The Dark Game

by Paul B. Janeczko

  By the time the war ended, the United States military recognized that it could no longer rely on other nations to provide it with crucial intelligence. Nor could it continue with the limited intelligence operations that it had established. Although World War II was more than twenty years in the future, the U.S. military was set on a course of developing a comprehensive intelligence network.

  WHILE MATA HARI’S DRAMA played out in France, soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force were thrust into the thick of the horrible trench war in the same country. Braving mustard gas that burned their lungs and relentless machine-gun fire, the Allied forces held their ground. Nonetheless, things were looking grim for the Americans in the Meuse-Argonne campaign when they found themselves surrounded by the German army, making its last offensive push of the war.

  When the Americans tried to send a message to headquarters pleading for help or discussing strategy, they suspected that the phone lines were tapped by the Germans. To verify their misgivings about the phone lines, they “let slip” a rumor that they were moving their supply depot. Part of this disinformation was the map coordinates that indicated where the supply depot would be. Within thirty minutes, the area that matched those coordinates came under heavy bombardment from German artillery. Even though the Americans encoded their messages, the German code breakers were able to easily crack the code and act on the intelligence that they discovered, making the American position even more dire.

  The Germans seemed to have mastered many of the essentials of spy craft, and the Americans still did not have the counterintelligence apparatus to match them. Then, one night in early October, an army captain accidentally discovered a way to foil the German’s ability to break their codes. On that evening, Captain Lawrence was taking his customary walk among his men of the 36th Division of the 142nd Infantry Regiment when he overheard a conversation between two of them in a language he’d never heard before.

  Curious, he asked the men what language they were speaking. One of them, Corporal Solomon Lewis, told Lawrence that they were speaking in Choctaw, their tribal language. Lawrence stared at the men, an idea growing in his mind. He asked if there were any other Choctaw speakers in the battalion. Lewis and his friend, Private Mitchell Bobb, figured there were eight others. In fact, two of them, Ben Caterby and Pete Maytubby, worked at headquarters.

  With Lewis and Bobb at his side, Lawrence hurried to the communications tent. He called headquarters and told his commander to get Caterby and Maytubby, then stand by for a message. Lawrence’s idea was simple. He would dictate a message to Lewis and Bobb, who would translate it into Choctaw, then use a field phone to relay the message to Caterby and Maytubby, who would translate the message for their commander.

  They quickly discovered, however, that there was one obstacle to overcome before the Choctaw could communicate essential military information: the language had no words for modern military terms, such as artillery, machine gun, or battalion. So Lewis, Bobb, and Lawrence put their heads together and came up with Choctaw words that could stand for such terms, including big gun for artillery, little gun shoot fast for machine gun, and ears of corn to indicate numbers of battalions. Filled with excitement, Lewis and Bobb made history that night in 1917 when they transmitted the first military message in the Choctaw language.

  The plan was such a success that the commander ordered one Choctaw code talker be assigned to each field company headquarters. The first official use of the Choctaw code talkers gave the orders for two of the companies to withdraw from Chardeny on the night of October 26, 1917. The retreat was a success, and the use of messages transmitted in Choctaw grew. On October 27, the men used the code to plan an attack at Forest Ferme that came as a complete surprise to the Germans.

  One can imagine the shock of the German code breakers when they started hearing the Choctaw messages. Remember, by so easily cracking a code system used previously by the Americans, the Germans had enjoyed complete access to intelligence sent by the American army. Suddenly, that changed. They were faced with a code that they couldn’t break because it was not based on a European language or the mathematical progressions that code breakers rely on. In fact, one captured German officer later said that their intelligence gatherers “were completely confused by the Indian language and gained no benefit whatsoever from their wiretaps.”

  Within seventy-two hours of the initial Choctaw transmissions, the tide of battle turned. The American and Allied troops took the offensive, driving the Germans into full retreat. Because the war ended very shortly after Meuse-Argonne, the Choctaw code talkers didn’t get another opportunity to use their code in battle. But Choctaw and other Native Americans, mostly Navajos, served in a similar capacity in World War II.

  On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to World War II. Although the United States was not involved in the war in its first years, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was, of course, deeply concerned with what was happening in Europe. He well understood that the U.S. had remained on the sidelines before they were drawn into fighting World War I. He knew that intelligence operations in the United States were still confined to sections within the army and navy, and he wasn’t convinced the nation’s intelligence operations were as good as they should be.

  Wanting to get a better understanding of the war in Europe, the president sent his old friend William Donovan to England to observe how the British were prepared for war. Donovan was a World War I hero and commander of the legendary Fighting 69th, a regiment founded by Irish immigrants. Donovan, wounded three times in the war, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and remains one of the most decorated soldiers in American history. Since the war, “Wild Bill” Donovan, as he was called since his army days, had become a partner at a successful Wall Street firm and had many well-connected friends serving as bankers, corporate lawyers, economists, university professors, and adventurers.

  While in England, Donovan met with members of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), known as MI6 (Military Intelligence Section 6), to assess the work of the British overseas espionage organization. Sir William Stephenson, the chief of SIS operations in the Western Hemisphere, convinced Donovan that the United States needed an agency like the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the U.K.’s central intelligence agency.

  When Donovan returned to the U.S., he presented Roosevelt with his report that made a strong case for a centralized intelligence agency. The president was won over by Donovan’s argument and on July 11, 1941, signed a directive establishing the position of Coordinator of Information (COI). The person in this position would be authorized to “collect and analyze all information and data, which may bear upon national security; to correlate such information and data, and to make such information and data available to the President . . . and to carry out, when requested by the President, such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.” William Donovan was chosen to fill this new position.

  Donovan had been in his new position for only about five months when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. This “date which will live in infamy,” in the words of Roosevelt, was the day the United States was thrust into World War II. Americans were stunned by the audacious surprise attack. Politicians and military men wondered how such an intelligence failure was possible. With the United States at war, the COI and military intelligence were forced to work together more than they had in the past and more than they cared to.

  About six months after Pearl Harbor, the office of the COI was renamed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS became what many military historians consider America’s first central intelligence agency. And Bill Donovan began his work to coordinate a number of clandestine activities that supported the war effort, including intelligence gathering and reporting, creating propaganda, spreading misinformation, sabotage, subversion behind enemy lines, and a number of ot
her related activities.

  There are always rivalries and turf battles in any large organization, and the intelligence community is no exception. OSS and the intelligence branches of the army and navy worked together only when they had to. (Some historians believe that a lack of communication among the military intelligence agencies allowed the Japanese clear sailing to Pearl Harbor.) In England the SOE had a similar relationship with MI6. Part of the reason for such poor working relationships was a matter of style. The OSS and SOE were more spontaneous, less “by the book,” which did not sit well with military and intelligence establishments. For the most part, however, the OSS and SOE worked well together in their European operations.

  One principle of espionage that both agencies understood is that a spy is often only as successful as the team that supports him or her. This support begins with the agent’s training, continues when he or she is in the field, and ends only when the agent returns safely. The OSS and SOE made sure that only young men and women who were able to survive a grueling and intense training were permitted to operate in the field. And they were young, especially the women, many of whom were in their early twenties when they began training.

  When the agents’ training was complete, they were still not ready to go behind enemy lines and put what they had learned to the test. Before they completed their training, they needed to have the tools of the trade, beginning with false identity papers. For instance, the French Document Section prepared whatever papers the agents being sent to France needed, including passports, identification cards, and ration cards. Once an agent was established safely in France, he or she would receive genuine documents from the proper authorities. But until then, the fake papers needed to stand up to close scrutiny. Technicians in the Research and Development Section examined all aspects of French documentation, including ink, paper, glue, and bindings. They understood that the slightest error could mean death for an agent behind enemy lines.

  The most important part of a document was the paper it was printed on. Nothing would give away an agent faster than a document with crisp new paper or a paper of better quality than the paper used in France. To overcome this obstacle, the paper needed to be artificially aged. One trick for giving paper a used look was to spread it on the floor and let people repeatedly walk over it. In some cases, paper was rubbed with ash to make it look older than it really was. Agents also needed correct currency to use behind enemy lines, in particular francs and Reichsmarks. The agencies placed a premium on worn coins and bills, which were unlikely to attract attention.

  A female spy who followed in the footsteps of her sisters who served before her, particularly in the Civil War, was Virginia Hall. Code-named Diane, Hall was one of the most successful woman spies in the history of espionage. By the time her service was complete, “the limping lady,” as she was called, was one of the spies most wanted by the Gestapo. As one Gestapo officer put it, “The woman who limps is one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France. We must find her and destroy her.”

  Although Virginia Hall began college in the U.S., she traveled to Europe to further her language studies, mastering French, German, and Italian. She returned home in 1929 to study French in more depth. She then entered the diplomatic service, working for the U.S. State Department in Poland, Austria, and Turkey. While on a hunting trip in Turkey, she accidentally shot herself in the foot. When gangrene set in, there was nothing doctors could do but amputate her leg below the knee. She was fitted with a wooden leg, which she nicknamed Cuthbert.

  Although her wooden leg kept her from working for the State Department as she had wanted — at the time they had a policy of not hiring amputees — Hall wasn’t one to let something like an artificial leg stop her from making a contribution. Alarmed at the growing threat of Nazi Germany throughout Europe, she returned to Europe as a volunteer with the French Ambulance Service Unit. However, when France fell to the Nazis in June 1940, Hall was no longer safe in France. She moved to England and worked as a code clerk at the United States embassy. It didn’t take long for the British intelligence community to learn of her work, and she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive.

  For her first assignment as a trained SOE agent, Virginia Hall was sent to France at the end of the summer of 1941 to organize resistance fighters and collect intelligence. Her “legend,” or fake background story, had been carefully crafted to take advantage of her position as a credentialed journalist for the New York Post. Hall would cable her stories to the U.S. with secret intelligence encoded and embedded in them.

  While others may have worried that Hall’s limp would make her too recognizable to be effective in the field, she learned to compensate by wearing long coats and walking with long strides. She was also a great actor — a master at taking on cover characters.

  It was Hall who suggested that agents be sent into Germany posing as French workers, making it less likely that they would come under close scrutiny as they gathered intelligence. She also realized that French cities, whose residents tended to be more sympathetic to the German occupation, were becoming dangerous places for SOE agents. She suggested concentrating agents in rural areas, where people were more sympathetic to the resistance, especially the farmers, who resented being paid so little by the Nazis for their crops. She began organizing resistance fighters in the Lyons area of southern France. Downed airmen or escaped prisoners of war knew that if they got to Lyons, Hall and her contacts would help them to return safely to England.

  Virginia Hall had a knack for finding helpful and reliable contacts in Lyons who were ready to provide information or take action. Among them were: Germaine, whose “main interest was helping prisoners”; Pepin, “useful as a postbox” and for arranging a “clinic, ambulance service, doctors, nurses, anaesthetists, etc., for our men”; Eugène, whose girlfriend had a sister and brother-in-law who were “ready to do anything for us”; and Madam Landry, who was “able to get all sorts of fake papers for people.” And these are only a handful of French citizens in Lyons and other towns and villages who responded to Virginia Hall and risked their lives to help defeat Hitler.

  The situation in France became too dangerous for Virginia Hall early in November 1942. She was alerted to the approaching Allied invasion of North Africa, which would more than likely force German troops to race to the southern part of France. The following day, one of her contacts warned her that the invasion had begun and the Nazis were expected to swarm into Lyons sometime after midnight. Virginia Hall was taking no chances. She packed her bag and started her long journey to London. That night she caught the 11:00 p.m. train to Perpignan, on the Spanish border. Her instincts to flee were on target. The head of the Lyons Gestapo said that he “would give anything to put his hands on that . . . bitch.” He never got that chance. When she reached Perpignan, at the foothills of the Pyrenees, a guide was waiting to lead her safely to Barcelona. She arrived in London in January 1943.

  While the rushed journey over the Pyrenees would tax even the hardiest of hikers, Virginia Hall made it with a wooden leg that was vexing her for a good part of the journey. The message she sent London became an enduring legend: “Cuthbert is giving me trouble, but I can cope.” The reply, no doubt from a radio operator who knew nothing of Virginia Hall, was curt: “If Cuthbert is giving you trouble, have him eliminated.” As one of her French agents said, “God knows how she made the journey over the mountains.” Indeed.

  After some weeks in England, Hall was ready for her next assignment. This time she was sent to Spain to help organize a version of the Underground Railroad, like the one that existed in the United States during the Civil War. This underground railroad aided escaped prisoners of war, stranded agents, and airmen making their way to London via neutral Spain. She spent much of her time sending messages via wireless, organizing safe houses, and keeping alert for new resistance recruits. But she soon grew restless. She craved the excitement she had experienced in France.

  When she expressed her desire to return to Fr
ance, her SOE superior tried to convince her to go to London as a “briefing officer for the boys.” She resisted, and he finally agreed to transfer her to France. Thus, on the evening of March 21, 1944, Virginia Hall arrived by boat on the Brittany coast. After a brief stop in Paris, she set off for the town of Maidons. There she met an old farmer who found her a one-room house, without water or electricity, and invited her to take meals with his wife and him. Since Hall had spent summers on her family’s farm, she was familiar with farm chores and offered to repay the farmer for his help by tending his cows. After morning milking, she walked the cows to pasture, always on the lookout for fields that could serve as parachute drop spots or landing strips for small planes. And, as usual, she was always studying the people, looking for those who might be sympathetic to the Allied cause. As she wrote in one report, “I found a few good fields for receptions and farmers and farm hands willing and eager to help.”

  For reasons of security, Virginia Hall moved often, before the Gestapo or the Milice, the hated French military police, could corner her. Some agents, in fact, made it a personal rule never to stay in one house for more than two days in a row. While in France, Hall also took the precaution of always traveling with a French chaperone.

  Her work took her to other small villages; she lived in the attic of a home in Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire and in the garret of a farmhouse in Sury-près-Léré. Once again her familiarity with animals played a part in her cover, as she tended a herd of goats for the farmer, giving her the opportunity to check for movement of Nazi troop carriers along country roads. In addition, delivering goat milk and cheese gave her the chance to meet farmers and workers who were willing to help her make life difficult for Hitler and his army. In one village she found a small, very trustworthy group that would greet agents new to the country and establish three or four safe houses. Virginia Hall continued her OSS work until the end of the war, helping anti-Nazi groups with money, then with weapons and explosives to do their subversive work.