Excerpts from the book Below are several select excerpts from OPERATIVES, SPIES, & SABOTEURS. To view the excerpts, click on the link that describes the excerpt that you wish to read. When finished, click the Back to top link to return to the excerpts list. An Introduction to The Shadow War A Gestapo dragnet was closing in on the abandoned farmhouse in northern France where agent René Joyeuse was busy on his radio. Joyeuse was feverishly reporting the exact location of a German oil refinery, when his last sentence was cut short by the glare of a very powerful flashlight. "The house was surrounded. So I told the resistance fighters with me, 'We're surrounded, let's get out of here fast!' I was picking up my Colt .45 lying on the table when four German hand grenades were thrown into the room. "The blast from the grenades violently threw me on the ground twice. Miraculously, I wasn't wounded. "We dashed into the alley and reached a small service staircase in the back of the house. We succeeded in leaving the house at the moment that the Germans entered through the garden gate." "We were continuously attacked from ten meters behind by grenades and submachine-gun fire, and blazing torches lit up the night. I attempted to cover our retreat with my Colt but it jammed on the fourth shot. With Colt in hand we arrived in the front of a big wall separating the Secours National Park from a neighboring property next to the railroad tracks by a freight station. We all tried to scale this wall. I made two unsuccessful attempts and told the FFIs [resistance fighters] that I wasn't going to make it and would try the wall further down. They kept trying and I never saw them again." "I was able to scale the wall about twenty meters down. At this moment the Germans, who were posted on both sides of the block near the tracks, fired at me at a distance of ten meters and missed me. I came upon a patrol. Seeing a running man passing them, they fired on me with their machine guns at point blank range. They still missed me. I crossed all the tracks and came to another gate leading to a street on the side of the station. I climbed over. At this moment, two other Germans with machine guns woke up to what was going on and fired. Luckily, in climbing over the gate, I had fallen flat on my face behind a small cement parapet which caused all the bullets to ricochet. When their magazines were empty, I got up again and ran off in the direction of nearby houses. After about 200 or 300 meters of painful progress, since I was wounded in the right foot, and hand, the left kneecap, and numerous contusions, I got into a house where the gate was half open and met a women who, seeing that I was going to bring her a lot of grief, told me, 'Don't come in here!' 'Beat it!' 'Get out of here!' I threatened her with my pistol begging her to 'shut up!' and went up to the fourth floor by a back staircase. I dropped down to a door to another apartment, which seemed to belong to a woman who was an informer for the Gestapo! I stayed there, near the door, the whole time holding in one hand my Colt and in the other my potassium cyanide pill [L-Pill, or Lethal Pill]. I decided to use one or the other on myself if I were surrounded. The dragnet continued for me all night, all the nearby houses were searched, with the exception of the one I was in." Joyeuse, leader of a two-man spy team, narrowly escaped with his life. The resistance men were captured and summarily executed. Despite the disaster, the team continued to gather valuable intelligence on German troop movements. Additionally, the oil refinery and German rocket plant were later destroyed bywas later destroyed by Allied bombers. Joyeuse's mission was part of the "shadow war," one of the few remaining aspects of World War II that has not been fully appreciated. While the most visible part of World War II was fought by armies, navies and air forces, a largely invisible covert war was also raging throughout the globe. Saboteurs were demolishing railroad tunnels, spies were stealing secrets, and "operatives," uniformed soldiers trained to fight behind enemy lines, were parachuting into occupied countries to organize and lead resistance fighters. Mathematicians were breaking codes. Radio propagandists were demoralizing German soldiers and civilians, while professors were analyzing the German economy, to determine which were the crucial industries that should be targeted by Allied strategic bombers to cripple the German war effort. Back to top The Last Heroes Arguably, Wild Bill Donovan, OSS's wartime chief, was America's greatest director of intelligence. Donovan built OSS overnight, against a culture averse to spy craft, a virtual lack of signal intelligence information (ULTRA) and facing the Germans, who had a well-established intelligence and commando operations. Donovan considered the Germans "big league professionals" and America the "bush league club." He explained to the president that the only way to get America up to speed quickly against the Germans was to "play a bush league game, stealing the ball and killing the umpire." Donovan created a dynamic and groundbreaking organization that recruited the best men and women. His freewheeling, imaginative, bold agents created a record, though flawed at times, speaks for itself. The OSS was not affraid to take risks as Wild Bill would remind them, "if you fall, fall forward." The heroes of the OSS are all slowly fading away but their legacy remains. Back to top Training OSS Operatives were trained in the deadliest form of hand-to-hand combat ever devised, even to this day. Major Ewart Fairbairn, in his mid-fifties, yet one of the toughest men on the planet, was OSS's principle hand-to-hand instructor. "The knife is a silent, deadly weapon. It's great for sentries. Never mind the blood. Just take care of it quickly." The rules of fair play went out the window when an agent's life was in danger. "To break a bear hug go limp... grab his testicles. Ruin him..." "We were trained at an estate, outside Peterborough, at Milton Hall, a huge mansion, several thousand acres," recalled former Jed Joseph Dde Francescoiso. The Jeds were three-man special operations teams that dropped behind the lines to aid and train the resistance, forerunners to the spec ops teams used in Afghanistan and Iraq. "One test involved a group of five or six of us. They said you have a mission in occupied territory and you are going to destroy a radar station. You land a few miles from there. On your way you come across a civilian going to work, then they asked, 'What are you going to do about it?' One of the men in my group was a Catholic priest and he said, 'I'd kill him.' I said to myself, 'Jesus, this guy is pretty bloodthirsty.' I said I'd try to avoid him. They also said, 'On landing one of the men on your team breaks a leg.' The priest said, 'I'd kill him.' I said to him, 'You are a bloodthirsty bastard aren't you!'" Back to top Aunt Jemima OSS developed many weapons to fight the shadow war including a plastic explosive known as Aunt Jemima. Master demolitionist and saboteur Frank Gleason recalls working with the explosive flour that could turn an ordinary looking muffin into a hand grenade. "I knew Stanley Lovell, head of OSS R&D, quite well, and he introduced me to 'Aunt Jemima.' It was a plastic explosive that looked like baking flour. The concept of it was that you could easily transport it behind the lines. In China we made muffins from the stuff. I wanted to show Major Miles how you could bake Aunt Jemima into muffins, put a blasting cap into it and blow something up. It looks like regular flour but if you look carefully at a little piece you'd see it was gritty, unlike flour. It could make bread so I told this Chinese cook at Happy Valley to make some muffins out of the explosive flour. I said, 'Do not eat those muffins! They are poison. Do not eat them!' You should have seen them when they came out of the oven, they were gorgeous. The cook thought to himself, 'well those damn Americans want those muffins for themselves.' He violated what I told him and he ate one. He almost died." Back to top The Truth Drug The final Special Assistants Division within OSS created, among other things, "L", "K" and "TD" pills. "L" stood for lethal and could be administered in the event of capture for "self termination" to "preclude the possibility of revealing information under the strain of interrogation and torture." Biting down on the capsule and ingesting its contents caused instant death, otherwise the rubber-coated capsule could be swallowed and harmlessly passed through an agent's body. Tragically, a number of OSS agents were forced to use the deadly pill. "K" pills were liquid knock out drops, while "TD" (Truth Drug) tablets were an early form of truth serum derived from narcotics. OSS assembled a committee of prestigious psychologists and neurologists to develop the Truth Drug. After reviewing half a dozen drugs, the committee selected tetrahydrocannabinol acetate, a derivative of India hemp. In trials, cigarettes laced with the drug successfully loosened the tongues of test subjects. The most extraordinary experiment was conducted by a former New York City detective, Captain George White: "On May 27, 1943, I conducted a field test with cigarettes containing Loewe's acetate upon a subject who did not know he was the subject of experimentation and who, because of his position, had numerous secrets he was most anxious to conceal, the revelation of which might well result in his imprisonment." "This subject's alias is Augie Dallas alias Dell alias Little Augie. Subject is about 46 years of age, in good health, and is an occasional user of opium. He is known as a "pleasure" smoker, which means that while he is not addicted to the use of opium he might smoke once or twice during a month." "Subject [Little Augie] is a notorious New York gangster, and in his youth has served prison sentences for felonious assault and murder. In 1936 he was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Germany for a two-year period on narcotic law charges. For the past 20 years he has been one of the outstanding international narcotic dealers and smugglers and at one time operated an opium alkaloid factory in Turkey. He is a leader of the Italian underworld in the lower East side of New York City, where he resides and owns considerable property." "On several occasions I have arrested this subject but was never able to obtain sufficient evidence to warrant a conviction. "In connection with a plan to utilize members of New York Italian underground in SO and SI operations in Italy, I have had frequent occasion to talk intimately with the subject during the past six weeks. During the course of these conversations, we have also frequently discussed the narcotic situation in New York in general terms. Upon no occasion did the subject show willingness to provide any concrete information whatsoever which might be of value to the government as evidence against narcotic law violators. The subject prides himself on the fact that he has never been an informer and that he has been instrumental in killing some persons who have been informants. He is intimately acquainted with all the major criminals in the New York area. "On the day of the experiment, I requested subject to visit me at my apartment in New York on the pretext that I wanted to talk further about plans to utilize his services in Italy. I had previously prepared cigarettes of the same brand I knew him to smoke loaded with both .04 grams of Loewe's acetate and .02 grams of Loewe's acetate. Subject[Augie] entered the apartment at 2:00 p.m. and at that time stated that he could not remain long as he had a friend waiting for him in an automobile outside. After a short conversation regarding the pretext on which he had come to the apartment, I gave him a .04 cigarette at 2:10 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., having noticed no perceptible effects, I gave him a .02 cigarette. Shortly thereafter subject became obviously 'high' and extremely garrulous. He monopolized the conversation and was exceedingly friendly. I turned the conversation into 'Enforcement' channels, whereupon with no further encouragement subject divulged the following information." "A prominent enforcement official had been receiving a bribe over a period of years from subject and his associates." "The place formerly occupied by 'Lucky' Luciano in the American underworld has now been taken over by a 'combination' headed by: Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Longie Zwillman." Back to top Dangers Behind the Lines in Sicily "Disobeying the order, though wounded in several places, I rolled down the hillside chewing part of the communication code that I was carrying. While running away I exploded another land mine. I heard for the last time the colonel's voice as he was saying to the enemy that his group included Sergeant Buta and Sergeant Ribarich, thus promoting me under battle conditions. I barely had time to hide our civilian clothing and money. After about an hour, surrounded by enemy troops, and without possibility of escape, I gave myself up." "They took me to the Acquarossa farm where I found Buta on a stretcher. I did not see the colonel whom I believe they had immediately taken away after his capture. The two owners of the farm who had befriended us were also taken prisoner. They were summarily executed. "The two civilians and I were escorted to the headquarters of the 7th Company, 15th Panzer Regiment whose [Command Post] was located at Passo dei Tre. Interrogated by the [commanding officer] of the 7th Company and by an Italian officer, I made out that I did not understand either German or Italian and spoke only English. They took all my personal belongings including my 'dog tags,' but neglected to take my pen knife. They had found the transmitting key and the earpieces of the radio in the gully." "At approximately 9:00 P.M., Buta was brought in on a stretcher and the entire regiment began to retreat toward Randazzo. I heard the order to leave Buta on the road so he could be found by our troops. They ordered me to get into the car with the German lieutenant." "When the driver had disappeared and the only thing I could hear was the slight snoring of the lieutenant, I slowly felt for my knife, and when I was certain, with a rapid movement, I pressed the spring that released the blade and in a moment sliced his throat." "I jumped out of the car and fled as fast as my legs could carry me, despite the pain from my wounds, as I knew what it would mean if they recaptured me." Back to top Seduction, Drugs, and the Black Bag Job in Washington to Steal Ciphers A complex plan was devised that called for Brousse and Cynthia to befriend the embassy guard and convince him that they needed to use the embassy for a tryst. When he wasn't looking they would drug him and embassy guard dog. Next, an OSS safecracker would pick the lock on the naval attachés' room and crack the safe that contained the cipher books. (When a need arose, safecrackers and other criminals with a specific expertise were plucked from prisons by the OSS and given the opportunity to reduce or eliminate their sentences in return for their services.) The codebooks would be given to a team waiting outside the embassy, photographed, and returned before dawn and the arrival of Vichy personnel. Brousse beguiled the guard by pleading that using a hotel for meetings with Cynthia could arouse the suspicions of his wife, who might call him while he was supposedly "working" late at night. The watchman agreed to make the embassy available to the couple. On June 19, 1942, Cynthia and Brousse made their first attempt to steal the ciphers. The couple swaggered into the embassy with several bottles of champagne. Telling the guard that it was their first anniversary, they offered him a glass of bubbly, which he gladly accepted. Cynthia slipped Nembutal, a sleep-inducing barbiturate, into his second glass. Another dose went into the guard dog's water bowl. Within minutes both canine and watchman were out cold. Next, Cynthia opened the front door, and gave a prearranged signal. The "Georgia Cracker," a safecracker working for the OSS, sauntered through the front door. The Cracker easily picked the lock on the naval attaché's office door and went to work on the safe containing the bBible-sized cipher books. At around 4:00 a.m., he solved the combination and pulled out the books. But it was too late to copy the books; within two hours Embassy personnel would be arriving for work. Reluctantly, Betty placed the ciphers back into the safe, and the group left the embassy before guard or hound awoke. A few nights later Cynthia and Brousse returned to the embassy and the unsuspecting watchman allowed them once again to use the embassy (drugging the guard again would have been too risky). After waiting about an hour, Cynthia picked the lock on naval attaché's door and opened a window for the safecracker to enter. Sensing the guard would return to investigate their activities, she stripped completely naked except for her pearl necklace and high-heels and hissed at Charles to undress as she started to kiss him. Suddenly the door swung open, and the guard's flashlight shone upon the naked lovers. Sheepishly, the watchman stammered, "I beg your pardon a thousand times madame. I thought…" and he closed the door. As the door closed, the Georgia Cracker scrambled up a wooden ladder and climbed through the open window. Deftly his fingers turned the tumblers and opened the safe. The agents handed the cipher books to a confederate waiting in the alley below the window, who whisked them away to a waiting OSS team. Several hundred pages were photographed and the books safely returned before dawn. Back to top Unsung heroes "A violent blow broke two of my teeth and I was once again kicked to the ground. My mouth was full of blood and I was in pain. I was once again asked to reveal my identity and I kept on denying the name Frascati. They changed the system and I was made to lie down on a bench while one of the men took hold of a pick ax which was lying around. For three hours they held me there, while I endured the most violent lashing with this instrument. One blow cut my scalp open and I was drenched with blood. I thought they were going to kill me and I waited for the moment, saying to myself they could do anything they want, but they could not force me to talk. Arneux, who knew nothing, was beaten as hard as I was regardless of his age, but not one word escaped his lips. We were placed against the wall and threatened with being shot, at which time we decided that if we had to die we would die with courage." This was the nightmarish story of OSS agent Walter Lanz, who was captured by the Gestapo before he could complete his mission in southern France. Lanz endured unbelievable suffering, first in a French prison at the hands of Gestapo torturers, and later at the infamous Dachau concentration camp: "We were loaded into freight cars, 100 men to a car. It was impossible to sit down… A hundred men were thus forced to live in a freight car where the amount of air was half that of normal conditions… Within a few hours the air was unbreatheable… The terrible thirst, heat and un-breatheable air, combined with the mental state of the prisoners and the sense of atrocities just beginning, resulted in general tumult. The strongest knocked down the weakest, who fell and were trampled on by the others. The cries of those in agony were greeted with volleys of machine gun fire. The slaughter kept up all night; in certain cars there were sixty, seventy, and in one car ninety-seven, deaths out of a hundred. The madness took hold of everyone. The suffocating air and heat hastened the decomposition of the bodies. It was almost impossible to breathe. The shrieking of the survivors and the odor emanating from the freight cars finally induced the commander of the convoy to open the doors, but there were already 892 victims… "We arrived at Dachau after a ride which lasted three days and were forced to walk through the town itself, surrounded by the hostility of the people. The children even shook their fists in our faces and the women laughed and pointed at us. The SS amused themselves and the crowd by throwing their dogs upon us… We were nothing but criminals who did not want to be slaves of this "great" nation… "Our heads were then shaved as well as the other hairy parts of the body and testicles painted with a caustic solution which produced painful burns among a great many. "The construction of the camp at Dachau used up thousands of human lives… One of the favorite distractions of the SS consisted of throwing a Jewish or Communist prisoner into the concrete mixers while he was still living. The man was crushed to death and was poured out with the concrete. The gas chamber was also working and yielded its share of dead. The survivors of this outrage became, in large majority, the unconscious auxiliaries of the tormentors." Miraculously, Lanz survived Dachau and was liberated by the Seventh Army at the end of the war. Back to top