TRIBUTE THROUGH ART | A boy seems at a row of metalwork depicting Presidents Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, and Joseph Estrada on show in Intramuros, Manila. Ramos, who died at 94 on July 31, will likely be accorded a state funeral on Tuesday at Libingan ng mga Bayani. (Picture by RICHARD A. REYES / Philippine Day by day Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — The late President Fidel V. Ramos in his later years proudly wore his legacy on many events — a inexperienced beret with a parachute and a dagger badge, the insignia of the Philippine Army’s Special Forces Regiment Airborne (SFRA), which he established in 1962.
Dozens of retired and energetic officers and enlisted personnel of the SFRA paid tribute on Saturday to the departed chief at Heritage Memorial Park in Taguig Metropolis. Ramos died on July 31 on the age of 94.
Retired Maj. Gen. Jose Magno Jr., one in all his co-leaders at SFRA, recalled Ramos saying that “probably the most thrilling and harmful task” in his 52 years in public service was his stint as the primary commanding officer of the first Special Forces Firm, which was patterned after the US Army’s Special Forces and was later expanded right into a regiment with 20 firms, largely in Mindanao.
In 1960, Ramos and Magno, along with then Lt. David Abundo Jr.and Cpt. Cesar Batino, skilled on the Particular Warfare Heart at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and later topped the Special Forces and Psychological Warfare course. They took airborne programs later.
Unconventional warfare
Ramos, who graduated from the US Navy Academy at West Level, New York, in 1950, was later tapped right here by the army to incorporate the idea of unconventional warfare in its operations, which consisted of guerrilla and psychological warfare. One of many necessities included a unit with airborne functionality which focuses on parachute drops.
Retired normal and former Government Secretary Eduardo Ermita, who served with Ramos in Vietnam and helped create the first SF firm, remembered that it was the previous President who at all times set a superb instance.
In one in all his lessons when Ermita was a Ranger module teacher for Special Forces, his college students had been “all very apprehensive” of the rappelling and river crossing that they had been requested to do. They had been speculated to descend on a 100-feet vertical cliff alongside a street in Fort Bonifacio, then a densely forested space, parallel to the Pasig River.
“No one wished to be an instance, however you recognize what, Captain Ramos moved ahead to go on rappelling even when he was having a tough time… He did it simply to [set an] instance,” Ermita recalled in his eulogy.
“He noticed to it that what he says could be achieved as a result of he knew the psyche of the soldier. Give them a superb chief and you’ll have good troopers,” he mentioned.
As a younger lieutenant, Col. Ferdinand Napuli, who now heads the SFRA, remembered that President Ramos, through the Special Forces anniversary in 1992, pledged to attend the unit’s anniversary each 5 years from thereon. Sadly, he didn’t make it to the sixtieth anniversary in June due to his well being.
“It might have been my honor to inform him that the Special Forces of right this moment is now able to orchestrate unconventional warfare operations to deal with exterior threats at our maritime borders,” he mentioned.
Ramos will likely be given a state funeral with full army honors on Tuesday. A two-day public viewing began on Sunday, with a number of mourners trooping to Heritage Park to pay their final respects.
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