Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line

by James V Milano

  The candidate was Major Samuel Morivitz, who had served in the U.S. Army in France and was now back in Europe on a second tour of duty. During the war, he had served as a POW interrogator because of his proficiency with languages. He had become commander of an MIS detachment and had become fascinated with the Jewish underground in Europe. He volunteered to go down the railroad himself, as a refugee, and to report back once he had safely reached Palestine.

  Milano was doubtful at first: there was no call for information on the underground railroad from headquarters in Vienna, let alone the Pentagon. Intelligence was directed at the Soviet Union and its satellites, not Palestine. Gestaldo countered that all information was useful and that the Jewish organizations were an important part of the secret life of the country. Milano finally agreed that Morivitz should be allowed to try his luck. He would be on his own during most of the time, but he was given the address of the CIC office in Trieste so that he could check in when he reached that city.

  A few months later, Milano received a phone call from General Hickey, chief of staff to the U.S. Command in Vienna. The call was over the open telephone line, which passed through the Soviet zone and was tapped continuously. Hickey gave a cryptic order that Milano was to proceed to Vienna immediately and be in his office there the next day. There would be someone to see him, and he need not report to the general afterward. This was all a little unusual, but as a good soldier Milano packed his bag and took the next train to the capital. As usual, he checked into the Regina Hotel and, after breakfast the next day, went to the office he kept in army headquarters.

  Punctually at half past eight, there was a knock on his door. The man who came in was dressed in sports clothes and a camel's-hair jacket, not at all the sort of attire usually worn by civilian personnel attached to army headquarters. He was friendly, cheerful, and wholly relaxed, but he was clearly a military man. He introduced himself as a recently retired colonel in the U.S. Army, a graduate of West Point, and he announced that he had resigned his commission in order to go to Palestine, to offer his services to the Jewish army there. The British had announced, in February 1947, that they would withdraw from Palestine in fifteen months, and it was obvious that there would be immediate war between the new state of Israel and the Arabs.

  "General Hickey is an old friend," he said, "and he suggested that I should talk to you. I appreciate your position and don't expect you to give me any top classified information, but I'd be grateful for anything you could tell me concerning Jewish organizations and operations in Austria and Palestine."

  The colonel came with the explicit recommendation of Milano's boss, so he briefed him for an hour on everything he knew about Jewish activities in Austria and the underground railroad to Palestine. He told him of the smuggled arms from Czechoslovakia that were being shipped through Austria to Trieste and Salonika, the clandestine training provided by some American officers for Jewish recruits in the camps who were destined for the Haganah, and the steady movement of refugees from the camps and across the borders to the ports where they could take ship for Palestine. The colonel listened intently, asked many questions, and, when Milano had finished, thanked him effusively.

  "I've given up my career in the U.S. Army in order to help the Jews establish their own state in Palestine, and what you have told me will be a great help. Israel's survival will depend on the number and quality of people coming in and the arms and munitions they can get. Now I have a much better understanding of what I can expect when I get there. I very much appreciate what you have done to help in the past. I hope the Operations Branch will do nothing in the future to interfere with Jewish efforts to help our people in Palestine."

  Milano assured him that the policy of the blind eye would be continued unless orders came from Washington. Then the colonel left. Much later, Milano heard that he had enlisted with the Haganah, which became the State of Israel's army at the moment of independence, on May 15, 1948. He played a leading role in the War of Independence, which lasted until 1949, and was killed in action shortly before it ended.

  He was not the only military officer who went from Austria to Palestine. Milano lost one of his defectors from the Soviet Union that way. He was a Russian Jew, code-named Norman, a captain in the Red Army and an expert in the Soviet Ordnance Corps. He was a particularly valuable recruit because he could provide precise and detailed information on Soviet munitions and supplies. The Pentagon had been so pleased with the initial reports of his interrogation that it had sent over two experts from Washington to question him further. His information had filled in many gaps in the American knowledge of Soviet military strengths-and weaknesses. When the interrogations were finished, Norman was scheduled for the next Rat Line shipment. He was prepared, with three others, for a new life in Uruguay-and then disappeared.

  Milano convened a meeting of the Rat Line support group to discover what had become of the missing man. A general alert had gone out, for fear that he had been kidnapped by the KGB. That was the constant terror of all the deserters, and also of the CIC and the Rat Line group. Paul Lyon was put in charge of the investigation, and after two weeks' inquiries was able to report that there was no evidence of a Soviet infiltration into the Rat Line operation. On the other hand, he strongly suspected that Norman had joined the Haganah underground railroad and was already on his way to Palestine.

  Norman had told his interrogators that he had encountered a great deal of anti-Semitism in Russia as a young man, both in civilian life and in the army. He was proud to be Jewish and was not deceived by the Soviet boasts that anti-Semitism was a bourgeois disorder that had been abolished by the October Revolution. Hitler had called the Jews subhuman. Stalin called them "rootless cosmopolitans," and although there were no gas chambers for Jews in the USSR, they were treated far worse than the other persecuted citizens of that vast tyranny. So Norman had seized his moment, when he was posted to a Soviet unit in Austria, to slip over the border into the American zone and turn himself in to the U.S. Army. The CIC had welcomed him with open arms, and he had immediately been spirited away to a safe house in Badgastein. He had been kept there for a month for debriefing and preparation for his trip down the Rat Line, and the agents in charge of his case had found him a job in a local garage to try out his abilities as a mechanic. He had done very well.

  Badgastein was the site of one of the main Jewish DP camps, and Norman had soon met the refugees. Lyon believed that Norman had been found by Haganah agents, who had discovered that he was an arms expert and had offered him asylum in Palestine and an opportunity to put his specialized knowledge to work for the Jews. All the signs were that he had accepted and had been sent down the underground railroad. The liaison officers with the Brycha were asked to inquire if anything was known of Norman, and, although that discreet Jewish organization firmly denied knowing anything about him, it also told the Americans that it was quite sure that no harm had befallen him and that they should stop worrying. Lyon took this as proof that Norman had joined the Haganah. The Brycha would never admit it, as a matter of principle, but it knew perfectly well how much it owed to American tact in allowing it to operate the underground railroad in the American zone, almost openly. The least it could do was to drop an unmistakable hint that Norman was in safe hands.

  Some weeks later, Milano heard from Major Sam Morivitz, who had succeeded in infiltrating the underground railroad in Austria and had traveled to Palestine and back. It was a remarkable story, and Milano went to Vienna to hear it in person.

  "The trip went brilliantly from beginning to end," Morivitz told him. "There was never any doubt that there had been a great deal of careful and precise planning. The whole machine ran like clockwork: they've been doing it for months, and they've got it down to an art.

  "To start with, I got myself some old clothes in town, but I had a cobbler build a secret compartment into the heel of one of my boots. I hid my Army ID and some dollars in it. Then I turned myself into the DP camp at Badgastein. I told the authorities th
ere that I came from Lesko, in southern Poland. It's near the Czech border. That's where my mother comes from, so if anyone questioned me, I could put up a good case for myself. Anyway, I told the camp authorities that I'd been drafted into a work camp in Germany and managed to survive. After the war, I'd worked my way south to Austria. The camps are full of people from all over the place, so the story was perfectly believable.

  "Besides, I said I had worked for an American concern in Linz, and I gave them the name. It was a government job, of course, and I'd briefed the officer in charge in case anyone came asking about me. But no one ever did.

  "Anyway, in Badgastein, I soon fell in with the Zionists. They were only too happy to send me to Palestine. In fact, I was on my way within a week of getting there. Eight of us were packed into a small truck and driven along all sorts of back roads into the British zone. There was an Austrian policeman at the crossing point, and it must have been a regular thing: he had a couple of words with our driver and waved us straight through.

  "The truck took us down to the Italian frontier. It was evening by then, and we slipped around the British sentries-and then turned around and came straight back. We'd been told to let ourselves be caught and tell the British that we had come across from Italy, and were trying to get back to our homes in Poland. It worked like a dream.

  "We made a lot of noise as we came up to the British border post, and a couple of sentries grabbed us and marched us into a guardhouse. We told our story, and they believed it. It was astonishing. Some junior officer turned us around and marched us into Italy and told us never to come back. So we didn't. We hiked a couple of miles down the road, and there was another truck waiting for us, which took us to Udine. We were put up in a house there, and the next day another truck took us down to Trieste.

  "We got there after dark. The driver sure knew his way: he slipped us straight into the docks without being stopped once and dropped us off at a warehouse. The whole back end had been converted to a dormitory. There were bunks, tables, showers, a kitchen and plenty to eat, everything we needed. There were caretakers to cook for us and to keep the place clean. It was like a well-run, cheap hotel.

  "The next night, we walked out the front of the warehouse and straight aboard a freighter that was waiting for us. It had a great deal of deck cargo, and up at the bow there was a bunkhouse hidden away behind the anchor chain locker. It had bunks for thirty-five or forty people. When we sailed, I counted, and there were thirty-eight people altogether, all bound for Palestine.

  "Once we were at sea we were allowed on deck, and we had a very enjoyable and uneventful cruise down the Adriatic, around Greece, and then up the Aegean to Salonika. When we got there, everything was ready for us. There was another converted warehouse, where we stayed. There were no restrictions: we could move around the port as much as we liked. They told us that we would be shipped to Palestine in a smaller boat, and would be landed over an open beach, by life raft.

  "That's exactly what happened. We were put on a small freighter. It was a lot less comfortable than the one that brought us from Trieste. We had to sleep on deck, but the trip just lasted two days and then we were put ashore in the middle of the night somewhere north of Tel Aviv. I don't know where the British were. We saw neither hide nor hair of them.

  "There were a couple of trucks waiting for us, and we were taken into the city. I suppose the other guys went off to join the army or look for jobs. I just dropped out. I went in to the American Consulate and produced my ID. I found a State Department official, told him I'd been on a sensitive intelligence operation and needed to get back to Austria. I gave him Ed's name and address in case he wanted to check up on me. I don't know if he did.

  "Anyway, he got me a lift to Famagusta, in Cyprus, on a British plane. I got another lift from there to Foggia, in Italy, and took the train to Vienna. I have to tell you that the Jews have a much better system than the Italian and Austrian railroads.

  "It was an eye-opener. It's marvelous just how well organized and well planned the whole system is. There's a huge investment in transportation, ships, trucks, warehouses, and people along the way. I just saw the movement of people. I guess the system for getting supplies to Palestine is just as efficient. All in all, I'm proud of the whole setup, as a Jew. They've done it brilliantly."

  Milano had listened intently to the whole story. "I must admit that's a major league rat line you've been through. It makes ours look like a peanut operation. Anyway, you've done really well. Congratulations. I don't think we'll need a written report, but I'll make an oral report to Colonel Bixell. If he wants a written report, I'll get back to you."

  The colonel was as interested in the story as Milano himself had been. He was again amazed at the freedom with which his operations chief interpreted his orders-and once again refrained from reining him in. As for Morivitz, he returned to duty.

  The Special Intelligence Section was manned by a group of young Americans who had fought the war together and who were experienced in all the subtleties of dealing with the army bureaucracy as well as with spies, defectors, and enemy agents. Then they received an addition. Lieutenant Henry Butcher, a spit-and-polish, by-therules, Regular Army, West Point man, was foisted on Milano by the American High Command in Austria: the commanding general was an old friend of the lieutenant's father, another West Pointer. Butcher was too young to have served in the war and was astonished and appalled at the lax ways of his new outfit. He always wore his regulation uniform until Milano called him in, in exasperation, and ordered him to wear civilian clothing. He called superior officers "sir," and it pained him greatly to see his new colleagues' irreverence for army rules and regulations. He also pained his new unit, which had very little time for such pedantry. All the same, they set him to work, introducing him to what they considered the real world of postwar Europe, with its desperation, corruption, and deceit. He found it all very difficult.

  He was, however, welcomed by at least some of his new colleagues: Milano's secretary, Pat Walden, popped her head around his door just after Butcher arrived and said, "Gee, boss, thanks for ordering a -cute one!"

  Milano had to lay down the law: "Let's get one thing straight, Pat. The lieutenant's off limits. He's forbidden fruit, and don't you forget it."

  Pat was seriously miffed. "Well!" she replied huffily. "Who put a burr under your saddle this morning?"

  Butcher had joined the unit a few days before the monthly crap game. This was a cherished ritual that had been developed by the MIS in Italy out of the boredom and frustrations of wartime and had been carried over into peacetime operations in Austria. It was always held in Milano's room, and between ten and twenty people played, with a complete disregard for rank and privilege. The hotel served the food, and Dominic Del Greco provided drink from his copious stores.

  Butcher was invited as a matter of course. He was volunteered to serve bar, because Del Greco was going to be late. The head of French Intelligence in Vienna had called and asked him to find a room for a French lieutenant on his staff who had to pass through Salzburg and would arrive that evening. Del Greco, who was perfectly ready to oblige, booked a room in the hotel and went down to the station to collect the visitor.

  The crap game began punctually at 7:00 P.M., and Butcher passed the drinks around while observing the general informality of the occasion with ill-concealed disapproval. Then Del Greco arrived, bringing the French officer with him. Her name was Maxine Prudent, and she was very pretty. She said she was just dropping by to thank Major Milano for allowing her to stay in the mess, but everyone there, of course, insisted that she stay. She very sweetly agreed, and the assembled Americans fell over themselves offering her drinks, food, and a place in the game. She decided, however, that she preferred to watch the men rolling the dice and volunteered to help Lieutenant Butcher man the bar.

  As the evening wore on, it seemed to some of them that Henry and Maxine were striking it off well. Henry explained the niceties of the game, and Maxine showed intense inter
est in his every word. All good things come to an end, however, and about midnight it was time for winners and losers to settle their accounts. Milano, ever the thoughtful commanding officer, suggested that Butcher might care to take Madamoiselle Prudent back to her hotel.

  He replied that he would be delighted but added, "You understand, Maxine, that I'll have to leave you at the desk. Men are not allowed into women's billets above the ground floor."

  Everyone in the room heard him, and everyone was equally astonished. Maxine instantly seized on the situation. "My dear lieutenant," she replied, "if you were in the French Army and were seen coming out of my room in the morning, you would undoubtedly be awarded the Croix de Guerre. Thank you for your kind offer. I think I can find my own way home." She thanked Milano and Del Greco and everyone in the room in a sultry, husky voice and left. Butcher had the wit to be embarrassed at his own ineptitude and got out as best he could, leaving his comrades to marvel at his stupidity.