Lt. Robert E. Carter, one of the spirited parachute and glider trained paratroop officers,
chosen for OSS Special Operations Teams and Operational Groups, which received their
OSS training at Areas F, B, and A. Courtesy of Robert E. Carter, Jr.


Left: Greek-American members of the OSS
Special Operations “Chicago” Mission

in 1944 to northeastern Greece, where

they destroyed two heavily-guarded

railroad bridges that had provided an

important supply route for Germany,

|, tor, Spiro Cappony, Mike Angelos, James Kellis

| : . Greek guerrillas assemble
packs of C-2 (plastic) composition

. F explosives to blow up the bridges.
Radioman George Psoinos with

his suitcase radio and his bodyguard.
a Greek guerrilla fighter

Photos courtesy of Spiro Cappony,

Right: Greek guerrilla fighters lead
the way as the unit heads out on
its mission.



Lt. Col. Serge Obolensky, Russian prince.

New York socialite, OSS officer, who trained

at Areas B, A, and F, parachuted into Sardinia
in 1943, becoming at age 52, the oldest combat
paratrooper in the Army. In 1944, he led

OSS French OG Mission Patrick into central
France, fighting for a month behind enemy lines.



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Training Chinese Commandos

In 1945, Members of the OSS
French OG section headed by
Capt. John E, Cook and including
Ellsworth (“AI”) Johnson, Roy
Gallant, and others, arrived in
China and began training the

2TM OSS Chinese Commando

unit near the OSS Theater
headquarters north of Kunming.

Above: OSS rifle range targets for Chinese
trainees on a hillside near Kunming.

Left: Chinese commando trainees
participate in a field exercise to take
over a Chinese village.

Above: OSS 2" Chinese Commandos
Photos courtesy of Ellsworth (“AI”) Johnson. and their Chinese officer graduate
after their OSS training in China.


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OSS Detachment 101 operated in northern Burma from its headquarters in Nazira, India;
Detachment 202 in China and northern French Indochina from Chungking and Kunming;
Detachment 404 operated in southern Burma, Thailand, Malaya, and southern French

Indochina from its main headquarters in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). John W. Chambers,


Above: OSS Photographer. Seaman
Nelson Paris, was among those
executed. U.S. National Archives.

A month later fleeing into the Lower Tatra Mountains, the main
OSS group stopped for a break on November 11, 1944. Team
photographer, Navy Seaman Nelson Paris took a picture of Joe
Morton, lefi, Lt. Holt Green center, and Sgt. Jerry Mican, right.
They were captured December 26, 1944 and executed at
Mauthausen Concentration Camp in early 1945.

(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).

Above: Margita Kockova, a 30-year-old
Slovak-American, was assigned by the
Czechoslovak Army HQ as an interpreter
with the British SOE team in Slovakia
headed by Major John Sehmer. Like him,
she was captured and executed by the Nazis.
(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).

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Left: Maria Gulovich, 24, Slovakian schoolteacher, partisan,
ion, led two OSS enlisted
men to safety, Her Slovakian identity card, included her signature,
¥ Benitstave'dna G. ene Me. Maria Gulovigova in Slovak, scrawled over part of her face.
Za prev 2) Following the escape, she continued to work for the OSS and was:
2 coup later brought to the United States where she received the Bronze Star
= Medal. (SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia),



Lt. Roger Hilsman, West Point graduate. and former member of Merrill’s Marauders.
joined the OSS in 1944, serving with OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, where this picture
was taken of him carrying a pistol and an OSS silenced M3 submachine gun. Later,
serving with OSS Detachment 202, he would later help rescue his father and General
Wainwright from a Japanese POW camp in China, Photo courtesy of John W. Brunner.


OSS China Theater Headquarters Compound north of Kunming.
Photo courtesy of John W. Brunner


Six U.S. B-17G “Flying Fortress” Bombers from the 15" U.S, Army Air Force from Bari,
Italy at the insurgent-held, Tri Duby Airfield near Banska Bystrica, on Oct. 7, 1944.
(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).

y i

Bazookas and other weapons as well as munitions, explosives, medical and other
supplies for the Slovakian National Uprising unloaded from a B-17 by Slovakian soldiers
and members of the OSS. (SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).



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From Trainees to Combat Veterans; A French OG from Europe to Asia

Portrait of part of a sizable part of the OSS French Operational Group in their Class-A
uniforms at Brockhall training estate in England. They had previously trained at Areas F
and B. In the summer of 1944, they would be parachuted behind German lines. After the
liberation of France, these French OGs volunteered for service in Asia in 1945.

A section of this same OSS French Operational Group after their combat success in
France and before being returned to England and then transferred to China. Rear row, left
to right: Grant B. Hill, medic Ellsworth (“AI”) Johnson, radioman Thomas F. McGuire.
two unidentified OSSers, then Robert Anderson, and Capt. James E. Cook. Front row:
two unidentified OSSers on the left, then J.L. DuBois, and with the cap, Roy Gallant
Photos courtesy of Ellsworth (“Al”) Johnson.


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Current Map of Catoctin Mountain Park with locations of OSS Training Area B and Sub-
Camps Area B-2 and Area B-5 superimposed

Catoctin Mountain Park



Starved Allied POWs

Some of the Allied prisoners of war rescued by the OSS “Pigeon” Mission on Hainan
Island. The team rescued more than 500 in all. This group of Australian officers with
their colonel, back row center, posed for an OSS photographer. Malnutrition, disease and
brutal treatment had led to the deaths of 200 Australian and Dutch prisoners at the Hainan
POW camp since their capture in 1942, but 500 were still alive. Eight American airmen
had been captured in 1945, but only one was still alive. Aided by Singlaub*s men and the
medical team that arrived afterwards, the sick and starving prisoners were treated and put
aboard ships for transportation to Allied hospitals. Photo courtesy of John K. Singlaub.


OSS Rescue Mission

Members of the OSS “Pigeon” Mission arrive at a Japanese camp for Allied
prisoners of war on Hainan Island off the south China coast after parachuting in on 27
August 1945 with news of Tokyo’s surrender. Maj. John K. (“Jack”) Singlaub, center,
commander of the mission, a Jedburgh in France who had trained at Areas F and B and in
England, directs a Japanese Army captain to take them to the colonel in charge, as they
hasten through the village where were the guards resided toward the camp where the
POWs were incarcerated.

Left to right: Lt. Ralph Yempuku, Japanese-American Nisei from Hawaii, the
interpreter, with bandaged chin from the parachute drop; unidentified Japanese Army
captain; Lt. John Bradley, Special Operations Branch; Major John K. Singlaub, SO,
commander; Cpl. Jim Healey, medic; and Lt. Arnold Breakey, Secret Intelligence
Branch. Photo courtesy of John K. Singlaub.


Virginia Hall, OSS Special Operations Branch, one of the most effective OSS spies and
resistance leaders, operated behind enemy lines in German-occupied France. The Gestapo
called her the limping lady because of her wooden leg and because of her effectiveness
offered an enormous reward for her capture as one of the most dangerous Allied agents.
This Maryland socialite turned clandestine operative eluded capture and provided
valuable intelligence information as well as organizing, arming, and training French
Resistance forces that demolished bridges, destroyed supply trains and disrupted enemy
communications. Here, Virginia Hall receives the Distinguished Service Cross from Maj.
Gen. William J. Donovan in September 1945, She was the only civilian woman to receive
the Distinguished Service Cross in World War IT. National Archives.


¢

An unidentified woman and man, members of OSS Secret Intelligence Branch, being
suited up in British SOE jumpsuits and parachutes in preparation for airborne infiltration
from England to France. Courtesy of John W. Brunner.

Members of an OSS Operational Group Mission, Percy Red, are trucked to a waiting
plane to parachute them into central France in August 1944, Courtesy of Rolf Herstad.


Right: Film star, Sterling Hayden
(also known as Capt. John Hamilton),
far right, and the naval radio operator,
Seaman Spiro Cappony, who Hayden
trained with at Area B.

Courtesy of Spiro Cappony.

Above: Morris (“Moe”) Berg,
major league baseball catcher,
linguist, and spy for the OSS.

Joseph (“Jumping Joe”) Savoldi when he was
an All-American at Notre Dame a decade before
joining the OSS and training at Area B.

Courtesy of J.G. Savoldi.


Area C served as the OSS Communications School. Civilian instructors like John
Balsamo, front left, formerly a Wall Street telegrapher, and Timothy Marsh, front right.
helped OSS “Commo” operators reach a minimum, accurate speed of at least 25 words

SS Records.

per minute in OSS coded International Morse Code in classrooms like this.

Communications Branch trainees at Area C also learned how to set up various types of
radio antennas for clandestine or base station wireless telegraphy transmitters and
receivers. OSS Records, National Archives.


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Map of OSS Italian Operational Group operations in Italy 1943 to 1945. OSS Records,
National Archives.


Assessing trainee’s ability to
withstand hostile interrogation. OSS Photo.

Right; Learning to build and use
rope bridge crossings. OSS Photo,

Left: Lt. Erasmus H. Kloman practice firing
a German submachine gun on the beach,
Courtesy of Erasmus H. Kloman.



On the way home to the United States.

Five members of the OSS French Operational Group. who had trained at Areas F and B
and then in England, had fought behind German lines in France in 1944 and Japanese
lines in China in 1945, were on their way home from China via Calcutta, India, in
September 1945. They were Nicholas Burke, from Chicago, sitting; others, from the left,
Emil Roy from Kansas, Ellsworth (“AI”) Johnson from Grand Rapids, Michigan; Gus
(full name unknown), Robert Vernon from Idaho. Courtesy of Ellsworth (“AI”) Johnson.


Lieutenant John C. Hooker, Jr. was 20-year-old officer in the OG section of the Arakan

ld Unit, in 1944, Like the others he had trained at Areas F and A. After service on MU
fast boats along the Burma coast in 1944, he was sent to parachute school and deployed
into jungle combat in northern Burma with Detachment 101, Subsequently, he served
with Detachment 202 as an officer in the 10" Chinese Commando Group, which attacked
a Japanese held airfield in China in 1945, Postwar photograph of Lieutenant Colonel John
C. Hooker, Jr. in 1959, courtesy of John C. Hooker, Jr.



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Right: Capt. Leopold (“Leo”)
Karwaski, on left, former instructor
at Area B, and a Marine Major
Benson, right, both members of
Maj. Gleason’s SO team, take

a roadside break near Kweilin,
south China, late fall 1944.

OSS Records, National Archives.

Below: Destruction achieved by Maj. Frank Gleason's OSS team helping to stop the
Japanese Army's /chi-Gé campaign toward Liuchow, Kweilin, and north toward
Kunming and Chungking. The Japanese were halted. OSS Records, National Archives.

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Pvt. Arthur F. (“Art”) Reinhardt, 19, from near Buffalo, New York. a top graduate of the
Amy Air Corps’ Communications School, was recruited by Donovan's organization and
sent to the OSS Communications School at Area C in Prince William Forest Park in the
summer of 1944, Subsequently, he was sent to China in October 1944 as an OSS radio
operators/cryptographer. Initially, he was stationed in a forward base of the 14” U.S, Air
Force, but once it was overrun by the Japanese Army in December 1944, Reinhardt spent
most of 1945 with OSS teams working in the field behind enemy lines. He served both
inland and along the seacoast, providing target and other information for the U.S. Army
Air Force and the U.S. Navy. Courtesy of Arthur F. Reinhardt.


Two leaders of OSS SO Team “Ibex” in North China in 1945,

Lt. Herbert R. Brucker, left, trained at Area E and probably C.

An OSS radioman in France in 1944, Brucker had been promoted
to lieutenant. In China, Brucker, with his Alsatian accent and beret,
quickly became known as “Frenchy.” He was executive officer of
SO Team “Ibex” commanded by Capt. Leon Demers, right, which
trained and led Chinese guerrillas behind Japanese lines in North
China in 1945. Courtesy of Troy J. Sacquety.


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Maj. Albert Jenkins, USMCR, commanding officer of Area C for most of the war,
sometimes personally instructed trainees in the use of the .45 caliber automatic pistol as
he did here in December 1943, On the extreme left are Martin Lubowsky from
Pittsburgh, half in the picture, James Bisaccia from the Bronx, holding up a pistol, and
Corporal Mulford, weapons instructor. Identifications by Roger L. Belanger. OSS Photo.
? . =

A trainee 1s Thstrecied im he vst Of the Mh Garand automatic rifle at the rifle target ”
range at Area C. OSS Records, National / rchives,



In front of OSS headquarters in Washington, D.C., Major General Willliam J. Donovan
awards the Legion of Merit to a number of OSS officers who returned from the Far East
in 1945, Among them in the front row are three OSS Special Operations officers, from
the left, first, Lieutenant Colonel Arden W. Dow, OSS Special Operations, an infantry
officer ftom Wenatachee. Washington, who had an instructor at Areas B and A, before
being sent to China to head a joint Sino-American training camp for preparing Chinese
soldiers as OSS Chinese Commando units to be parachuted behind Japanese lines;
second, Lieutenant Colonel Nicol Smith, trained at Area B, who commanded OSS-
trained Thai agents sent into Thailand from China; and third, Major Frank A, Gleason
from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, an Army Engineer and instructor in demolitions at
Area B in Maryland and then, deputy commander of the Sino-American training camp
headed by Arden W. Dow, Gleason also headed an OSS SO team in China in the fall of
1945 that helped impede and ultimate halt a Japanese Army advance by destroying parts
of the transportation network and blowing up warehouses full of arms and munitions to
prevent their capture and use by the Japanese, Photo courtesy of Dorothea D. Dow.


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and Hans Tofte, instructors in close combat fighting,
Courtesy of the Congressional Country Club.

William E. Fairbairn demonstrated a disarming
technique at Area B. This is a still from an OSS training
film shot under John Ford’s direction at Area B in 1942,
Both students and instructors wore masks during the filming
to preclude identification. Courtesy of Lynn Philip Hodgson.

Left: Fairbairn, on right, accompanying a trainee
Firing at a mock-up German in one of Fairbairn’s
“Mystery Houses,” or “House of Horrors.”
Courtesy of Lynn Philip Hodgson,



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Hite of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the

tral intelligence Agency (CIA), was established by direction

f President Franklin D. Roosevelt in June of 1942. and existed

oMntil September of 1945. its Director was Major General William

J, Donovan, The charter of the OSS was to conduct espionage
and cover! action against enemy forces during World War II.

This area im the Park, known as Area C,. and surrounding
buildings, wat Used by the OSS during that perlod to conduct
Communications training for approximately 1500 radio operators
and technictans, They were trained in the use of Morse Code and
various radie equipments. Following training, these personnel

) Were assigned to overseas theaters of operation to provide
communications links In support “of clandestine operations
conducted by the OSS, U.S. Military and Allied Forces.

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This marker furnished by OSS-Communications Veterans, 1997

There are several organizations of veterans of the OSS, including the OSS Society, the
Detachment 101 Society, and others, but the OSS CommVets. whose members served in
the Communications Branch, have maintained a special relationship with Prince William
Forest Park, site of the main OSS Communications School at OSS Training Area C.

In 1997, the Comm Vets association dedicated the bronze plaque shown here at Prince
William Forest Park. It may be seen in the Visitor Center. Prince William Forest Park.


Above: Off duty trainees at Area A clowning around in 1943 on the dock on the lake on
the south fork of Quantico Creek that was used for seaborne landings and drills. Louis J.
Gonzalez is on the right in an arm lock hold. Courtesy of Ronald Gonzalez.

Overseas Duty. Staff Sergeant Louis J. Gonzalez, OSS Research and Analysis
Branch, in Italy, 1944. Courtesy of Ronald Gonzalez.


OSS Training in the National Parks
and Service Abroad in World War II

by

John Whiteclay Chambers II

U.S. National Park Service
Washington, D.C.
2008


Sgt. Charles R. Perry, USMC, a member of OSS’s Union II Mission, was killed when his
steel parachute cable snapped during the team’s airborne infiltration into France on Aug.
1, 1944. He was buried with full military honors provided by guerrillas of the French
Forces of the Interior and the surviving team members of the Union II Mission in a
ceremony held in the drop zone itself. Courtesy of the California State Military Museum.


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OSS Detachment 404 “War Room” in
Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with.

left to right, British Admiral Lord Louis
Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander
of the Southeast Asia Command; Cora

du Bois, chief of the Research & Analysis
unit for Detachment 404:and Colonel John
Coughlin, former deputy commander of
Detachment 101, later head of OSS
Detachment 202 in China in 1944,

U.S. National Archives.

Major Lloyd E. Peddicord, left, OG section
chief, and Captain George H. Bright, planning
operations along the southern Burma coast in
December 1944, Both officers, and the entire
OG unit, trained at Areas F and A in 1944.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen

The P-564,.an MU. fastboat under
er th 3
oF ILT Walter Le Mess, sera

Arakan Field Unit of Detachment 404 and later Detachment 101, was composed of OG,
SI, and MU personnel, and engaged in operations along Burma’s southern Arakan coast,
inlets and rivers, They used Maritime Unit fastboats, including the P-564, shown here
skippered by First Lieutenant Walter L. Mess of Arlington, Virginia. These U.S. Army
Air-Sea Rescue Boats were similar to Navy PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats but shorter and
without the torpedo tubes. Photo courtesy of Troy Sacquety.


OSS Jedburgh Team “Je with Lt. Ja glaub, second from left with hands on hip,
interrogating a German soldier captured by maquis guerrillas directed by the OSS team.

is =

OSS men help celebrate the liberation of Castres, France, September 1944. Left to right:
Raymond Picard, Cpl. Herbert Shapiro, and T/S Marcel Landry armed with Marlin
submachine guns and .45 caliber pistols. Courtesy of John W. Brunner.



Maj. Gen. William Donovan, OSS Director, center, at a breakfast meeting in winter of
1944-1945 with Maj. Howard Manning, left, who succeeded Albert Jenkins as head of
Area C, and Manning’s adjutant, Lt. Edward Katszka. Photo courtesy of Betty Manning.

1 \ ==

General Donovan addresses an audience of trainees, probably Special Operations or
Operational Group members, as they are in military uniform with shoulder patches and
the paratroopers among them are wearing jump boots. The setting is probably one of the
recreation halls in Area A or Area C as the pool tables have been moved to the front of
the room. A dummy used for bayonet, knife, or unarmed combat exercise has been
moved to the left rear corner of the room. Photo courtesy of Betty Manning.


Chris Rumburg: An American Hero

Lieutenant Colonel Ira
"Chris" Rumburg

Ira Christopher (“Chris”) Rumburg, who had been captain of the Washington State
University football team, a champion wrestler, and president of the student body, had
as a young licutenant in OSS’s SO Branch been an instructor at Area A in 1942-1943.

By 1944, Rumburg was a lieutenant colonel assigned to a regimental headquarters in the
66" (“Black Panther”) Infantry Division, possibly as an OSS adviser. On Christmas Eve,
Rumburg and 2,200 soldiers boarded a transport ship, the SS Leopoldville, which was to
take them from Southampton, England to Cherbourg, France for the trip to the front. The
ship was torpedoed six miles from France, Before the ship sank and he drowned,
Rumburg was credited with saving the lives of more than one hundred of his fellow
soldiers. He was one of the nearly 800 American soldiers who perished in the disaster.
Rumburg was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, and
commemorated by a Memorial Fund by the Washington State University.

Photos courtesy of Washington State University Athletics.


Although instruction was rigorous at the Training Camps, there was usually some time
for outdoor recreation, softball, basketball, or volleyball. Here a volleyball game is held
in front of the Recreation Building in Area C. OSS Records, National Archives.

Since so much of the paramilitary training was so demanding physically, OSS tried to
ensure that the quality of the food was better than standard Army chow. In Training Area
C, former restaurant owner Capt. John Navarro obtained first class cooks. OSS Records.


In late summer and early
winter 1944, in an attempt to
impede the Japanese Army’s
Ichi-Gé offensive toward
Kweilin and Liuchow in
southern China, Maj. Frank
Gleason led an OSS Special
Operations unit of nearly a
dozen Americans to destroy
the area’s transportation net.

Above: Maj. Frank Gleason
stands atop the ruins of a stone
bridge blown up by his team,

Left: A river ferry burns
near Pinglo, set fire by
Gleason’s men.

Right: Villagers survey

the remains of a wooden bridge
with stone supports destroyed
by Gleason’s team, which set
off a 1,000 pound bomb there
to delay the Japanese Army.

Photos from OSS Records,
National Archives,



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Map of Prince William Forest Park with locations of OSS Training Areas A and C and
Sub-Camps in Areas A-2, A-3, A-4, A-5, and C-1 and C-4 superimposed.
Prince William Forest Park.



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Area A-4, the former Civilian Conservation Corps work camp in Prince William Forest §
Park, served as the OSS headquarters for Area A. Because there were barracks there, it
also served as a training sub-camp as well. OSS Records, National Archives.

A summer scene at Area A around the water fountain with cabins in the background.
Courtesy of Ronald Gonzalez.


Col. Carl Eifler, left, commander

of Detachment 101, prepares to

take Gen. William Donovan on

a flight behind Japanese lines in
Burma, Dec. 1943, while film director
John Ford, with sun glasses, and Nicol
Smith, who trained at Area B, watch.

Lt, Joseph Lazarsky. former
Instructor at Area B, in Burma,
where he commanded the

1“ Kachin Ranger Battalion, 1944

OSS on the offensive in the jungle
of northern Burma, 1944, Lt. Joe
Lazarsky, right, CO of 1° Kachin
Ranger Battalion, his deputy, a
British officer, second from lefi.
and two Anglo-Burmese agents
accompanying the battalion and
its elephant supply train south

to Lashio before heading to Rangoon.
Photo courtesy of Joseph Lazarsky



As part of the immediately postwar celebration of the 0.S.S., Hollywood film studios
produced a number of movies about the daring clandestine agents, men and women, who
went through OSS training camps and risked their lives behind enemy lines in World War
Il. One of these was Paramount's feature film, O.S.S. starring Alan Ladd and Geraldine
Fitzgerald, It was released in 1946 in America and globally, as indicated by this publicity
poster from France. The poster shows Ladd using a 1945 Joan-Eleanor voice transmitter.



Lt. Col. Charles M. Parkin in front of a pagoda in one of the joint Sino-American training
camps in which American instructors trained Chinese soldiers to become Special
Operations guerrillas. Parkin was chief instructor and eventually commanding officer of
this camp in the mountains five miles south of Huizhou (Shexian), about 200 miles west
of Shanghai. Later Parkin led a major reconnaissance mission, the “Akron” Mission,
behind Japanese lines along the south China coast. Courtesy of Charles M. Parkin.


Private Caesar J, Civitella, paratrooper at Camp MacKall, North Carolina, in 1943 where
he was recruited by OSS. Trained at Areas F and B, he was sent with the OSS Italian
Operational Group on missions in southern France in 1944 and northern Italy in 1945.

Courtesy of Caesar J. Civitella.


Private Barbara Lauwers, OSS Morale Operations Branch, a member of the U.S. Army’s
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), was stationed with the MO unit in Rome. This Czech-
born WAC, working with German Army prisoners of war in Italy, helped develop
“Operation Sauerkraut,” an innovative psychological program that sent disaffected
German POWs back to persuade fellow soldiers to surrender. Many did. In addition, she
personally created a program that induced 500 Czech soldiers conscripted into the
Germany Army to give up to the Western Allies, Here Lauwers is shown in Rome
receiving the Bronze Star Medal. National Archives,


Lt. Piero Boni (code-name “Coletti”). Rome born and a member of the Italian Resistance,
received OSS training at Naples and Brindisi, and was parachuted behind German lines
near Parma in 1944 in the OSS “Renata” and then “Cayuga” Missions to help coordinate
activities of partisan groups against German and Italian fascist troops and provide
intelligence information about the German forces to the OSS as the Allies advanced into
northern Italy, He narrowly escaped capture and execution by the Germans.

Courtesy of Piero Boni


Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Most of interrogations, torture and execution of at least seventeen members of the
OSS and SOE Missions to Slovakia in 1944-1945 took place at Mauthausen
Concentration Camp near Linz, Austria, one of the largest. oldest and most brutal of the
Nazi concentration camps (at least 70,000 persons, mainly Jews perished there during the
war). The camp commander at the time the OSS and SOE members were executed was
SS Colonel Franz Ziereis, who personally supervised the torture and execution of the
captives, often aided by deputy commandant Georg Bachmayer.

In 1941, after Ziereis had become the new commandant of Mauthausen, Nazi SS
Chief Heinrich Himmler and his main subordinate Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who oversaw the
SS, the secret police, and the management and the methods of liquidation in the camps.
made an inspection tour of the Mauthausen camp .

The top photograph, shows, left to right in the front row, Kaltenbrunner, Ziereis,
Himmler and August Eigruber, Nazi Gauleiter (administrative leader) for Upper Austria.
At the far right in the second row is Georg Bachmayer.

The bottom photograph shows Himmler, Ziereis. and Kaltenbrunner.
Photos courtesy of the KZ-Gedenkstdtte Mauthausen, the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp Memorial, Mauthausen, Austria.

OY sdter t e



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Instructors like Lt. F. Ralph Ward, left,
small, portable, suitcase-size SSTR-1. transmitter and re

clandestine operators in the woods, its antenna wire, pas
from a nearby tree branch. OSS Records, National Archiv

and John Balsamo, right, demonstrated how the
eiver could be quickly set up by

ng over Ward’s shoulder, hung
es,

The SSTR-I wireless telegraphy, short-wave radio transmitter and receiver in its suitcase
carrying case complete with battery on the right and wires for connection to the battery
and a plug for use with an electrical outlet. The battery was recharged by hand crank.
Courtesy of John W. Brunner.


Lt. Richard T. Walsh, Detachment 101, prepares to jump into Japanese occupied Burma.
Photo courtesy of John W, Brunner.


In China, Lt. Col. Arden W. Dow, right,
former instructor at Area B and chief
instructor at Area A, and Maj. Frank A.
Gleason, left, former instructor at Area B,
were commander and deputy commander
respectively of a joint Sino-American training
camp sixty miles southeast of Loyang to
prepare Chinese Special Operations guerrilla
teams to operate behind enemy lines.
Courtesy of Frank A. Gleason.

Maj, Frank Gleason, OSS Special Operations and Army Corps of Engineers, instructs
Chinese Special Operations trainees on the necessary amount and proper placement of
modern explosives to destroy an industrial steel boiler. Courtesy of Frank A. Gleason.

=

Frank A. Gleason, 24, points to his jeep’s windshield which was smashed by: rock
fragments from an explosive charge set by his Special Operations Team as they set out in
late summer 1944 to impede the Japanese Army's advance Courtesy Frank A, Gleason,


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parachuting onto a plateau in the French Alps, Aug. 1, 1944, (1. tor.) Sgt. John Bodnar,
Maj. Ortiz, Sgts. Robert Lasalle and Fred Brunner, Capt, Frank Coolidge, Sgt. Jack
Risler, all Marines except Coolidge. Courtesy of the California State Military Museum.

A week after his arrival near Albertville, Ortiz, in his Marine Corps service uniform,
inspected guerrilla members of the French Forces of the Interior. The young man with
glasses and beret, Captaine Bulle the local FFI commander and already a hero, was later
killed in action liberating Albertville. Courtesy of the California State Military Museum.


Left: Two members of the OSS Norway OG,
who trained at Areas F and B, enjoy an evening
out before leaving for Europe. Left to right:
Leif Eide and his girlfriend, Margy;

Andi Kindem and her financé, Ame I. Herstad.

Right: A group of buddies from the OSS Norway
OG, who called themselves “The Unholy Four.”

(1. to r.) Cpl, Odd Aanonsen, Cpl. Kai Johansen,

Pyt. Leif Eide, and T/5 Ame I. Herstad.

Photo on “Percy Red” Mission in France 1944,

Above: A section of OSS Norway OG team being flown
back to England in a C-47 transport plane after the
successful “Percy Red” Mission in central France in 1944.
All three pictures courtesy of Rolf Herstad.


Corporal Conrad D, Beck, radio operator of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Parkin’s
“Akron” Mission to survey the south China coast behind Japanese lines, transmitting a
message from the village of Tinting back to base headquarters, April 24, 1945, with an
SSTR-1 to the fascination of Nationalist Chinese Army bodyguards and some local
residents. Beck trained with Arthur Reinhardt at Area C. Photo courtesy John W. Brunner

The OSS communications room in Tientsin (Tianjin), China, southeast of Peking
(Beijing) in 1945. John W. Brunner, left, who trained at Area C as well at the OSS coding
center in Washington, D.C., encodes a message, while Guy E. Webb, right, transmits
another message. Photo courtesy of John W. Brunner.


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ince William Forest Park ,
‘oni Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area)
in a wartime photo. Courtesy of Dorothea Dow.

Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams, left,
Superintendent, Catoctin Mountain Park

(then Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area)
in a Jater photograph. National Park Service



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Dotted lines and Roman Numerals indicate Chinese War Zones and the black dots denote
War Zone Headquarters. OSS Records, National Archives.



Lt. Arden W. and Dorothea D. Dow, right,

in front of their rented cottage in Olympia, Washington,
just back from their honeymoon after their marriage in
March 1942. Courtesy of Dorothea Dow.

Below: Diary Entry, October 30, 1942,
Albert R. Guay Diary.
Courtesy of Albert R. Guay.

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Courtesy of Albert R. Guay.



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Capt. Albert Materazzi, who trained at Areas B, A, and F, and served as Operations
Officer for the OSS Italian Operational Groups in Corsica and Italy, 1944-1945.


Captain Howard W. Chappell, OSS German Operational Group, a paratrooper from
Cleveland, Ohio, who had trained at Areas F and B, had, under direction of the OSS
Italian Operational Group headquarters, commanded the “Tacoma” Mission against the
German Army in the Italian Alps in 1944-1945. Here, Chappell receives the Silver Star
Medal from Maj. Gen. William J, Donovan in front of OSS headquarters in Washington,
D.C. in September 1945, He had already received a Purple Heart Medal for being
wounded in action, Photo courtesy of Jack R, Chappell.


Private Sidney L., Harrow, attorney
who trained at Area A and then became
an interrogator in the OSS Assessment
Program at Station S.

Courtesy of Mary Harrow.

Col. Aaron Bank, who as a young

OSS Jedburgh trained at Areas F and A,
then served in France and Indochina,
and in 1952 helped found the Army Special
Forces. A 1952 U.S. Army Photo.

Naval Lt.Frank V. Huston, left, with unidentified Marine lieutenant, both OSS, in North
Africa in December 1943. Huston trained at Area C. Courtesy of Steven A. Huston.


Major General William J, Donovan, Portrait of the Director of the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS). Courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency


Tragedy in Slovakia

In the fall of 1944, in an attempt to assist a Nationalist Uprising in Slovakia against
Germany and also to establish information networks in central Europe, OSS flew two
teams, including nearly two dozen Special Operations and Secret Intelligence personnel,
into site of the uprising in central Slovakia. The SO “Dawes” Mission to aid the Slovak
Resistance and rescue downed Allied fliers was headed by Navy Lieutenant J, Holt Green
from Charleston and his deputy, Navy Lieutenant James Harwey Gaul from Pittsburgh.
Many of the team members were Czech or Slovak immigrants, such as Jaroslav (“Jerry”)
G. Mican, the oldest team member at 42, a native of Prague, who had emigrated to
Chicago in the 1920s and become a school teacher, Army Air Force Captain Edward V.
Baranski, an ethnic Slovak from Illinois, headed the OSS SI “Day” Group, whose
mission was to establish a ring of local spies in Czechoslovakia. B-17 bombers flew the
teams into Slovakia in September 1944 and in early October, half a dozen B-17s landed
on a grass-covered airfield at Tri Duby near Banska Bystrica with additional planeloads
of supplies for the 1“ Czechoslovakian Army and the Slovak Resistance. But the uprising
was crushed by the Germans. Although the OSS team, as well as British SOE members
accompanying them, fled into the Tatra Mountains, most of them were captured, tortured
and executed, many of them at Malthausen Concentration Camp near Linz, Austria. Of
the twenty OSS team members, fourteen were killed, and only six survived. Most of the
SOE team members were also captured and killed. Two of the OSS team members
evaded capture with the help of 24-year-old Maria Gulovich, a Slovakian schoolteacher
and partisan, who had been hired as an interpreter and guide by the OSS.

Nazi Germany

Czech.

Lower Tatra Mountains

© Banska Bystrica

USSR
(Ukraine)

Slovakia

“Tr Duby Airfield
OSS Mission

Austria

—Malthausen,
Concentrative

Camp Bratislava (capital)

944
Hungary

Slovakia, showing location of Banska Bystrica, the focal point of the Slovak National
Uprising and site of OSS landings in nearby Tri Duby airfield, as well as the Tatra
Mountains where most members of the OSS and SOE teams were captured by the Nazis.

Unless otherwise noted, all of the following illustrations are courtesy of the :
Mtizeum Slovenského ndraodného povstania, Museum of the Slovak National Uprising
Banska Bystrica, Slovakia (SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).


OSS in the European and Mediterranean Theaters of Operation

Specially modified, black-painted B-24 “Liberator” bombers

flown by the U.S. Army Air Force’s “Carpetbaggers,” the 801 suagand
Bombardment Group of the Eighth Air Force, for low level airdrops
of OSS personnel and supplies in enemy occupied territory in Europe.
Courtesy of Rolf Herstad


Lt. John K. (“Jack”) Singlaub, left, who had trained

at Areas F and B, commanded Jedburgh Team “James,”
which included a French executive officer, and an
American radioman, Sgt. Anthony J. (“Tony”) Denneau,
right, and which spent seven weeks in the Correze region
of France in August and September 1944.

Courtesty of John K. Singlaub,

Right: Cancelled Identity Card

for Jacques F. Snyder, French-raised
American soldier, who trained at
Areas F and A, and parachuted into
the Grenoble area of France in 1944
on OSS missions for both Secret
Intelligence and Special Operations.
Courtesy of James Snyder.

Maj. William E. Colby, above, who trained

at Areas F and B, headed Jedburgh Team

“Bruce” with two French assistants in the

area southeast of Paris in August 1944.

In 1945, Colby led an OSS Norso team which
severed key railroad lines in Norway. He later
headed the CIA under Presidents Nixon and Ford.



OSS Communications School graduates from Area C

Above (left to right) Roger L. Belanger, (unidentified), Chet Taylor, Robert Halvorson,
Martin Lubowsky, at OSS Radio Base Station “C” in Pounden Hill, England, 1944.
Courtesy of Roger Belanger.

Pvt. David A. Kenney on leave on Lt. Marvin S. Flisser, after graduation
the family ranch in Wyoming from Officer's Candidate School, 1944
in December 1944, after graduation and being reassigned from OSS

from OSS Communications School. Communications to OSS Research
Courtesy of David A. Kenney. and Analysis Branch

Courtesy of Marvin S. Flisser,


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Left: OSSer Julia Me Williams later
married Paul Child whom she met
while she headed the OSS Registry
for secret documents, first in Kandy,
Ceylon and then in Kunming, China.
Later, as his wife, Julia Child, she
accompanied him to France, famously
mastering the art of French cooking.
Photo courtesy of the OSS Society.

Above: Elizabeth (“Betty”)

P. MacDonald (later McIntosh)
former war correspondent, joined
OSS, trained at Area F, and

was sent to Ceylon and then
China, to write material for

the Morale Operations Branch.

Left: When the MO print shop

in Kunming, China, was flooded
in 1945, Betty P. MacDonald was
carried to dry land by noted artist
William A. Smith, also in MO,
accompanied by Tong Ting,

a famous China cartoonist.
Photos courtesy of Elizabeth
(“Betty”) P, McIntosh.



Sergeant Caesar J, Civitella, OSS Italian Operational Group, a paratrooper from
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who had trained at Areas F and B, had been sent first to
North Africa. From there his OG section was parachuted behind German lines to assist
the Allied invasion of southern France in 1944. The “Lafayette” Mission took the
surrender of nearly 4.000 German soldiers. Subsequently. his section was part of the

“Sewanee” Mission in northern Italy, arming and coordinating partisan forces and
overwhelming German outposts and garrisons in the Italian Alps. Civitella, shown here,
receives the Bronze Star Medal from General Donovan. Courtesy of Caesar J. Civitella.


Above: Navy Lieutenant, senior grade, J, Holt Green, Commander of Special Operations’
“Dawes” Mission to Slovakia. Below: Navy Lieutenant James H. Gaul, his deputy
commander. Both were among those later captured and executed by the Nazis.

(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia).

Army Air Force Captain Edward V. Baranski,
Commander of SI's “Day” Group.

Also captured and executed by the Nazis.
U.S, National Archives



During the air supply operation, Navy Lieutenant
Holt Green, left, conferred with Sergeant Jerry Mican
and British Major John Sehmer, right, commander of
the British SOE intelligence mission. All three were
later captured and executed by the Germans.

(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia),

Three OSS enlisted men waited for the B-17 deliveries

(left to right) Radioman Charles O. Heller, Czech-speaking
Chicagoan; Slovakian native, Sergeant Joseph Horvath from
Cleveland, Ohio; and radioman Robert Brown, who had previously
served on OSS missions in Yugoslavia.

All three were later captured and executed.

(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia),

In the shade of a B-17 wing,

war correspondent Joseph Morton
of the Associated Press typed a
story on his portable typewriter
perched atop a box of supplies.
He too was executed by the Nazis.
(SNU Museum, Banska Bystrica,
Slovakia),



Instructors, Staff and Visiting Officers at OSS Training Area B-2,Catoctin Mountain

Park, Thurmont, Maryland in front of Administration Building, Aug-Sept. 1942

Back Row (left to right)

Capt. Lt Lt. Lt. Capt. Unknown Capt. Possibly Cmdr.

Charles Frank Rex Elmer Morris officer Jerry — William H.

Parkin Gleason Applegate Harris Kessler Sage Vanderbilt, USNR

Instructor Instr Instr Instr Med, Officer Inst = SO & XO Branch
Visitor

Front Row (left to right)

Capt. Capt. Lt. Col. Maj. Maj. Unidentified
George Joseph Kharb Ainsworth William officer
White Collart Kunjara__ Blogg (“Dan”)
Instr Instr (attaché) Camp Fairbairn

(Free Thai) Commander (U.K.)

(Govt.) Instructor

Visitor

Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Clemente, M.D.; identifications by the author with the
help of Frank A. Gleason, Joseph Lazarsky, and Dorothea D. (Mrs. Arden W.) Dow.