“What kind of parties?”
“At the Polo Club, for one.”
I belonged to the Polo Club. But only for business reasons-and for Patricia. She liked to have lunch out there. I arranged guest cards for our masters and chief engineers when they were in port. The only time I can remember going out there myself was when Pick was in boarding school-he couldn’t have been older than fourteen. During summer vacation he came out on the Pacific Venturer-worked his way out as a messboy. While she was in port, I took him out there so he could play.
He had a sudden clear memory of Pick at fourteen-a skinny, ungainly kid wearing borrowed boots and breeches that were much too large for him, sweat-soaked, galloping down that long grass field. He was unseated when his pony shied; he skidded twenty yards on his back, while Patricia moaned, so slowly, “Ohhhhh myyyyy Lordddddd!!!!”
“This man Fertig belonged the Polo Club?”
“I suppose he did. I saw him out there a good deal. And he played, of course.”
OK. We have now established that General/Captain Fertig was a member of Manila social hierarchy. Polo Club membership wasn’t cheap, and there was a certain snobbish ambience to it. You didn’t just apply for membership; you had to be invited to apply. And then the membership committee had to approve you. They were notorious for keeping the riffraff out.
“How did he come by his commission?” Pickering asked.
“He was directly commissioned just before the war, in October or November 1941. The General saw the war coming…”
Why am I tempted to interrupt and ask, ” Which general would that be, General?”
“… and we set up a program to directly commission civilians with useful skills. Fertig came in as a first lieutenant, Corps of Engineers, Reserve, as I recall.”
Yeah, you knew him, all right. And now he wasn’t one of the overpaid civilians at the Polo Club, he was a lieutenant who had to call you “Sir.”
“What was his skill, engineering?”
“Yes. Demolitions, as I recall. There was another one, a chap named Ralph Fralick. They were both commissioned into the Corps of Engineers as first lieutenants.”
“And what did they do when the war started?”
“That category of reserve officers came on active duty 1 December 1941. Their call to active duty was originally scheduled for 1 January 1942. But with the situation so obviously deteriorating, the General moved it up a month.”
“What did Fertig and this other fellow… Fralick?”
“Fralick,” Willoughby confirmed.
“… do when the Japanese invaded?”
“I don’t know specifically, of course…”
Someone as important as you was obviously too busy to keep track of a lowly reserve lieutenant, right?
“… but I presume demolitions. That’s what they were recruited for. The best people to blow a bridge up, of course, are the engineers who built it.”
“He apparently did it well enough to get himself promoted,” Pickering thought aloud.
“No one is casting aspersions against his competence, Pickering. As an Engineer officer. Without men like Fertig and Fralick blowing bridges and roads-literally in the teeth of the Japanese-Bataan would have fallen sooner than it did, and at a considerably cheaper cost to the enemy.”
“And then, presumably, rather than accept capture by the Japanese when Bataan was lost, Fertig somehow got to Mindanao.”
“A less generous interpretation would be that Captain Fertig chose to ignore his orders to proceed to the fortress of Corregidor, and elected to go to the island of Mindanao.”
“He was ordered to Corregidor?”
“All the specialist officers were ordered to Corregidor. There was work for them there.”
“What about the other one? Fralick?”
“He never showed up on Corregidor. I don’t know what happened to him. Presumably he’s either dead or a POW.”
“He’s not on Mindanao with Fertig?”
“That’s possible, of course, but so far his name has not come up.”
“I’m very curious why Fertig is now calling himself ‘General Fertig.’ ”
“God only knows,” Willoughby said, audibly exhaling. “If you accept the premise that he knows better, then I just don’t know.”
“You’re suggesting he might not know any better?”
“I’m saying, Pickering, that despite the valor he displayed on Bataan, he may well have been at the end of his string. He was under enormous psychological pressure. He was not a professional military man. He was a civilian in an officer’s uniform, upon whose shoulders was suddenly thrust enormous burdens…”