Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  We knew that, as in all armies, there was a fairly constant ratio of enlisted men to officers killed. By underground means we obtained small-town newspapers. We read them carefully. By 1943 we were able to make an estimate of the strength of the German army that turned out to be curiously exact.

  A question of high priority through the war was German tank production. We sent some of our economists into the battlefield to examine captured German tanks. Each tank carried a factory serial number. These numbers, we knew, ran consecutively in every factory and never varied. When we collected enough numbers, which meant several thousand, we were able to estimate tank production.

  In one way or another, according to Donovan, the OSS learned such information as the first confirmation of the existence of German submarine oil tankers together with the first photograph of such a tanker refueling a submarine at sea, the conversion by the Germans of captured Russian locomotives from wide to standard gauge, and the first description of the new two-man Italian assault boats designed to operate either on or below the surface to attach mines to ships at anchor.

  John Ford returned to Washington from an overseas assignment, and Donovan immediately informed him that “something big was going on in the Pacific.” Navy cryptographers had broken Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto’s messages, and it appeared that the Japanese were trying to draw the remainder of the U.S. fleet into a battle. Ford had scarcely unpacked his bag when Donovan told him to repack and head for the Pacific. There Ford and Bob Parrish filmed the epochal Battle of Midway.

  As soon as the film had been edited, Donovan arranged for a private showing at the White House for the President and his family and close friends. When Donovan discovered that Ford had taken a sequence showing James Roosevelt, who had left the OSS to be with the fleet, he directed that this be included in the screening. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt, James Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and Adm. William Leahy were present. As the dramatic battle scenes unfolded before them, FDR and Hopkins talked and made jokes until, during the memorial scene at the end, the picture of the President’s son came on the screen. Roosevelt paused in mid-story and paid close attention. When the lights blinked on at the end of the film, he was white-faced with emotion. His wife was sobbing.

  “I want every mother in America to see this picture,” the President said to Leahy.

  Donovan was pleased with Ford’s success. He ordered 500 prints of The Battle of Midway made and screened throughout the nation.

  28

  Prelude to Torch

  ON APRIL 17, 1942, French Gen. Henri Giraud dropped a rope from his window in the impregnable German castle of Koenigstein near the Czech border and climbed down it to freedom. Some say a French patriot had smuggled the rope to him inside several cans of ham; others say that members of the German underground were responsible. In any case, Giraud slipped through Germany, hiding during the daytime, and escaped into Switzerland and then to unoccupied France. Giraud soon broke with the aged Vichy leader Marshal Pétain, and when OSS emissaries contacted him at Lyon, indicated that he might be willing to come to North Africa to lead a revolt against the Nazi-dominated government.

  William Eddy reported the development to Donovan. Giraud might be the heroic French leader who could weld together the Gaullists and other patriots in North Africa. Robert Solborg took action. He flew from Lisbon to London and went to see De Gaulle to enlist his support for Giraud as the leader of the rebellion being plotted in North Africa. Solborg reported to Donovan that he had sounded out De Gaulle regarding Giraud and found that the Free French leader was enthusiastic. Giraud, said Solborg, was the one man under whom De Gaulle said he could work.

  Solborg flew back to Lisbon. Donovan had told him emphatically to keep out of Africa, emphasizing that to go there would jeopardize the security of the entire local OSS network. Solborg, however, convinced that he was playing a vital role in the negotiations to bring the French North African troops into the Allied camp, went in early June to Casablanca, where he met with Bob Murphy and Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil, emissary of Giraud.

  “The African Army on the whole dislikes the British,” said Lemaigre. “Too much blood had been shed fighting them at Mers-el-Kebir and in Syria and at Dakar. All of this may have been necessary for the British, but it was humiliating and costly for France.”

  Lemaigre told Solborg that most Frenchmen considered De Gaulle a British puppet. Yet almost all Frenchmen were pro-American. Henri Giraud was the French leader who could accomplish the job De Gaulle could not. Lemaigre agreed to go back to Lyon and urge Giraud to come to North Africa as soon as possible.

  “The plan briefly is that the general would assume command of French forces in North Africa and would issue orders to receive our task force without opposition whenever the opportunity arises,” Solborg reported to Donovan.

  Solborg was elated, but on June 15 he was dismayed. A cable came from Donovan, then in London, stating, “It was agreed between us that no activities were to be carried on in North Africa. You are directed to stop immediately whatever you may be doing, go to Lisbon and await orders.”

  Donovan had a high regard for De Gaulle, and he learned from Free French London sources that De Gaulle had actually said only that Giraud was a good soldier. Donovan also was receiving intelligence from France and through London sources that the growing French underground was more likely to support De Gaulle than Giraud. Solborg’s activities threatened to compromise the Allies’ political options in North Africa. More important, Donovan knew that Solborg had long been identified by enemy agents in Lisbon as an OSS man, and he feared that his presence in North Africa would now jeopardize the security of the entire network so laboriously established by Eddy.

  In addition, Murphy was already working on the Giraud connection. With the Russians in dire straits and the Japanese continuing their advance in the Pacific, the plans for Operation Torch were lagging. The new OSS, moreover, had been placed under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donovan, who now had to create a good working relationship with the generals and admirals, scarcely needed Solborg’s freewheeling actions to embarrass him. It was hardly the time for Solborg to make a sweeping OSS commitment to Giraud for action in North Africa.

  Solborg flew back to Lisbon and then, without orders, crossed the Atlantic to Washington to confront his chief. Donovan, faced with such insubordination, was furious. He refused even to see Solborg, and Solborg could only bombard him with messages.

  “No promises were made, nor hopes held out to the French in North Africa,” he wrote. “The general with whom I have been negotiating represents today the highest authority, overshadowing that of Weygand, De Gaulle, and everybody else. He is a fighting general and a true and patriotic Frenchman.” Solborg’s fierce insistence that he was right could lead to only one end. Donovan ordered him dropped from the OSS.

  At the start of his ill-fated enterprise, Solborg had hoped to discuss the situation with William Eddy, but Eddy was not in Tangier when he arrived. Disturbed at the skimpy supplies reaching the French and Arab undergrounds in North Africa from the United States, Eddy had gone to Washington to see Donovan. Eddy outlined the extent of OSS intelligence and the size of French and Arab resistance groups, first to Donovan and then on June 10 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The JCS was impressed. Increased support would have to be immediate to be effective, since French Premier Pierre Laval was already replacing every pro-Allied Frenchman he could discover in North Africa with a German sympathizer.

  When William Eddy returned to Tangier on July 11, he discovered that he had apparently been all too right. Two weeks before, Vichy police had arrested 300 French patriots in Morocco for forming a secret organization antagonistic to the French state. An OSS report from Tangier dated July 11 indicated that plans to sabotage Vichy French resistance to U.S. troops and to propagandize on behalf of the Allies had been leaked to the authorities. Prodded by the Germans, the Vichy police had sprung into action. The fascist Partie Populaire Française was also reported to be
getting ready “to act as key men at strategic points in the event of an American invasion of this territory.”

  Eddy realized that Anglo-British action in support of the hard-hit French underground in North Africa was urgently needed. He flew to London to meet with Ned Buxton, Donovan’s assistant director. Hoping for military assistance in obtaining supplies for the French, Buxton gave a dinner party and invited Gen. George V. Strong (the OSS’s nemesis in Washington, who had just been made chief of Army Intelligence), the redoubtable Gen. George Patton, and Air Force Gen. James Doolittle.

  Wearing his marine uniform decorated with five rows of World War I ribbons, Eddy limped into the room. “I don’t know who he is,” remarked Patton, “but the son-of-a-bitch’s been shot at enough, hasn’t he?”

  Strong knew well who he was and began the conversation with the warning that if the OSS intelligence was wrong, many American lives would be lost in the invasion. Undisturbed, Eddy gave a factual, point-by-point analysis of the situation in North Africa. He presented a mass of details about the French underground, its leadership, organization, and possibilities. “If we sent an expeditionary force to North Africa, there would be only token resistance,” he concluded.

  Even Strong was impressed and agreed to pass on Eddy’s analysis to those of Eisenhower’s staff planning Torch. From then on the French underground in North Africa was taken into account in preparations for the invasion.

  “Donovan was included in on all the details of our Torch operation,” said Gen. Mark Clark. “Before we went into North Africa, Donovan kept us briefed about his intelligence findings in Europe.”

  Eddy returned to Tangier with promises of support for the French. On August 3 he cabled Donovan, “There will be no problem at all about reception of the merchandise, since our partners practically control the Province of Oran, as well as other sections of the coast. All they ask is an early delivery to reassure both sides that the traffic can flow.”

  On July 23 Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had made a historic decision to launch the Torch attack on North Africa as soon as possible after October 30. The JCS accepted the OSS recommendations for cooperation with the French underground, but objected to staff talks with the resistance leaders for fear that vital information about the timing of the invasion might leak out.

  It was time for Bob Murphy to report back to Washington. He crossed the Atlantic and on August 30 met with General Marshall, Admiral Leahy, and Adm. Ernest King. After briefing them about the critical situation in North Africa, he hurried to Hyde Park, where Franklin Roosevelt told him about the plan for the invasion. Roosevelt, deciding that Murphy must also brief Eisenhower and his staff, dispatched him to London. Murphy traveled incognito as Lieutenant Colonel McGowan. “No one,” observed General Marshall, “ever pays attention to a lieutenant colonel.”

  Murphy flew the Atlantic but finished his journey by train. Eisenhower’s aide, Comdr. Harry C. Butcher, met him at the railroad station and whisked him in a staff car to Ike’s secret headquarters, conveniently located on a golf course outside London. Eisenhower was completely won over by Murphy’s report, but Murphy was not completely won over by Ike. He noted that when it came to talking about North Africa, “Eisenhower and some of his officers had mental pictures of primitive country, collections of mud huts set deep in jungle.”

  On his way back to Casablanca, Murphy boarded a plane in Lisbon and discovered that most of the passengers were French and German members of the German Armistice Commission, which was supposed to enforce the terms of the Franco-German Armistice in North Africa. The Americans and commission members repeatedly toasted one another with champagne.

  “Our groups are prepared to destroy key power stations, tunnels and bridges connecting Morocco with Algeria,” Eddy reported to Donovan, “and they are prepared to isolate from reinforcement the Port of Fedala and the Port of Lyautey. These preparations were in anticipation of Axis aggression and will presumably not be necessary if we occupy the territory first.

  “It is, of course, in general true that we can count on the submission or active support of the French Army as we must also count upon the determined resistance of the French Navy and of the aircraft under the navy’s control.”

  Admiral Darlan had been made chief of the French armed forces when Pierre Laval replaced Pétain as premier of Vichy France, and OSS agents were convinced that the navy would remain loyal to Darlan even if the army in North Africa did not.

  OSS arms now began to move to the French Resistance. From American stocks in the Gibraltar arsenal, Sten guns, .45 pistols and ammunition, explosives and flares were taken across the Strait of Gibraltar to the British Legation at Tangier. At night they were removed to the U.S. Legation and from there smuggled through the Spanish zone to Casablanca. A Riff, or Berber, leader who had a large cache of hand grenades left over from the Spanish Civil War presented them to OSS agents. They were packed in cartons labeled tea and sugar and loaded on muleback for transport through Spanish Morocco to an OSS agent waiting at the border. Donovan, until now generally stingy with funds, made available $2 million to finance the OSS operations.

  The day of invasion was nearing. Donovan went to London on September 10 to confer with SOE head Gubbins. The American and British chiefs agreed that SOE and the OSS would work together under OSS direction to achieve the following tasks: “(A) During the assault: 1. light beaches; 2. neutralize batteries; 3. put out infrared detectors. (B) Safeguard dock installations from Arab destruction. (C) Sabotage enemy air forces by any means. (D) Temporarily block roads and rails. (E) Damage French naval forces if they resist. (F) Provide guides for forces after landing.”

  Before returning to Washington, Donovan discussed the Torch plans in detail with Eisenhower, General Clark, and Bob Murphy. He made arrangements for William Phillips to serve as a liaison officer between Ike and the OSS. Phillips grimaced when Harry Butcher of Eisenhower’s headquarters presented him with a lengthy message from G-2’s General Strong in Washington, who spelled out directives from the JCS that were bound to hamper the OSS in its preparations for the North African landings.

  Donovan sent the agreement with SOE to Eddy. Eddy shook his head over it. There was no danger at all from the Arabs, who, far from causing trouble for the invading forces, were ready to assist in any way possible. If ordered to do so, Eddy’s North African OSS apparatus could carry out all the actions that would be required during the assault. OSS teams could also block roads and rails and sabotage enemy air forces. The SOE was not needed.

  On September 23 Clark sent more detailed instructions to Murphy for Eddy’s information. One hour before the assault on Algeria a number of coast defense batteries were to be destroyed or put out of action. The batteries, near Algiers, were listed and described. The D day instructions for Eddy continued: “Break electrical connections between infrared detector stations and coast defense batteries. Seize Blida and Maison Blanche airdromes and destroy French planes. Secure and immobilize tanks. Seize and preserve intact the main civil broadcasting station, also the main telephone and telegraph exchanges. Prevent destruction of cables, main power stations and docks. Provide guides for Algiers. Prevent damage to key road and railroad bridges and tunnels. Arrange, insofar as consistent with maintaining secrecy, for seizure or neutralization of German and Italian Armistice Commissioners.”

  Eddy and Donovan offered solutions to some problems, but Eisenhower’s staff turned them down, perhaps out of queasiness. A Frenchman whose son the Germans had murdered in Paris had made detailed preparations, with Eddy’s help, for the assassination of German military personnel, most of them Gestapo officers, who were stationed in North Africa. When London headquarters refused to approve the plot, Eddy made a new proposal. A black African waiter who spoke Oxford English and quoted Shakespeare at length, to the delight of the people he waited on, was an OSS spy. At the strategic moment he would drop Mickey Finns into the drinks of the Germans, thus incapacitating them during the invasion.

  OSS a
gents reported to London on the conditions in the harbors of North Africa and on the beaches. A constant watch was kept on the German and Italian Armistice commissions. “The Germans in Fedala and Casablanca now keep their effects ready packed and have been trained to clear from the hotels, complete with baggage within 15 minutes,” one report indicated.

  The OSS, despite the attitude of the State Department, still was plotting to increase Arab support for the Allied invasion. The Riff leader, Abd-el-Krim, was to be spirited from his exile on Reunion Island, a French possession in the Indian Ocean, about 420 miles east of Madagascar, and Allal-el-Fasi was to be brought from Brazzaville on the Congo River in equatorial Africa. They would lead a Moorish revolt against Spain if the Spanish assisted the Axis. Carleton Coon and Gordon Browne negotiated for the OSS, but they gave up on the project lest they arouse suspicions of the impending invasion.

  There were last-minute requests from Eisenhower’s staff in London. What were the Italians in Libya planning? Donovan’s agents reported they were getting ready to attack. Five thousand troops had been flown to Libya, and Italian destroyers were bringing more. Could a reliable pilot be found to take the Allied fleet to the Algerian beaches? Chief Pilot Malverne of Port Lyautey was the man, and Eddy knew he was hiding in Casablanca. Two OSS men met Malverne at his house and devised a hiding place for him behind some gasoline drums in a trailer. They covered him with a Moroccan rug and a canvas tarp, which they battened down tightly. With the trailer bouncing behind their venerable Chevrolet, the OSS men undertook to smuggle the pilot past the French and Spanish border officers.

  “We’d better check Malverne again,” one man would say to the other from time to time. They’d stop the car and lift up an end of the tarpaulin to see how he was doing.

  “Not dead yet,” Malverne would reply, although fumes from the gasoline drums were seeping into his hiding place.