Best Seller

With Roscoe Mayo Holdeman, superlatives became a habit. At 21, he was the youngest, most talkative, most engaging U.S. Army major that the good people of northeast Mississippi had ever seen. Above his officer's pinks and forest-green shirt he wore the most dazzling decorations (the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart). He had lived through the most spine-tingling experiences imaginable, on all possible battlefronts (strafing Nazi tanks in North Africa, being rescued by the French underground after a crash landing in occupied Europe, shooting it out with Jap Zeros over the South Pacific). When red-haired young Holdeman spoke at war-bond rallies in Booneville, Tupelo, Okolona and a dozen other towns, women sobbed openly and strong men rose en masse to subscribe the limit. He was the best war-bond salesman that ever hit the state.

After a three-month whirlwind Bond-selling tour of Mississippi towns (eating the best food at the tables of the best citizens), Roscoe Mayo Holdeman was taken into custody by the FBI. Holdeman had spent one year in the Army as a flying cadet. Last June he was given a medical discharge. He had never been outside the U.S. Unimpressed by his record as the smoothest, fastest, most effective bond salesman in Mississippi, the FBI locked ex-Cadet Holdeman up on charges of impersonating a U.S. Army officer.

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