February 4–5, 1899 · Manila Theater

On the night of February 4, 1899, Private William Grayson of the Nebraska Volunteers fired on a Filipino patrol at the San Juan del Monte bridge — the shot that started the war. Fighting erupted along the sixteen-mile perimeter between American and Filipino lines around Manila. American artillery and naval gunfire from Dewey's squadron shattered the Filipino trenches, and by the end of the second day the Army of Liberation had been driven from the outskirts of the capital with enormous losses.

February 10, 1899 · Manila Theater

Six days after the outbreak, MacArthur's division attacked north from Manila toward Caloocan, the railway terminus that anchored Antonio Luna's line. Naval guns and field artillery pounded the town before the infantry assault carried it. Luna's counterattack plan — a coordinated torching of American-held Manila from within — flickered out days later when his sandatahan infiltrators failed to coordinate.

March 31, 1899 · Central Luzon Theater

MacArthur's division fought its way twenty miles up the railway through entrenched Filipino lines to Malolos, the capital of the First Philippine Republic. Aguinaldo's government evacuated north rather than be trapped; retreating troops set the presidential quarters ablaze. The Americans marched into a burning, nearly empty city on March 31.

April 23, 1899 · Central Luzon Theater

Young General Gregorio del Pilar's entrenched troops ambushed an American cavalry reconnaissance near Quingua, pinning it down and killing Colonel John Stotsenburg when he arrived with reinforcements at the head of the Nebraska infantry. Only after artillery came up was the Filipino line finally broken.

June 13, 1899 · Southern Luzon Theater

The largest battle of the war: roughly 5,000 Filipino troops held the fortified line of the Zapote River south of Manila against Lawton's advance into Cavite. Naval gunfire from Manila Bay enfiladed the trenches while American infantry waded the river and turned the flank. By evening the strongest remaining conventional force of the Republic was broken.

November 11, 1899 · Northern Luzon Theater

As three American columns raced to trap Aguinaldo in northern Luzon, Wheaton's force landed at San Fabian on the Lingayen Gulf and pushed inland. At San Jacinto, Manuel Tinio's brigade fought a sharp delaying action from wet rice paddies and bamboo groves before withdrawing north.

December 2, 1899 · Northern Luzon Theater

To buy time for Aguinaldo's escape into the Cordillera, 24-year-old General Gregorio del Pilar held the 4,500-foot Tirad Pass with sixty riflemen against Major March's Texan battalion. The Americans, guided up a goat trail around the position, killed 52 of the 60 defenders. Del Pilar died in the saddle, shot through the neck; an American officer later returned his diary to his family.

December 19, 1899 · Central Luzon Theater

Leading an assault on San Mateo in a driving rainstorm, Major General Henry Lawton — conspicuous in a white raincoat and pith helmet at the front of his skirmish line — was shot through the chest by one of Licerio Gerónimo's sharpshooters. He was the highest-ranking American killed in the war. The town fell, but the Army had lost its most aggressive field commander.

April 15–19, 1900 · Samar Theater

Hundreds of Filipino guerrillas besieged a 31-man detachment of the 43rd Infantry in the Catubig church convent on Samar, burning them out with flaming arrows and captured rifles. The survivors dug in on the riverbank for four days until a relief boat arrived; nineteen Americans died.

June 4, 1900 · Mindanao Theater

Above the Cagayan River gorge in northern Mindanao, guerrillas under Apolinar Velez lured an American punitive column into a concealed trench-and-stockade complex on Makahambus Hill. Point-blank volleys and a steep ravine turned the assault into a rout — the first outright American defeat in a set engagement in Mindanao.

September 13, 1900 · Marinduque Theater

On the small island of Marinduque, Colonel Maximo Abad's 250 guerrillas and bolo-armed auxiliaries ambushed Captain Devereux Shields' 54-man patrol from the heights of Pulang Lupa, wounded Shields, and forced the entire surviving command to surrender — one of only a handful of American unit surrenders in the war.

September 17, 1900 · Southern Luzon Theater

American infantry attacking Mabitac in Laguna had to advance along a flooded causeway, waist-deep in water, against Juan Cailles' entrenched riflemen. The lead companies were shot to pieces — some two dozen killed, including 21 in a single stretch of causeway — before the assault was abandoned.

March 23, 1901 · Northern Luzon Theater

Using captured correspondence, Frederick Funston staged one of history's great military ruses: eighty Macabebe Scouts posing as guerrilla reinforcements, with Funston and four other Americans playing their prisoners, marched a hundred miles through the coastal jungle to Aguinaldo's hidden capital at Palanan. Welcomed into the president's own headquarters, the Scouts seized him in seconds.

September 28, 1901 · Samar Theater

At breakfast on a Sunday morning, the church bells of Balangiga signaled hundreds of bolo-wielding townspeople and guerrillas — some disguised as women mourners, their weapons hidden in coffins — to fall on Company C, 9th U.S. Infantry. Forty-eight of the 74 Americans were killed, the worst American defeat of the war.