01/06/08

Military June 1943-March 1946)

My military career was enjoyable, educational, challenging, and an important factor in shaping my character. That is not to say that it was entirely without hardship and frustration. It is also a great source of satisfaction to have avenged the murder of many family members by having played an important role in defeating the Third Reich as a member of the intelligence team that planned and executed the systematic destruction of the nazi war industry. . I was also selected to interrogate certain generals to collect evidence for the Nuremberg war crime trials, and I helped convict two of them who ordered the bombing of Holland after the Dutch surrender. I was also instrumental in bringing the leading German scientists and engineers to our country before the Russians could capture them . I feel that I contributed significantly to making the world safer.

I was drafted in June 1943, sent to the classification center at Harrisburg. They ignored my language skills and my request for air force assignment, and sent me to the infantry basic training camp at Fort Wheeler, Georgia, where I spent a very hot summer. I was naturalized in a federal court in Macon Georgia, along with about fifty other soldiers, most of them refugees from Nazi invasions. I was honorably discharged from the Military Intelligence Service in March 1946 with the rank of staff sergeant.

Infantry basic involved three or four months of calisthenics, 20 mile forced marches, infiltration courses (crawling through mud, barbed wire, brambles under live machine gun fire eighteen inches above ground, with grenades, artillery rounds anti-personnel mines, and tear gas exploding all around, with a full pack, munitions belt, gas mask , bayonet, hand grenades and rifle, hand-to-hand combat, and countless days of target practice using M-1 (Garand) rifles, carbines, pistols, light and heavy, 30 and 50 caliber machine guns, assault rifles. We used targets at 100 and 300 yards, and aerial windsocks towed behind Cessna 119 artillery observer planes. We also had parachute training using towers at nearby Fort Benning, where our daughter Cornelia did her prarachute training many years later.

I learned to understand and appreciate comrades from every region and every walk of life, men I would never have met otherwise. I also discovered my strengths. I was tougher than most when it came to forced marches and push-ups, and better than most when it came to marksmanship. I earned one of the two highest medals for every weapon; expert or sharpshooter. I never panicked on jump towers or infiltration courses. It was not uncommon to see a soldier panic and be carried away on a stretcher. There was always a chaplain and an ambulance at infiltration courses. I was not good at throwing hand grenades, never having played baseball. But I could field-strip and re-assemble my rifle while blindfolded faster than most. I loved baked beans (and still do) and was the Mess Sergeant’s favorite kp helper. Alec Templeton, the blind pianist, performed for us one day, and I am awed at his courage and skill to this day.

After infantry basic in fall 1943 I was assigned to the newly formed ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program), with a parallel Navy program called V-12 and sent first to Stetson University and then to Rollins College in Florida for intensive college level language training in French, which I already spoke fluently. Rollins is an upscale co-ed college on a lake and paradise compared to Fort Wheeler. We were heroes to the girls and thoroughly spoiled. I had lots of dates, mostly canoeing and swimming.

After two or three months at Rollins I was sent to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where I spent most of the winter studying modern history and international politics and diplomacy in preparation for the intelligence service.. Kenyon is one of the first land grant colleges, and specializes in training students for diplomatic service with the state department. President Rutherford B. Hayes went to Kenyon, and his dorm room was the one directly above mine, with an appropriate brass plaque on the door. We had no Christmas leave, so father came to spend a few days with me. I remember introducing him to the organist with whom I had made friends, and playing the organ. I also remember horse-drawn sleigh rides in bright moonlight with some of the co-eds. Kenyon has its own airport and offered flight training. There is also a very active equestrian department to teach a skill important for diplomats.

In early spring 1944 the Army and Navy decided to terminate their training programs and I was assigned to active duty with the 220^th Armored Engineer Battalion of the 20^th Armored Division, which was then on maneuvers with the 14^th Armored Division near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Our mission was to prepare for the invasion of Europe, more specifically to move from the Italian coast (the famous Anzio beachhead) across France to attack the Siegfried Line as part of Patton’s Seventh Army. I was assigned to the Battalion intelligence section, commanded by a Captain Barbarossa, a civil engineer and MIT alumnus with whom I got along very well. I was promoted to staff sergeant, and I had my own jeep and did forward reconnaissance, liaison, and demolition work. We were testing and learning to use all of the newest high-tech weapons.

Sherman tanks with gyro-stabilized 105 mm rifles, that could fire while moving.

The "preacher", a 155mm rifle mounted on a bare M-7 (Sherman) tank chassis, which could outrange the 88 mm and 105mm rifles on German tanks.

Shaped satchel charges (munroe charges) that could blow a neat hole through the 2 inch thick steel hatch of a pillbox.

Jellied gasoline flame throwers that could melt through a steel hatch in seconds.

The snake, a 600 foot long W-profile steel snake  (two highway barriers bolted together to form two explosive-filled pockets between them) which a tank could push through a dragon-tooth field and blow up to clear a path wide enough for a tank.

The British Bailey steel truss bridge and the American M-10 Pneumatic Pontoon bridge, as well as the Brockway bridge-building truck.

And a new US artillery barrage tactic known as "TOT" (time-on-target), which enabled all of the artillery battalions of our two divisions to maintain a continuous barrage, guided by forward observers who gave fire corrections to each gun on the basis of a precise fire-time schedule. It had been used successfully against general Rommel’s army in Africa.

We were joined by members of the tenth mountain division, who trained for the Anzio beachhead attack, and brought the new 4.2 inch chemical mortar that could be broken down to be backpacked by three mountain climbers. I met some very tough characters.

Groups of generals from the Pentagon visited frequently to observe these new weapons and tactics used against bunkers and tank obstacles in the dummy Siegfried line. I was often assigned to drive visiting generals to the front lines. Eisenhower visited several times, always wearing his friendly smile. Patton also came.

I had a chance to drive tanks and learned to use use high-tech weapons like jellied gasoline flame throwers and shaped charges.

After several months of maneuvers our two divisions embarked for Europe, but captain Barbarossa recommended me for officer candidate school and I was sent to Corps of Engineer headquarters at Fort Belvoir,  south of Washington.

I learned surveying, road building, demolition, bridge building, and my battalion command assignment was the construction of a timber trestle bridge across a 300 foot wide river strong enough to carry a Sherman M-7 main battle tank (35 tons) and using only timber from the surrounding forest. I befriended the sergeant in charge of the motor pool, and spent weekends getting a license to drive virtually all vehicles including graders, bulldozers and tanks. I earned good grades in everything but leadership, and was "washed back" for more training with the next cycle. A seventeen year old "ninety day wonder" was not considered fit to command an engineer company,  The Corps feels that an engineer lieutenant is worth at least as much as a colonel in any other branch. I didn’t think I had much chance for a commission in The Corps.

While waiting for assignment to the next cycle, I had myself assigned to the motor pool, and drove staff cars, busses and ambulances. One day I was assigned to drive some officers to the Pentagon. While waiting I decided to try to get into the intelligence service. I managed to talk my way into the innermost ring of the Pentagon, to the office of general Bissel, head of G-2. The general emerged just in time to hear my history and my reasons for wanting to join G-2, and when I was about to be shown the door, he intervened. "How did you manage to get to this office?" He asked. It was the office of the chiefs of staff. . Then he said "This is the kind of man we want in G-2. assign him to Ritchie!" My orders were in Fort Belvoir by the time I got back.

Fort Meade, also known as Fort  Ritchie, in the Blue Ridge Mountains  of Maryland was the Military Intelligence Training Center   for training personnel for G-2, and the "OSS", the "Office of Strategic Services", the joint special forces branch, predecessor of the CIA.

It was tough training. Calisthenics, Obstacle courses, parachute training, tumbling, night orienteering, hand-to-hand combat, and familiarization with all weapons, German and Japanese, including assault rifles and bazookas and he famous German "burp-gun". We also learned to read stereoscopic aerial reconnaissance photographs to detect objects such as camouflaged gun emplacements and docks. In the process I managed to impair my accommodation-convergence ratio by learning to diverge my eyes to view stereo-pairs without using a prismatic stereoscope, a cool skill among intelligence people. After the war I suffered double-vision and had to spend several months exercising with stereoscopes to restore my accommodation-convergence ratio.

At the end of my training  cycle in July 1945  I was among a very small group of German-speaking graduates selected for a secret assignment. Arno Mayer, a refugee from Luxembourg, and Leslie Wilson, a language student from Texas, were among us. We were taken in unmarked cars to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s plantation south of the capital, and told that our official address would be "Post Office Box 1142, Arlington, Virginia".  We were not to disclose our actual location or mission.

The "plantation was part of  Fort Hunt, the   fortification against attack from the Potomac, with a row of gun emplacements and underground ammunition bunkers.   In the woods surrounding the mansion, were two fenced stockades  for enlisted prisoners  and  a number of cabins where German generals and other key prisoners were housed and interrogated.  We were issued new officer’s uniforms without branch or rank insignia and assigned rooms in the bachelor officer quarters. There was a very plush officer club complete with swimming pool and golf course.  There was also a secret underground building which housed offices, conference rooms, and a facility with many cubbies  occupied by agents who recorded all conversations taking place in all prison enclosures and cabins. They used red vinyl records; magnetic tape hadn’t been invented yet. We answered directly to General Bissel, head of G-2 (Intelligence) in the innermost ring of the Pentagon.

At the time our campaign against General Rommel’s Africa Corps was nearing a victorious conclusion, and we were beginning to plan the invasion of Europe. US  did most of the daytime bombing of Germany, and the British did most of the night-time bombing. Our prime mission was to assess the results from daily aerial photos and talks with mission pilots, and by the interrogation of critical prisoners and professional spies. We were to plan and guide the strategic destruction of the German war industry by what today would be called "surgical strikes".

My first personal "customer" was a Colonel Rudolf Hesse, a Prussian faculty member of the German War College and prime strategy advisor to Hitler. He worshiped Klausewitz (who wrote the bible on warfare) and actually loathed Hitler for having betrayed the Wehrmacht by ignoring competent advice (such as his own). He described Hitler’s habit of turning his back on the meeting and drumming on a window as long as a speaker Hitler didn’t want to hear spoke. Hesse wanted to play chess every time I visited him in his cabin, and he was very talkative over the chess board. He usually won, and hated the few times he lost. We had a very amusing conversation one day: Hesse told of having enjoyed a wonderful vacation spot in my home country of Austria, so remote that I certainly would never have heard of it. It was a mountain lake at a place called "Turach Plateau", reachable only by driving up the steepest road in Austria, the "Packstrasse", a 50 mile dirt road on which the Austrian army tested their famous Saurer mountain trucks. It wasn’t even a village. Only two small huts for mountaineers. I replied: " and which hut did you stay in? The Sieglerhof or the Seehotel Turach? (Father had taken us there for a couple of weeks one summer.)

Hesse was speechless, and convinced ever afterwards that American intelligence had a dossier on every detail of his entire life. Very useful for my interrogations.

Rolf Arndt was a charming James Bond type character Arno and I befriended. He had been manager of a German bank branch in Africa and after his wife was killed he became a professional two-way spy, shuttling back and forth between Germany and P O Box 1142. We were never quite sure Rolf would return, but he always did, usually with prize inside information. His sympathy was clearly with the allies, and he survived by sharp wits and good contacts, as well as good luck. He was a master interrogator. I saw him get valuable and true information from  a hard core Nazi Waffen-SS officer none of us Americans could interrogate, by threats but never torture.  We strictly obeyed all provisions of the Geneva, Helsinki and The Hague conventions. All prisoners received the same food, accommodations and health care as American soldiers. I remember sitting in the waiting room at Fort Devens while some of them sat in the dentist chair. 

A memorable event was the surrender of Untersee Boot - 234 U-Boot 234 off Portsmouth NH,  which made a huge media splash at the time, although it was highly classified. The war was drawing to a close and Hitler had personally dispatched this submarine to take several key people and about 200 tons of technical secrets to Japan to preserve them. These included three complete Messerschmitt airplanes, a Henschel glide-bomb Junkers jet engines, and ten canisters containing 560 kg of uraniumn oxide (U235), rocket fuel formulas, two complete V-1 rockets, complete drawings for rockets, destroyers, aircraft factories, and diplomatic mail. all in the custody of a four-star air force general, General der Flieger Ulrich Kessler, a Hollywood model Prussian officer.

If U-234 had made it to Japan,  our pilots would have been fighting Kamikaze pilots flying V-1 rockets instead of propeller planes. Two Japanese  naval officers  abord  U-234 committed hari-kari at sea rather than surrender to America, with whom hey were still at war.  

As they neared the American coast, Kessler commanded the submarine captain Heinz  Fehler, to head for Argentina, where he planned to sit out the rest of the war like many renegades. He had multiple sealed crates of valuables to finance his retirement, including jewelry, Leica cameras, fur coats, silverware, objets d’art and some gold ingots.

The captain had his own agenda. He planned to surrender to the Americans and enjoy life as a prisoner of war. He ignored Kessler’s orders and threats. The loyal Nazi crew would have killed them both, had they known their intentions. One morning Kessler woke up and smelled fresh air. They never surfaced in daylight. Kessler demanded an explanation. The captain informed him that they had surfaced off Portsmouth NH  and surrendered to the US Coast Guard..

When the Coast Guard arrived, Kessler greeted them with due military protocol from the sail (the conning tower deck), wearing his white tropical uniform and his monocle. By the time we arrived from Alexandria the submarine was being unloaded at the dock and the crew of about seventeen was under guard in a coast guard bus. Apparently they had threatened or actually tried to kill the two officers, who were glaring at each other in a staff car. Our procession, including a truck with Kessler’s crates, arrived at P O Box 1142 at about dinner time. It took all night to translate and inventory all the papers and belongings.

The U-boat captain was very helpful, and told us where his batteries were manufactured. Siemens-Schuckert near Bremerhaven. The plant was duly bombed. I got very friendly with Heinz Fehler because both of us shared an interest in submarine technology and the first name of Heinz. He was a career naval officer and had no love for the Nazis,  like most military officers.  

Kessler turned out to be the General who commanded the bombing of Rotterdam after the Dutch surrender, and he was assigned to my group of "customers" when we were collecting evidence for the Nuremberg war crime trials after the war ended. Kessler blamed the crime on a subordinate three star General named Aschenbrenner. We had Aschenbrenner sent, and I interrogated him separately. Of course he blamed Kessler. After several weeks I informed Kessler that a suitable officer of general rank would be sharing his cabin. Aschenbrenner was as easygoing and amiable as Kessler was stiff and arrogant. He simply refused to be intimidated by his former commander, and made it clear in all of the recorded arguments that there was enough blame for both of them. And both of them did ultimately go to jail for life. In 2000 a book about U-234 was published and reviewed on the internet which gives more details and background information about U-234.

Joseph Scalia: Germany’s Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press , 2000. 296pages; $29.95.  Also available from Amazon; For a review, see www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviews54.htm

At this time it was becoming clear that there were hundreds of German scientists and engineers, including Wernher von Braun’s rocket team at Peenemünde, who had valuable technical information, and that the British and the Russians were racing each other to collect as many of them as fast as they could. General Bissel tried frantically to get permission from the State Department to bring some of them here, but to no avail. It is not legally possible to import enemy aliens in time of war, and the "duration" had not ended officially. President Roosevelt was ill and could not be reached to intervene.

One day General Bissel briefed us on his failed attempts and told us that he considered it his obligation to risk jail if this was in the interest of our country, just as risking his life on the battlefield would have been, and that he had decided to import German engineers illegally. And thus originated "project paperclip", which is described accurately and in great detail in James Michener’s book "Space", even though the book pretends to be a novel.

An amusing event: Leslie Wilson returned from an evening in Washington and reported having hitched a ride with Mrs Mamie Eisenhower. None of us believed him. So he wrote a letter to her addressed to the chief of staff office, thanking her for the ride and asking her to confirm it, since none of his colleagues believed him. He got a prompt reply, on chief of staff stationery, hand-written by General Esisenhower himself. It said "Dear Sergeant Wilson, Mamie is very busy and asked me to write on her behalf to confirm that she did give you a ride last week. Both of us like to give soldiers rides whenever possible."

I was honorably discharged in March 1946, but continued to work for the Intelligence Service as a civilian through summer of  1946. I entered MIT in the fall of 1946. I graduated in 1950 with an SB  in  Physics, earned a PhD in 1955, and was a faculty member until I took early retirement in 1979.

(Continue to Paperclip)