True and that was pretty much the opinion shared by all American soldiers of Filipino troops circa 12/25/41 but many of those same Filipino soldiers who lost their nerve on the beaches regrouped and gave an excellent accounting for themselves on Bataan.
My original comment was a challenge to find a single American serviceman on Bataan in 1942 that had a poor opinion of the Filipino troops that fought on Bataan in 1942.
Sadly, there are very few primary sources with testimony from US servicemen in combat in Bataan.
There were very few US combat troops in the field and very few US officers leading Philippine Army units.
And even more unfortunately there were few survivors of Japanese captivity of these few, and even fewer of these survivors wrote a memoir. Mallonee is the best of what there is from people who would be in a position to know and offer candid opinions from the ground level. There are others who avoided Bataan and captivity, who served in the guerilla like Fertig (who was at Bataan btw) and Lapham.
Interesting excerpt - found online - I forgot about this -
Whitman - Our Last Ditch -
Note - Major Zobel’s battalion of the 1st Regular Division was the “mestizo” (Filipino-Spanish) battalion, in which my granduncle served. I don’t know if he was in the fight described, but that’s the unit mentioned. There were few survivors of this unit after Capas.
On April 6, the Americans and Filipinos staged a last ditch counterattack...
Three hundred men from Col. Whetherby’s 41st Infantry (PA) pushed eastward early that morning to establish a line across Trail 29 to which the 45th Infantry (PS) could advance. Hoping to surprise the enemy, the 41st Infantry decided against using an artillery preparation; it would be a sneak attack. It is amazing that the Filipinos could still be called upon for an offensive operation and, more amazing still, it was a night attack, one of the most difficult and hazardous of military maneuvers.
...Whetherby was ordered to use only 300 of his 650 effectives - a provisional battalion of three 100-man companies commanded by Filipino Major Zobel. After Col. Fortier gave them orders about 1600 hours on April 5, American and Filipino officers organized their men for the effort and put them into motion. Leaving the west bank of the Pantingan river just after midnight, the 41st Infantry slithered down the 300-foot tall banks, crossed the boulder-strewn brush-cloaked river, and slowly scaled the steep wooded cliffs of the opposite side. After catching their breaths on the east bank, the Filipinos crept cautiously into their old kitchen area. Straining to see in the dark, they found a small number of Japanese asleep in the rear-area shelters and huts the 41st Infantry had recently evacuated. These Japanese were old enemies, their Abucay and Trail 2 opponents, men of Nara’s 65th Brigade.
About 2 hours after climbing into and out of the river, the Filipinos stole across the darkened terrain, bayoneted and knifed some sleeping enemy, and pushed ahead of their objective, Trail 29...
But Japanese who escaped from the kitchen area sounded the alarm, and before noon the Japanese counterattacked with forces equalling a reinforced battalion and pushed the Filipinos off Trail 29 into a defensive position on a small ridge paralleling the Pantingan river. Here the 41st Infantry held.
Drawing on their experiences in Abucay and Trail 2, the hardened survivors of 4 months of war dug in. In the next 36 hours, the Filipinos, backed against the Pantingan, and armed only with rifles and machine guns suffered 30 percent casualties, 100 men killed or wounded while defending their little ridge.