Robert Joseph Dagney

The Cross and The Dragon Robert Joseph Dagney

In 1896, a revolution began in the Philippines against Spanish colonial rule and by 1898 was about to succeed when the United States Army landed in Manila, drove out the Spanish and took over the country, after purchasing it from them for 20 million dollars. In February of 1899, war broke out between the United States and the communist and masonic Filipino Revolutionary Army of Liberation which had as one of its goals the destruction of the Catholic Church in the Philippines and was succeeding when the United States took over the country. The United States won that war in 1902 by the tactic of Total War. With the colonization of the Philippines and the acquisition of Guam along with the annexation of Hawaii, It was the beginning of the United States becoming a global superpower. An unintended result of of the war was the rise of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, now the only Catholic country in Asia. How this happened is one aspect of this story. How the war was fought is another. The central character of the story is James Aloysius McCarty, my first cousin, thrice removed, who enlisted in the Regular Army of the United States in 1899 and served thirty months in the War in the Philippines. He was with the 20th Infantry Regiment as a supply clerk and was discharged in 1902 as a QuarterMaster Sergeant. He spent his entire time in Manila, driving an Ox cart, supplying his regiment that had outposts around the city. Against this backdrop, the war around the country is described. This book is an example of what I call metafaction, in other words, fiction based on facts and meta-history, the belief that the Transcendent God of the Bible intervenes in historical events and in the lives of individual people.