The Irregulars

by Jennet Conant

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS ACCOUNT OF Roald Dahl’s wartime adventures could not have been written without the encouragement of Robert Haskell III, heir to Charles Marsh’s passion for politics and journalism, and publisher in his own right of the family-owned Martinsville Bulletin, who gave me unrestricted access to the mass of correspondence between his grandfather and Roald Dahl, as well as to additional Marsh letters, family papers, and photographs. It is impossible for me to adequately express my gratitude to Robert and his wife, Elizabeth, for their extraordinary hospitality, generosity, and kindness. Not only did they provide bed and board at their beautiful Virginia farm, answer endless questions about the family, no matter how frank, but also somehow arranged for me to be allowed inside Marsh’s beloved Longlea, which is presently owned by the religious sect Opus Dei. I am also deeply grateful to Robert’s mother, Antoinette Marsh Haskell, for sharing with me her detailed memories of the young RAF officer who frequented her father’s house on R Street.

  In pursuing firsthand sources, I was helped immensely by the author William Stevenson, who granted me access to his archive at the University of Regina in Canada, which includes the unedited and unpublished transcripts of interviews with members of the BSC conducted by the CBC for the 1972 documentary A Man Called Intrepid, which led to Stevenson’s best-selling book by the same name, as well as interviews and related correspondence for the radio programs The Two Bills, The Great Canadian Spy and Martin Bormann. William Stevenson was a wry and thoughtful guide to navigating this complicated and controversial material, which over the years has spawned a mini-industry of Intrepid critics and debunkers. I am also greatly indebted to the writer John Pearson for making available interviews he did for his authoritative 1966 biography of Ian Fleming, which provided rare insight into the complex friendship between Dahl, Fleming, Bryce, Cuneo, Ogilvy, and their collective hero, Bill Stephenson.

  For research assistance, I would like to record my gratitude to the Roald Dahl Estate, which is administered by his widow from his second marriage, Felicity Dahl, and Amanda Conquy. Pinning down wartime dates can be a tricky business, and I greatly appreciate the contribution of Jane Branfield, archivist at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, which houses the bulk of Dahl’s papers and correspondence.

  I would also like to thank the following for their recollections, family letters, diaries, photographs, and documents: Patricia Neal, Beth Warner, Davis Haines, Creekmore Fath, John Forester, Jonathan W. Cuneo, Elizabeth Winthrop, Annette Tapert, and the late Peter Viertel. For their Jamaican hospitality and tales of island life, I must pay tribute to my hosts Michael Thomas, Chris Blackwell, and Nigel Pemberton. My thanks also to several former members of the OSS who agreed to reminisce a little for my benefit but asked not to be named, and
to the mutual friends who made the introductions.

  Too many individuals and organizations provided assistance to mention them all, but special recognition is due to John Huey, editor in chief of Time Inc. At the Public Welfare Foundation, Elaine Shannon was exceptionally resourceful and hunted down obscure facts and old pictures and, when all else failed, turned photographer. For his assistance with the Ralph Ingersoll Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, I want to thank Charles Nile. I also benefited from the hard work of a number of researchers: Paul Veneziano of History Associates, Donna Coates, Katharine Dale, Ruth Tenenbaum, and in Britain, Christopher Werth. Cavelle Sukhai manages everything, and I would be lost without her. For their unflagging support and friendship, which means so much more than this small mention can convey, I am beholden to Barbara Kantrowitz, Mary Tavener Holmes, Perri Peltz, and Toni Goodale.

  I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Kris Dahl, my literary agent, who was especially helpful to me in focusing this project, and first planted the kernel of an idea that became The Irregulars. She, too, is a distant descendant of brilliant, blue-eyed Viking stock, though there is no evidence she is related to Roald. This is my third book for Alice Mayhew, my editor, whose intelligence, patience, and boundless enthusiasm make all things—even finishing—seem possible. There are so many at Simon & Schuster who have contributed to this book, beginning with David Rosenthal, an exuberant champion of his writers, on whom Dahl, who was most particular about people, would doubtlessly have bestowed his favorite adjective, “sparky.” I would also like to acknowledge Roger Labrie’s careful shepherding, Janet Biehl’s painstaking copyediting, and Michael Accordino’s inspired art direction.

  Finally, I dedicate this book to my boys—my husband, Steve Kroft, and son, John—who are my best friends and favorite coconspirators. You have braved years of war stories, and I am deeply grateful to you both.

  Jennet Conant

  Sag Harbor, 2008

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  Numbers refer to photos in the insert.

  Courtesy of Haskell Family: 2

  Courtesy of Elaine Shannon: 3, 20

  Historical Society of Washington, D.C.: 4, 5

  Courtesy of Jonathan W. Cuneo: 8

  Weidenfeld & Nicholson Archive: Frontmatter (bottom left and bottom right), 11, 12

  Lyndon B. Johnson Library: 19

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: 23, Chapter 10 (both letters)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JENNET CONANT is the author of the New York Times best seller Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II and 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. A former journalist who has written profiles for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, and the New York Times, she lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.

  Photographic Insert

  2

  The self-styled Texas newspaper tycoon Charles Marsh became Dahl’s mentor and volunteered his services to help the British cause.

  3

  Marsh’s R Street mansion, Dahl’s base of operations, was regarded by prominent New Dealers and journalists as a cross between a political salon and a private clubhouse.

  4

  Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, was “not of this century” and was frequently ridiculed in the press for engaging in such aristocratic pastimes as foxhunting.

  5

  Halifax often attended the famous parties at Friendship, the Georgetown mansion of Washington doyenne and archconservative Evalyn Walsh McLean ( far right, wearing glasses ), whose diverse guest lists included well-known isolationists as well as interventionists, such as her dinner partner Vice President Henry Wallace.

  8

  Ernest Cuneo, an American lawyer and member of FDR’s palace guard, served as the intermediary between Winchell and the BSC. Margaret Watson, whom Cuneo married after the war, was one of Stephenson’s loyal secretaries at the BSC’s New York headquarters.

  11

  Commander Ian Fleming, on assignment with British naval intelligence, became one of Stephenson’s special boys. He was given responsibility far above his rank and helped to draft an early memo on the OSS.

  12

  Stephenson also recruited Fleming’s best friend, Ivar Bryce, a charming playboy, as a BSC agent and later made him a liaison officer with the OSS.

  19

  Congressman Johnson was a great admirer of President Roosevelt. (The man in the middle is Texas governor Jimmy Allred.) When he first came to Washington, Johnson was a frequent guest at Marsh’s palatial Virginia estate, Longlea

  20

  where he fell in love with Alice Glass. For many years thereafter, he journeyed alone from Washington to Longlea for secret trysts.

  23

  Dahl reported back to the BSC on all his meetings with Roosevelt, who did not “glamour” him as much as he had expected, although he was much impressed by the paralyzed president’s skill behind the wheel of his customized Ford.

  *David Coke was decorated for bravery, and as Dahl later wrote in Going Solo, “tragically but almost inevitably, he would be shot down and killed.”

  *Lothian was a Christian Scientist and refused to allow doctors to treat him when he fell ill. He died of uremic poisoning.

  *This was not standard practice, especially since Stephenson’s personal designation was the number 48100, but the aptness of the code name INTREPID was apparently too good to ignore, and over time Stephenson made it his own. It has been noted that if all British officials had gone by their wartime code names, it would have had comical results: for example, Aubrey Morgan, the director of the British Information Service, would have been known as DIGESTION for the duration of the war.

  *Forester would have liked to do secret work, either for the BSC or later the OSS, but it was not to be. The closest he came was a memorable interview with Colonel Donovan, the new head of the OSS, which he described in a letter to his wife, Kathleen: “He [Donovan] was lying in bed in the St. Regis Hotel with two broken legs as the result of a car accident, and he and two regular U.S. colonels went through me and turned me inside out as if they were three doses of salt. It was interesting—obviously they were sizing me up for some mysterious purpose of their own.”

  *Dahl has told versions of this tale in many interviews, but a letter from Dahl to Matson dated May 13, 1942, lists the sale price as $300, so he may have inflated his rates over the years, but whether it was by accident or design is not clear.

  *Dahl later blamed the title and errors on the Post’s overzealous editors. After the war, he rewrote the story with greater accuracy, restored its original title, and included it in a collection of ten war stories, Over to You, which was published in 1946.

  *A first-class storyteller, Stephenson began fashioning a new identity for himself long before his spying days and lied about his past in countless interviews and to two successive biographers. The records indicate that he was born in Winnipeg in 1896 to an impoverished immigrant Icelandic family, and when his father, a day laborer, died, leaving behind a widow with three small children, William was given away to relatives who could afford to raise him. He was never formally adopted, but his name was changed from William Samuel Clouston to William Samuel Stephenson, a fact that was revealed years after his death by the Canadian reporter Bill Macdonald and became the basis of his revisionist history entitled, The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents.

  *He was later revealed to be a Soviet double agent and the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies.

  *Ironically, Ellis, who had impeccable credentials, was later suspected of having sold secrets to both the Russians and the Germans. During a “hostile” interrogation by MI6, he reportedly confessed to Nazi espionage.

  *Stephenson always maintained that Churchill gave him his orders on May 10, in his old rooms at the Admiralty because he had not yet moved into 10 Downing Street. As a number of sc
holars have subsequently noted, however, Churchill’s movements on that historic day have been documented in detail, and it is extremely doubtful that the two men came into contact. While it appears likely that Stephenson was mistaken about the exact date of their meeting, this discrepancy, among others, has become a source of endless controversy and has led some critics to question his basic credibility.

  *Thorpe worked for Stephenson under the code name CYNTHIA and achieved postwar fame as the beautiful American debutante-turned-spy who helped steal crucial naval ciphers from the Vichy French.

  *Howard was reportedly running an errand for the BSC when his plane from Lisbon was shot down by the Germans in 1943 over the Bay of Biscay. Eight German Ju-88s attacked the DC-3 passenger flight, which was not in a designated war zone at the time. Several in-depth accounts of the incident have concluded that the Germans were well aware of Howard’s intelligence work and deliberately targeted his flight with the idea that the death of the popular entertainer and outspoken patriot would hurt British morale.

  *The Americans and British are still arguing about who deserves the most credit for the creation of the OSS. Years later, Stephenson claimed to have had a hand in orchestrating Donovan’s mission, which was decisive in paving the way for the formation of the agency. In his book Wild Bill and Intrepid, author Thomas Troy, a retired CIA staff officer and historian, argues that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the initiative for Donovan’s trip came from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. He makes the case that there is little evidence to support Stephenson’s additional claims that he accompanied Donovan on that trip and that they were old friends. As Troy writes, Stephenson, who was recalling these events in his retirement, and after a debilitating stroke, in all likelihood “read history backwards. He was to develop such a close and mutually fruitful collaboration with Donovan, was to make so many Atlantic crossings with him…that it is quite probable he unconsciously pushed the line of collaboration back to the beginning of the trip, transforming, in the process, ‘advance knowledge’ into the conception of it.”