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"He Eats Before I Eat." Magsaysay got the job. He moved the Defense Department out of downtown Manila to suburban Camp Murphy, to get it away from the pressures of politicians. Trained to the simple life (he doesn't drink or smoke, and has never succumbed to the Filipino weakness for gambling), he picked out a modest, one-story cottage at the camp for himself, Luz and their three children. He combed the army for bumbling or corrupt officers, promoted the good ones, and put a revitalized force into the field, with one mission: "Kill Huks."
In a C-47 called Pag-asa (Tagalog for hope), he toured the islands, dropping in unannounced on one army outpost after another; in regions Pag-asa could not reach, he traveled by car or carabao cart. He gave the soldiers better food, better quarters, promise of advancement. At one post he went out with a patrol to do a little Huk-shooting himself, and handed a battlefield commission to a sergeant who bagged three. At another post he found soldiers sleeping without blankets.
He routed the officers out of bed and made them distribute blankets. "It is the soldier who carries the gun and risks his life," said Magsaysay. "I must treat him like my own son. He eats before I eat."
To the demoralized population in Huk country, Magsaysay sent civil officers to explain the new army and to solicit their support. He posted rewards for Huks dead or alive, and saw to it that they were paid. But the claimants had to submit proof, preferably a photograph. He went after the Huks with their own tricks and their own cunning. They dressed their fighters in women's clothes; so did Magsaysay. They picked at army communications with phony messages and fake letters; Magsaysay disrupted their communications even more with the same tactics and with sharp, well-planned forays.
But most important of all, he struck at the source of the Huk strength—the social conditions that had made them what they were. He sent out word that all who surrendered would be spared, and offered each Huk ten hectares (about 25 acres) and a government-built house in a resettlement project in the lush, underpopulated island of Mindanao.
"They are fighting the government because they want a house and land of their own," said Magsaysay. "All right, they can stop fighting, because I will give it to them. And if they are not satisfied with that, by golly, I have another big deal for them. I am going to make the Huk a capitalist. I am going to set up a carpentry shop and let the Huks run it." The Huks began to come in, at first a trickle, then by the hundreds. Many signed up with Magsaysay as special anti-Huk commando teams ("When I turned over arms and ammunition to them, I wondered to myself if I was doing right"). Some 400 made off to the new promised land of Mindanao.