Wild Bill Donovan

by Douglas Waller

  The brass hats don’t know “F” all, the rest are snafu too,

  It takes a damned magician to know just what to do.

  An order here, an order there, it’s anybody’s guess.

  You too can be a fubar if you join the OSS.

  (“Snafu” was the GI acronym for “situation normal, all fucked up,” while “fubar” stood for “fucked up beyond all repair.”) Donovan enjoyed hearing all the tunes.

  David Bruce’s London station had grown to more than 2,900 OSS men and women. He had a clothing shop, complete with a cobbler Polish intelligence supplied and tailors who paid attention to the minutest details dressing agents for foreign countries so they did not stand out. Buttons had to be sewn onto coats by threading the holes parallel, the European style, instead of crisscrossing them. A photoengraving plant the British loaned him printed phony identification documents for agents. A special mill supplied the paper whose watermarks matched continental Europe’s. Potential commandos from the United States went first to a reception center Bruce set up at Franklin House in Ruislip outside London, where British special operations officers helped screen them for clandestine duty in France. More than a third washed out; the rest went to five-week guerrilla warfare “finishing schools” in the English countryside.

  Bruce had become another of Donovan’s trusted aides, which was not surprising. They were a lot alike. Bruce tended to be disorganized with administration and enjoyed landing at beaches with the troops as much as Donovan. One of Bruce’s favorite moments occurred in the summer of 1943 when Donovan had slipped unnoticed into a meeting General Jacob Devers, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, was holding at his military headquarters on Grosvenor Square with his senior officers. Bruce, a lowly lieutenant colonel, was being dressed down by Devers’s G-2, also a general, who accused the OSS of being “a dangerous intruder” into the military intelligence system he’d set up. Bruce tried the best he could to defend his agency but the G-2 got wound up and finally declared loudly that Donovan was “tricky” and he didn’t trust him “or his ideas.” Donovan walked quietly to the front of the room where Devers sat at a table and said in a clear but absolutely calm voice the entire room could hear that unless the intelligence chief “withdraws this slur on me and apologizes I shall tear him to pieces and throw what is left of him through these windows into Grosvenor Square.” A barely audible gasp could be heard from the gaggle of generals in the room because Donovan seemed ready to do exactly that. The intelligence chief “made a handsome apology,” Bruce recalled.

  Hitler had ordered German defenses bulked up all along the northern French and Belgian coasts. The buildup included Normandy to the southwest; the extensive Allied deception campaign for the most part convinced the führer and German military leaders that the main landing would be northeast at Pas de Calais. Putzi Hanfstaengl predicted to his OSS debriefers that if Hitler threw back his invaders at the French coast he would quickly “drive through Spain to Gibraltar with the object of immediately cutting off our North African and Italian forces.” If the Allies gained a foothold on the French coast and moved inland, Hitler, who envisioned himself a twentieth-century Frederick the Great, “will fight to the utmost limit of his resources,” Putzi predicted.

  Dulles thought otherwise. Fritz Kolbe, one of his key spies, had supplied him four hundred pages of Foreign Office documents that convinced the Bern station chief Nazi Germany was near “imminent doom,” he cabled Donovan. D-Day might well prove easy for the Allies. Donovan passed Dulles’s cable to Roosevelt, Marshall, and Eisenhower. He would have been better served sending them Hanfstaengl’s. Marshall’s intelligence aides saw no evidence the offensive would be a cakewalk. “It would be extremely unwise from the military standpoint to count on an imminent collapse of the Nazis,” one adviser warned. With the Army scoffing at Dulles’s bold prediction, Donovan queried his Bern chief to see if he wished “to modify” it. Dulles backpedaled some, predicting the Wehrmacht might fiercely fight an invasion attempt. But he continued to insist that “a collapse of Germany might follow . . . a few months after” the Allies established “a firm toe-hold” in France. Dulles could not have been more wrong.

  Donovan had a wide range of OSS operations underway for D-Day. Langer’s research analysts sent the Army and Navy lengthy topographic studies of the Normandy coast and analyzed German targets in France for Arnold’s 8th Air Force. By the time Donovan arrived in London, Bruce had parachuted nearly twenty-five two-man spy teams into France, under a joint American-British project code-named “Sussex” to collect military intelligence for the invaders. Menzies had dropped thirty-five of the French teams. Another eighty-five OSS special operations commandos infiltrated behind enemy lines to organize the French resistance fighters who had fled to the forests and mountains and became known as the Maquis—the “men of the underbrush” its literal translation. They cut telephone lines, sabotaged factories, blew up bridges and fuel dumps, mined roads, derailed trains, and eventually captured ten thousand German prisoners. (One of the OSS infiltrators was Virginia Hall, who had lost part of her leg in a hunting accident before the war and wore a wooden prosthetic; she arrived on the Brittany coast in March to supply the Maquis with money and arms.) All told, the OSS and British Special Operations Executive dropped ten thousand tons of weapons and equipment to the Maquis before and after the Normandy invasion. The British grew nervous the massive supply operation would end up arming different Maquis factions to fight one another after the war but Donovan pressed to keep up the airdrops. A typical two-and-a-half-ton load in a bomber, he wrote Roosevelt, included four machine guns, forty-four rifles, fifty-five Sten guns, and 41,000 rounds of ammunition.

  The clandestine penetrations were not uniformly successful. The Sussex teams did radio back eight hundred intelligence reports, which Eisenhower’s staff found helpful. But because they were rushed into the field with little advance preparation, only a quarter of the Sussex teams succeeded in their missions. Two men air-dropped into Le Blanc in central France on April 10 transmitted 127 messages on Panzer deployments, V-1 rocket launching ramps, and enemy convoy routes out of Paris they had gleaned from a stolen German map. Another team, which parachuted into Rochefortsur-Loire in western France on June 1, had its radio dumped into a well by panicky Maquis guerrillas fleeing the Germans and became totally useless because it could not transmit any information it found.

  Eisenhower also questioned whether guerrilla attacks should be attempted at all for the Normandy invasion. By March de Gaulle had successfully united under his Forces Française de l‘Intérieur headquartered in London the two other Maquis factions: the Organisation de la Résistance dans l’Armée controlled by North Africa’s General Henri Giraud and the communist Francs Tireurs et Partisans. But Overlord’s planners still found the maverick French general difficult to deal with and Ike worried that partisan warfare at D-Day would result in the useless slaughter of de Gaulle’s Maquis and French civilians by the enemy. Hitler’s occupation already had been brutal. Determined to crush all resistance, the SS mauled the Maquis forces they found and the Gestapo methodically terrorized the French population. Donovan’s men and the British special operations commanders also worried about the heavy partisan casualties that would surely result from a French national insurrection. But Eisenhower finally softened his opposition to a Maquis revolt. The French will rise up whether he wanted them to or not, his advisers told him. The Allies might as well exploit the Maquis as best they could to harass and help delay German reinforcements that will surely rush to Normandy when they land.

  While waiting in London for the invasion, Donovan busied himself with chores. He fired cables back to Washington ordering more assets transferred to Europe and flew to the Home Counties around London to inspect the men and equipment being parachuted in for Sussex. He booked a lunch at Chequers with Churchill, who did not relish a session suffering Donovan’s pushy views on the Balkans. Churchill arranged for Fitzroy Maclean to drive to the prime minister’s cou
ntry estate in the same car with Donovan. The two men remained frosty but civil toward each other during the awkward trip and the meal. David Donovan dropped by Claridge’s for a visit with his father. Now a full lieutenant, he was about to board the flagship of the imposing Admiral John “Viking” Hall Jr., who commanded the 11th Amphibious Force and thousands of landing craft for the Normandy invasion. Donovan also had one more loose end to tie up before Overlord commenced—obtaining permission to be in on the Normandy landing.

  Marshall, who by now had his fill of Donovan’s escapades at Salerno, Anzio, and Hollandia, ordered that he not be allowed to join in Overlord. Eisenhower agreed that the Normandy beach was no place for America’s top intelligence officer. James Forrestal had sent Bruce a cable he wanted passed on to Donovan telling him “he was not to board any U.S. Naval craft.” (Forrestal had just been installed as navy secretary after Knox died from a massive heart attack on April 28.) Bruce tried to hand his boss Forrestal’s message but Donovan brushed him off and told him to put the paper in his pocket. “I’ll read it later,” he said. Instead he took Bruce with him to a luxurious apartment on Grosvenor Square occupied by Admiral Harold “Betty” Stark, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe.

  Donovan turned on the Irish charm. He begged his old Navy pal to cut orders attaching him to one of the ships making the landing. Stark, who had been alerted by Ike’s staff about what Donovan was up to, said absolutely not. The Army had barred Donovan from going in with any of its contingents, no way a Navy admiral would countermand orders from a sister service and take a stowaway, Stark told him.

  Stark stood up to warm his backside in front of the fire crackling in his living room’s fireplace. Donovan jumped out of his easy chair and sprung at him, poking his stubby forefinger into Stark’s midriff, almost toppling him into the flames. “Betty, you and I are old and expendable,” he told the white-haired admiral. “We ought to die together on the beach with enemy bullets through our bellies!”

  That did not seem like a pleasant prospect to Stark, who still wouldn’t change his mind. Donovan returned to Claridge’s to brood over another solution to his problem.

  Bruce never learned how Donovan found it, but on late Tuesday night, May 30, the two of them boarded the train at London’s Paddington Station for Plymouth in southern England. Donovan told the London OSS office they would be visiting friends at British army units. He knew his habit of attending landings had made it into the papers, which the Abwehr read. He decided to keep his staff in the dark about his movements so Overlord’s timing wasn’t leaked from his end. It was curious that Donovan and his partner decided to take what amounted to a week-long excursion instead of sticking to their headquarters desks and monitoring their secret forces in the biggest invasion of the war. To Donovan’s detractors it seemed like a joy ride. But at this point all the preparations had been completed, the OSS penetration agents were in place or on their way, and the rest of Donovan’s secret army for Overlord was now under the command of generals at the front. At the outset of a great campaign, the most useless officer is the headquarters commander who must sit and wait for field reports on how his plan is being carried out. The ever restless Donovan did not intend to wait at headquarters for his reports.

  Their train arrived in Plymouth early Wednesday morning and the two boarded the destroyer USS Davis, which pushed away from the pier shortly after noon. The next morning, June 1, when the Davis dropped anchor off Belfast, Donovan and Bruce hopped into a launch that took them to the USS Tuscaloosa, a heavy cruiser that soon would be parked off Utah Beach for the invasion. Donovan was comfortably installed next to the cabin of Vice Admiral Morton Deyo, the deputy commander of U.S. Naval Forces for Normandy. Bruce, who landed a berth in the ship captain’s emergency cabin, finally guessed how Donovan had wangled his passage. During the visit Donovan and Knox had made to Pearl Harbor before the war, he had struck up a friendship with Deyo.

  While the Tuscaloosa remained anchored with an Allied flotilla off the Irish coast the next two days, Donovan motored back and forth in the launch from the cruiser to the docks. He met with Britain’s Northern Ireland commanders in Belfast Castle, sipped port wine with the Duke of Abercorn (the charming seventy-five-year-old governor of Northern Ireland whose purple nose showed he had drunk a lot of port), paid a courtesy call to Sir Basil Brooke (the Northern Ireland prime minister judged to be amiable but far lazier than his famous uncle, Field Marshal Sir Alan Francis Brooke), and took tea, jam, and cakes with the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava at their Clandeboye estate. Between idle chitchat he also caught up on the intelligence both Northern Ireland’s officers and diplomats from the Republic of Ireland to the south had secretly fed the OSS the past year on Nazi agents and sympathizers infesting the island.

  Donovan and Bruce returned to the ship each evening for long dinners with Deyo, his staff officers, and Willard Shadel, a CBS radio correspondent on board for the landing. Shadel shared gossip reporters had picked up on Mark Clark’s arrogance and George Patton’s bombast, which Donovan was eager to hear. After dinner each night Donovan slipped into the ship’s combat information center to study the invasion plans for Overlord, which Deyo’s officers scrambled through the wee hours to update with last-minute changes. He was struck by the complexity of the plan. Donovan had always favored Churchill’s idea to invade Germany with a thrust from the Mediterranean through the Balkans. He thought too much optimism infected Overlord’s architects. They did not realize the multitude of battle hazards that might confront the Allies with this amphibious attack.

  Early Sunday morning, June 4, the Tuscaloosa arrived off Falmouth at England’s southwest tip. By 6:30 a.m., the ship’s radio shack had received orders that bad weather in the Channel had forced postponement of the invasion for twenty-four hours. It further heightened Donovan’s fears. Only for a few days in each month were the moon, tides, weather, and sea conditions right for the long cross-Channel invasion. Choppy seas like what he now saw from the Tuscaloosa’s deck could toss landing boats about “like cockleshells,” he told Bruce, throwing off the carefully choreographed schedule and hurtling seasick “human freight” to the shore to be mowed down by the enemy. The Germans, too, would consider Normandy a favorable point of attack and have its coast heavily fortified, he thought. So much of the plan he now read depended on surprise, but how could you keep a huge armada like this one secret? German espionage agents are bound to have picked up its breadcrumbs, he worried.

  The weather mercifully improved on Monday, June 5. As the Tuscaloosa steamed back around the southeast tip toward Plymouth, Donovan spent much of the day leaning over a deck rail watching the majestic armada of over six thousand ships and landing craft assembled before him: cruisers and battleships in line, flanked by destroyers, long convoys of transports crammed with hundreds of thousands of troops, barrage balloons floating overhead. “The firepower of this fleet will be immense,” Bruce recorded in his diary. On the Tuscaloosa alone Donovan counted nine eight-inch guns, twenty-five-caliber guns, six forty-millimeter antiaircraft quads, and eighteen twenty-millimeter pieces.

  By 9 p.m., the winds picked up and the seas churned higher, but Eisenhower’s weathermen predicted an interval of calmer skies into the night and by next morning. The Tuscaloosa set its course for the beaches designated Utah at the coastal village of La Madeleine on the western leg of the ninety-mile landing front. Sailors stood watch wearing helmets and nervously chain-smoking cigarettes. Admiral Deyo pounded a punching bag in his cabin to vent his pent-up energy, while Donovan cheerily shaved and showered next door. After he dried off and wiped the foam from his pink cheeks, he dressed in his fatigues, buttoning his trousers around his ankles, and slipping on rubber-soled shoes. He took an olive wool cap out of his duffel bag, perched it on his head, and began calmly munching an apple. Other OSS officers had told Bruce this was his routine before going into a combat zone. Shortly before midnight, Donovan made his way to the officers mess and ate a plate of bacon and eggs. He was ready to
storm the beach.

  The Tuscaloosa’s heavy guns opened fire shortly before 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 6. Donovan could feel the deck tremble under his feet and hear ship joints creak. His own teeth rattled in his head from the discharges. The air around him smelled acrid with powder from the yellow clouds of smoke billowing out of the guns while a fine mist of disintegrated wadding fell around him like lava ash. Spouts of water gushed near the cruiser as German long-range batteries off Utah Beach tried to zero in on their vessel. An Allied fighter was hit by antiaircraft fire and skidded along the ocean in front of them before bursting into a ball of flame. The USS Corry destroyer nearby struck a mine, then took shore battery rounds and had to be abandoned by its crew. A sailor on watch spotted a periscope pop up out of the water a thousand yards from the Tuscaloosa so depth charges were readied. Something—the crew could never determine exactly what it was—made a direct hit on Deyo’s flagship, which shattered the water closet Donovan had been using adjoining the admiral’s cabin.

  The troops began wading ashore at Utah at 6:30 a.m., undaunted by four heavy enemy guns shelling the beach. Donovan heard over German radio the cruiser monitored the announcement that American paratroopers had landed in France. BBC radio ordered French resistance troops to await further instructions. An OSS photo unit covered the Normandy landings, shooting four reels of film that were later screened for Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Donovan also succeeded in having a spy and sabotage detachment landed with Bradley’s army to link up with the guerrillas ahead. Even Bill Stephenson, who had accompanied Donovan to London, managed to snare a rear gunner’s seat in a British bomber and was now flying over the Normandy coast.

  But the OSS director was stuck on the ship. Donovan had sidled up to Deyo throughout the day, hinting about how “interesting” it would be to wade ashore soon after the landings to check up on what his agents were doing near the beach, but the admiral ignored him. It was clear to Bruce that Deyo had been told by his superiors he could give Donovan the run of ship, but he was not to let him leave it.