He looked up and saw Major Lundholm across the mess hall. Lundholm ruled the staff with an iron fist and occupied a space just a step down from MacArthur’s inner circle. As his buddy Andy Tatum liked to say, “From Lundholm’s lips to God’s ears.” Of course, in this case Major Lundholm had the ear of General MacArthur and not the Almighty, but that was close enough.
Lundholm seemed to be looking for someone. Oatmire’s heart fell when Lundholm’s gaze found him and the major began making a beeline for the table where he was sitting.
“There you are,” Lundholm said, a note of annoyance in his voice, clearly not happy about having to track him down. “It seems like every time I try to find you, you’re either in the mess hall or out on a smoke break.”
“Yes, sir,” Oatmire said, hoping it didn’t sound as if he was agreeing with the major. He started to stand up, scattering the flies and spilling some of his coffee in the process.
Looking annoyed all over again, Lundholm waved him back down. Oatmire knew that he wasn’t Lundholm’s favorite person, but he wasn’t going to cry any tears over it. He didn’t much care for Lundholm either. Lundholm had formed some kind of judgment about him and seemed to think that he didn’t fit the mold of the rest of the headquarters staff. The major likely would have been happy if Oatmire had not returned from the Leyte invasion, but he had managed to do just that despite the best efforts of the Japanese.
Oatmire should have known better, but something about Lundholm brought out the smart-ass in him. He asked, “Did you come to find out how I liked the meat loaf, sir?”
“Did I—” Lundholm scowled. “No, that’s not the reason, Oatmire. You’ve always got to be the wiseacre, don’t you? I came to tell you that you’d better get packing. The Old Man wants a liaison on Luzon, and I couldn’t think of a better candidate to march around through the mud and swat at flies.”
“Thank you, sir.” Oatmire dared to ask, “Luzon?”
“That’s where the next big show is going to be, now that things are wrapping up on Leyte,” the major said. “I’d have expected that you’d know that, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your launch leaves in thirty minutes,” Lundholm said. “Make sure you’re on it. It’s an awful long swim otherwise.”
“Yes, sir. But, sir, may I ask what I’m supposed to be doing once I’m back on shore?”
The major looked around, and then, to Oatmire’s surprise, dropped into the empty chair across from him. The major suddenly appeared much older and more tired than he had a moment ago. His shoulders sagged so that he resembled a turtle about to withdraw into its shell. Oatmire felt a pang of conscience, realizing that the major probably had more responsibilities on his mind than the younger officer could ever know. The major frowned at the plate, where a fly was trapped in a pool of the ketchup that Oatmire had added earlier to improve the flavor of the meat loaf. “Here’s the thing, Oatmire. The Japanese have taken many hostages in Manila, maybe thousands of hostages by some accounts, most of them American civilians, but a few British and Australians, too. We need someone to negotiate with the Japanese when the time comes.”
Oatmire couldn’t help but open his eyes wide in amazement. “Why me, sir?”
“It should be obvious by now that you are a man of many talents, Oatmire.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t know anything about hostage negotiation.”
“None of us do, Oatmire. It’s not a position that the United States Army usually finds itself in. Don’t worry, the worst that can happen is that all the hostages end up dead.”
The major got up and left Oatmire stewing in his own juices.
His head was spinning. Negotiating with the Japanese? What could possibly go wrong? The answer was
He glanced down at his plate, suddenly feeling more than a little sympathy for that fly trapped in the ketchup.
Over on Leyte, Ernie Pyle was continuing to chronicle what the troops were going through. Rail-thin and much older than the troops he wrote about, Pyle stood out and was easily recognized by the soldiers wherever he went. His folksy piece about Christmas dinner with the boys of the 77th Infantry Division had been read by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, back home. He didn’t sugarcoat things, a fact that had made him beloved by the troops in Europe. He had left Europe to cover the Pacific conflict and found an entirely different situation, despite it being the same war. His reporting painted a truthful picture of “island hopping,” a term that sounded breezy compared to the grim reality of it all.
