Medal of Honor · Philippine–American War
Frederick Funston
Colonel, U.S. Army
- Date of Action
- April 27, 1899
- Location
- Rio Grande de la Pampanga, Luzon, Philippines
- Medal Presented
- February 14, 1900
Values Embodied
- Courage
- Commitment
- Integrity
Official Citation
This citation is paraphrased from public-domain histories and is pending verbatim verification against the Congressional Medal of Honor Society archive.
Crossed the river on a raft, and by his skill and daring enabled the General commanding to carry the enemy's intrenched position on the north bank of the river and drive him with great loss from a strongly intrenched position.
Biography
Before the War
Frederick Funston was born November 9, 1865, in New Carlisle, Ohio, and grew up on a farm near Iola, Kansas — son of a congressman and a restless student who washed out of the University of Kansas. Before the Army, he was a botanical explorer for the Department of Agriculture, collecting specimens in Death Valley and the Alaskan interior; then a coffee plantation agent; and then, in 1896, an American soldier of fortune in the Cuban war of independence, where he commanded artillery for the rebels and took a slug through both lungs. When the United States went to war with Spain, he was given a volunteer colonelcy — the 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry — and shipped to the Philippines.
The Action
On the morning of April 27, 1899, Funston’s regiment reached the far bank of the Rio Grande de la Pampanga at Calumpit, where the Filipino insurgent forces held a fortified line behind the river. The only bridge was down. Funston asked for volunteers from his old Kansas swimmers to carry a line across under fire. Two privates, William B. Trembley and Edward White, stripped, took the end of a rope, and swam the river. Funston and his staff followed on a small raft, cabling the line to the far bank and hauling men across a platoon at a time. They cleared the trenches and broke the Filipino line, opening the road to Malolos.
After the War
Funston returned to the United States a brigadier general and a national hero, though his postwar years were shadowed by controversy over counter-insurgency methods in the Philippines. In April 1906 he commanded federal troops at the San Francisco earthquake and fire and is widely credited with saving what was left of the city. He died of a heart attack at the Saint Anthony Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, on February 19, 1917. He is buried at the Presidio of San Francisco.