by Dick Camp
At one time or another, four thousand women served in its ranks, most in the United States but seven hundred females went overseas. The few who served behind enemy lines were the heroines of the OSS. Often they were indigenous agents. Helene Deschamps, code named “Anick,” joined the French Resistance as a teenager. After joining the OSS, she reported on German mines and camouflaged weapons and helped downed fliers and persecuted Jews to escape. At one point she was arrested, interrogated, and beaten but survived the war. American socialite Virginia Hall was perhaps the most famous woman spy, known to the Gestapo as the “Limping Lady,” because of her wooden leg. She served as a volunteer ambulance driver until France surrendered and then fled to London where she was recruited by the British SOE. They sent her to Lyons, where she organized and worked with an operational resistance unit until it was betrayed. After escaping back to England, she joined the OSS when the SOE refused to send her back to France. She became a major resistance leader, directing espionage and guerrilla operations under the code name “Diane.” For her exploits, Hall was awarded the French Croix de Guerre, the Order of the British Empire, and the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Service Cross, the first woman to receive the award.
The major operational branches within the OSS were:
• Secret Intelligence (SI)—These men and some women were the “cloak and dagger operatives who ran intelligence operations and rings of indigenous spies primarily in enemy-occupied countries.
• Special Operations (SO)—Its members were trained to blow up bridges and railroad lines and to lead guerrilla attacks on enemy outposts and lines of communications and supply.
• Operational Groups (OG)—Highly trained foreign-language specialists were recruited for commando teams to operate behind enemy lines with indigenous resistance groups.
• Maritime Units (MU)—Specialist seaborne raiders whose mission was to infiltrate enemy harbors to destroy ships and facilities and perform reconnaissance of landing beaches to identify obstacles.
• Morale Operations (MO)—Its mission was to use “black” propaganda to spread confusion, dissension, and disorder among enemy troops and civilians.
• Research and Analysis (R&A)—Its job was to collect and analyze economic, political, social, and military information about Axis or Axis-occupied nations or countries.
• Communications Branch (CB or “Commo”)—A global network designed to provide secure and effective communications.
• Research and Development (R&D)—The OSS workshop and laboratories that produced specialized weapons, explosives and other deadly devices.
• X-2 Branch—Its mission was to collect information on espionage and subversive activities of the enemy; analyze, process and exchange this information; maintain operational security and prevent infiltration by enemy intelligence services; and create foreign area subversive personality lists.
In a major coup, Eddy was able to exfiltrate two harbor pilots who knew “every rock and buoy and wreck, as well as … the very treacherous swell which is perhaps the chief hazard for any landing party.” One of the men was smuggled out of Morocco in a trailer where he was almost asphyxiated by exhaust fumes from the car that pulled it—“Tout va bien, pas trop de monoxide,” he gasped at one point (All is well, not too much monoxide)—before reaching the coast where he was hustled aboard a motorboat for the trip to Gibraltar. Not all of Eddy’s recommendations were accepted. General Mark W. Clark, Eisenhower’s deputy, wrote in Calculated Risk that he received a memorandum from Eddy recommending “that on D-day, when the landing operations actually begin, I be authorized to arrange the assassination of the members of the German Armistice Commission at Casablanca … and for any members of the German or Italian Commissions who may then be in the city of Oran.” Clark scrawled in the margin, “O.K. Looks good to me” and forwarded it up the chain of command, where it was disapproved.
As D-day approached, no one was quite sure how the French would react. Eddy wrote 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.” Eddy’s agents were also able to convince some, but not all, of the French coastal battery commanders to withhold resistance. “Before the Allied landing on the coast of North Africa on November 8, 1942, the handful of us who knew the date and place of the landings were terrified lest we might talk in our sleep,” Eddy wrote in F.D.R. Meets Ibn Saud. “In those days before the landings it was imperative that one neither cancel nor increase normal engagements of any kind lest he give the alert. One must plan to go to the tailor as usual to be measured for a suit, or to a barber for a haircut, or to invite Spanish friends in for a cocktail party which will never come off, just as though nothing were to happen.”
In accordance with the Special Operations instructions, Eddy shifted his headquarters from Tangier to Gibraltar. Coon noted the relocation “… required considerable planning not to give the show away. He [Eddy] kept his room in the Minzah, and left most of his clothing there; he told them that he would be gone for a few days.” On the night of 7 November, Eddy anxiously waited for the code word announcing the landing—“Robert has arrived”—that was to be broadcast on the BBC’s French language program. He was elated when the message came through and cabled Donovan—“Thank God, all well … ‘Le Jour De Gloire, C’est Arrive [The day of glory has arrived].’” Donovan wired back, “You are a superb soldier.” Coon recalled that afterward, “We ate ham sandwiches and drank beer, and soon came this historic broadcast in several languages—I remember most clearly the German, Achtung, Achtung—and then, Franklin Roosevelt in his Grotonian French, making his announcement to the French people. Then the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner. Eddy and I, groggy with excitement and lack of sleep, went back to the office and made out a message to General Donovan. And then we slept.”
Operation Torch was a success, thanks in no small measure to Eddy’s agent organization, secret intelligence and campaign of subversion. An OSS assessment found that “… [I]ntelligence networks operated smoothly and completely in all strategically important parts of North Africa; the clandestine radio stations were able to funnel information efficiently; resistance groups were organized, ready to take over the government long enough to allow the landing forces in with a minimum of opposition; and special agents were ready to guide and advise the landing force commanders.” The effectiveness of the OSS support for the landing helped the organization gain support in Washington and dampen opposition to Donovan’s power. Two weeks after the landing, Donovan wrote the commandant of the Marine Corps recommending Eddy’s promotion. Holcomb responded, “I have thought for some time that he should be promoted. I will send his name in at once for spot promotion to the temporary rank of colonel.” Donovan also increased Eddy’s span of authority by designating him chief of the OSS in the Mediterranean Theater. His responsibilities encompassed secret intelligence, special operations, and counterespionage for Italy, southern France, Spain, Tunisia, and Spanish Morocco.
Special Assignment
In November 1943, the State Department wrote Donovan requesting the loan of “a senior officer expert in the Arabic language and political matters in the Arabic speaking countries of the Levant” and requested Eddy by name, saying, “[he] is ideally suited for the functions that the Department has in mind.” Donovan concurred, and in a letter to Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, confirmed that the OSS and the State Department would share Eddy’s intelligence reports while on this “special temporary duty.” Eddy’s official title was “Special Assistant to the American Minister” at the American Legation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The secretary of state gave him carte blanche to visit the Arab countries anytime he desired and assigned him to “establish contact with both official and nonofficial persons … acquaint yourself with local personalities, problems, currents of thought, wants, needs, and aspirations … with particular reference to American interests, friendly and hel
pful relations between the United States and the local governments and peoples, and the attitude of their governments and their respective nationals.…” The secretary’s instructions were amazingly broad and showed that Eddy was held in high regard in Washington.
Eight months later Eddy’s assignment was cut short. The U.S. representative to Saudi Arabia was recalled and who better to replace him than Bill Eddy. In August 1944, President Roosevelt confirmed Eddy as “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary” to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. FDR’s letter to King Ibn Saud stated, “My knowledge of Colonel William A. Eddy [is as] a distinguished citizen of high character and ability.” Eddy officially “resigned” from the OSS and was placed on the retired list of the Marine Corps to accept the assignment. At the time of his assignment, the U.S. was trying to establish a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia. In early February 1945, Eddy was notified that President Roosevelt wanted to meet with Ibn Saud in one week’s time, an unprecedented undertaking considering that the Arab leader was a semiliterate desert potentate who knew little about the world beyond his dealings with the British.
Eddy worked literally night and day on the trip arrangements. His plan called for the king and his entourage to travel overland from Riyadh to Jeddah and board the destroyer USS Murphy for the voyage up the Red Sea to Egypt where he would meet the president on the cruiser USS Quincy at the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal. “We were still at war with Germany, bombs were still being dropped on Cairo and on the Suez Canal, and a target more attractive to German bombers could hardly be imagined than a cruiser with the American President and the Arabian King on board,” Eddy recalled. At 1630, 12 February 1945, the Murphy weighed anchor with the king and a party of forty-eight, as well as live sheep to provide fresh mutton on board the overcrowded ship. For two-thirds of the party, there were no accommodations and they were forced to sleep wherever they could find space—gun turrets, on the deck, in the scuppers. A tent was erected on the forecastle for the king. Bosun’s Mate Thomas Hilliard recalled the Saudis provided twenty-five to thirty “great big rolls.” “We hand-sewed the canvas together with four-inch needles. I started in the morning and worked all night, and the next morning before the king arrived, we were just finishing up.” Eddy noted that, “At prayer times the ship’s navigator would give him the exact compass bearing for Mecca, which the King would verify with his astrologer. Facing the holy city he would lead the entire company of Arabs in their prayers.”
The trip took two nights and one day and from all accounts, it was a success. “The Arabs and the sailors fraternized without words with friendliness which was really astonishing,” Eddy said. The sailors showed the Arabs how they did their jobs and even permitted the Arabs to help them; in return the Arabs would permit the sailors to examine their garb and their daggers, and demonstrated by gestures how they are made and for what purposes.” At precisely 1000 the Murphy tied up alongside the Quincy. Sailors manned the rails as the king and his ministers crossed the gangplank to meet the president who was sitting in his wheelchair on the quarterdeck. Later, after lunch, Eddy joined the president and the king to interpret for “… five very intense hours.” Eddy said the two heads of state “got along famously together.” He described the president as being “in top form as a charming host, witty conversationalist, with the spark and light in his eyes and that gracious smile which won people over to him. … [H]owever, every now and then I would catch him off guard and see his face in repose. It was ashen in color; the lines were deep; the eyes would fade in helpless fatigue. … [E]ight weeks later he was dead.” Eddy remained ambassador, serving as a key figure in the development of the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, until resigning in July 1946.
The following month, Eddy was appointed as special assistant to the secretary of state for research and intelligence, becoming an instrumental figure in passing the National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA. During the late 1940s and 1950s, he was a consultant for the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) while living in Beirut, Lebanon. He died in 1962 and is buried in Sidon.
CHAPTER 2
Carrying the Torch
In September 1942, the London, England, and Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Marine detachments received a classified message ordering them to send men to the naval base at Rosneath, Scotland, to conduct marksmanship training. London sent fifteen enlisted men, under the command of 1st Lt. Fenton J. Mee, and Londonderry sent Lt. Col. Louis C. Plain, Capt. William E. Davis, and twenty-five enlisted men. Upon arrival at Rosneath, the Marines found out that they had been assigned to conduct a three-week weapons training course for U.S. Navy landing craft crewmen involved in a highly classified joint American-British amphibious landing in North Africa. The landing, codenamed Operation Torch, was slated for early November 1942, allowing just enough time to train the sailors in the rudiments of weapons handling and marksmanship. In typical Marine fashion the detachment quickly designed a training schedule, and set up rifle and machine gun ranges that safely and expeditiously passed the neophyte marksmen through the program. F. O. Cooke wrote in They Took Thirty Marines, “…[F]or the next three weeks [the detachment] put the bluejackets through an intensive series of secret maneuvers, equivalent to two months of advanced boot camp training.” At the end of the training period, the Marines were surprised to learn that they had been “volunteered” to join the operation.
OPERATION TORCH
Operation Torch, the joint American-British invasion of French North Africa, was designed to wrest control of North Africa—Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—from the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) and improve Allied naval control of the Mediterranean Sea. The operation was to be conducted by three amphibious task forces, which were assigned to seize the key installations and airfields at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers from the Vichy Regime, the French government which was collaborating with the Axis Powers. The Western Task Force—some 35,000 Americans of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division and the 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions—under the command of Maj. Gen. George Patton, was aimed at Casablanca. The Centre Task Force—18,500 men of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the 1st Ranger Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, and the 1st Armored Division—was tasked with Oran. The Eastern Task Force—20,000 men of the British 78th and the U.S. 34th Infantry Divisions, and two British Commandos (No.1 and No. 6 Commando)—was slated for Algiers. The operation was to commence on 8 November 1942.
In early October, Eisenhower decided to incorporate into the general plan a direct frontal attack on the ports of Algiers and Oran in an attempt to prevent the Vichy French from blocking the two vital ports and sabotaging shipping and harbor installations. The plan envisioned the Royal Navy forcing the entrance of both ports by two small warships and to discharge joint Allied military landing parties to secure the ports intact.
The three officers and thirty of the enlisted men were divided into six teams and assigned to six different ships (the other ten enlisted men returned to the Londonderry base). Their “commando” style missions involved a landing at the port city of Arzeu, Algeria, by three officers and twenty-four enlisted men, and a direct assault into the harbor of Oran, code named Operation Reservist, by the remaining six Marines.
Arzeu Landing
The landing at Arzeu was scheduled for 0100 on 8 November by two companies of the 1st Ranger Battalion. Their mission was to capture the town and the two coastal artillery batteries so the port could be used to land supplies and equipment to support the North African campaign. Lieutenant Colonel Plain and eleven men of the Londonderry detachment were assigned to support the U.S. Navy Advance Base Unit, which was to take over the port as soon as the Rangers had completed their mission. U.S. Army in World War II: The Technical Services noted that, “The first landing craft to go ashore at Arzeu were equipped with loudspeakers through which men especially chosen for their American-accented French were to shout, ‘Ne tirez pas! Vive la France!’ One of the combat team
s carried a mortar that would shoot an egg-shaped bomb about two hundred feet in the air, where it would burst into a magnificent pyrotechnic display of an American flag in color. There were four such sets of fireworks, each capable of flinging the star-spangled banner a hundred feet across the sky.”
Shortly after 0100, Plain and his eleven-man force boarded a British LCA assault boat, which they lightheartedly described as “about three times as big as a bathtub.” The heavily armed Marines were keyed up, expecting a fight to get ashore. As they approached the harbor, it was as quiet as a church. The navigation lights were still functioning, the floating barrier blocking the entrance had not been deployed: indications that the French were unaware of the operation. Plain’s boat sailed unopposed into the inner harbor and tied up alongside the Grand Quay. The Marines piled out of the landing craft and took up firing positions, somewhat dismayed by the lack of opposition. Private First Class Robert Marsh broke the tension by whispering, “Run for your lives girls. There is a man on the beach!”
