Later he was released to work at a rice mill and then managed to link up with guerrilla forces, continuing the fight in another form until liberation.

After the war, the recognition he had earned in battle finally reached him in public. In 1945 he received the Medal of Honor in a ceremony in the Philippines, standing as one of the first Filipino soldiers honored in this way for actions in that campaign. He chose to remain in the Army, serving with Scout units on Okinawa and then accepting United States citizenship and a direct commission. He and his family eventually settled in Washington state, where he retired as a captain, earned a business degree, and worked in industry while remaining active in veterans groups and community life. He built a new life. When he died in Tacoma in 1998 and was laid to rest at Mountain View Memorial Park, his journey had carried him from a rural village in Panay to a new home across the Pacific.

Today, his legacy lives on in several places at once. Memorials on Bataan recall the stand of the Scouts and the hardships of the campaign, and his name appears among those who earned the Medal of Honor in the Philippines. Community projects and honors in Washington state bear his name, keeping his story present in the daily life of the place he chose as home. Museums preserve his medal and tell visitors about the day a mess sergeant ran into a storm of steel to bring a fallen gun back into the fight. His story still speaks. At its heart is a simple but powerful image: a man who put down his cooking gear, crossed deadly ground to shield his comrades, and then returned quietly to serve them a meal.