Chapter 5 

Transforming Prince William Forest Park 

into Military Camps 

The hilly, forested lands in the large northern part of Prince William Forest Park 

near Quantico, Virginia, became the site of training camps for the OSS Special 

Operations and the Communications Branches in 1942. In a 5,000 acre section of the 

park, Donovan’s organization set up Training Area A for advanced paramilitary work in 

sabotage and guerrilla activity and other aspects of unconventional warfare behind enemy 

lines. Additional acreage in the northern part of the park was subsequently designated 

Training Area C and was assigned as the radio operators school. Within Areas A and C, 

the OSS converted the five National Park Service summer cabin camps and one of the 

Civilian Conservation Corps work camps into sub-camps capable of training several 

hundred men. The U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico was located adjacent to the park, 

and the Marines used the acreage in the southern part of the park, where there were no 

summer cabin camps, for their own type of field training. The wartime military facilities 

in the 14,000 acre park played an important part in OSS and Marine Corps training. They 

also led to important changes at the park 

. 

Area A (Advanced Special Operations School) 

 

Three officers from Donovan’s headquarters were the first to arrive at the park, 

which was then known at Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area. On the last 

day of March 1942, they drove down U.S. Route 1 about 35 miles south of Washington 

to meet Park Manager Ira Lykes and to inspect the facilities. Lieutenant Colonel Garland 

H. Williams, executive officer of the Special Operations Branch, the man in charge of SO 

training, headed the group. Accompanying him were Captain William J. Hixson, an 

engineer, who would become the first commanding officer at Training Area A, and 

Lieutenant Rex Applegate, a military police officer soon to become a noted instructor in 

combat pistol shooting, first at Area B in Catoctin and later at other OSS stateside 

training camps. Accompanied by Lykes, the three officers inspected Cabin Camps 2 

(Mawavi) and 5 (Happy Land) in the western section of the park. Williams told Lykes 

that the organization would begin occupation the next day, April 1, 1942. As 
140 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

commanding officer of Detachment A, Hixson would establish his headquarters in Cabin 

Camp 5, which was renamed Area A-5.1 

Williams emphasized that as a military facility, the park would be closed to the 

public. The War Department planned to use the large part of the park that lay north of 

Joplin Road (today County Route 619). That road, which ran from the towns of Quantico 

and Triangle northwest toward Manassas, could remain open, but between it and 

Dumfries Road (today Route 234) the secret training camp would be guarded from 

intruders by sentries and military police patrolling the perimeter.2

 Lykes later recalled 

that everything the OSS did was covered with the “greatest secrecy.” Even Lykes had to 

pass through military checkpoints to enter and leave the park 3 Guard houses were built 

at the two main gates, the one for Area A on Joplin Road and the one for Area C on 

Dumfries Road. In addition, as sub-camps were created in other cabin camps, they often 

had guard houses at their entrance.4 The area was patrolled by mounted soldiers and 

armed guards with dogs, and barbed wire fences may have been erected in some sectors 

of the park, perhaps toward Batestown.5 In converting the facilities to military use, the 

colonel told the park manager that the War Department would provide the needed 

workers—carpenters, plumbers, electricians—to recondition the camp, and that in 

accordance with the use permit, Lykes would be consulted about the work. 

Within two weeks after that visit, the Army Engineers had come up with a 

construction plan for altering Chopawamsic to the needs of Donovan’s organization. The 

Civilian Conservation Corps and its youthful workers would do much of the construction 

as a national defense project. The National Park Service concurred and recommended 

that a CCC unit in the park which had been scheduled for termination, be maintained and 

assigned the job. Its personnel had been working on projects in the park for some time 

 

1

 Ira B. Lykes manager Chopawamsic RDA, to Conrad L. Wirth, Assistant Director of NPS, confidential 

memorandum, 31 March 1942, in National Park Service Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-

1949, General, 201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-IV-1&1A, Box 73, Folder 201, 

National Archives II, College Park, Md. 

2

 Ibid. 

3

 Ira B. Lykes, interview with Susan Cary Strickland, historian for NPS, 4 September 1985, quoted in 

Susan Cary Strickland, Prince William Forest Park: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: 

National Park Service, 1986), 27. 

4

 In addition to the guard houses at the two main gates, there were 8 by 8-foot guard houses erected at A-2, 

the initial headquarters for the OSS camp, and at A-4, a former CCC work camp, which ultimately served

as the headquarters for the entire Area A from fall 1942 until the closure of Area A in January 1945. Lt. 

Col. Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, schools and training branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly 

OSS], to General Counsel Office, SSU, 16 October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. In addition to the main gate at 

Area C-1, for example, there was also a guard house at the entrance to Area C-4. 

 

5

 Lee Lansing, historian for the town of Dumfries, Va., interview with Susan Cary Strickland, 15 July 1985, 

in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 27. Robert A. Noile, 68, who grew up on Joplin Road near the 

park headquarters, said his father told him that that the perimeter of the park had been patrolled by men on 

horseback. Noile who, as a youth played in the park, at least the part north across Joplin Road, said he 

never saw any fences. Perhaps wire fences were erected on the Batestown side on the east. Robert A. Noile, 

Triangle, Va., telephone interview with the author, 27 April 2007. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 141

and were quick familiar with the area and local resources.6 The Army’s new projects 

included construction of roads and trails, extension and correction of sanitary systems 

and water supply systems, grading and landscaping for unidentified military purposes, 

obliteration of some buildings and roads, and other incidental work necessary for the 

maximum utilization of the area by the military. 7 “It is estimated,” Lykes’ supervisor 

wrote in late April 1942, “that it will take a full 200-man company [of the CCC] 

approximately 72,000 man-days to complete the work outlined,” in other words, nearly a 

year.8The CCC, however, was terminated by Congress in 1942, and subsequently, most 

of the construction work done for OSS in Areas A and C of Prince William Forest Park 

was performed by the larger workforce of a private firm, Kent and Company of 

Richmond, Virginia.9

 Simultaneously, the War Department moved quickly to acquire land 

within the park by the OSS training area that was still in private hands. A representative 

of the Corps of Engineers had arrived at Chopawamsic at the end of March with copies of 

the Army’s property acquisition plan. Ira Lykes spent the morning with him going over 

the acquisition status for the private properties. The park manager called in John T. Gum, 

the NPS representative and acting manager for all the CCC facilities in the Chopawamsic 

RDA, both those still existent and the CCC work camps that had already been 

abandoned.10 Gum lived in the nearby town of Dumfries with his wife and three 

children.11 Having worked as liaison with CCC and the Resettlement Administration for 

several years before Lykes arrived, Gum had an intimate knowledge of the land owners 

and land prices in the Chopawamsic RDA, and he shared that personal information with 

the Army’s representative. Because the OSS project remained secret, Lykes did not at 

that time inform Gum about the specific nature of the planned military use of the park. 

But John Gum, in his dual capacity of representative of CCC and NPS, would soon learn 

 

6

 The CCC operated in the park until February 1943. Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 17. 

7

 NPS had for some time sought to have the supervisors of Prince William County officially abandon a 

number of the old dirt roads, overgrown with brush, within the park that were considered unsafe and often 

impassable. William R. Hall, project manager, Chopawamsic RDA, to Board of Supervisors, Prince 

William County, 25 November 1939, and clipping, “Roads May Be Closed,” [Manassas?] Star, 12 

November 1939, both in NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, Box 126, Folder 630, National Archives II. 

8

 Conrad L. Wirth, Memorandum for the Departmental Representative on the Advisory Board, CCC, 24 

April 1942, and referring to Major General James A. Ulio’s letter of 11 April to the Director of CCC, 

requesting the allocation of a national defense project on the Chopawamsic RDA, in NPS Records (RG 79), 

Entry 47, Box 126, Folder 621, National Archives II. General Ulio, was the War Department representative 

on the Advisory Council of the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1940-1943. 

9

 Stan Cohen, The Tree Army: A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942

(Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories, 1980), 129; for Kent and Company’s work since 1942, see Lt. Col. 

Ainsworth Blogg to Charles S. Cheston, via A. William Asmuth, Jr.,Legal Division, 5 May 1944, subject:

new sewer field at Area A-2, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, National Archives II. 

10 On the role of John T. Gum [whose name was sometimes misspelled as John E. Gum or Gun], as 

manager of the CCC facilities at Chopawamsic RDA before the during the war, see Strickland, Prince 

William Forest Park, 17, although she misspells Gum’s name as Gun. 

11 Robert A. Noile, Triangle, Va., telephone interview with the author, 27 April 2007. 
142 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

the details. In fact, Gum would supervise most if not all of the construction work 

performed by the CCC work crews for the OSS. Subsequently, John T. Gum was 

recruited into the OSS and given the rank of Army Technical Sergeant. He remained 

assigned to OSS Detachment A until it was closed down and was held in stand-by status 

from November 1944 through July 1945. At that point, Gum was transferred to OSS Area 

C in the eastern part of the park.12 In the meeting of 30 March 1942, with Lykes and 

Gum, the representative of the Army Engineers told them that he planned to give full 

attention to acquiring the privately held tracts of land located within the area.13 Lykes had 

emphasized to the importance of including Batestown in the Army’s acquisition plans. 

“This so-called community is a hot-bed of bootleggers, thieves and vice,” Lykes said he 

told the Army “and is likewise a potential health hazard to the adjoining Camps 1 & 4 

and the Quantico Creek Watershed.”14

 

Although the Roosevelt Administration had insisted that the people in the 

Chopawamsic RDA needed the help of the U.S. government to escape poverty, many of 

the local people did not consider themselves to be poor and did not want to be forced out 

of their homes. These people, whites and blacks, resided in small houses scattered 

throughout the wooded area or in a few tiny settlements. One of them, Batestown, a 

scattering of houses, a country store and a church, just east of the park boundary, was a 

largely black community. It had been founded after the Civil War by ex-slaves and free 

blacks who were members of the family of Betsy Bates, the matriarch. By the 1930s, 

Batestown had a population of around a hundred persons.15

Under the New Deal programs, the Department of the Interior had obtained title 

through purchase or condemnation of most of the lands within the new park. The 

developing agencies had been gradually moving the residents from these lands out of the 

park. But U.S. entry into the war and the designation of Chopawamsic RDA as a military 

facility dramatically altered the situation. With the secret training camp going into 

operation in April 1942, the War Department moved swiftly to remove remaining 

residents and acquire additional in-park tracts. Residents within the park area who had 

not moved were now quickly evicted. Some of them moved just outside the park; others 

moved farther away. Many of the longtime residents did not want to sell their land, and 

 

12 For John T. Gum’s supervision of construction, position as sergeant in Detachment A, and eventual 

transfer to Detachment C, see Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4 [Supply], OSS Schools and Training Branch, to 

Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], subject: Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, 

Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

13 Ira B. Lykes to Conrad L. Wirth, confidential memorandum, 30 March 1942 [a separate memo from the 

one of the same date cited above], in NPS Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 

201 National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-II-1, Box 81, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

14 Ibid. 

15 Patricia Parker, The Hinterland: An Overview of the Prehistory and History of Prince William Forest 

Park, Virginia (Washington, D.C: National Park Service, 1986); and Arvilla Payne-Jackson and Sue Ann 

Taylor, Prince William Forest Park: The African-American Experience (Washington, D.C.: National Park 

Service, 2000). 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 143

the government’s negotiations were often acrimonious.

16 The village of Hickory Ridge 

with its houses, church and country store, was abandoned, and during the war, its empty 

buildings were destroyed in OSS field exercises including demolition practice. Today the 

site of Hickory Ridge village is marked only by the Virginia pine trees near the park’s 

Parking Lot D and Pyrite Mine Road, and by the nearby small cemeteries containing the 

remains of generations of Hickory Ridge residents who died before the park was created. 

The War Department did not purchase the Batesville land outside the park, but 

incursion into the eastern sector of the park was impeded by the security that the military 

established. Batestown continues to the present day, although in recent years, the park has 

acquired some of its properties. In contrast, in the southern part of the park, the village of 

Joplin, which consisted of a number of houses, a grocery store, school, and a church at 

Joplin Road around the intersection with Breckenridge Road, no longer exists.17

When the United States entered the war, Chopawamsic Recreational 

Demonstration Area included 14,466 acres, both north and south of Joplin Road, but the 

government did not yet have complete ownership or possession of all that property.18

There were leases, options to purchase, and deeds not yet conveyed. Many residents were 

still in their homes within what would become the military training camp. When 

Donovan’s organization took over the park north of Joplin Road, however, the process of 

acquisition speeded up. During the war, indeed mostly by the end of 1942, the War 

Department purchased 44 additional tracts of land within the park north of Joplin Road. 

They comprised a total of 1,139 acres. The price paid was $54,890, an average of about 

$48 an acre. They were privately-owned tracts that were acquired for security and 

demolition purposes. Two munitions storage magazines and three demolition areas were 

later constructed on them. After the war, in accordance with the usage permit, these 

tracts, plus the CCC camp lands, were turned over to the Department of the Interior and 

made part of the Prince William Forest Park.19

 

16 For example, in 1942-43, the Richard W. Wheat family did not want to sell their 20 acres for 

construction of a new entrance road to the Chopawamsic RDA. For a reference to their resistance and to

negotiations being “acrimonious,” see Olinus Smith, engineer, memorandum for the Chief Counsel of NPS,

19 October 1942, NPS Records (RG 79), Entry 47, Box 126, Folder 630, National Archives II. 

17 Robert A. Noile, Triangle, Va., telephone interview with the author, 27 April 2007. Mr. Noile’s mother 

taught at the Joplin school. 

18 Ira B. Lykes to F.F. Gillen, December 1941, NPS Records (RG 79), File Number 1460/3, National 

Record Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Susan Cary Strickland, Prince William Forest Park: An 

Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1986), 28, n.99. These records are 

believed to have been subsequently transferred to the National Archives, but cannot be found. 

19 Lt. Col. Robert H. Fabian, Army Service Forces, Corps of Engineers, for the Chief of Engineers, 

completed form for Declaration of Surplus Real Property, 23 January 1946, Recommendation for Disposal 

to the U.S. Department of the Interior, located in the Park Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, 

Va.; see also Lt. Col. C.J. Blair, Jr., Chief, Real Estate Division, Middle Atlantic Division, US Army Corps 

of Engineers, to National Park Service, 3 December 1945, subject: Chopawamsic Recreational 

Demonstration Area, NPS Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201, National 

Defense “C,” Box 73, Folder 201, National Archives II. 
144 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

Transformation at Area A 

Even as workers began to convert the northern part of the park into a Special 

Operations school, the first advanced training class began in the early summer of 1942. 

Members of one of the initial classes at the Basic Special Operations course at Catoctin 

arrived for the Advanced Course at Area A in Chopawamsic RDA the second week in 

May. Private Edgar Prichard, a journalist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one of them. He 

had joined the Army and become bored as a company clerk before being recruited by 

Donovan’s organization. “We arrived there in later afternoon, but it was still broad 

daylight,” Prichard, now a Virginia lawyer, recalled fifty years later. “The camp we were 

taken to appeared to have been a scout camp. There was a cluster of cabins beside a lake 

and a Mess Hall. The cabins had no window sashes, just screened openings, but there 

were Army cots in place. We were told to pick out a place in one of the cabins. I walked 

into a cabin which hadn’t been inhabited for a while and a big rat ran across the floor. I 

was carrying a .38 [caliber pistol] in a shoulder holster. I fired at the rat. I think I 

wounded him. Anyway, he took off squealing. And about that time, the Captain I had just 

met came storming down the hill and confiscated my .38.”20

That facility was either Area A-2 or A-5, the first two training camps established 

by the OSS at Area A. The captain, who confiscated the pistol from Pritchard, may have 

the commanding officer, Captain Hixson, or the chief instructor, George H. White. Like 

Garland H. Williams, White was a veteran agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics 

[FBN], who had been recruited by Donovan’s organization. In March, White had been 

sent Canada to attend the British SOE school at Camp X. After graduating from what he 

called the “Oshawa School of Mayhem and Murder,” White helped teach the first Basic 

Special Operations class at Area B-2 in Catoctin in April He was then assigned as chief 

instructor at A-5 at Chopawamsic RDA.21 White was an inspiring instructor, but his 

countenance belied his lethal skills. Five feet, seven inches tall and weighing 179 pounds, 

the roly-poly agent reminded his boss of a Buddha statue. But behind that innocent, round 

face with the disarming smile, the short, plump White was, as one OSS official recalled, 

 

20 Edgar Prichard, OSS veteran, SO Branch and in the postwar an Arlington, Virginia, lawyer, “Address to

Historic Prince William, Inc.,” 16 January 1991 [sic, actually 1992], typescript and accompanying 

newspaper clipping, Denyse Tannenbaum, “Veteran Recalls Learning to Spy in the Park,” Potomac News,

18 January 1992, both in White Binder, OSS, Park Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va. 

21 On George White, see John C. McWilliams, “Covert Connections: The FBN, the OSS, and the CIA,” The 

Historian, 53/4 (Summer 1991): 665-69; Harry J. Anslinger with J. Dennis Gregory, The Protectors: 

Narcotics Agents, Citizens and Officials against Organized Crime in America (New York: Farrar, 

Straus,1964), 79-80; William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, Behind the Burma Road: The Story of America’s 

Most Successful Guerrilla Force (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), 30; Nicol Smith and Blake Clark, Into 

Siam: Underground Kingdom (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946), 49-50; David Stafford, Camp X

(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), 82. White kept a diary, which included his service in the OSS. It is part of 

the Douglas Perham Collection, one of the largest collections of electronic related historical materials in the 

United States. Unfortunately, the diary cannot be located at present because the Perham Collection is 

currently in two hundred, unsorted, unmarked boxes as a result of its transfer from Foothill College, 

Mountain View, California to History San Jose in San Jose, California in 2003. Telephone interview James 

Reed, archivist of the Perham Collection, San Jose, Calif., with the author, 4 October 2005. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 145

“the most deadly and dedicated public servant, I have ever met.”22 By late summer 1942, 

White had transferred to OSS counter-intelligence first as an instructor and subsequently 

in the field overseas, achieving considerably notoriety, in one case for personally 

identifying and assassinating the head of Japanese espionage system in Calcutta, India. 

In 1943, the former narcotics agent collaborated with Stanley Lovell, OSS director of 

Research and Development, in an unsuccessful search for a “truth drug” that would lead 

enemy agents or prisoners to disclose secret information. White was, according to one 

account, “probably the most dynamic, flamboyant and prolific agent in the FBN’s 

history.”23 

From Prichard’s description of his cabin, the work on preparing the military 

camps had just begun. His hut had not yet been fitted with window sashes nor had it been 

winterized as it would be later, but the Army cots had been delivered. During the war, the 

OSS did not remove or destroy any of the buildings in the NPS summer cabin camps, but 

it did make significant changes to some of them, and it erected additional structures and 

training facilities related to its military mission. Most importantly on a permanent basis, 

key buildings in all the cabin camps in the park were made suitable for operation during 

winter. The NPS camps had been designed for occupancy only during the summer 

months. The OSS training camps would operate year round. The occupants found them 

cold and damp in the winter months. To make them habitable at that time, the OSS 

installed pot-bellied, cast-iron Franklin stoves, and hot water tanks first and subsequently 

put in insulating wall board inside and creosoting outside many of the buildings. The pitlatrines were augmented or replaced by Army latrine/washhouses often with hot water 

showers. The kitchens in all of the mess halls were upgraded with new wiring and the 

addition of an array of new electrical equipment for food preparation and storage, 

including standard Army gas ranges, electric potato peelers, deep fryers, and 

dishwashers, plus large refrigerators.24

 

In general, in addition to winterizing and upgrading the NPS summer camps at 

Prince William Forest Park, the OSS made a number of changes it deemed necessary for 

the operation of the areas as military training camps. As on any military base, that meant 

the allocation of more individual accommodations for officers than enlisted men on the 

staff (in contrast, the trainees were all treated alike regardless of their rank, which was 

unknown because the students dressed alike and had fictitious names). It also meant the 

creation of post exchanges, or PX, that is shops on a military post selling items of food, 

clothing and sundries, guard houses and sentry boxes, armories for weapons and 

 

22 The quotation is from the director of OSS Research and Development, Stanley P. Lovell, Of Spies and 

Stratagems (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 57-59. 

23 Lovell, Of Spies and Stratagems, 57; McWilliams, “Covert Connections: The FBN, the OSS, and the 

CIA,” 665-69. 

24 Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4, Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], subject: 

Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, ; and Estimate #3, 

Estimated Prices Prepared by T. Sgt. John E. [sic] Gum, both attachments to Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting 

Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit (SSU), for the Director, to Commanding General, 

Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, subject: Chopwamsic National Recreational

Demonstration Area, Attachments #1, #2, and #3 in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, 

both in National Archives II. 
146 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

ammunition, and magazines for storing explosives. It meant the creation of firing ranges, 

indoor or outdoor, for various types of weapons: pistols, rifles, submachine guns, which 

were a favorite among OSS Special Forces and Operational Groups, as well as areas to 

practice throwing hand grenades. There were demolition areas for instruction in the use 

of various types of explosives and fuses for blowing up samples of wood, steel, or iron, to 

simulate bridges, buildings, or railroad tracks. Extensive areas of woods and fields were 

designated for day and night exercises in map reading and deployment and for practice in 

field craft, that is the ability to operate stealthily and effectively regardless of weather or 

terrain, to “see without being seen,” either for attack or for evasion or escape from the 

enemy. 

Detachment A was ultimately divided among four sub-areas in the park. Three of 

them, Areas A-2, A-3, and A-5, had been NPS cabin camps previously used for summer 

camping by various charitable or social service youth groups. They had a common 

pattern. Each camp consisted of several circles of huts, each cluster grouped around a 

recreation all. In the center of each camp, for use by the occupants of the various clusters, 

was a large central dining hall as well as some smaller structures: an administrative 

office, arts and crafts building, and an infirmary. Unlike these three former summer camp 

areas, OSS Area A-4 had been a year-round work camp for the Civilian Conservation 

Corps. With its already winterized facilities for a headquarters, barracks, motor pool, 

workshops, and communications building, the former CCC work camp fit the OSS needs 

for an administrative headquarters, supply facilities and motor pool for the entire military 

training camp at Area A.25 Area A-4 served primarily as the headquarters of Detachment 

A, but because of the CCC barracks, it also served as a training area. When the military 

conversion of the entire Area A was complete, each of the sub-camps had its own small 

headquarters. At each sub-camp, an executive officer was responsible for the 

administrative staff and the running of the facility; a chief instructor had authority over 

the instructional staff, the curriculum and the training of the students. The entire Area A 

was the responsibility of the central headquarters of Detachment A located at A-4. That 

former CCC work camp housed the commanding officer and his staff as well as the 

motor pool and other facilities for furnishing supplies and services to all the sub-camps. It 

was also the location for the chief instructor for Area A and his assistants. The total staff 

at all four sub-camps plus Detachment A headquarters numbered approximately 280 

officers and enlisted men. At capacity, Area A could hold some 600 trainees, giving a 

total of nearly 900 personnel that could be handled by OSS Training Area A.26

 

25 It is not absolutely certain which CCC work camp in Prince William Forest Park became Area A-4. By 

location, the evidence (CCC flagpole, parade ground and CCC era buildings currently numbered 3-32, 3-

35, 3-36, 3-36A, and 3-39) suggests that it may have been the CCC work camp located at what is currently 

the Maintenance Area of the Orenda Historic District, about one to two miles from current Cabin Camp 

Number 3. That was CCC work camp S.P. 26. Judy Volonoski, museum technician at PWFP, email 

correspondence with the author, 20 March and 7 June 2006, the latter enclosing Map of Chopawamsic 

RDA showing CCC Camp Locations, c. 1935-39 [but not 1941-43], source: Civilian Conservation Corps 

Activities in NPS National Capital Region, HABS NO. DC-858, p. 146. 

26 Statistics computed from the figures listed on the maps for each sub-camp in Area A, undated [October

1943, date on similar map for Area B],in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, National Archives II.
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 147

Area A-5: First Headquarters, and SO Waterborne Infiltration School 

 As the first commander of Area A, Captain Walter J. Hixson had indicated to Ira 

Lykes on 30 March 1942 that he intended to begin by occupying Cabin Camp 5 in the 

western end of the park, which he did within the next few days.27 Hixson set up the 

headquarters for OSS Detachment A there until the main headquarters was moved to the 

old CCC camp at what became A-4 in November 1942. Before the war, the NPS summer 

camp, known as “Happy Land,” had been used by needy children from Washington, 

D.C., brought to the park and supervised by the Salvation Army. Now it was converted to 

much different purposes. Beginning in mid-May 1942, the first class of trainees for 

Advanced Special Operations, arrived to learn more about sabotage, guerrilla leadership, 

armed and unarmed close combat technique, including silent killing, and other aspects of 

unconventional warfare.28 These first groups of trainees were housed at A-5 and A-2. 

Later, between 1943 and 1944, Area A-5 served as a “finishing school,” basically a 

holding area for OSS personnel finished with their training and awaiting assignment 

overseas. The purpose of the finishing school was largely to keep the graduates in top 

physical and mental condition. Consequently, much of the activity was in physical 

exercise, weapons use, and field exercises.29 

Smaller than many of the camps, Cabin Camp 5 included only two subunits, A 

and B, each a cluster of cabins and a few other buildings. Depending on their size, the 

cabins slept four or eight trainees. OSS used two buildings as classrooms, one capable of 

holding 70 men for lectures or training films, the other accommodating 40 students for 

Morse code practice, map exercises, or other interactive training. An outdoor 

demonstration area seated 50. Later more classroom space was added through temporary 

buildings. Existing structures were converted to create officers’ quarters, a cabin for staff 

enlisted men, an armory, and a combination recreation hall and post exchange. Beginning 

in the winter of 1943-1944, key buildings in A-5 were winterized.30 Area A-5 had a 

 

27 Ira B. Lykes manager Chopawamsic RDA, to Conrad L. Wirth, Assistant Director of NPS, confidential 

memorandum, 31 March 1942, in NPS Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General, 201 

National Defense, Chopawamsic, Project CHO-IV-1&1A, Box 73, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

28 Edgar Prichard, OSS veteran, SO Branch and in the postwar an Arlington, Virginia, lawyer, “Address to

Historic Prince William, Inc.,” 16 January 1991 [sic, actually 1992], typescript and accompanying 

newspaper clipping, Denyse Tannenbaum, “Veteran Recalls Learning to Spy in the Park,” Potomac News,

18 January 1992, both in White Binder, OSS, Park Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va. 

29 Course A-5 (Specialist Course) SO Finishing Course, undated, unsigned document, located in White 

Binder, entitled, “OSS,” Park Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va.; plus Lt. Col. Henson L. 

Robinson, “Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 1, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 158, 

Folder 1723, both in National Archives II. 

30 Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4 [Supply], Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], 

subject: Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658; and Lt. Col. 

Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, Schools and Training Branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], 

to General Counsel Office, SSU, 16 October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in OSS 

Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 1999, National Archives II. 
148 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

capacity to hold 8 officers and 10 enlisted men in the station complement, and a 

maximum of 112 trainees in double-decked bunks, a total capacity of 130 men.31 Normal 

housing, however, was for about 60 rather than 112 trainees.32

 

A number of military facilities were constructed near Area A-5. A 275-yard firing 

range with 20 silhouette targets of the advanced, pop-up type was constructed for practice 

with rifles and submachine guns, the latter a favorite with the OSS. Farther away were 

demolition ranges for testing explosives. For outdoor and indoor pistol practice, students 

from A-5 had access to the pistol house and outdoor firing ranges erected at A-2 only half 

a mile away. To the east of A-5, an extensive area was set aside for practical exercises in 

map reading and in field craft.33

For maritime use, a small boat house and dock were constructed near Area A-5 on 

a lake on the South Fork of Quantico Creek. Arthur F. (“Art”) Reinhardt, whose group of 

radio operator trainees was kept briefly at Area A in 1944 until space became available 

for them at the Communications School at Area C, recalled that there was also a pylon 

type structure with rope ladders. “The idea was to practice jumping off—supposedly in 

full battle gear—and tread water in case, if you went by ship, it was torpedoed, you 

would be able to tread water and survive.”34 For the Special Operations trainees, the lake 

was used for practice in clandestine seaborne landings or river crossings.35 It was the 

initial site for instruction in OSS waterborne operations before responsibility was 

transferred from Special Operations to the new Maritime Unit (MU) and instruction was 

 

31 “Area A-5,” map and capacity list, undated [October 1943,date given on similar maps for Area B] 

located in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 

32 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

33 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

34 Arthur F. (“Art”) Reinhardt, OSS Communication Branch veteran, who was at Area A for a few days and 

then trained at Area C-4 for ten weeks from April to early July 1944 before being sent to China. Mr. 

Reinhardt, toured Cabin Camp 4 (the former OSS Training Area C-4), with the author and Prince William 

Forest Park Museum Technician Judy Volonoski on 13 December 2004. The author tape recorded and 

transcribed Mr. Reinhardt’s commentary and the current identification by Ms. Volonoski of the building

numbers and usage today at Prince William Forest Park. 

35 The location of the Boat House is given variously as at A-2 and at A-5; however, A-5 seems the most 

probable. Strickland, Prince William Forest Park: An Administrative History, 36, states that the Army 

Corps of Engineers relocated the Boat House from Camp 5 to Camp 2. The Boat House location at A-2 and 

its dimensions are given in Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4 [Supply], Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, 

undated [February 1945], subject: Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, 

Folder 1658. But it is cited at A-5 in Estimate #1, Estimated Prices Prepared by Quartermaster Depot 

Office, Ft. Belvoir, Va., and again at A-5 in Estimate #3, Estimated Prices Prepared by T. Sgt. John E. [sic] 

Gum, both attachments to Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit 

[formerly OSS], for the Director, to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 

19 October 1945, subject: Chopwamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Attachments #1, #2, 

and #3 in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, all in National Archives II. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 149

moved to Area D on the Potomac River. So the lake near A-5 served a variety of 

purposes including amphibious and aquatic training in numerous exercises from 

evacuating from sinking ships to clandestine waterborne landings in kayaks or rubber 

rafts.36 It may also have served for recreation for the OSS personnel if the photos taken 

of Technical Sergeant Louis J. (“Luz”) Gonzalez and his fiends horsing around at the 

lakeside dock in July 1942 are indicative.37

Area A-2: First SO Training School 

One of the first two camps opened by the OSS in Area A was sub-camp A-2, 

located only half a mile from A-5 where Hixson had set up his headquarters. Formerly 

NPS Cabin Camp 2, known as Mawavi, it had been used by the Girl Scouts before the 

OSS took it over and employed it first for an Advanced Special Operations course. 

Subsequently, A-2 was used for a variety of wartime purposes: a holding area for 

incoming personnel awaiting security clearance, a training area for Operational Groups in 

1943-1944, and a holding area for already trained OG or SO personnel awaiting further 

assignment. Beginning in the spring of 1944, it offered basic military training for OSS 

personnel being sent overseas who had for some reason not already undergone such 

training.38 The OSS retained all the NPS buildings in Cabin Camp 2. It was one of the 

larger camps and included four subunits: cabin camps A, B, C, and D, each clustered 

around a recreational hall. The OSS put four to eight enlisted men or trainees in each 

cabin and 12 men in each of three recreational halls. In the center of A-2 was a dinning 

hall, infirmary, a central shower building and an office. In addition to upgrading these, 

OSS converted two other buildings into classrooms for lectures and code work. For 

military purposes, the OSS built a small guard house, an armory and an ammunition 

storage building. It also erected a “pistol house,” actually a “mystery house” or “house of 

horrors” like the one created at Area B-2 at Catoctin under the direction of William 

(“Dan”) Fairbairn.. Outside in a neighboring area of A-2, the Army Engineers 

constructed a pistol range, a submachine gun range, and a jogging-type obstacle course 

that extended 150 yards. A map-reading and field craft exercise area were nearby. 39 

 

36 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. Callahan reported that at

least in March 1944 the Boat House was at Area A-5.

37 Photographs of Louis J. Gonzalez, Bill Dyck, Bill Messina, and Jerry Lapid at a lake in Chopawamsic in 

July 1942, provided by his son, Ron Gonzalez, to the author, 16 January 2008. 

38 Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, “Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 1, OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 1723, National Archives II. 

39 Material on OSS building usage and construction at A-2 is primarily from two documents: Capt. Stanley

H. Lyson, S-4, Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], subject: Data on Detachment 

A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658 ; and Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg, executive 

officer, Schools and Training Branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], to General Counsel Office, 

SSU, 16 October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, 
150 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

Beginning in late fall 1943, the cabins and other accommodations at A-2 were 

winterized because of the heavy usage by the Operational Groups. In the spring of the 

following year, the basic training course had filled the camp to such an overcapacity that 

a new sewer field had to be installed. 40 Area A-2 was able to hold 44 officers, a large 

number probably because for the first six months, it served as the headquarters for 

Detachment A. In addition to the staff officers, it had the ability to accommodate 22 

enlisted men in the station complement, and in an emergency, 206 trainees or holdees, in 

which case many of them were bunked in the mess hall, a total capacity of 274 men.41

Under normal conditions, however, A-2 held a much smaller staff and housed 78 students 

or 98 holdees.42

 

Area A-3: Parachuting and Training 

 In the southeastern corner of the park, Cabin Camp 3 became OSS Area A-3. The 

NPS camp known first as Goodwill and later as Orenda had been used before the war by 

several different social service organizations. When Donovan’s organization first took it 

over, A-3 became the OSS Parachute School. Lieutenant Colonel Garland H. Williams 

had planned that after basic and advanced Special Operations training, students would 

then learn infiltration by sea or by air. The lake and then Area D were where waterborne 

infiltration was taught. Most of the OSS Parachute training was provided at the U.S. 

Army’s new Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, but during a brief period in 1942 

the OSS had a Parachute School in at Area A-2 in Prince William Forest Park. Captain 

Lucius O. Rucker, Jr., a dedicated career soldier and an avid paratrooper, from Jackson, 

Mississippi, was in charge. He brought a group of personnel qualified in parachute 

rigging and jumping from Fort Benning to the OSS camp in Virginia in June 1942 to 

establish the OSS Parachute School. The training equipment was primitive, but it did 

provide for landing training.43 According to friends like SO instructor Captain Jerry 

 

Box 8, Folder 1999. In March 1945, Fairbairn remembered his “indoor mystery house” as having been at 

A-3, but the above cited reports indicate that it was at A-2. It is possible that Fairbairn misremembered; a 

less likely possibility is that the structure was moved between A-2 and A-3. Lt. Col. William E. Fairbairn, 

British Army, to Director of Office of Strategic Services, 23 March 1945, memorandum, subject: Resume 

of service of Lt. Col. William E. Fairbairn, p. 3, in OSS Records (RG 226), Director’s Office Files, 

Microfilm 1642, Roll 46, Frames 19-20, all in National Archives II. 

. 

40 Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg to Charles S. Cheston, via A. William Asmuth, Jr. of the Legal Division, 5 

May 1944, subject: new sewer field at Area A-2, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, 

National Archives II 

41 “Area A-2,” map and capacity list, undated [October 1943, the date given on similar maps for Area B] 

located in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 

42 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

43 Harry F. Belfry, “Office of Strategic Services (OSS),” in U.S.A. Airborne: 50th Anniversary: A 

Commemorative History (Atlanta, Ga.: Turner Pub. Co., 1997), 350. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 151

Sage, “Ruck’s” slow, southern drawl contrasted with the speed with which he 

volunteered to jump out of airplanes. He had done well over three dozen jumps by 

November 1942. “We always said he could jump out of a plane faster than he could talk,” 

Sage recalled.44 Rucker was often assisted in instruction by Sergeant John Swetish, who 

once set a record for the most jumps in twenty-four hours.45

Air travel was not common until after World War II, and in the early 1940s few 

people had even ridden in an airplane, let alone jump out of one. Parachuting, however, 

was the fastest and most efficient way to infiltrate behind enemy lines, and paratrooper 

training also gave agents a further sense of self-confidence, courage, and pride and a 

feeling of belonging to an important, elite group. At parachute school, whether at Area A 

or at Fort Benning, trainees spent the first two days at Parachute School doing ground 

exercises of body control—jumping from a platform and learning how to tumble, 

practicing in a suspended harness—and also how to control the open parachute upon 

landing. They also learned how to pack their parachute and containers and how to dispose 

of both afterward so they would not be discovered. Finally, trainees had to make a total of 

five jumps in order for certification and award of the winged parachute insignia.46

At the OSS Parachute School at A-3, candidates would board a plane at the 

nearby U.S. Marine Base at Quantico, fly low over Prince William Forest Park and 

parachute into clearings, simulating the manner in which agents and equipment would be 

airdropped into partisan areas behind enemy lines. They would walk back to the Marine 

base and jump again. Among SO instructors and trainees a tradition emerged by late 1942 

of earning their winged paratrooper insignia by doing the ground preparation and all five 

required jumps in a single day.47 In December 1942, OSS headquarters decided to 

transfer Rucker and the parachute school to North Africa, and, thereafter, if OSS trainees 

received parachute training in the United States, most of them did it at Fort Benning, 

Georgia. When the OSS went overseas, Rucker established and ran the OSS parachute 

training school in Algiers from December 1942 through August 1944, after which he was 

sent to China to help prepare the first Chinese paratroopers being trained and led by the 

OSS, including former Area B instructor Charles M. Parkin, Jr. Rucker left behind in 

Algeria some inadequate financial records, which the head of OSS finances subsequently 

 

44 Jerry Sage, Sage (Wayne, Pa.: Miles Standish Press, 1985), 53, 55. 

45 Ibid., 53. 

46 “History of the Schools and Training Branch, Office of Strategic Services,” typescript history prepared in 

1945, but not declassified until the 1980s; for handiest reference, see the published version, William L. 

Cassidy, ed., History of the Schools & Training Branch, Office of Strategic Services (San Francisco: 

Kingfisher Press, 1983), 33. 

47 Frank A. Gleason, telephone interview with the author, 9 May 2005; and interviews with Gleason and 

Charles M. Parkin, veteran instructors from Area B, interview during tour of Catoctin Mountain Park 

arranged by the author, 18 May 2005. 
152 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

excused, noting “Lt. Col. Rucker with the other officers that worked with him are typical 

parachute men, quite casual about everything except jumping. This is to be expected.”48

Beginning in October 1943, A-3 became the site for advanced training for 

members of Special Operations and Morale Operations (psychological warfare). An “Etype” course developed at Area E, the basic SI school north of Baltimore, the course was 

designed to give an overall idea of all the various tasks by OSS personnel in the field so 

they could better coordinate with others and even do the others' work if required. At the 

end of the two-week course, three days were allotted when students could be sent out of 

Area A on practical problems related to their specialization, mock exercises of espionage, 

sabotage, or the spreading of disinformation. There are reports that at various times 

before the OSS formal assessment program began in 1944, A-3 had been used for 

weeding out the unfit or unsuitable and determining those who would be sent on for 

advanced training for missions behind enemy lines.49 

OSS took over the NPS Cabin Camp 3 pretty much as it was. In three subunits, A, 

B, and C, it had clusters of cabins around recreation halls, several of which were turned 

into classrooms holding 40 men. Enlisted men and trainees slept six to a cabin and 12 in 

each barrack. One building was retained as a combination recreational hall and post 

exchange; the dining hall and infirmary were maintained but improved, as were the 

central showers. One small building was converted to a code room, a larger structure was 

retained as the headquarters for A-3. Of course, like the others, this cabin camp had to be 

winterized with insulation and hot water as well as enhanced utilities, water and sewage 

system. That did not occur, however, until well into the winter of 1943-1944. Meanwhile, 

pot-bellied, cast-iron heating stoves were installed to provide warmth. At A-3, a 25-man 

latrine/washroom was the only new building constructed by the Army.50 Outdoors, the 

Army Engineers created firing ranges for rifle and submachine gun practice and a 

Demolition Area for using explosives in sabotage training.51 Area A-3 had a capacity to 

 

48 Col. W.L. Rehm, 13 June 1944, notation at the bottom of Lt. Col. Lucius O. Rucker, Jr., to Col. W.L. 

Rehm, 12 June 1944; as well as other documents n OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 169A, Washington-SFBPersonnel, Box 23, Folder 1014, National Archives. 

49 Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, “Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, pp. 1- 2, OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 1723, both in National Archives II. 

50 Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4 [Supply], Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], 

subject: Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658; and Lt. Col. 

Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, Schools and Training Branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], 

to General Counsel Office, SSU, 16 October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in OSS 

Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 1999, both in National Archives II. 

51 Ibid., both Lyson’s and Blogg’s letters. The Demolition Area near A-3 is also referred to in Estimate #3, 

Estimated Prices Prepared by T. Sgt. John E. [sic] Gum, attachment to Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant

Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit (SSU), for the Director, to Commanding General, Army 

Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, subject: Chopawamsic National Recreational 

Demonstration Area, in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 153

hold 6 officers and 20 enlisted men in the station complement, and 162 trainees, for a 

maximum capacity of 188 men.52 

Area A-4: Permanent Headquarters and Basic SO and OG Training 

Although sub-camp A-4 replaced A-5 as the headquarters for all of Detachment A 

in November 1942, it also sometimes served as a training camp for basic or advanced 

Special Operations and Operational Group training. One of the new trainees there in 

1942 was Prince Serge Obolensky, a royal Russian émigré and New York socialite, who 

had been an officer in the Czarist Army and leader of White Russian guerrillas against 

the Reds after the Revolution. After Pearl Harbor, Obolensky enlisted in the American 

Army, was commissioned a major and was soon ordered to report to Donovan’s 

headquarters in Washington. Donovan assigned him to Col. M. Preston Goodfellow, head 

of Special Operations for training of commando units to jump behind enemy lines. This 

was part of Goodfellow’s plan for a Strategic Services Command, an idea put forward in 

the fall of 1942, which was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but which ultimately was 

adopted in a smaller scale in the Operational Groups. Obolensky trained first at Area B.53

Then as he later recalled, “I was sent immediately to a commando school in Virginia 

[Area A]. None of us had names. We were all given nicknames, which were printed on 

badges. Nobody knew who we were. My name was Sky. This was a physical toughener 

as well. We got up early and went to bed late, training in special tactics, shooting at 

sounds at night, guerrilla tactics, memory tests of small and configurations of places in 

total darkness, and especially demolitions work.”54 After graduation, Obolensky reported 

to Goodfellow’s office to help write a proposed training schedule for the groups of 

foreign nationals and first generation American citizens into military units in the 

proposed Strategic Services Command. A variation of these would become the OSS 

Operational Groups (OGs).55 Subsequently, as will be shown in a later chapter, Oblensky 

would use his skills and training effectively behind enemy lines in Italy and France. 

Subsequently, a course was developed called the A-4 course because it was given 

over such a long period at that facility. It was, in fact, SO basic training, designed for 

men who were going to perform the rougher kinds of missions overseas. Many SO 

trainees went first to Area B-2 or sometimes Area E for their basic training and then to A-

 

52 “Area A-3,” map and capacity list, undated [October 1943, the date given on similar maps for Area B] 

located in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249; another report indicated that the classes 

of 33 men each were staggered so that a new class arrived each week. Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, 

“Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 2, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 

1723, both in National Archives II. 

53 Jerry Sage, 30-31. 

54 Serge Obolensky, One Man in His Time: The Memoirs of Serge Obolensky (New York: McDowell, 

Obloensky, 1958), 342-343, and 352-391. 

55 “Major Obolensky’s Training Schedule, Outline of the Strategic Services Command,” OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 61, Box 11, Folder 121, National Archives II. 
154 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

4, but many reversed that process and went first to A-4. The course lasted about three 

weeks and comprised such subjects as field craft, map reading, demolitions, weapons, 

Morse code, close combat and physical training. Students were taught how to make a few 

basic types of demolition charges adequate for the sabotage of industrial establishments, 

rail lines, and bridges. They were taught how to use small arms most effectively for rapid 

firing in daylight or at night. Practical problems assigned to the students at the end of the 

course included night map and compass problems, problems in reconnaissance, and 

problems in the placing of demolition charges on mock targets. A-4 courses were given 

not just at Area A, but also at various times at Areas B, D, F, and on the West Coast on 

Catalina Island.56

Because it had been a CCC work camp rather than an NPS summer cabin camp, 

A-4 in the southeastern part of the park had a rather tenuous relationship during the war 

with the National Park Service. It was located not far from the park headquarters, but the 

CCC camps did not become the property of the NPS until after the war. Consequently, 

OSS concluded that the National Park Service “had nothing to do with the buildings and 

equipment” there. Indeed, John T. Gum, who worked there as liaison between the 

Civilian Conservation Corps and NPS, served as the CCC liaison with OSS in the park 

until CCC was terminated in the winter of 1942-1943. Thereafter, Gum worked as liaison 

between the NPS liaison and the OSS. Later, Gum recalled that in the prewar period the 

National Park Service had no definite plans for using the CCC work camp site as a 

summer camp.

57

 

Twenty-four buildings at the work camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps were 

taken over by the OSS. There, as at the NPS cabin camps, the use made of the structures 

by the two organizations was often similar. The CCC headquarters became the OSS Area 

A headquarters, five CCC barracks holding 80 young men each in double-deck bunks, 

remained barracks for the OSS enlisted men of the cadre or for trainees. The CCC supply 

warehouses, gas house, storage shed, and water tower continued to function in the same 

manner for their new tenant. Sometimes, however, buildings were put to new use: The 

CCC infirmary became the OSS Guard House, a CCC structure listed only as “Building,” 

became the OSS Post Exchange (PX) and Recreation Hall. Two-thirds of one CCC 

barrack became a gymnasium complete with parallel bars, punching bags, rowing 

machines, and place for instruction and practice in knife fighting and unarmed, close 

combat. The dining hall was retained as the mess hall, but the kitchen was completely 

remodeled and upgraded. 

 Nearly a dozen new buildings were constructed for OSS and remained in Area A4 at least until the end of the war. They included an auto and truck washing building, 

carpenter shop, commissary, armory, code room, storage shed, a small guard house and a 

 

56 “Types of Training,” p. 4, document attached to L.B. Shallcross, deputy, STB/TRD [CIA] to John 

O’Gara, 1 February 1951, subject: information on OSS schools and training sites, OSS Records (RG 226),

Entry 61, Box 7, Folder 76, National Archives II. 

57 Estimate #3, Estimated Prices Prepared by T. Sgt. John E. [sic] Gum, attachment to Col. W.L. Rehm, 

Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit (SSU), for the Director, to Commanding

General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, subject: Chopawamsic National 

Recreational Demonstration Area, in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National 

Archives II. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 155

sentry box. Most expensive was a ten-room, bachelor officers’ quarters (BOQ), which 

cost $13,000. A-4 also had two large classrooms, each of which could accommodate 50 

students, where the trainees heard lectures and watched films about field craft, weaponry, 

and demolitions, plus a smaller classroom where code work was taught and practiced.58

Area A-4 had a capacity for 15 officers and 128 enlisted men as part of the cadre and 

instructional staff, plus the ability to hold 76 trainees if necessary, a total capacity of 219 

men.

59

For use in the military training courses at A-4, the Army Engineers built three 

indoor firing ranges, one each for pistols, .22 caliber rifles, and submachine guns. 

Outdoors in a neighboring area, they installed another pistol and submachine gun range. 

About a mile west-northwest of A-4, an M-1 rifle range with ten standard target frames 

was created. Not far away, in the same general area, engineers constructed two standard 

cinder block magazines for storing ammunition or up to 50 tons of explosives between 

them.60 For physical training, the engineers erected an obstacle course as long as a 

football field and which included various difficult, optional objects to be overcome. 

Farther from the camp, there were practice areas for field craft and stalking the enemy, 

and a demolition area for practicing with various types of explosives on the kinds of 

wood, iron and steel fixtures used in bridges, railroads, and buildings.61

The capacity of Area A overall, including all four sub-camps when they all had 

been winterized, equipped with extra temporary classrooms, and completely operational 

in early spring 1944 was 550 men—trainees or holdees. This was in addition to the 130 

men assigned as the station complement for Detachment A.62 

 

58 Material on OSS building usage and construction at A-4 is derived primarily from Capt. Stanley H. 

Lyson, S-4, Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], subject: Data on Detachment A, 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658; and Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, 

Schools and Training Branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], to General Counsel Office, SSU, 16 

October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, 

Folder 1999, National Archives II. 

59 “Area A-4,” map and capacity list, undated [October 1943, the date given on similar maps for Area B] 

located in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85,Box 13, Folder 249; plus Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, 

“Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 1, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 

1723, both in National Archives II. 

60 Capt. Stanley H. Lyson, S-4, Schools and Training, to Lt. Warner, undated [February 1945], subject: 

Data on Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

61 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

62 Capt. Don R. Callahan, CO at Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, Executive, Training, OSS, 13 

March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities Detachment A, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136 

Schools and Training Branch, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives. 
156 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

Teaching Effective Use of Violence at Area A, including the “Mystery House” 

 Overall at Area A, a variety of firing ranges, demolition areas, pistol houses, and 

other facilities were installed by the military for instruction in the effective use of 

violence in pursuit of OSS objectives. A list of what was available in Area A and 

environs in the spring of 1944 began with ten target ranges for practicing with pistols, 

carbines, rifles, and submachine guns, including a 200-foot rifle range with ten, 6 by 6 

frame sliding targets, a 400-yard mortar range, a range for the use of hand grenades, riflepropelled grenades and M-1 rocket launchers. Also listed were two booby trap areas and 

tactical problem houses; four objective tactical areas, a proposed infiltration course, three 

map and reconnaissance areas, a marine dock at Quantico for use of amphibious tactics 

on the Potomac River, and fifteen thousand acres of all various types of terrain for 

tactical problems. Plus outside the area, the commanding officer of Area A reported, 

there were numerous civilian facilities available for exercises involving simulated capture 

or demolition—from the Manassas Power Dam and Control Tower to the bridge at 

Woodbridge, Virginia for the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad.63 

Demolition areas, where explosives were used against wooden, iron, or steel 

objects, mock bridges, towers, buildings, or railroads, were extremely hazardous areas. 

There were three of them, ranging from one to four acres, and two magazines for storing 

explosives and other munitions had been erected on lands acquired by the War 

Department in1942 for that purpose.64 Because of the danger from the use of explosives, 

the Army convinced Prince William County officials in April 1944 to close old Route 

644 which ran through the park near the demolition areas and to abandon several sections 

of secondary roads in and around Chopawamsic RDA until six months after the end of 

the war.65 A number of the OSS field exercises involving weapons and live ammunition 

and explosives took place in a large corner area of the park formed by old Route 644 and 

the Joplin Road.66

Within Area A, there were several specialized houses built for OSS. They 

included two or three “Problem Houses” and a “Mystery House.” The Problem Houses 

 

63 Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools 

and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658; and Maj. Robert C. Wright, Schools and 

Training Branch OSS, to Commanding Officer, Detachment C, 29 January 1945, subject: memorandum 

from Military District of Washington, SPWTD 471.6, in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, 

Folder 1658, both in National Archives II. 

64 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 30, citing “6.5-64, 1946 source,” and “6.5-56, 56A, 1946 

source.” 

65 Worth H. Storke, clerk, Minute from the Prince William County Board of Supervisors Meeting of 6 April

1944, copy attached to Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg to A. William Asmuth, Jr., Legal Division, 4 May 1944,

subject: closing of roads and highways, Chopawamsic Area, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, 

Folder 24, National Archives II. 

66 See maps of number of field exercises/problems located in White Binder entitled “OSS,” in the Park 

Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va.
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 157

involved field exercises. Trainees might be required to recognize and dismantle booby 

traps or making a nighttime rendezvous, or message drop, at a “safe” house, or they 

might assault it as part of an enemy outpost. What Fairbairn called the “Mystery House” 

at Area A, like the similar structure at Area B at Catoctin Mountain Park, was created for 

indoor weapons training and testing reaction time.67 It contained sounds of gunfire and 

visual props such as pop-up targets, resembling armed enemies soldiers to test the 

trainee’s nerves and skill in instinctive pistol firing as he proceeded, gun drawn, through 

the rooms and corridors of what many students called the “House of Horrors.” 

At Area A, like Area B, there was a Mystery House or House of Horrors. It was 

constructed by the CCC work crews under the supervision of the OSS and the NPS Park 

Manager Ira Lykes. Years later, Lykes, after a career of preserving the forest and its 

wildlife while fostering healthy recreation in nature, recalled, still with some concern, the 

brutal elements involved. “I remember we built a little place we called Little Tokyo68 in 

which we had one building, and [they] had to train the men to get through the door of that 

thing and walk down a labyrinth in a blue light, a very, very dim light while they were 

being fired at [and were firing back] in order to protect themselves. They taught them 

such delicate things as when they burst into a room of German staff officers which one to 

shoot first. The one that stood up was the one that got shot first and the one that had the 

wild look and stare on his face got shot last because he hadn’t collected himself yet and 

he didn’t know what to do. This was the fine shadings in murder. Of course, we had to do 

it because we had to fight fire with fire and it was a really justified program.”69

 

Normal ethics were put aside and the idea of a fair fight rejected in the OSS 

training program that emphasized the need for an agent behind enemy lines to use any 

effective means available to accomplish their mission and avoid capture. As an example 

of such training, two former OSS Special Operations officers, writing immediately after 

the war, informed the public with barely concealed relish about what a typical recruit 

would learn at an OSS training camp. “Here he would be taught to meet the enemy on the 

enemy’s terms. He would park all idea of clean sportsmanship along with his name, and 

learn to fight barehanded, gutter-style, with all the dirty tactics of gutter fighting: a knee 

 

67 On the number and functions of the pistol houses (he reported three pistol houses, some other sources

indicate two) and the one mystery house in Area A, see Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, 

schools and training branch, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS] to General Counsel Office, SSU, 16

October 1945, subject: Liquidation of Areas “A” and “C,” in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, 

Folder 199, National Archives II. 

68 Lykes may be confusing two different houses here, or he may be describing a cluster of houses. In a 1985 

interview with historian Susan Carey Strickland, the retired park manager told her that a “Little Tokyo” 

was built in the woods and regularly assaulted in training practice, which sounds more like a Problem 

House. Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 27-28, n. 96. But in the 1973 interview quoted here with 

Herbert Evison, his former supervisor at NPS, Lykes although using the term “Little Tokyo,” spends the

rest of his statement taking about what appears to have been one of Fairbairn’s Mystery Houses with 

dummies representing German soldiers and officers inside. Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 

November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison, page. 42 of transcript made from Tape Number 261, at NPS’s 

Harpers Ferry Center Library, Harpers Ferry, W. Va.

69 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison, his supervisor at NPS, 

page. 42 of transcript made from Tape Number 261, at NPS’s Harpers Ferry Center Library, Harpers Ferry, 

W. Va. I am indebted to David Nathanson there for responding to my request for a copy of the transcript. 
158 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

in the groin, a savage slash with the side of the hand across an Adam’s apple, a jab at the 

eyes with fingers stiffly hooked in a tiger’s claw.”

70

 

Destruction in the Park 

During the OSS training exercises a number of buildings within the park were 

destroyed. Most were old structures—farmhouses, barns, outbuildings, sheds and 

shacks—which had been abandoned or whose owners had been evicted. They were 

destroyed in exercises involving booby-traps, explosives, or mortar shells. During a 

demolition exercise in March 1943, the OSS blew up an uninhabited, dilapidated old 

house in the western border of the park. But a few weeks later, they learned that the 

house and its two-acre site on County Route 619 were not owned by the government, but 

had remained the property of the Stark family, which complained about their destruction. 

As Captain Eliot N. Vestner, current chief instructor, reported to OSS headquarters, he 

and the then chief instructor, Captain Arden Dow, were operating on the basis of a map 

showing a training area that included the property and the unoccupied house. “We have 

been accustomed to maneuver all through this [park] land and have likewise demolished 

other houses in the immediate vicinity,” Vestner reported. It was only on investigation, 

presumably by conferring with Park Manager Ira Lykes, that Vestner learned three 

months later that the two-acre plot was only under option to buy and not yet been 

purchased by the War Department. The National Park Service had been anxious to 

acquire the property for the park, and the government had originally offered $1,000 for 

the property, which they, but apparently not the owner, considered a fair price.71 The 

entire Stark property, all ten acres, on Route 619 was eventually purchased for the park. 

Building and Maintaining Roads 

The National Park Service had established five cabin camps in Chopawamsic 

RDA, but the camps were not connected by any system of internal roads. They had been 

used by separate civilian, non-profit organizations, and the Park Service did not have the 

funds for the expensive work of constructing an interconnected road network through the 

forest. This meant that one had to drive around the periphery, nine miles over state roads, 

for example, to get from Cabin Camps Numbers 1 and 4, in the northeast section to Cabin 

Camp Number 3 near park headquarters in the southeastern sector of the park. In 1942, 

Superintendent Ira Lykes hoped that the “Army occupation” of the park would provide a 

“splendid opportunity” to build “at least temporary connecting roads between the 

 

70 Lt. Col. Corey Ford and Maj. Alastair MacBain, Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of OSS (New York: 

Random House, 1945), 24-25. 

71 Capt. Eliot N. Vestner to Director of Training, OSS, 28 June 1943, subject: demolition of unacquired 

property, with attached hand drawn map of “General Area Used for Training,” OSS Records (RG 226), 

Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, National Archives II. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 159

organized camps, particularly camps one and four and the central road.”72 But Lykes saw 

little chance that this would happen, because during the first few months after the military 

had occupied the park in April 1942, he had run into major difficulties trying to get “the 

Army to stop unnecessary auto traffic,” the volume of which Lykes believed was counter 

to sound conservation and indeed ultimately harmful to the preservation of the park.73 

The effects of the heavy military vehicles on the roads within the OSS training 

area, plus the deterioration accelerated by the weather during the winter of 1943-44, led 

Corps of Engineers to agree that it was imperative that the roads in Training Area A be 

repaired. Furthermore, the engineers recommended that culverts be installed and other 

drainage be put into place before the fall of 1944 and even greater damage created in the 

following winter. The Army Engineers furnished the labor, but the material would have 

to be purchased. The commanding officers of both Areas A and C agreed that the first 

priority was for the roads leading to the OSS constructed magazine for storage of 

ammunition and explosives, as the dirt road had become almost impassible in the winter. 

Second priority went to repairing roads which connected existing camp areas. The third 

priority was for repairing roads classified as secondary roads within the training area and 

which were used mainly for training purposes and in connection with field exercises. The 

roads were in such poor condition that they were inflicting undue wear and tear upon 

military motor vehicles, which consequently were frequently in need of repair. OSS 

concluded that under the agreement between the War Department and the Department of 

the Interior, “we are required to maintain existing roads and, of course, maintain any 

roads we ourselves constructed.”74 By 1945, Superintendent Lykes could report that the 

Army did maintain “certain roads in good condition.”

75

Closure of Area A 

Recruiting and training of paramilitary personnel in the United States for the 

European Theater of Operations ended in the summer of 1944, and consequently Area A 

was closed down as a training area in November 1944. Most of the OSS training in 1945 

for the war against Japan was done in West Coast camps. Area A was declared officially 

closed effective 11 January 1945 with the exception of normal maintenance and 

safeguarding of property, and was held in stand-by status until it was permanently closed 

in July 1945. When the OSS personnel vacated Area A, responsibility for the facility was 

 

72 Ira B. Lykes to Irving Root, NPS, 20 October 1942, NPS Records (RG 79), File 1460/3, Federal Records 

Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 28, n.100. These records have 

disappeared. 

73 Ira B. Lykes, Monthly Report, July 1942, in ibid., 28, n. 101. 

74 Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg to Charles S. Cheston, through William Asmuth, OSS legal division, 5 May 

1944, subject: repair of roads—Areas “A” and “C,” OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, 

National Archives II. 

75 Ira B. Lykes, Monthly Report, August [1945], NPS Records (RG 79), File 1460/3, Federal Records 

Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 29, n. 102. These records have 

disappeared. 
160 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

transferred to the commanding officer of Area C, Major Albert Jenkins.76 Of course, the 

two NPS officials at Chopawamsic RDA, Ira Lykes, the park manager, and John T. 

Gum, the NPS liaison person, first with CCC and then with OSS, also maintained 

responsibilities for the preservation of Area A as well as for all of the park. Area C 

remained in operation until October 1945. 

OSS Maritime Training (at Areas A and D) 

Special Operations had initial responsibility for training OSS agents, especially 

from SO and SI, in techniques of clandestine infiltration by water—from the sea or across 

a lake or river into enemy territory. The original training for such waterborne landings 

began in May 1942 using a boat house on a lake near Area A-5 and sometimes a dock at 

the nearby Marine Base. About the same time, Special Operations had begun that same 

month to create a maritime training camp on the east bank of the Potomac River, a few 

miles from Quantico. It was subsequently designated OSS Training Area D.77 The 

precise location of Area D is still the subject of debate among some veterans, but the CIA 

records indicate that it was at Smith’s Point, in Charles County, Maryland.78 That would 

 

76 Col. H.L. Robinson, chief, Schools and Training Branch, OSS to Lt. Col. James A. Hewitt, Post 

Engineer, Fort Belvoir, Va., 6 January 1945, subject: Closing of Detachment A, OSS in OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. 

77 On the use of the lake near A-5 and also the dock at Quantico, see Capt. Don R. Callahan, commanding 

officer, Detachment A, to Col. H.L. Robinson, executive, Schools and Training Branch, OSS, 13 March 

1944, subject: Housing and Training Facilities, Detachment A, in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box

153, Folder 1658, National Archives II. On the establishment of a maritime school at Area D, see War 

Report of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), with a new introduction by Kermit Roosevelt (New York: 

Walker and Co., 1976), 81, 225-26, a commercially published, declassified version of the original “War

Report of the OSS,” prepared by the History Project, Strategic Services Unit, Office of the Assistant 

Secretary of War, 5 September 1947 (hereinafter cited as, OSS, War Report of the O.S.S.). 

78 For the Smith’s Point, Charles County, Maryland location, see L.B. Shallcross, deputy, STB/TRD [CIA] 

to Mr. John O’Gara, 1 February 1951, subject: Information on OSS Schools and Training Sites, OSS 

Records (RG 226), Entry 61, Box 7, Folder 76, National Archives II. This document has proven accurate in 

the location of every other OSS training and assessment site. All sources agree that it was located on the 

Potomac River a comparatively short boat ride from the U.S. Marine Corps Base at Quantico. Some place it 

down river. The President of the UDT-SEAL Association seeking to commemorate the founding of the 

American frogmen wrote in 2000 that Area D, “was located south of Quantico, VA on the Potomac River, 

and is discussed extensively in the MU history to be presented. We have not yet located it on the map.” 

Tom Hawkins, “OSS Maritime: We Have Looked into the Past, and It is Us!,” The Blast, (2000), 10-11. 

Frank A. Gleason, who was at Area D recalled it as north more than 10 to 20 miles south of Quantico on

the eastern shore of the Potomac River. Frank A. Gleason, telephone interview with the author, 3 April

2008. Some think it was upriver from Quantico. Jerry Sage, Sage, 50-51, called the location Indian Head, 

Maryland, which is today the location of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center and was then the

Naval Ordnance Station. OSS radio operator James Ranney located it in what is now Smallwood State 

Park, Maryland, just south of Indian Head; James F. Ranney, “OSS Training Areas,” in James F. Ranney 

and Arthur L. Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd ed. (Covington, Ky.: James F. Ranney, 2002), 

119. OSS, War Report of the O.S.S., 80, says only that it was on “1,400 acres of wooded terrain on the 

Potomac River across from Quantico.” 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 161

place it just below what is today Purse State Park on Wade’s Bay, a half a dozen miles 

down river from Quantico, and about three miles west of the village of Grayton, 

Maryland. OSS. The temporarily obtained property included a long stretch of river 

frontage and 1,400 acres behind it.79 After a few yards of river bank, the area was 

covered with light woods interspersed with open fields. The camp site was about 50 feet 

from the river. Three or four miles away there were some scattered dwellings, including a 

tavern, sometimes frequented by the OSS staff.80 Temporary prefabricated buildings, 

possibly CCC-type portable structures, had been secured from the Army and used for 

housing the students and the equipment.81 When expansion of Area D was completed by 

the summer of 1943, and by that time was used mainly by Special Operations, it had a 

station complement of 75 officers and enlisted men and could house an additional 180 

trainees, for a total capacity of 256 OSS personnel.

82

The initial development of the maritime infiltration school at Area D was by OSS 

personnel from the U.S. Navy under the supervision of a commando experienced Royal 

 

 The most contemporaneous document indicating location of Area D is by the then new head of Schools 

and Training Branch who stated only that it was “located on the Potomac River about 40 miles from 

Washington [which would put it around Smith’s Point]. It is a CCC type camp, situated on the river bank.” 

is Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, “Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 4, OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 1723. A typescript history of the Schools and Training Branch apparently 

written at the end of the war, indicates only that Area D was “located on the Potomac River in an isolated 

section comprising fourteen hundred acres. This area, like Areas A, B, and C, had formerly been a summer 

recreation area.” “History of Schools and Training Branch, OSS,” p. 12, received by Col. E.B. Whisner, 7 

January 1949 from W.J. Morgan [a former OSS officer], OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 176, Box 2, Folder 

13, both in National Archives II. 

 In an attempt to find any indication of OSS Area D located at a summer recreation area that might have 

become one of the Maryland state parks along the Potomac, or a CCC camp, most of whose buildings were 

easily portable and were moved from place to place as needed, the present author conducted telephone 

interviews with the following individuals. From the Maryland Park Service: Ross Kimmell, 22 May 2007; 

William Moffat, 5 June 2007; William Farrall, 21 June 2007; from the Maryland Forest Service, Craig 

Henderson, 1 April 2008; a letter to Frank Owens, local historian, 3 April 2008, which went unanswered; 

and telephone interviews with two OSS veterans of Area D, Jonathan Spence, former MU frogman, 28 

January 2005; and Frank A. Gleason, former SO instructor, 3 April 2008; plus a search of the CCC records 

for Charles County, Maryland, by Eugene Morris, archivist, National Archives II, 14 April 2008. The result 

was inconclusive in regard to locations at a state park or CCC camp. It should be noted that Purse State 

Park is located just north of Smith’s Point, and also that one of the typescript histories of the Schools and 

Training Branch, the one edited by William L. Cassidy, indicates that the temporary housing for Area D

was obtained from the Army, but it does not reveal whether this housing had been from CCC camps 

supervised by the U.S. Army or directly from the Army. The mystery remains unresolved. 

79 OSS, War Report of the O.S.S., 80. 

80 Frank A. Gleason, telephone interview with the author, 3 April 2008. 

81 History of the Schools and Training Branch: Office of Strategic Services, ed. William L. Cassidy (San 

Francisco: Kingfisher Press, 1983), 135. This is largely a reprint of the typescript official history of the 

S&T Branch of the OSS prepared by Schools and Training, probably Maj. Kenneth P. Miller, in 1945 and 

obtained by William Cassidy in 1983 from the CIA through Freedom of Information Act requests. On the 

possibility that they were CCC structures, see note 77 above. 

82 Map of layout of buildings with statistics on capacity of Area D, undated [October 1943, the date given 

on similar maps for Area B] located in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, National Archives II. 
162 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander H. G. Woolley of British Combined Operations. 

Among the American naval officers assisting him were Lieutenant Jack Duncan, who had 

trained with the U.S. Marines’ Raider Battalion and with the British commandos in 

England, and Lieutenant John (“Jack”) Shaheen, later chief of special projects for 

Donovan, and who the following year would run a small boat mission, the McGregor 

mission, to obtain information about Nazi weapons development from Italian naval 

officers. Instruction in clandestine waterborne landings had begun at Area D for SO and 

SI agents in August 1942. In October, OSS planned to expand use of the area to include 

not just for small craft amphibious landings but full blown field exercises, including 

airborne infiltration by parachute drops and small planes from the Marines’ airstrip at 

Quantico. 83 Army Lieutenant Jerry Sage, an instructor from Area B-2 who had just 

returned from SOE training in Britain, arrived in the late aumn of 1942.84 He became 

executive officer for Major Albert B. Seitz, commanding the SO training exercises. 

(Within a year, Sage would be trying to escape from a German prison camp after having 

been captured in North Africa, and Seitz would be parachuting into Yugoslavia as a 

member of the first U.S. military mission to the Chetnik partisans fighting under General 

Draza Mihailovich.) 

In the autumn of 1942 at Area D, however, Sage’s assignment was to build an 

earthen landing strip at the camp in woods to experiment with short takeoffs and landings 

by light planes. Obtaining a bulldozer from the Corps of Engineers, Sage used it to tear 

up trees and stumps and to scrape an even landing surface. The first test landing went off 

perfectly, but when the pilot tried to take off, the unencumbered strip was not quite long 

enough. Suddenly confronted with the camp flagpole, the pilot banked sharply, lost 

control of the plane and crashed, fortunately without sustaining serious injury.85 Another 

near fatal mishap occurred during a major field exercise in November, Sage was leading 

the simulated attacking force coming down a road in Army trucks. Lieutenant Frank 

Gleason, Corps of Engineers, a fellow instructor from B-2, was leading the simulated 

guerrilla force setting up an ambush including explosives. Someone else had set a booby 

trap with a wire, pull switch, and two blocks of TNT, about half a pound of explosive. 

When Gleason pulled the pin, the trip wire had been wound too tight and instead of 

triggering the time fuse, it set off the explosive, which was only four or five feet away 

from him. “I almost bought the farm that day,” he recalled. “Fortunately I had a helmet 

and heavy back pack on. The blast knocked me off my feet and onto the ground. When I 

came to, I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear for a week.”86

In one of the waterborne exercises in the Potomac River off Area D in 1942, one 

of the trainees accidentally drowned. earlier that year. Seaman John Pitts Spence, an 

instructor who became the Navy’s first frogman, remembered that during the autumn 

 

83 War Report of the OSS, 81, 226; and Commander H. Woolley [Royal Navy] to Colonel M.P. 

Goodfellow, 9 October 1942, subject: Guerrilla Notes—Rough Notes and Suggestions, M. Preston 

Goodfellow Papers, Box 4, Folder 4, Hoover Institute, Stanford, Calif. 

84 Sage, Sage, 50, 55. 

85 Ibid., 51, 443. 

86 Frank A. Gleason, telephone interviews with the author, 16 December 2007, and 3 April 2008. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 163

while the weather was still mild, the men trained in underwater demolition and the use of 

small rubber boats which were launched from a converted yacht, the Marsyl. It was 

during one of those exercises that one of the trainees in underwater demolition apparently 

became disoriented in the murky waters or was trapped in debris, was carried 

downstream by the current and drowned.87 

Underwater swimmers from Italy had been sinking British ships, and Donovan’s 

organization decided to initiate a group of underwater warfare swimmers (later called 

combat swimmers or “frogmen). Spence, was one of the first chosen. Beginning in 

November 1942, he tested a new self-contained underwater breathing device that recirculated the oxygen and left no telltale bubbles on the surface. 88 This was the 

Amphibian Breathing Apparatus or Lambertsen Respiratory Unit, named after Christian 

J. Lambertsen, a physician, who invented it in 1940. The underwater combat swimming 

groups began training in May 1943 at Annapolis. Meanwhile, in January 1943, OSS 

designated maritime activities the Marine Section of Special Operations Branch, and in 

March 1943, that section assumed complete control of Area D. The emphasis was still on 

waterborne infiltration rather than underwater sabotage, but the combat swimming groups 

did proceed from Annapolis to Area D for training in small boats and the use of limpet 

explosive devices for use against ship’s hulls. The Marine Unit (MU) of OSS was 

established as a separate branch on 9 June 1943, and it did emphasize the use of 

“frogmen” for underwater demolition work. Polluted water in the Potomac and ice in 

winter prevented effective underwater combat swimming training, and as a result, 

training for the “frogmen” was shifted to Silver Springs, Florida, and in 1944 to Nassau 

in the British Bahamas as well as Catalina Island and the Camp Pendleton Marine Base 

near San Diego, California. Dr. Lambertsen transferred from the Army Medical Corps to 

the OSS Maritime Unit in 1943 and remained with it until the end of the war. 89

When the Maritime Branch was created in June 1943 and vacated its training 

camp on the Potomac for bases in the Caribbean and on the Pacific Coast, Area D, still 

under control of Special Operations Branch became available as an adjunct to SO’s Area 

A. In October 1943, for example, the overflow of students at A-4 basic SO training was 

 

87 John Pitt Spence, telephone interview with the author, 28 January 2005. Spence remembered the name of

the yacht at the Maybelle, but Commander Woolly listed it in October 1942 as the Marsyl. Commander H. 

Woolley [Royal Navy] to Colonel M.P. Goodfellow, 9 October 1942, subject: Guerrilla Notes—Rough 

Notes and Suggestions, p. 2, M. Preston Goodfellow Papers, Box 4, Folder 4, Hoover Institute, Stanford, 

Calif. In 2005, the 85-year-old Spence recalled that a group of men went to Quantico Marine Base by boat 

every Sunday to get the newspapers; he recalled that Area D was on the east side of the Potomac, but he 

could not remember whether it was north or south of Quantico. 

88 Tom Hawkins, “OSS Maritime: We Have Looked into the Past and It Is Us!” The Blast, newsletter of the 

UDT [Underwater Demolition Team]-SEAL Association, (Third Quarter, 2000), p. 10; plus materials on 

the OSS combat swimmers reunion at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md., 27-29 March 2001, and 

the memorial plaques to the OSS MU operational swimming units at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the UDT-Seal 

Museum at Fort Pierce, Fla., sent to the author by John Pitt Spence, 5 February 2005.

89 OSS, War Report of the OSS, 226-27; Kenneth Finlayson, “Key West: Home of ARSOF Underwater 

Operations,” Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History, 3/1 (2007): 3-4; Francis Douglas Fane 

and Don Moore, The Naked Warriors (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1956), an account by 

Commander Fane of the origins and accomplishments of the Underwater Demolition Teams of the U.S. 

Navy, and the OSS, in World War II.
164 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

briefly sent to Area D for Special Operations training there. Area D also served as a 

holding area for already trained SO and OG personnel awaiting assignment overseas. The 

SO role continued until April 1944, when Area D was closed, its staff moved to Area A-5 

at Prince William Forest Park, and the property in Charles County, Maryland, returned to 

its owner.90 

 

Area C: the Communications School 

In the hilly, wooded northeastern corner of Prince William Forest Park, 

Donovan’s organization established Area C as a site for training in clandestine radio 

operations and equipment, probably in June 1942.91 At that time, communications was 

part of the Special Operations Branch, and the initial purpose of Area C, then called the 

SO-SI Communications School primarily to train agent-operators for the Special 

Operations and Secret Intelligence Branches. They were taught a smattering of 

International Morse code, secret cipher and radio techniques and equipment operation 

and repair.92 It was initially a very small facility, part of one of the two National Park 

Service summer cabin camps there. 

To create a secure, rapid, global communications system connecting agents in the 

field with regional bases and ultimately with the OSS message center in Washington, 

Donovan established a new and separate Communications Branch (CB) of OSS on 22 

September 1942. It replaced the separate communications systems that SO and SI had 

been creating, at least at the higher, central level.93 The Communications Branch was 

 

90 “Chief Instructors by Training Area,” a list, 1942-1945, included in Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, 

“Schools and Training,” report, October 1943, p. 15, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 

1723; on Area D, see also Gregory Gluba, NWDT2, National Archives to Christina J. Snyder, Prince 

William Forest Park Visitor Center, 16 October 1997, located in the PWFP Library. He indicated that his 

information was from the OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 174, both in National Archives II. 

91 Lawrence L. Hollander, “A Brief History of Area C,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet 

Papers, 2nd ed., 11. Hollander, like James Ranney, was a veteran of the COI/OSS Communications Branch 

and a member of the CommVet alumni association. Hollander indicated that Area C was established in 

mid-1942; the biography of R. Dean Cortright, p. 190, declared it had been set up by COI. COI was 

succeeded by OSS in mid-June 1942. 

92 The Training Directorate to All Geographic Desks and Administrative Officers, SI-SO, n.d., [winter 

1942-43?], subject: Training Procedures, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Misc. Washington Files, 

Security Office Files, Box 223, Folder 3106, Schools and Training, National Archives. 

93 OSS, War Report of the OSS, 136. For the background to this decision, see Col. William J. Donovan to 

Colonel Buxton, Colonel Goodfellow, and Major Bruce, 3 July 1942, subject: a study of the question of 

communications. OSS Records (RG 226), Records of the Director’s Office, Microfilm M-1642, Roll 42, 

Frame 1122. For recommendation that for security purposes, SI eschew joint communication operations at

least at the agent to supervisor level, but cooperate with a central communications branch at higher levels, 

see Robert Cresswell to Major Bruce, 20 July 1942, subject: communications problem: survey and 

recommendation, a six-page report attached to David Bruce to William J. Donovan, 20 July 1942, ibid., 

Frames 1125-1131. Under the prodding of Donovan and C.W. Horn, his technical adviser for 

communications, Bruce at SI and Goodfellow at SO agreed, apparently in late July 1942 to the creation of a 

central communications officer; Lawrence Lowman was chosen to head the new branch when it was 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 165

headed by Lawrence (“Larry”) Wise Lowman, longtime vice President in charge of 

operations at the Columbia Broadcasting System in New York, who had been recruited 

despite the opposition of CBS chief William S. Paley. Lowman soon became one of the 

few full colonels in the OSS.94 

The Communications Branch combined all previous OSS signal and traffic 

facilities, was charged with developing a global communications network, and most 

relevant to this study, in October 1942, it was given responsibility for all communications 

training in OSS. The CB or “Commo” Branch, as it was informally called, had 

responsibility for recruiting and training staff and field personnel, both civilian and 

military, and providing instructors for communications courses in all the OSS training 

camps, not just its own communications school at Area C but at the other camps as 

well.95 Despite an attempt in November 1942 by the newly centralized Training 

Directorate of Kenneth Baker, Lawrence Lowman, and British SOE advisor Bill Brooker 

to move the communications school from Area C to a country house near Area F, the 

former Congressional Country Club, the main CB training center remained at Area C for 

the duration of the war.96 Although all training at Area C, including the selection of the 

trainees and the instructors and the course of instruction, was the responsibility of the 

Communications Branch, the camp itself and the cadre who ran it remained for 

administrative purposes in the Special Operations Branch. Schools and Training Branch 

never obtained much authority in regard to Area C, which remained primarily the 

responsibility of the Communications Branch. More than 1,500 communications 

personnel were trained at Area C between 1942 and 1945 in highly technical courses that 

ran from nine to thirteen weeks and included telegraphy, short-wave radio, codes and 

ciphers, OSS equipment operation and maintenance, weaponry, and demolition work, as 

well as physical and mental conditioning, field craft, and close combat skills.97

Around November 1942, when Lowman was considering moving the 

Communications School closer to Washington, he sent one of his staff to spend a week at 

Area C and report on conditions there. R. Dean Cortright, a civilian engineer for the Navy 

and like many of the “Commo” people an amateur, short-wave radio operator, a “HAM,” 

as they were called, had joined OSS in October 1942, becoming perhaps the third person 

 

created in September. C.W. Horn to Colonel Donovan, 23 July 1942, subject: Communication System for 

the OSS, ibid., Frame 1132, all in National Archives II. 

94 On Lowman’s recruitment, see exchange of letters, 18 May to 22 June, 1942 between Lowman and Lt. 

Cmdr. William H. Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the railroad tycoon and himself a former governor of 

Rhode Island who was one of Donovan’s main advisers and who handled Lowman’s recruitment. OSS 

Records (RG 226), Entry 92A, Box 45, Folder 736, National Archives II. 

95 OSS, War Report of the OSS, 136. 

96 From B.M. Brooker, Kenneth H. Baker, and L.W. Lowman to Maj. David Bruce, Lt. Col. E.C. 

Huntington, memorandum, 16 November 1942, subject: proposed change for communications school, OSS 

Records (RG 226), Records of the Director’s Office, Microfilm M-1642, Roll 42, Frames 1175-1176, 

National Archives II 

97 Arthur Reinhardt, “Deciphering the Commo Branch,” OSS Society Newsletter, Fall 2006), 6.
166 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

to be assigned to the new Communications Branch.98 Years later, he recalled his visit to 

the Communications School at Area C. “Upon arrival, I found that there was a building 

housing the code room. There were a few `agent operators’ in training; from Thailand, I 

recall.[99] There was a housekeeping group [cadre] in place, with supply arrangements 

capable of handling a few operators. There was no commo [communications] equipment 

for practicing, other than a couple of British agent units. I can’t remember the officer in 

charge at the time, but later on it was Maj. Albert Jenkins.”100

After the decision was made in November 1942 to retain Area C as the main 

school for the new Communications Branch, Cortright was sent back there with orders to 

redesign the technical program and establish the kind of training necessary to produce the 

large numbers of communications personnel that would be needed for OSS’s global 

operations. Winter was imminent, and the first priority was to get the NPS summer camp 

cabins and dining halls winterized. They were soon provided with insulation and castiron stoves that could burn local coal or wood. As in Area A, the mess hall was equipped 

with improved kitchen facilities. Major Jenkins arrived in December and quickly set up 

areas for physical training, an obstacle course, and pistol, rifle, hand grenade ranges. 

Jenkins and Cortright obtained vehicles, set up a motor pool, and also made arrangements 

to purchase food supplies from the nearby Marine Corps base at Quantico. Area C was 

soon in full operation and would continue so until the end of the war.101 

Major Albert H. Jenkins remained commanding officer of Detachment C from 

December 1942 until February 1945. A reserve Marine captain who served in World War 

I, Jenkins and had been recalled to active duty in World War II, he had been recruited by 

the OSS, in June 1942 to be an instructor on small arms, mapping and field craft at the 

Secret Intelligence school at RTU-11 (“The Farm”). In July, he was promoted to major 

and made executive officer of that training facility.

102 Five months later, when the new 

Communications Branch began its school at Chopawamsic RDA, Jenkins began the 

commanding officer there. He was “quick and snappy, not a man for small talk,” recalled 

Army Lieutenant Allen R. Richter, a Commo veteran from Detachment 101 in the ChinaBurma-India Theater. “If you met him on the street, you would know he was a Marine, 

 

98 “Richard Dean Cortright, W9IRY/5,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 

190. 

99 These were Thai students in the United States who, through the Thai Embassy, had offered their services 

to Donovan’s organization. The first group of 21Thais, from what was then called Siam, were trained at B2, A-2, and other areas, including Area C, before being sent to the China-Burma-India Theater in the 

spring of 1943. They were led there by SO officer and former Far Eastern travel writer, Lt. Nicol Smith, see 

Nicol Smith and Blake Clark, Into Siam: Underground Mission (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946), 

1-28, 44-45, 49. 

100 R. Dean Cortright, “Early Days of Area C,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers,

2

nd, 9. 

101 Ibid. 

102 History of the Schools and Training Branch: Office of Strategic Services, ed. William L. Cassidy (San 

Francisco: Kingfisher Press, 1983), 47-49. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 167

the way he looked, walked, and talked.” Jenkins was approximately 6’1” tall, slender, and 

although slightly balding, he was fit at about 150 pounds.103 

Like most of the other officers, Lieutenant James Ranney, a radio instructor at 

Area C from August 1943 to January 1944, remembered Jenkins fondly. “Major Jenkins 

was in charge. He was a very fine gentleman. Everybody liked him.... He was a Marine 

reservist. I don’t think he had anything to do with radio or communications. He was a 

nice guy, easy-going,” One incident showed how imperturbable Jenkins was. “I 

remember while we were there,” Ranney said. “they issued us our side arms, our .45s, 

and we were all looking at them....and wiping them off and checking the trigger pull. 

And the Officer of the Day wandered in, and he was carrying a side arm. He pulled his 

side arm out without remembering it was loaded, and he said: “This has a very good 

trigger pull.” And BANG, he shot a big hole in the floor. Major Jenkins came rushing in. 

He said: “Anybody hurt?” They said, “No, just the floor.” He said, “O.K., carry on.” And 

that was that.”104

 While members of the cadre were familiar with the commanding officer, the 

trainees had little to do with him. They saw mainly the instructional staff: commissioned 

officers and NCOs. Private Marvin S. Flisser from the Bronx spent three months in the 

winter of 1943-1944 at Area C as an OSS Commo trainee, and was struck by how 

informal things in the OSS. “We hardly ever saw him [Major Jenkins],” Flisser recalled. 

“It was as if there was nobody there. There was no saluting or anything along that line. It 

was very informal. There was a basketball court, and we were all playing basketball, 

officers and men, all together, first name [code name] basis. Once in a while, Major 

Jenkins would come out to play basketball....When he came out to play, he wanted to 

win. So we always let him win.”105 Timothy Marsh, a civilian instructor in Morse code

there from December 1943 to December 1944, remembered Jenkins as the senior officer 

and camp commander but had little interaction with him. Like other members of the 

instructional staff, Marsh dealt mainly the chief instructor, then Army Air Corps Captain 

Paul M. McCallen, who had his own office across from the mess hall and who, Marsh 

said, “more or less ran the Communications School.”106 

To many of the Commo men who came from cities or suburbs or directly from a 

standard Army base, Area C at Prince William Forest Park was a blissful, wilderness 

setting. Lawrence L. (“Laurie”) Hollander, was a Chicago lawyer and amateur “HAM” 

operator, when he was recruited by OSS, commissioned a captain and sent to Area C in 

 

103 Allen R. Richter, telephone interview with the author, 25 March 2005. 

104 James F. Ranney, telephone interview with the author, 8 January 2005. 

105 Marvin S. Flisser, telephone interview with the author, 27 January 2005. Similarly, John W. Brunner,

who admittedly was there only for one week in October 1944, said he only saw two officers and those very 

briefly, and he never saw Major Jenkins. Like Flisser, Brunner emphasized the informality of the OSS. 

“Everything that I experienced was very informal. No military routine. No marching or parading. We 

simply got up when we were told. An enlisted man would come down to our hut to wake us up, and we 

went to the mess hall. Then we went out to our assignment for the day. There was no marching there. We

just walked.” John W. Brunner, telephone interview with the author, 21 March 2005. 

106 Timothy Marsh, telephone interview with the author, 18 January 2006. 
168 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

early 1943 to organize instruction in International Morse Code.107 Years later, he recalled 

the natural beauty at the camp in the Virginia woods. “The complete area was about three 

quarters of a mile square. It is, and was, a beautiful area with its many shade-tolerant oak, 

hickory and pine trees. It also had its share of snakes and small animals. Located about 35 

miles from Washington, with its entrance off Highway No. 1 on a dirt side road, it 

became a top secret installation, its location and purpose known only to those with a need 

to know.”108

OSS Training Area C was composed of two cabin camps some 400 yards apart in 

the northeast section of park between Quantico Creek and the Dumfries-Manassas Road 

(Route 234). The main gate was off the Dumfries Road, and no one was allowed to enter 

without proper authorization. When taxicabs from Triangle, the nearest bus stop on Route 

1, when they brought trainees or staff back to the camp, they were not allowed to go past 

the main gave, and most of them did not even want to drive into the park up to the armed 

guards at the gate of the secret camp.109 Roger Belanger, a trainee from Portland, Maine, 

who returned from England after D-Day as an experienced instructor, recalled that ‘if we 

took a cab, the driver would let us out at the little white church on the Manassas Road. 

The cab drivers were reluctant to take us any closer.”110 

As at Area A, the OSS made alternations in many of the NPS summer camp 

buildings for year round operation and military training purposes. The layout of the 

camps at Area C was similar to those in the western park of the park, clusters of huts in 

sub-groups and the whole camp organized around a lodge, a dining hall, an office and 

other buildings. Most of the accommodations were quickly provided with insulation, 

heating stoves, and hot water facilities. Most dramatically, in 1943, the OSS upgraded the 

kitchens, adding a 500-gallon hot water tank and heater, gas ranges, a heavy-duty, 

electric baking oven, gas-heated, hotel-type steam tables, as well as electric coffee 

grinders, gas-heated coffee urns, plus ice boxes, refrigeration units, and an electric meat 

slicer, electric food mixer, and an electric-powered dishwashing machine.111 Following 

the termination of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1942, most of the work was done, 

as in Area A, by Kent and Company of Richmond, Virginia.112 But the existing cabins 

 

107 “Lawrence L. Hollander, N4JYV,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 

196. 

108 Lawrence L. Hollander, “A Brief History of Area C,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet 

Papers, 2nd ed., 11. 

109 Arthur F. (“Art”) Reinhardt, during a tour of former OSS Training Area C-4 arranged by the author, 13

December 2004. 

110 Roger L. Belanger, letter to the author, 28 December 2004. 

111 Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit (SSU), for the 

Director, to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, subject:

Chopwamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Estimates #1, #2 and #3, in OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. 

112 Lt. Col. Ainsworth Blogg, executive officer, OSS headquarters, to Charles S. Cheston, through A. 

William Asmuth, Jr., legal division, 6 May 1944, subject: floor covering for kitchen at Detachment “C,” 

OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, National Archives II. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 169

did not prove adequate for the rapidly expanding numbers of radio operators being 

trained, and it became necessary to set up several dozen tent-roofed wooden huts to 

handle the overflow, particularly among the trainees. That gave Area C a housing 

capacity of 26 officers, 84 enlisted men in the cadre and instructional staff, plus 247 

trainees, with 125 of the trainees living in temporary tent-roofed cabins, for a total 

occupancy of 357.113 In the summer of 1944, the OSS also approved the construction of a 

swimming pool at Area C, if it were required for water-borne instruction and practice for 

Asian Special Operations agents, Communications Branch radio operators, and 

Operational Group members scheduled for training in Area C in 1945 as part of OSS’s 

expanding mission in the Far East.114 

“Commo” Camp Headquarters: Area C-1 

 

Before the war, National Park Service Cabin Camp 1 (Goodwill) had been a boys’ 

camp used by African-American youths from what was then called the Negro YMCA in 

Washington. It had four clusters of huts, labeled A, B, C, and D, plus the central dining 

and administrative area. During the war, the OSS designated it Area C-1, and it served 

primarily as the headquarters, accommodations, and maintenance facilities for Major 

Jenkins and the cadre of officers and enlisted men who operated Training Area C. When 

necessary, however, C-1, which was separated from the main training camp at Area C-4 

by nearly a mile, was also used for a variety of training purposes. These included brief 

communications training for agents in operational branches such as SO, SI, or MO, or 

basic Army training for OSS personnel going overseas who had not yet fulfilled that 

requirement. At other times, it was used as a holding area for men awaiting further 

assignment, including graduates awaiting shipment overseas or veterans returning from 

abroad. In 1945, C-1 served as an area for training Koreans and perhaps other Asians as 

well for OSS operations in the final offensives planned for 1946 against the Japanese 

Army in China, Korea, and Japan itself. 

In addition to winterization and other alterations in existing buildings at the cabin 

camp, the OSS erected several new wooden structures at C-1. A radio repair shop was the 

largest, a portable, plywood building measured 16 by 16 feet and may have served as a 

classroom. Smaller new structures included a radio transmitter building and two guard 

houses, one at the main gate and one at the northern end of Area C-1.115 As completed for 

 

113 Capacity listed on building layout map, “Area C,” undated [October 1943, when similar map of Area B 

was prepared], OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 

114 Charles S. Cheston, acting assistant director OSS to chief, schools and training branch, 25 May 1944,

subject: repairs and improvements at Areas A and C; Cheston to chief, schools and training branch, 5 June 

1944, subject: swimming facilities at Area C; and Cheston to Col. H.L. Robinson, chief, schools and 

training branch, 19 June 1944, subject: construction at Area A and E, all in OSS Records (RG 226) Entry 

137, Box 3, Folder 24, National Archives II. 

115 Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit (SSU), for the Director, 

to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, subject: 
170 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

use by OSS’s Communications Branch, Area C-1 included an administration building, 

two buildings serving as quarters for 16 officers, a drivers’ quarters holding six enlisted 

men, a garage, a work shop, five washroom/latrines, a mess hall, a lodge, and a series of 

huts as well as two, 12-man barracks for enlisted men on the staff. In addition, there was 

a radio transmitter station in a building in the D cluster of cabins There was also another 

transmitter station, perhaps the main radio transmitter, in what was identified as an old 

CCC camp (probably the abandoned CCC work camp SP-22) across the road and a little 

more than 100 yards east of administration building at the entrance to Area C-1.116 Both 

the transmitters and the receiver stations were powered by electrical generators and were 

equipped with sizable antennas, long poles with radio antenna aerials on them.117

Communications School: Area C-4 

Nearly a mile south of C-1, the main Communications School of the OSS was 

located at Area C-4. In the years before the war, it had been NPS Cabin Camp 4, known 

as Camp Pleasant, and it provided a healthy respite of wholesome outdoor summer 

recreation for African-American girls and young women from Washington, D.C. Now it 

was the primary training facility of the OSS Communications Branch. Beginning in the 

winter of 1942-1943, it was transformed into an intensive training center where young 

men in Army fatigues spent two to three months learning to be clandestine radio 

operators behind enemy lines or more often operators and other technical personnel at 

OSS regional base stations in war zones and theater headquarters around the world. They 

learned and practiced repair and maintenance of the OSS’s specialized radio and wireless 

telegraphy equipment as well as how to code and decode and send and receive 

telegraphed messages rapidly and accurately. 

Area C-4 was larger than C-1. The NPS Cabin Camp had five sub-clusters of huts, 

A, B, C, D, and E, each with a lodge, plus there was a central dining hall and 

administrative area for the entire camp. Winterization of the entire facility was 

accomplished during the winter of 1942-1943, and the kitchens at the mess hall were 

modernized, as at the other cabin camps. Many of the NPS buildings continued to be used 

in the same manner, but some, such the nursery, today Building 78, was the OSS code 

room, where students learned and practiced becoming faster and more accurate in Morse 

code.118 Perhaps because of the demand for communications personnel and the 

 

Chopwamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Estimates #1, #2 and #3, in OSS Records (RG 

226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. 

116 Map of “Area C,” OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 

117 Arthur F. (“Art”) Reinhardt, OSS Communication Branch veteran, who trained at C-4 from April to 

early July 1944 before being sent to China, interviewed during a tour of Area C with the author and Judy 

Volonoski, museum technician at Prince William Forest Park, on 13 December 2004. The author recorded 

and transcribed Mr. Reinhardt’s commentary and the identification by Ms. Volonoski of the numbers of the 

buildings and their current usage at Prince William Forest Park. 

118 Arthur F. Reinhardt, during a tour of former Area C, Prince William Forest Park, 13 December 2001. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 171

comparatively long time it took to train them in their highly technical skills, new 

construction at C-4 was much more extensive than at C-1, or Areas A or B. In the 

summer of 1943, Donovan personally approved the construction of a new multi-purpose 

building, which at $24,000 was the most expensive structure built by the OSS at any of 

East Coast training camps.119 The cavernous building, today the Theater/Recreation Hall, 

Building 250 at Prince William Forest Park, was used by OSS as a theater to show 

training and entertainment films, for indoor assemblies by the entire camp such as when 

General Donovan came to speak, and for basketball and other spots during the winter 

months.120 Other new structures built at C-4 included a Bachelor Officers Quarters, a 

100-man latrine/washroom, three portable plywood buildings, probably used as 

classrooms, an addition to the mess hall, a guard house, and a metal Quonset Hut.121 

By mid-1943, the Communications School had grown to 250 trainees, which 

meant that more housing had to be provided.122 To handle the overflow, OSS created a 

“tent camp” at C-4. There were more than two dozen “tents” or more accurately, “cabintents,” since each of them combined a canvas peaked roof with a plywood floor and four 

wooden sides, one with an entrance, the other three with screened openings and hinged 

plywood flaps. They measured 16 by 16 feet, and most held four trainees. Although 

primarily for summer use, cabin-tents were eventually fitted with cast-iron heating stoves 

that provided warmth in winter. The tent camp, which held up to 125 trainees, was 

erected at a cost of $5,500.123 Various groups of these cabin-tents, often in sets of six or 

more were located between NPS cabin sub-clusters A and C in Area C-4, but the cabintents were only occupied when the regular cabins in the camp were filled.124

 

Each of the sub-camps, A, B, C, D, and E in C-4 had a wood cabins sleeping four 

and some of the sub-camps had wooden barracks for ten men each. The barracks were 

divided into three rooms with wooden bunks, an Army field telephone in a leather case 

hung from the wall beside the door. If it rang, you cranked it up to hear; it was for 

 

119 Capt. Duncan C. Lee to Brig. Gen. William J. Donovan, 11 and 15 June 1943, subject: new building for

Area C; Lee to Commanding Officer Hq. and Hq. Detachment, 16 June 1944, subject: erection of multipurpose building at Area C, 16 June 1944, all in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 137, Box 3, Folder 24, 

National Archives II. 

120 Arthur F. Reinhardt, during a tour of former Area C, Prince William Forest Park, 13 December 2001. 

121 Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], for 

the Director, to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, 

subject: Chopwamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Estimates #1, #2 and #3, in OSS Records

(RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. A Quonset hut was a pre-fabricated metal 

structure in which a semi-circular, corrugated steel roof curved down to form the main walls. Portable and 

quickly installed, it was widely used by the Army and Navy in World War II. 

122 OSS, War Report of the O.S.S., 137. 

123 Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], for 

the Director, to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, 

subject: Chopawamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Estimates #1, #2 and #3, in OSS 

Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. 

124 Map of “Area C,” OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 
172 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

communication only within the base. The washroom/latrines were outdoors and trainees 

remembered that it was cold going there on winter nights. Most of the sub-camps also 

had a classroom building.125 Often the lodges were converted into a post-exchange and a 

“Day Room” for relaxation and recreation. In sub-camp C, the “Day Room,” was in what 

is today Building 12, the lodge. There was a ping-pong table and a big table where six or 

eight men played cards. Poker was the main game and the men played openly for money, 

while others watched. Other men read or listened to the radio.126

 

For training in weapons and hand grenades for its communications personnel, 

OSS built target ranges about 200 yards east of sub-camp C of Area C-4. A pistol range 

with six silhouette stationery targets, was constructed first, then relocated when it proved 

to be in the way of the rifle range with eight targets.127 Both were pointed away from the 

camp, with shooters firing at targets mounted in front of an earthen embankment across 

Quantico Creek. A “utility range,” apparently the site of the grenade range and perhaps 

demolitions as well, was over a ridge and in a valley formed by Quantico Creek about 

another 200 yards southeast of the rifle range.128 Communications veterans Arthur 

Reinhardt from near Buffalo, New York, who spent ten weeks training at C-4 from April 

to early July 1944, before being sent to China, identified the old pistol range on a return 

visit to the area sixty years later. “We were encouraged to come down here and shoot our 

[Colt] .45s,” he said. “I used to come down virtually every day and shoot.”129 

Harry M. Neben, an amateur radio operator (“HAM”) from Illinois, had been 

recruited to help with install radio equipment at Area C. He arrived in December 1942 

and helped clear trees and brush for the firing ranges and an obstacle course as well as 

assisting in electronic installation for radio training. In addition to the obstacle course, he 

also remembered that trainees at Area C-4 “practiced on a landing net on a small lake 

near [Sub-]Area B.”130 This would be a lake on the north fork of Quantico Creek a 

quarter of a mile from C-4 and presumably involved some of the same kind of aquatic 

activities that trainees at Area A remembered undergoing at a similar lake across the park 

near OSS Area A-5. 

Unlike the Special Operations paramilitary field exercises with firearms, mortars, 

bazookas and explosives in Area A, the OSS Communications Branch focused on radio 

 

125 Ibid., plus Marvin S. Flisser, telephone interview with the author 27 January 2005. 

126 Marvin S. Flisser, telephone interview with the author, 27 January 2005; Arthur F. Reinhardt, during a 

tour of Prince William Forest Park, 13 December 2004. 

127 Col. W.L. Rehm, Acting Assistant Director for Services, Strategic Services Unit [formerly OSS], for 

the Director, to Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Mobilization Division, 19 October 1945, 

subject: Chopwamsic National Recreational Demonstration Area, Estimates #1, #2 and #3, in OSS Records

(RG 226), Entry 146, Box 8, Folder 199, National Archives II. 

128 Map of “Area C,” OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II. 

129 Arthur F. Reinhardt, on a tour of former Area C, Prince William Forest Park, arranged by the author, 13 

December 2004. Shooters probably had to pickup the spent brass cartridges and turn them in to get a new 

box of shells, because, as Mr. Reinhardt remembers, the camp was kept pristine. 

130 “Harry N. Neben, W9QB,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 202. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 173

training with merely some marksmanship training at firing ranges. Consequently, none of 

the deserted houses or other structures was deliberately demolished in Area C. However, 

one NPS cabin was inadvertently destroyed. The cause was a fire in a cast-iron heating 

stove with a loose ash dump door. When the trainees returned from an afternoon of field 

radio training away from the camp on a winter day, the cabin had caught fire and burned 

to the ground.131 In a separate incident involving fire, one part of the former NPS 

building used by OSS for the motor pool burned down. In both cases, OSS rebuilt the 

structure.132 These were apparently, the only NPS buildings destroyed by the OSS during 

the occupancy of Prince William Forest Park. 

 For any kind of maintenance work at the camp, the OSS cadre turned to John T. 

Gum, the National Park Service employee who previously had been the NPS liaison with 

the Civilian Conservation Corps that had worked in Prince William Forest Park. During 

the war, Gum had been drafted into the Army, and was recruited by the OSS. He held the 

rank of Army technical sergeant, and a roster listed him as post engineer and the sergeant 

in charge of utilities at both Area A and Area C.133 The friendly, six-foot-tall Gum visited 

the camp every day, always accompanied by his big black dog. Corporal Joseph Tully, a 

member of the cadre at Area C from November 1944 through October 1945, remembered 

Gum well. “He was in charge, the enlisted man who ran the entire camp. There were guys 

who rated higher than him. But if you wanted any kind of maintenance, he was the one 

you went to.”134 

Area M in Illinois and W-A in California: Adjuncts to Area C 

 So large were the numbers of communications trainees in the winter of 1943-

1944—the Communications Branch estimated that 430 Commo personnel would be 

trained by December 1943, exclusive of SO, SI and other agents being trained in 

communications135—that even with the cabin-tents Area C could not handle them all. 

Consequently, OSS acquired an adjunct Communications Training Area near Napierville, 

 

131 “Notes from the 1996 OSS CommVets Reunion,” in “OSS,” white binder, Park Archives, Prince 

William Forest Park, Triangle, Va. 

132 R. Dean Cortright, “Early Days of Area C,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd

ed., 10. 

 

133 Listing in Headquarters Detachment A, “Standard Operating Procedures,” 13 April 1944, p. 5; and ibid., 

“Pass and Furlough Policy,” 24 April 1944, p. 2, which lists Gum as a “S/Sgt,” a Staff Sergeant, which is 

higher than Technical Sergeant; both documents in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 153, Folder 

1658, National Archives. Gum lived in Dumfries with his wife, young son and two daughters. Robert A. 

Noile, Triangle, Va., who knew the family well, telephone interviews with the author, 27 April and 16 May 

2007. 

134 Joseph J. Tully, telephone interview with the author, 23 March 2005. 

135 The Communications Branch also supervised the preliminary radio and code training given by SO, SI, 

MO, and MU branches of OSS for their agents at Areas A, B, E, D, F, and RTU-11 and elsewhere. Areas C 

and M were where CB trained its own personnel. 
174 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

Illinois in October 1943.136 It was designated Area M because it was located at Camp 

McDowell, which had previous served as a radar training school for the Army Signal 

Corps. Captain Lawrence L. “(Laurie”) Hollander, a lawyer and amateur radio operator 

from Chicago, headed Area M, which was used, during its brief existence in 1943-1944 

for training recruits from the Midwest and Far West, including a number of Japanese 

Americans who volunteered for hazardous duty as radio operators with Donovan’s 

organization.137 Graduates probably served with the OSS against the Imperial Japanese 

Army in China.138 Instructors at Area M offered a more elementary and simplified course 

than at Area C.139 

 In January 1944, when OSS turned increased attention to preparing increased 

numbers of personnel to be sent to the Far East, a West Coast Training Center, Area 

 W-A, was established on Catalina Island off the California coast not far from Los 

Angeles. There the Communications Branch coordinated Commo instruction with 

training by the SO, SI, and MU Branches. By mid-1944, almost most of the OSS training 

in the United States for SO, SI, and MU had shifted to the West Coast, Area C continued 

to be the main training center for the Communications Branch until the end of the war.140

 

The Marine Corps and Prince William Forest Park 

From the inception of Prince William Forest Park in 1935, much of its southern 

border adjoined the U.S. Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia. The original plan of 

the National Park Service was to acquire much of the land west of U.S. Route 1 that was 

in the drainage areas of Quantico Creek north of Joplin Road (today County Route 619), 

and Chopawamsic Creek to the south of it, that were not already held by the Department 

of the Navy for the Marine Corps.141 But lack of adequate funding prevented the purchase 

 

136 OSS, War Report of the OSS, 137; Lt. Col. Henson L. Robinson, “Schools and Training,” report, 

October 1943, p.4, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 158, Folder 1723, National Archives II. 

137 Biographical sketch of “Lawrence L. Hollander, N4JYV,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS 

CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 196. In addition, the OSS communications base station from Mackinac Island 

was transferred to Area M. 

138 Biographical sketch of “Lawrence L. Hollander, N4JYV,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS 

CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 196, indicates that the Japanese-American radio operators were sent to Italy. But 

it seems unlikely that the OSS would train radio operators for the Nisei Regimental Combat Team in the

regular Army. Since the OSS was indeed training Asians and Asian Americans and deploying them in the 

China-Burma-India Theater, it seems more probable that the Far East was the destination of these Japanese 

Americans working for OSS. 

139 OSS, War Report of the O.S.S., 137. 

140 Ibid, 137, 241. 

141 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 53. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 175

of the Chopawamsic watershed property, and it also limited recreational development 

there. In practice, the park developed cabin camps and other organized recreational 

activity only north of Route 619 in the Quantico Creek watershed. The area south of that 

road, the area of the Chopawamsic Creek watershed, was preserved solely as a wilderness 

area with no organized recreational facilities. In that southern sector, NPS maintained 

only a temporary, one-room, park office and an undeveloped maintenance area just south 

of Joplin Road.142 

Given its proximity to the U.S. Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, Prince 

William Forest Park has had a continuing relationship with the Marine Corps and its 

parent organization, the Department of the Navy. The Marine Base dated back to World 

War I.143 When the Department of the Interior acquired the adjoining lands in the mid1930s, the Marines expressed interest from the beginning in finding ways that were 

“mutually advantageous” for using what they called the “contiguous areas under Federal 

control.” In the park area south of Joplin Road, the Corps wanted to build a dam and 

water reservoir on Chopawamsic Creek to augment the water supply for the base. They 

also wanted to clear areas within the southern section of the park for field exercises in 

which “weapons may be used in field firing and musketry training,” and they sought to 

use the dirt roads and abandoned buildings there for military training purposes.144 In 

1938, the Department of the Interior granted the Department of the Navy the right to 

build the dam and what became known as Breckenridge Reservoir.145 Beginning in 1938, 

the National Park Service began to grant use permits to Marine commanders to conduct 

specific field maneuvers in the southern portion of the park.146 

After the declaration of war in December 1941, Lykes was as diplomatic as 

possible in dealing with the Marines. He complained to his superiors that the Marines’ 

field maneuvers in the southern park of the park had become so frequent that they “have 

assumed the right to enter upon the area without advising or even consulting this 

office.”147 But Lykes continued to maintain a cooperative relationship with the personnel 

of the Marine base, emphasizing to the Marines the park’s recreational value to military 

 

142 Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 54; Robert A. Noile, Triangle, Va., telephone interview with the 

author, 27 April 2007. 

143 On the development of the Marine base at Quantico, see Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History 

of the United States Marine Corps, rev. ed. (New York: Free Press, 1991), 284, 291,323-24. 

144 Lt. Col. K.E. Rockey, USMC, to Charles H. Gerner, NPS, 24 June 1935, pp. 2-3, NPS Records (RG 79), 

Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General 201 National Defense, “C,” Box 81, Folder 201, National 

Archives II. 

145 Acting Secretary of the Interior E.K. Burlew to Secretary of the Navy, 27 May 1941, copy in the Park 

Archives, Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va.

146 Arthur Demaray, National Park Service, to Lt. Col. R. Valliant, 31 August 1938, NPS Records (RG 79), 

Box 121, Folder 110, National Archives II. 

147 Ira Lykes, Monthly Report, May 1942, NPS Records (RG 79), File Number 1460/3, Federal Records 

Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 25, n. 84. These records have 

disappeared. 
176 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

personnel, including fishing in its well stocked streams, ponds and lakes.148 In the hot, 

dry summer of 1942, Lykes voluntarily taught Marines the latest techniques in fighting 

forest fires so they could more effectively control fires when they began in the woodlands 

of their reservation.149 

The following year, the commander of the Marine base, Major General Philip H. 

Torrey, offered, and Lykes accepted, a commission as a first lieutenant and a position at 

the base.150 During his active duty in the Marines, from April 1943 to December 1945, 

Lykes was assigned as a security officer, particularly responsible for the forestry program 

and the prevention and control of fires on some 94,000 wooded acres of the expanded 

wartime Marine Base.151 That included some 5,000 acres of the park land south of Joplin 

Road that the Marines used as an extension of their base. That included, Lykes later 

recalled, what the Marines called the “Guadalcanal Area,” a reference to the Pacific 

island which was the site of the first jungle fighting between the Marines and the 

Japanese. In that area, the Marines erected 13 firing ranges as well as pistol houses, 

mockup villages, and other installations for field exercises using live ammunition and 

other munitions.152 The little village of Joplin, a hamlet with a general store, a 

schoolhouse, and a church, located near the intersection of Joplin and Breckenridge 

Roads, was demolished, only a concrete slab foundation of the old school house 

remaining.153 Lykes reported directly to the commanding general of the Marine base. 

The National Park Service officially put Lykes on furlough due to his military service.154 

But because the base and the park were adjacent, Lykes, as he later recalled, could and 

did “serve two masters.”155 

 

148 Ira Lykes, Monthly Report, 1941, NPS Records (RG 79), File Number 1460/3, Federal Records Center, 

Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 26, n. 87. These records have disappeared. 

149 Ira Lykes, Monthly Report, November 1942, cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 25-26, n. 

86. These records have disappeared. 

150 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison [who had been Lykes’ 

last superior at NPS], pp. 42-43, tape number 261,NPS’s Harper’s Ferry Center, Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. 

151 Lykes said General Torrey’s offer was made in January. Lykes’ NPS personnel file indicates that he was 

assigned to active duty with the USMC on 8 April 1943; he was relieved from active duty with the Marines 

on 3 December 1945, put on leave and was honorably discharged on 21 January 1946. Documents in the Ira

B. Lykes, Personnel File, National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records 

Center, St. Louis, Mo., obtained by the author, 26 April 2007. 

152 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview with S. Herbert Evison, 23 November 1973, pages 42-43, transcript 

in NPS’s Harpers Ferry Center Library, Harpers Ferry, W.Va. 

153 Robert A. Noile, Triangle, Va., telephone interview with the author, 27 April 2008. 

154 Frank Gartside, Assistant Superintendent, National Capital Parks, National Park Service, to Ira B. 

Lykes, 13 September 1943, subject: Furlough (military duty), copy in Ira B. Lykes, Personnel File, 

obtained by the author 26 April 2007 from the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Mo. 

155 Ira B. Lykes to Susan Cary Strickland, 8 September 1985, quoted in Strickland, Prince William Forest 

Park, 26. 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 177

Lykes remained at his new duties with the Marines on weekdays during the war, 

but on weekends, he continued his role as manager of the park. Lykes remained in the 

park manager’s house just south of Joplin Road for the duration of the war, and he 

maintained social and professional relations with the commanding officers of the OSS 

training camps, such as Captain Walter Hixson and his successors at Area A and Major 

Albert Jenkins at Area C. Lykes kept an eye on the park property being occupied the the 

OSS north of Joplin Road and being used by the Marine Corps south of there. Weekdays, 

the only administrative employee of the park on duty was Lykes’s secretary, Thelma 

Williams. She worked in a one-room temporary headquarters for the park off Joplin 

Road. Sharing the small office with her was a clerical employee of the OSS, a secretive 

man, who Lykes reported was given to drink. Late in the day on Fridays, when the Lykes 

came by the park office, Thelma Williams would fill him in on developments in the park 

during the past week.156

Complicated Relationships: USMC, OSS, and NPS 

The Relationship among the U.S. Marine Corps, the OSS and the National Park 

Service at Prince William Forest Park during the war was often intricately interrelated 

and sometimes complex. The Marine base provided many services for the OSS. Area C, 

and probably Area A as well, purchased much of its fresh food supplies from the Marine 

commissary at Quantico.157 The Maritime Unit at Area D sent a boat every Sunday to get 

a variety of supplies.158 Representatives at Areas A and C drove over for similar 

purposes. The airfield at the Marine base was utilized by Donovan’s organization. The 

OSS Parachute School used it for two-engine planes for parachute jumps at Area A in 

Prince William Forest Park and Area D across the river. Practice runs by the singleengine light planes that the OSS also employed for inserting or removing agents and 

carrying messages also flew in and out of the Marine airstrip when necessary.159 The 

relationship between the National Park Service and the Marine Corps could be especially 

complicated. 

Park Manager Ira Lykes sought the Corps’ aid in obtaining 1,900 acres west of 

the park that would secure the Quantico Creek watershed and help round out the borders 

of the park. In 1941, Lykes reported that Major General J. McCarthy Little, the base 

 

156 Susan Cary Strickland interview with Thelma Williams Hebda, 15 July 1985 (Williams had married 

another park employee, Joseph Hebda); also Ira B. Lykes to Frank Gartside, 31 May 1943, both cited in 

Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 26-27. 

157 “We made arrangements with the Marines at Quantico to go shopping from their food supplies.” R. 

Dean Cortright, “Early Days of Area C,” in Ranney and Ranney, eds., The OSS CommVet Papers, 2nd ed., 

9. 

158 John Pitt Spence, telephone interview with the author, 28 January 2005. 

159 Frank A. Gleason and Charles M. Parkin , interview at Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Md., on a 

tour of the park with the author, 18 May 2005, and Gleason, telephone interview with the author, 3 April 

2008. 
178 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 

commander, had suggested that the Navy might be able to purchase those that acreage 

with the idea of transferring them to the Park Service in exchange for a comparable 

amount of land on the Chopawamsic watershed in the southern part of the park that could 

be transferred to the Marine Reservation. The Secretary of the Interior followed up with a 

request to Secretary of the Navy proposing that the two agencies draft legislation for such 

a transfer.160 On its own, the Navy announced in October 1942 that it was going to 

expand the 6,800-acre Marine Base at Quantico by adding 50,000 acres west of the 

base.161 The Marines included the southern part of the park as well as private holdings in 

that plan.162 In conversations with Major General Philip Torrey, the new commanding 

officer at the base, Lykes expressed concern about the impact of the Marines’ acquisition 

on the western part of Quantico Creek upon the quality of water flowing into the cabin 

camps in the northern part of the park and that the park lands “not be used for maneuver 

purposes when the Marines Acquisition Program is completed.”163 Lykes later said that 

he had a very friendly relationship with General Torrey, who had proven helpful and 

cooperative. When the OSS occupied the park north of Joplin Road, Lykes and his family 

moved from the park manager’s residence (today the park headquarters) into a park 

building on the south side of Joplin Road. Lykes used part of this residence as an office. 

Although the building was in the southern sector used by the Marines during the war, 

General Torrey not only allowed Lykes to live there but the Marine base winterized th 

dwelling, furnished the heating oil, and paid the electric bill. General Torrey may have 

had other ideas for its eventual use. One day while touring the area, Torrey walked into 

the building and looked around. “The first thing he said was, what a damn good officers’ 

club this would make,” Lykes recalled. “I didn’t know how to respond to that so I didn’t 

respond.” The park manager’s coolness put the damper on the general’s enthusiasm. 

“They never did turn it into an officers’ club,” Lykes said.164

With the Marines already using the southern part of the park due to wartime needs 

and in anticipation of an exchange of land and permanent agreement, the Secretary of the 

Interior issued a temporary permit in June 1943 for the Department of the Navy (the 

Marine Corps) to use the 4,862 acres of park land on Chopawamsic Creek south of Joplin 

Road for the duration of the war and six months afterward.165 So while the OSS Special 

 

160 Acting Secretary of the Interior E.K. Burlew to Secretary of the Navy, 27 May 1941, copy in the Park 

Archives of Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Va. 

161 “Marines to Add 50,000 Acres to Quantico Reservation,” Washington Evening Star, 6 October 1942, 

clipping with Conrad L. Wirth, NPS, to Ira B. Lykes, 7 October 1942, in NPS Records (RG 79), Central 

Classified File, 1933-1949, General 201 National Defense, “C,” Box 81, Folder 201 National Archives II. 

162 Ira B. Lykes to Conrad L. Wirth, 9 October 1942, with map attached, NPS Records (RG 79), Central 

Classified File, 1933-1949, General 201 National Defense, “C,” Box 81, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

163 Ira B. Lykes to Superintendent National Capital Parks [Irving Root], 4 February 1943, Memorandum, , 

National Park Service Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, General 201 National Defense, 

“C,” Box 81, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

164 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison, p. 44, tape number 261,

NPS’s Harper’s Ferry Center, Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. 

165 Newton B. Drury, Director NPS, to Mr. Demaray, 28 June 1943, Memorandum; Acting Secretary of the 

Interior Abe Fortas to Acting Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, 21 June 1943; Forrestal to Secretary 
 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps 179

Operations and Communications Branches were doing their training in the northern part 

of the park, the Marines conducted their field exercises in the southern part.166 

What Lykes believed to have been a consensus on transferring Navy purchased 

lands on the western border of the park to the National Park Service in exchange for park 

lands south of Joplin Road to be transferred to the Marine Reservation broke down 

between 1943 and 1946. The joint Navy-Interior committees formed to draft legislation 

for the permanent transfer could not reach agreement. In Lykes’ opinion, he had a verbal 

commitment from Marine leaders at the base for the Navy to purchase 1,900 acres on the 

west in exchange for nearly 5,000 acres of the park in the south. It was with such an 

understanding, Lykes said, that the Marines had been allowed to use the land south of 

Joplin Road for major field maneuvers, including changes in the landscape for their 

training purposes that in the park manager’s words had left the area “no longer...in any 

way suitable for recreational development.”167 By 1944 with Allied victory only a matter 

of time, NPS was concerned cutbacks in defense spending would eliminate the funds 

necessary for the Navy Department’s purchase of the land and the transfer. Attempts to 

get a transfer agreement were blocked by the Navy which wanted to wait for a 

determination of the peacetime size of the Marine Corps which had been increased from 

19,000 Marines in 1939 to 475,000 during the war.168 The matter of the transfer of lands 

and the status of the Marine usage of the southern part of Prince William Forest Park 

remained unresolved when the war ended in September 1945. Although the 1943 

temporary use permit for the Marines was technically terminated in 1946, the entire 

southern tract of nearly 5,000 acres appeared to have become a fixture of the Marine 

Corps base. That expansion led to a longstanding controversy about control over the 

southern area of the park that would continue until its final resolution in 2003.169

 

of the Interior, 12 June 1943, requesting transfer of jurisdiction of 4, 862 acres in the park lying south of 

Road No. 626 and west of road No. 619 to Navy Department “for the period of the present national 

emergency and for a period of six months thereafter,” all in NPS Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 

1933-1949, General 201 National Defense, “C,” Box 81, Folder 201, National Archives II. 

166 Ira B. Lykes, oral history interview, 23 November 1973, by S. Herbert Evison, p. 43, tape number 261,

NPS’s Harper’s Ferry Center, Harper’s Ferry, W.Va.

167 Ira B. Lykes to Superintendent, 12 April 1946, NPS Records (RG 79), File Number 1460/4, Federal 

Records Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, Prince William Forest Park, 57, n. 164. These records 

have disappeared. 

168 Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to Acting Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, 5 August 1944, 

and Forrestal to Ickes, 18 September 1944; on other hand some Marine officers thought that the Quantico 

base might be expanded to a takeover of the entire Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area after 

the war, Lt. Col. M. B. Twining, USMC, executive officer, to Post Quartermaster, 4 December 1944; all in 

NPS Records (RG 79), File Number 1460/4, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md., cited in Strickland, 

Prince William Forest Park, 58, n. 165-167. These records have disappeared. 

169 The negotiations and final resolution in 2003 are described in Chapter 10 of the present work. 
180 Chapter 5 Prince William into Military Camps