The initial table of organization called for a complement of 540 officers and men, all Army personnel on detached duty to the OSS. The OGs would be highly skilled foreign language–speaking soldiers, trained with commando capabilities, who could be parachuted in small groups into enemy-occupied territory to harass the enemy and to encourage and support local resistance organizations. In May 1943, OGs were organized under their own branch within the OSS, which eventually became a separate command reporting directly to Donovan.1
With Sicily and Italy being the next targets of the Allies in the Mediterranean, recruiting for Italian-speaking OGs took priority between April and May 1943. The Army Ground Forces Headquarters authorized the recruitment of officers and men from divisions of the Second and Third Armies. The first recruits came from infantry divisions and engineer units in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Camp Blanding, Florida, and Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky. At each location, OSS recruiters broadcast and posted announcements calling for volunteers willing to perform hazardous duty overseas. Those who came forward filled out a twelve-page application covering in detail their personal history, including biographical information, education, employment history, financial background, skills, religion, and foreign languages. They provided information about family members, including parents, siblings, children, and in-laws, with particular emphasis on “relatives by blood, marriage, or adoption who live abroad, are under the jurisdiction of a foreign power, are not citizens of the Unites States, or are married to non-citizens.” They also listed employment references, character references, and names of neighbors and social acquaintances who could provide further information about them.2
Livermore and a small group of officers conducted a highly selective process in which they screened the applications and interviewed personally over two thousand men. Without getting into operational details, they explained that the assignments were behind enemy lines and carried unusual and dangerous risks. They chose only men demonstrating a real desire for such duty. They preferred candidates who spoke Italian fluently, but they accepted a number of second-generation Italian Americans who possessed only basic language comprehension skills. Previous training in demolitions, weapons, scouting, or fieldcraft was particularly desirable and exceedingly valuable. The rigorous character of their work demanded that OG personnel satisfy the same physical requirements as men accepted for parachute training in the Army. In addition, candidates were evaluated based on their emotional and mental stability, as well as good judgment, which were considered paramount for the success of operations behind enemy lines.3
At the end of the process, seventeen officers and 126 enlisted men were selected from the pool of two thousand candidates. They received orders to report to the OSS headquarters at 2340 E Street in Washington, DC, where administrative staff processed them into the OSS. From there, the candidates went to a training and holding facility in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. Known as Training Area F, it was located on the grounds of the Congressional Country Club, which the OSS had taken over for the duration of the war.
On May 14, 1943, the OGs recruited for Italian operations were formally activated as a unit designated Company A, 2677th Regiment (Provisional), OSS. The basic unit of organization was the group, composed of four officers and thirty enlisted men. The commander, or group leader, was a captain and the group itself was composed of two sections, each led by a first lieutenant. The sections in turn were subdivided into four squads, each led by a staff sergeant. At the point of activation, Company A included four operational groups.
While suitable as a holding area, Training Area F had not been prepared as a training facility in time to serve the needs of the Italian OGs. As a result, immediately after its official creation, Company A left for three weeks of advanced training at the Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia. Training included a strenuous course on jungle warfare and some preliminary parachute training, as well as intensive instruction in weapons, techniques, and methods of operations appropriate for a small, self-sufficient band of men who might be required to live and fight as guerrillas. Most of the officers who had already received this training attended special OSS courses in demolition, close combat, and silent killing techniques, which were organized in Quantico, Virginia, and at the nearby Prince William Forest, outside Washington, DC.
On June 12, 1943, the unit reassembled at the Congressional Country Club. Because the departure overseas was imminent, the men received an eight-day furlough, which they used to visit their families. Upon return they learned that there had been a delay in transport, so advanced training began. Classes of four officers and thirty-five enlisted men travelled to Quantico for additional demolitions training while the rest of the unit used the wooded area around the Congressional Country Club to solve small unit problems—cross-country movement, approach and destruction of targets, and withdrawal. Around this time, the men began calling themselves Donovan’s Devils, a name that stuck within the OSS and became synonymous with the OGs.4
On July 29, the unit moved on trucks from the Congressional Country Club to a holding area in Hagerstown, Maryland, and began preparing for travel overseas. Although morale was very high, the command continued a modified training program to keep the men occupied at all times. The OGs checked all the equipment and fully prepared for the trip. Each man had to settle his accounts and pay any money owed to the military camp authorities for items like property, equipment, mess bills, and personal telephone calls. They were required to pay any debts owed to civilian establishments in the vicinity, as well. The men completed all needed inoculations and immunizations and obtained correct identification tags, military IDs, and passports. They drew the equipment prescribed in their orders and took a final course in the use of their personal weapons, including a test in marksmanship with the arms issued to them. Military counselors advised them to prepare or update their will, power of attorney, allotments from their paycheck, insurance policies, and next of kin information.5
The date of departure from the staging area in Hagerstown was set for August 10. On the day prior, Colonel Ellery C. Huntington, in charge of the OSS security office, arrived from Washington for an inspection of the troops. That same evening, a banquet was held for the entire company where the colonel held a speech in Italian. The entire ceremony was very impressive and the morale of the troops remained very high. On August 10, the unit departed from Hagerstown, Maryland, for the staging area at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where they stayed until August 20 filling out additional forms, replacing worn equipment, and drawing clothing as needed. Everyone received a final physical examination. On August 20 at 1900 hours the unit boarded the train to Jersey City and from there took the ferry to Staten Island. At 2330 hours, they embarked aboard the troop transport USS Monticello.
The USS Monticello departed from the United States at 0930 hours on August 21, 1943, for North Africa. Men were allowed on deck four hours each day. The trip was uneventful except for an explosion in the boiler room that killed a sailor but did not affect the journey otherwise. After a twelve-day journey, on September 1, 1943, the unit debarked at Oran, Algeria. After several days of rest at Oran, they boarded a train to their final destination, the OSS headquarters in Algiers, known as Station X. The train trip was a ritual for all the OSS men arriving from the United States to the North Africa theater of operations. The officers travelled in third-class coaches and the men in diminutive boxcars called Quarante ou Huit (Forty or Eight) because they were used to transport forty men of the French Foreign Legion or eight horses. An OSS veteran recalled his train ride to Algiers as follows:
Much of the landscape was more like a moonscape—bleak, rocky, endless, with shimmering heat waves obscuring the horizon, and small, ragged boys materializing from nowhere crying ‘Baksheesh!’ Bright oases bloomed here and there in the form of lovely French colonial towns with palm-lined streets, dazzling adobe walls, arched windows, and red tile roofs. They were alive with gaudy soldiers, dark and light in red fezzes
and tunics…. We took in stride the cold stares of French Legionnaires who had been loyal to the Vichy government, and who fought against the American invaders of Operation Torch.6
On September 8, 1943, the unit arrived at Station X, where it set up pup tents in a former private beach community called Club des Pins. The OGs continued training to maintain their fitness while awaiting further combat orders. During the period from September 9 to 27 nearly all officers and enlisted men of the unit underwent parachute training. Although it was not a formal paratrooper course, the OSS had recruited jump-qualified paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to teach it. They had built a high platform with a cable reaching down to the ground at an angle from which the trainees would slide down to practice approaching the ground, manipulating the parachute raisers, and landing safely. There were also mock C-47 fuselages with benches and a mock door, which the men used to practice hooking up the lines and jumping off the aircraft as commanded by the jumpmaster. This stage of the training led to live jumps that began at one thousand feet and continued at lower altitudes until they reached five hundred feet, which was the typical altitude from which paratroopers jumped. Officers and men had to perform at least four jumps to qualify for parachute drops.7
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The Italian OGs of Company A served as the trailblazers for the new type of units created within the OSS. Other units quickly followed to bring the operational group capabilities to other areas in Europe where they were suited for action. By August 1944, when the Operational Group Command had reached full strength, it included 1,100 men in its ranks.
In July and August 1943, the OSS recruited French-speaking men to staff Company B and began training for the invasion of France planned for the following year. As part of their tactical training, they took part in combined airborne troop carrier maneuvers in North Carolina in December 1943. They left the United States for the North Africa theater of operations in January 1944 and arrived in Algiers in February. Six additional groups, two Italian and four French, were formed in the winter of 1943 and 1944 and departed in March 1944 to augment Companies A and B. One German group was formed in the spring of 1944 and arrived in North Africa in July, where it was attached to Company A.8
With the agreement of officials from the Norwegian government-in-exile, the OSS recruited personnel from the 99th Infantry Battalion, an all-Norwegian US Army unit stationed in Camp Hale, Colorado. Ten officers and sixty-nine enlisted men volunteered and formed the Norwegian Operational Group, activated on July 28, 1943, at Training Area F, just vacated by the Italian OGs. The group conducted five months of intensive specialized training, including mountain climbing in Colorado and amphibious operations at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The group departed the United States and arrived in Scotland in December 1943 under the Allied Forces Headquarters Scandinavia command. There was more training and exercise at various SOE bases and schools but the unit was not called to action against targets in Norway given British restrictions on operations against that country. In June 1944, the Norwegian OGs were combined with the French OGs and participated in seven parachute missions into France in August and September 1944.9
Company C was created in fall 1943 with OGs destined to cover the Balkans. The first OGs for Yugoslavia left the United States at the end of October 1943; others left at the end of January 1944. The island of Vis, off the Dalmatian coast, became their main base of operations. Vis at the time was a major supply base for the Yugoslav partisans, through which flowed thousands of tons of equipment that the Allies shipped from southern Italy. Over two hundred Yugoslavian OGs became part of the Allied garrison at Vis, which included hundreds of British Commandos and Yugoslav partisans. The OGs conducted joint operations to defend the island against German attacks, to harass enemy forces on other Dalmatian islands, and to obtain battle order information for enemy forces on these islands and on the mainland. They operated from the Vis base until July 1944, when the Germans abandoned the area.10
A Greek OG unit was formed at the request of the Greek government-in-exile. In the summer of 1943, an OSS recruiting team visited Camp Carson, Colorado, seeking personnel with Greek language qualifications. So many of the 122nd Infantry Battalion volunteered for duty that its commanding officer offered the entire battalion. Transferring an entire battalion to the OSS was an unprecedented step that required careful negotiations with the War Department. The final approval from Washington arrived in September. A total of 18 officers and 172 enlisted men went through the OG training curriculum. In early 1944, they arrived in Cairo ready for action in Greece. The first group of twenty-three OGs landed by boat on the western coast of Greece on April 23, 1944. The rest followed in groups from three to fifteen officers and men between May and September. As in Yugoslavia, the Greek OGs operated in conjunction with British Commandos and local resistance fighters. The majority of their operations aimed at cutting rail lines and highways to disrupt the German withdrawal north toward Albania and Yugoslavia. By the time the Greek OGs withdrew in November 1944, their accomplishments included fourteen trains ambushed, fifteen bridges blown, sixty-one trucks destroyed, six miles of railroad lines blown, 349 confirmed enemy killed, and almost 1,800 estimated killed or wounded.11
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When the Italian OGs of Company A were preparing for deployment in the summer of 1943, their training was ad-hoc and done mainly in existing Army training facilities. In the months that followed, the OSS created a robust training program of its own that delivered strong fighting and survival skills to the personnel from the Operational Group and the Special Operations commands. The training was structured in large scale based on the curriculum of the British SOE training schools. The main objective of the training was to provide the officers and enlisted men in the OG and SO teams with the techniques and skills required to execute their unique mission in enemy-occupied territory.
The mission of these teams was different from the mission of the British Commandos or the US Rangers who operated behind the frontlines as well. Initially, Commandos and Rangers focused on hit-and-run or smash-and-grab raids aimed at creating maximum damage and confusion in enemy territory for a short amount of time. Later, they acted as the spear point of invasion forces, charged with taking key objectives and holding them until they were overrun by regular troops.
The OG and SO teams on the other hand were expected to be efficient, mobile, and self-sufficient units capable of infiltrating deep into enemy territory, making contact with local resistance groups, and converting them into guerrilla units. Serving as liaisons between these guerrilla units and the Allied Forces Headquarters, they would supply the native guerrillas with arms, ammunition, demolitions, communication equipment, clothing, food, medical supplies, and money. Under the direction of the theater commander, these teams would assist the guerrillas in planning and execution of attacks against the enemy forces or installations, and sometime engage in their own independent operations. Ancillary responsibilities of the OG and SO teams included gathering intelligence and rescuing distressed allied airmen and prisoners of war that had escaped captivity. The OSS training program for the operators in the OG and SO teams aimed at providing them the skills required to fulfill this unique mission.12
The training program developed the physical strength of the operators and prepared them for survival in hostile terrain. Focus areas included physical conditioning through swimming, toughening exercises, and obstacle course runs; survival in the field, including camouflage, living off the land, and preparation of shelter and food; and welfare, including personal hygiene, camp sanitation practice, and providing first aid, especially under combat conditions. The training honed the operators’ skills to move around undetected through map studies, which included map sketching, map-and-compass problems, direction-finding using terrain features, and study of aerial photos. The wooded areas in the Prince William Forest, along the Potomac River, and in the Catoctin Mountains were used to conduct scouting and patrolling exercises, including instru
ction and practice in the use of physical cover, reconnaissance, signaling, and infiltration. The operators also learned to repair and operate enemy motorcycles, trucks, automobiles, and other vehicles they might find in the field.
To enable the OG and SO teams to prepare and lead the local fighters in the field, the training included classroom instruction in basic maneuvers, tactical principles, and methods of guerrilla warfare. Outside the classroom, the trainees practiced small-group operations, day and night problems, planning and execution of airborne raids, and street and village fighting. Methods of organizing and training civilians and maintaining the correct attitude and behavior toward civilians were emphasized. Operators attended lectures on enemy military and political structures, organizations, uniforms, and insignia. The training also covered procedures in interrogating prisoners, methods of espionage, and counter-espionage.
To sharpen their fighting skills, the OG and SO teams were taught to plan and execute demolition jobs of all sizes using explosives, incendiaries, booby traps, delayed action charges, multiple charges, and even charges manufactured with material found in the field. The weapons training covered handling, stripping, cleaning, and firing of a variety of weapons in the Allies’ arsenal, including the .32 Colt and .45 pistols, .30 M1 and Browning automatic rifles, Sten and Bren guns, .45 and 9-mm sub-machine guns, grenade launchers, bazookas, 60-mm and 81-mm mortars, and hand grenades. In addition, the operators learned the function and firing of enemy weapons with which they might come into contact.
Pistol training in particular generated a lot of excitement among the trainees, especially the officers among them, who had been conditioned by the regular military training to consider the pistol primarily as a weapon of self-defense to be fired from static positions and with plenty of time to aim. OSS instructors emphasized instead the pistol as a weapon of attack, which the operators could use to kill while moving with extreme speed, shooting from any position and in any sort of light—even in complete darkness. Here is how an instructor helped his trainees visualize the circumstances in which they would most likely fire their weapon:
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