Donovan
Page 69
Donovan still appeared at 2 Wall Street daily, and on some days his mind seemed as brilliant as ever. On other days he stared uncomprehending at his partners as they explained a legal fine point. He dropped off to sleep at odd moments, and when he walked from the elevator to his car, he leaned on the arm of whoever was walking with him.
On December 12, 1956, sick though he was, Donovan opened a new drive for funds to finance the work of the American Committee on United Europe. “The tragedy of Hungary has shown again the need for such union,” he argued. “It proves that Stalin’s successors will continue to seek their objectives of force and repression. A united Europe could become a powerful center of attraction for the restless nations of Eastern Europe. Such a union would also be a bulwark against the aggressive designs of world communism.”
During the bleak New York months that followed, Donovan kept to his Sutton Place apartment. He rarely went to the office. Then in the last week of March he was overcome with a massive cerebral thrombosis, a blood clot in the brain, and had to be taken to the hospital. Once again he rallied, and he returned to Sutton Place.
“Lying in his bed, he could look out over the Queensborough Bridge,” remembered Larry Houston, who spent long hours with his onetime chief. “His clouded mind imagined the Russian tanks were advancing over the bridge to take Manhattan.”
When President Eisenhower learned that the man who had been America’s master spy seemed near death, he awarded him the National Security Medal, the highest honor a civilian can earn. Donovan became the first American in history to hold the nation’s four top decorations—the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and now the National Security Medal. Larry Houston made the trip to New York on April 2, 1957, and pinned the medal on Donovan’s pajama tops.
“Through his foresight, wisdom, and experience he foresaw, during the course of World War II, the problems which would face the postwar world and the urgent need for a permanent, centralized intelligence function,” said Eisenhower’s citation. “Thus his wartime work contributed to the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency and a coordinated national intelligence structure.”
Donovan rallied once again. “He is slowly but steadily improving,” Walter Berry was able to write on May 17, “and we hope before too long to have him back on the job.”
This was not to be. Another stroke further incapacitated him, and in the spring of 1958, at the request of President Eisenhower, Donovan was taken from New York to Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington. On February 8, 1959, at the age of 76, he died.
Of the many tributes received by William J. Donovan in the course of his life of service to his country, that delivered by Ned Buxton at the final gathering of OSS employees in 1945 ranks among the most eloquent and fitting.
History will know and record only in part the value of [Donovan’s] service.
As the perilous years passed, he extemporized; he devised; he asked for the improbable and confidently achieved it. He capitalized on his weaknesses and attacked. Inspired by his personality and his vision, thousands of devoted people took the uneven odds. People of all ages lived or died as duty demanded or circumstances permitted. They killed and were killed alone or in groups, in jungles, in cities, by sea or air. They organized resistance where there was no resistance. They helped it to grow where it was weak. They assaulted the enemy’s mind as well as his body; they helped confuse his will and disrupt his plans.
And with it all, the General assembled the brains to evaluate and the competence to estimate the material that flowed back from a thousand vital sources, dealing with the enemy’s capabilities and intentions and morale, military and civilian, the bottleneck targets, and the web of diplomatic intrigue. General Donovan, all of us, whatever our role, whatever our individual spot in the pattern of your unprecedented task—we esteem it a very great privilege to have served our country under your banner.
Acknowledgments and Chapter Notes
It would have been impossible to create a faithful account of the life of Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan without the assistance of the intelligence community. I am indebted to the many men and women who not only shared their own recollections and memorabilia of Bill Donovan but who arranged for me to see still other people who knew him. In particular, I want to thank Walter Pforzheimer, Thomas Troy, and Sir William Stephenson. Others who played a cardinal role in my research included: Ray S. Cline, David Crockett, Ernest Cuneo, John W. English, Arthur Goldberg, William J. Gross, Lawrence Houston, Sir Edwin Leather, Sir Fitzroy MacLean, Elizabeth Heppner McIntosh, James Murphy, Hayden B. Peake, Lt. Gen. W. R. Peers, Edwin Putzell, Jr., Frank Raichle, Kermit Roosevelt, Nicol Smith, and Thomas W. Streeter. Geoffrey M. T. Jones, president of the Veterans of the OSS, was helpful and encouraging throughout the work.
Archivists and librarians are an author’s best friends. John Taylor, who as Modern Military Archivist presides over the labyrinthine OSS collection at the National Archives, was my research mentor, but I also am greatly indebted to John Barden, St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute; Edward T. Boone, Jr., MacArthur Memorial; Nancy Bressler, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Dennis V. Cavanaugh, 101 Association Archives; Rudolf A. Clemen, Jr., American Red Cross Library, Washington, D.C.; Mal Collet, Citadel Memorial Archives; Kenneth C. Cramer, Dartmouth College Library; Joseph D’Addario, Buffalo Cavalry Association; William R. Emerson, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; Nancy L. Fappiano, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University Library; Susan Halpert, Houghton Library, Harvard University Library; Paul T. Heffron, Library of Congress; Clyde E. Helfter, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society; Gregory Johnson, Alderman Library, University of Virginia Library; Kenneth A. Lohf, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Columbia University Libraries; Royster Lyle, Jr., George C. Marshall Research Foundation; Edward Lyon, George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University; I. Frank Magavero, Niagara University Archives; Russell Malone, Special Collections, Northwestern University Library; Dwight M. Miller, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; Charles G. Palm, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; Paul Palmer, Columbiana Collection, Columbia University Libraries; Mary Jo Pugh, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Library; Jon K. Reynolds, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library; Earl M. Rogers, University of Iowa Library; Richard Sommers, U.S. Army Military History Institute; Robert D. Spector, Long Island University, Brooklyn; Arthur Veysey, Cantigny, Wheaton, Illinois; Charles Anthony Wood, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Carroll of Fairfax, Virginia, assisted my research through a crucial period. My wife, Joan, shared the entire burden of the work. She extended love and understanding throughout the writing of the book and contributed the index. She too knew Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan and joins me in expressing our appreciation for his revelation of details of his life.
The works of all authors cited in the Notes are given with full publication information under those authors’ names in the Bibliography. Newspapers consulted are identified in the Notes but are not listed in the Bibliography. The following are the abbreviations used in the Notes:
BCAA
Buffalo Cavalry Association Archives
Buffalo Society
Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society
Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace
Hoover Library
Herbert Hoover Presidential Library
Marshall Foundation
George C. Marshall Research Foundation
PAA
Politischen Archiven des Auswartigen
Pforzheimer Collection
Walter Pforzheimer Collection on Intelligence Service
RFAC
Rockefeller Foundation Archives Center
Roosevelt Library
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
ULPA
Union League
of Philadelphia Archives
USAMHI
U.S. Army Military History Institute
Prologue
Page 2: Interview with Houston.
Page 3, lines 5–26: Interview with McIntosh.
Page 3, lines 27–44: Interview with Crockett.
Page 4, line 15: Pforzheimer Collection.
Page 5: Poem, dated June 2, 1959, given to author by Coon.
Chapter 1. The Boy from the Irish First Ward
The account of Donovan’s life in Buffalo is in the main drawn from his own recollections.
Page 10, line 24; Page 12, line 29: Interview with Kathleen Donovan.
Page 11, line 10: Graham.
Page 14, line 43; Page 20, line 20: Mary Duggan interviewed by McIntosh.
Page 17, line 34: Interview with Irene Murphy.
Page 17, line 43: Nardin Academy Archives.
Page 19, line 35: John J. Barden to author.
Chapter 2. Donovan the Young Lawyer
Page 21, line 7: Niagara University Archives.
Page 22, line 2: On June 4, 1901, Donovan’s oration, “True Manhood,” won second place in the second “Complimentary to Professor Egan” contest. The 18-year-old stated: “There has come into the hearts and minds of men a fatal moral lethargy, the destroyer of all pure thought, the breeder of wickedness. Wrapt in the pleasing dream of self-complacency, the young men of today care not for duty, religion, virtue. They look upon them as empty phantoms which are soon forgotten in the bright sunshine of life’s pleasures. Enveloped in the mists of admiration and self-glorification and dazzled by the glare of wealth, they grope their way blindly on, pursuing, revering, adoring their gods—wealth and notoriety.”
Page 25, line 14: Alpheus Mason, 92.
Page 25, lines 18–28: Jackson E. Reynolds interviewed by Dean Albertson, June–August 1949, Oral History Archives, Columbia University Libraries.
Page 26, lines 2–14: Freidel, FDR: The Apprenticeship, 74.
Page 26, line 31: Even in his first year of law practice Donovan showed an interest in public service. W. A. King of the Catholic Union and Times wrote to Republican leader Edward H. Butler, “I presume you are the object of numberless importunities to use your all-potent influence to ‘place’ ambitious young men when the Republican victories are secured by the November elections. I beg, therefore, that you will give kindly thought to the ‘good word’ I wish to say for my young friend William J. Donovan, who aspires to a post in the District Attorney’s office. Perhaps you know of young Donovan, but you cannot possibly know him as I know him, for I have watched him through his every upward step from his school days through St. Joseph’s College, through Columbia University, and so far in what promises to be a brilliantly successful legal career. In college, he was always a leader, and carried off enough medals and honors for oratory and scholarship to turn the head of one less well-poised. His course at Columbia was no less marked by success, and his fine muscle and good-fellowship earned him a place on its football team. Leaving college, he buckled down quietly to the study and practice of law, and in the short time he has been at it has given evidence of those qualities that ensure him the reward of patient and persistent application, combined with brilliancy of intellect. Mr. Donovan is a splendid type of the young Catholic professional man whose success can be lauded by his fellows, and he is certain as time goes on to gather around him a circle of earnest friends whose chief desire will be to see him achieve the destiny which his gifts entitle him to.
“With good brain, good looks, good judgment, he does not feel that he ‘knows it all,’ and is just the kind of man that you are known to favor. If through your good offices he succeeds in his present desire, I predict that you will always be glad that you helped to give him a start.” King to Butler, Oct. 2, 1908.
Pages 28 ff.: Donovan’s Troop I experiences are chronicled in the BCAA.
Chapter 3. Relief Mission to Europe
Page 36, line 10: This telegram, as well as other telegrams and correspondence between Donovan and Greene and with other personnel of the War Relief Commission that are quoted in this chapter, is in the RFAC.
Page 37, line 44: Beck, 176.
Page 39, line 3: “My job was to keep the back of the United States against that door and hold it open. It was not always easy. I was obliged to make protests, remonstrances, and polite suggestions about what would happen if certain things were not done.” Van Dyke.
Page 40, line 17: Lithgow Osborne, then a young diplomat assigned to the embassy in Berlin and later Franklin Roosevelt’s ambassador to Norway, taped his impressions of Donovan as he then appeared in Germany. He remembered him as “an extremely agreeable and pleasant young Irish-American who had come up the hard way. I don’t know whether he married the boss’s daughter, but he married into one of the old families in Buffalo.” Osborne interviewed by Wendell Link, Oct. 29, 1952, Oral History Archives, Columbia University Libraries.
Page 40, lines 18–24: Dr. Sareyko to author, May 5, 1980, PAA.
Page 41, lines 11–15: Donovan diary, June 10, 1916, RFAC.
Page 43, line 4: “The Rockefeller Commission, however, up to the time I left Germany, did continue to carry on some measure of relief and succeeded in getting in condensed milk, to some extent for the children of that unfortunate country,” wrote Ambassador Gerard about the work Donovan had begun. “I wish here to express my admiration for the work of the Rockefeller Commission in Europe. Not only were the ideas of the Commission excellent and businesslike, but the men selected to carry them into effect were without exception men of high character and possessed of rare executive ability.” Gerard, 299.
Chapter 4. Joining Up with the Fighting 69th
Page 44, lines 3–12: Horne, 871.
Page 44, lines 13–28: Herbert Mason, The Great Pursuit, 222.
Page 45, line 5: When asked why his men called him Galloping Bill, Donovan replied, “The boys called me that because I drove them hard. I knew if we went to France, it would not be a cavalry war, and I was determined to have my unit physically fit.” “Wild Bill Donovan, War-Time and Peace-Time Fighter.”
Page 45, lines 17–32: Rio Grande Rattler, Vol. 1, No. 17.
Page 46, line 18: Donovan’s snarled accounts were the subject of correspondence between Warwick Greene and the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Warwick Greene to the Commission, Sept. 23, 1916; William Roland to the Commission, Oct. 2, 1916, Hoover Library.
Page 46, line 35: Buffalo Society.
Page 47, lines 10–19: “An Account of the Mexican Border Service, Troop I, 1st Cavalry, N.G.U.S.,” BCAA.
Page 47, line 22: In the Buffalo Cavalry Association’s Club Room in the Connecticut Street Armory, Bill Donovan’s portrait hangs among others of Troop I’s commanding officers. A McClellan saddle like the one Donovan used is kept in a place of honor. A rack contains the sabers of each of the troop’s commanders. A card explains that one of the sabers was carried by Bill Donovan, but General Hogan explained that this is not so.
“He came into the armory one day,” he told the author, “and discovered that his saber was missing from our collection. My saber was handy, and I suggested that we put it up on the wall and attribute it to him. Bill grinned and approved of the idea.”
Page 47, lines 26–29: Duffy, 24.
Page 47, line 34: In the decades to come, the Captain William J. Donovan Trophy was given to men of Troop I “To encourage good performance.” “Trophies were awarded to outstanding individuals for shooting. The trophy was purchased by Captain Donovan and awarded to the squad which performed best each year.” BCAA.
Page 47, lines 34–40: Army Times, The Daring Regiments.
Page 48, lines 18–25: Martin Hogan, 5.
Page 49, lines 1–19: Theodore Roosevelt, 1195.
Page 49, lines 26–30: Corey Ford.
Page 50, lines 1–8: Interview with Cassidy.
Page 50, lines 26–31: Berry, 330.
Page 51, lines 18–23: Flick, 86.
Pag
e 52, lines 11–19: Theodore Roosevelt, 1236. Ironically, this letter was delivered to Archibald in France by Mrs. August Belmont, Donovan’s friend of amateur theatrical days. She was there to get background for training Red Cross workers.
Page 52, lines 37–44: Woollcott, 47.
Page 53, lines 17–22: Flick, 161.
Page 53, lines 36–44: Howe.
Page 54, line 5: “Major Donovan’s War Diary.”
Page 55, lines 5–8: Freidel, Over There, 87.
Chapter 5. Rehearsal for War
Page 59, lines 4–9: Berry, 316.
Page 59, lines 14–16: USAMHI.
Page 59, lines 23–27: Flick, 162.
Page 59, lines 32–40: Lenahan journal (I Remember—I Remember), 54, USAMHI.
Page 60, lines 34–37: Martin Hogan, 35.
Page 63, lines 1–3: Frazier Hunt, 72.
Page 63, line 21: “The rest and the food were not only needed by ourselves but also by our ‘cooties’ boarders, who had become mighty scrawny on the poor entertainment that we had been able to furnish them on the rationless hike. With the return of better times, the cooties became more active.” Martin Hogan, 47.
Page 65, line 6: Oliver Ames letter home, Jan. 27, 1918.
Chapter 6. A Wood Called Rouge Bouquet
Page 68, lines 12–17: Raymond Tompkins, 63.
Page 68, lines 18–23: Rainbow Reveille, May–June 1935.
Page 68, lines 32–38: Berry.
Page 71, line 24: Brigadier General Michael J. Lenahan remembered, “On the afternoon of March 8th, while I was attending a theatrical performance staged by some French soldiers at Bonamenil, I was informed of the loss of the 1st platoon of Co. 3, 165th Inf. A direct hit by a projectile fired by a German minenwerfer had struck a dugout occupied by Lt. Norman and 22 of his men in Rouge Bouquet. All were killed and buried in the dugout. I left immediately on horseback for the scene but was met by Father Duffy who was returning. He said there was nothing anyone could do—the men were buried under 20 to 30 feet of earth. He had given general absolution on the spot. Such a catastrophe was depressing for everyone.” Lenahan, 56, USAMHI.