The Forgotten 500

by Gregory A. Freeman

  In addition to extensive training in hand-to-hand combat and conventional weapons, the OSS provided agents with an astonishing array of clever gadgets and innovative ways to kill. Most of them were developed by Stanley Lovell, handpicked by Donovan to head the agency’s research-and-development branch. He was given free rein to be as devious and underhanded as he wanted, with a premium placed on unusual, creative tools that the enemy would never suspect. Lovell did not disappoint, equipping agents with special weapons like Aunt Jemima, an explosive that looked remarkably like regular flour and could even be used to bake muffins and bread. The surprise came when you stuck a fuse in the muffin and threw it at some Germans. There was also the Casey Jones, a device that could be attached to the bottom of a railroad car. It had an electronic eye that sensed the sudden decrease in light when the train entered a tunnel, which set off an explosive charge that filled the tunnel with a mangled mess of metal. The train was destroyed, the tunnel was blocked, and it took days to remove the wreckage by hand. As a final touch in case the device was discovered, the OSS added a sticker to the Casey Jones that played into the Nazi soldier’s seeming inability to challenge authority. In German, the sticker said, This is a car movement-control device. Removal or tampering is strictly forbidden under heaviest penalties by the Third Reich Railroad Consortium. Heil Hitler.

  Other weapons included miniature guns disguised as pens, tobacco pipes, and umbrellas, and bombs disguised as everyday objects. A favorite was the lump of coal that Felman had seen used against a train in Yugoslavia. Another was a candle that a female agent could light while spending time with a German officer, making sure she left the room before it burned down to a preset mark and exploded. Shoes had hidden cavities and corsets had stilettos hidden in the fabric. Anything that a person might normally carry without suspicion was reworked in the OSS laboratories to make it a weapon, a hiding place, or a way to collect information. OSS scientists also produced huge volumes of forged documents, everything from identity papers to supply requisitions and Gestapo badges.

  Some of the weapons that Lovell and his team designed were so dangerous that the OSS lost agents while trying to demonstrate them. One was the Beano grenade, designed to be much more deadly than the typical grenade, which was plenty deadly already. A key difference was that the Beano had a small butterfly-shaped fitting on it that caught wind as the grenade was thrown. The butterfly turned in the wind, which activated the grenade, causing it to explode the instant it landed on the ground or contacted anything else. This design meant that, unlike when using regular grenades that worked on a timer after pulling the pin and throwing it, the enemy did not have a second or two to run away—or to pick up the grenade and throw it back at you—before it exploded. The Beano carried twice the explosive power of a regular grenade and one of its first victims was an instructor who was making the point that the round Beano could be thrown just like a baseball. Without thinking, he tossed the grenade up in the air as he would a baseball to demonstrate. The Beano activated and exploded when he caught it on the way down.

  OSS agents knew that they were risking their lives every single day they were in the field. If caught by the enemy, spies and saboteurs could be killed on the spot without even violating the conventions of civilized warfare. Not that the enemy gave a whit about following the rules, of course. OSS agents knew that once they were caught, a quick execution might be the best they could hope for. In reality, they were far more likely to be tortured for days or weeks as the Nazis tried to squeeze information out of them or “turn” them, forcing them to work as double agents to feed misinformation to the Allies and draw out useful intelligence. The smallest slip of the tongue or a careless moment of inattention could result in an OSS agent dying slowly and painfully in a Gestapo torture chamber. Every person the OSS trusted was a link in the chain, a link that could be broken and lead the Germans to you.

  Of the 831 members of the OSS decorated for gallantry during World War II, a significant number received their medals posthumously. Many disappeared without warning, never making another radio call to Cairo. When the radio remained silent for weeks, their contacts knew what must have happened. And on occasion, the agent would radio but provide a subtle signal, perhaps a slightly different code word, to let his superiors know that he was contacting them under duress. When that happened, the Allies would continue providing instructions and information to the agent, making sure that the transmissions were plausible enough to keep the agent alive but not actually useful to the enemy holding the gun to his head.

  The brutality of the Nazis knew no bounds. The cruelty unleashed on captured agents was unspeakable, including every type of beating imaginable and the liberal use of instruments of torture. The treatment of captured agents was surpassed perhaps only by the punishment exacted on members of the local resistance, like the villagers helping hide the Allied airmen in Pranjane. If caught helping the Allies, these hapless local people felt the worst of the German military. The Germans were great believers in the public spectacle and the power of heinous acts to cow anyone who witnessed them inflicted on others. The Nazi SS often castrated members of the resistance and gouged their eyes out, and a favorite method of terrorizing the local populace was to impale members of the resistance on meat hooks in the public square. The prisoner’s hands were tied and soldiers lifted him off the ground, positioning him so that the meat hooks penetrated the underside of his jaw. Then the SS would force the entire village to file past the man and see him writhing in agony. The prisoner could hang for more than a day before the jawbone finally snapped and the hooks were driven deep into his brain.

  Knowing that horrors like that awaited them, many OSS agents carried “L” pills hidden somewhere on their persons. The “L” stood for “lethal.” The rubber-coated capsule could even be carried in the mouth for long periods, ready to use if the SS came through the doors. Biting down on the pill would spill its contents and bring nearly instant death.

  Most of the field agents had been recruited through the army, so they had substantial military training and often some experience in the war before joining the OSS. The OSS administrators, on the other hand, tended to be the businessmen, the overeducated and the well connected. They usually were recruited because they possessed skills that were of use to the OSS, and there is no disputing that they served their country admirably. But inevitably, the agents risking their lives in the field developed a disdain for the “bourbon whiskey colonels” in Washington and other OSS posts who thought they could tell them how to do their jobs. Even the field agent who had led a sedate life before becoming a spy quickly developed disdain for someone who was giving him orders from the comfort of London or Cairo while he infiltrated German units and slept in pigsties. Unfortunately, these disputes sometimes went beyond the typical griping that comes from all soldiers in the field who think their commanders are out of touch. Arthur Goldberg, who worked for the OSS and later became a Supreme Court justice, complained after the war that Donovan had made a major mistake by selecting “men for the higher echelons of the organization who by background and temperament were unsympathetic with Donovan’s own conception of the necessity of unstinting cooperation with the resistance movements.” The men and women in the field shared Donovan’s enthusiasm for supporting the insurgents and guerilla movements throughout Europe, but the OSS administrators in between were not always as consistent.

  The OSS also had an ongoing feud with the State Department that would rear its head later in the Mihailovich affair. Part of the dispute was an old-fashioned turf war, the type that can be found in a thousand permutations around Washington, DC, but the State Department did have good reason to fear Donovan and his clandestine army. The freestyling ways of the OSS were a sharp contrast to the hidebound, stodgy, protocol-driven ways of the State Department. Where the OSS did whatever it felt would work in a given situation, the State Department was hobbled by tradition and diplomatic niceties. An analyst moving from the OSS to the State Department would be
moving from a politically liberal, dynamic, intellectually driven agency to one that was conservative and driven largely by the career ambitions of bureaucrats. State Department officials knew that meant Donovan could always come out ahead when the president looked for results.

  Musulin’s confirmation about the number of airmen with Mihailovich, and his outrage at the abandonment of Mihailovich, built on the emotions the letter from Mirjana stirred in Vujnovich. When he started looking into the possibility of rescuing the downed airmen in the hills of Yugoslavia, he knew immediately that political concerns would be the first challenge. A year earlier, the same rescue mission would have been a very different proposition. It would have been a question of logistics mostly, a routine sort of decision about if, how, and when such a large rescue could be made. The answer might be no, but it would be for realistic reasons, not political ones.

  In the spring of 1944, however, the logistical question took a backseat to politics. When Vujnovich presented his plans for rescuing the downed airmen in Yugoslavia, his superiors in the OSS knew there would be trouble getting approval from Washington. Aside from the risks of the mission, the Allies were now locked into their stated position that Mihailovich was a Nazi collaborator and could not be trusted. All Allied aid was given to Tito’s forces, which ended up using the guns and ammunition against Mihailovich as much as against the Germans.

  If Vujnovich could not get past the political impediments it didn’t matter whether he could come up with a way to get those men out. The mission could never take place without approval from very high up, especially a rescue this large and one that would have to be so daring. Vujnovich worked with other OSS leaders in Bari and started formulating a plan. The OSS met with General Nathan Twining, commanding general of the Fifteenth Air Force, and at that meeting Musulin emphasized the need for an immediate rescue. The group discussed how such a large rescue might be accomplished, and then they sent the request up the chain of command. The OSS in Bari and the Fifteenth Air Force were in agreement that they wanted to go ahead with a rescue mission, but every time the request went across another bureaucrat’s desk, the response was the same: We’d love to rescue those men, but how can we do that now that we’ve written off Mihailovich as a Nazi collaborator? If he really can’t be trusted, this would be a suicide mission. And what if it’s all a trick? What if he doesn’t have a hundred airmen waiting to be rescued?

  Vujnovich suspected the real motivation was fear that Mihailovich did have the airmen and really was protecting them. That could create an awkward situation if the man that the Allies accused of collaborating with the Nazis actually was protecting the downed airmen. If they went in and rescued the airmen, how could the Allies continue calling Mihailovich a collaborator?

  The British, still operating on the false information fed to them by their spy James Klugmann, were vehemently opposed to anyone going into Mihailovich’s territory for any reason, as were the Russians. The British insisted that Mihailovich could not be trusted and that no rescue mission be attempted. It was easy for them to say that, Vujnovich thought. There were maybe a few British fliers among the downed airmen in Yugoslavia, but there were a hundred or more Americans trying to get out, and the Brits were willing to let them stay in Yugoslavia until the Germans found them, they succumbed to injuries and disease, or in some other way were no longer a problem.

  Vujnovich and the others in Bari kept pushing and eventually the debate went all the way to the top. On July 4, 1944, Donovan sent a letter to President Roosevelt asking for permission to send in a team of agents to conduct the rescue, working the request into a larger discussion about how Donovan and his subordinates were not happy about losing their presence in the territory controlled by Mihailovich. He noted in the letter that Musulin had been withdrawn at the request of Churchill, but he explained that the changing fronts of the war made it imperative to gather more intelligence from the region. Donovan was careful to acknowledge the delicate dance that had to take place between the United States and Britain when discussing intelligence operations in Yugoslavia, noting that there was “a basic difference between clandestine agents sent in for the purpose of obtaining general information and operational reconnaissance directed to the preparation of military movements.” His interpretation of the current arrangement with the SOE was that the first could be carried out by either the Americans or the British without each other’s approval, while the second required coordination.

  Further, the British intend to send (if they have not already done so) an intelligence team into that area. In view of the above facts, and particularly of the view of General [Henry] Wilson that we aid him in searching for American pilots now known to be in that area, I respectfully request that we be permitted to send in our intelligence team and also our search parties.

  Donovan’s letter had been carefully crafted to convey the proper respect for diplomatic channels and the propriety of international relations during wartime, the bureaucratic language striking all the required notes. But he was much more direct when speaking to the president in person a few days later. As they were discussing the issue, Roosevelt made it clear that he wanted to rescue the airmen but was concerned about how the British would respond.

  Wild Bill Donovan, a man known for mincing no words and doing whatever it took to get the job done, spoke plainly to the president: “Screw the British! Let’s get our boys out!” This was a tactic that Donovan often used when he was fed up with the insanely political maneuvering between the OSS, the State Department, and anyone else who thought they knew better than he did: Just say it in plain English. Get right to the point.

  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Fortunately the president was in the same no-nonsense mood that day and agreed. Word was sent from Washington to Italy, and on July 14, 1944, Lieutenant General Ira Eaker, the commander of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force, signed an order creating the Air Crew Rescue Unit (ACRU). The unit was assigned two B-25 bombers to use as needed, and the Fifteenth Air Force was on call to provide whatever other air resources ACRU wanted. The order creating ACRU specified that its work would be carried out by OSS agents and that missions would be coordinated from Bari. ACRU was commanded by none other than Colonel George Kraigher, Vujnovich’s old friend from Pan American.

  Kraigher’s involvement gave Vujnovich some degree of confidence that this was a team he could trust. Vujnovich and his men could go ahead with his risky plan. Whether they could pull it off was still very much in doubt.

  Chapter 11

  Goats’ Milk and Hay Bread

  The British were none too happy when they heard about the formation of ACRU and the impending mission to Mihailovich’s headquarters, suspecting that it was really just an attempt by Donovan to reestablish an OSS presence in that part of Yugoslavia. They were at least partially right. Donovan wanted to rescue the airmen for humanitarian reasons, but he was far too savvy to overlook the strategic potential of sending in a mission.

  Five days after the special ACRU team was created, Donovan sent an urgent message notifying its members that Mihailovich had contacted the Yugoslav embassy in Washington with the news that about one hundred airmen were waiting for rescue. This was not news to anyone by this time, of course, though it may have been the first time that one of Mihailovich’s many pleas for a rescue officially made it to the desk of someone who could act on it. Aware that Vujnovich and everyone else in Bari already knew Mihailovich was hiding the airmen, Donovan nevertheless used the official communication from Mihailovich as an opportunity to move the rescue forward and to pursue his own goals with ACRU. Donovan forwarded the message from Mihailovich as if it were urgent news.

  You are requested, therefore, to act on this soonest, using this chance as a means of establish [sic] a clandestine intelligence team in Yugoslavia. In order that our colleagues may not take advantage of our present position, you must act soonest.

  In other words, get the OSS team in there fast, while we have this message from Mihailovich a
s our reason for going in right away, and before “our colleagues” the British can interfere.

  Vujnovich didn’t need to be persuaded. He was in agreement with Donovan’s intentions and he was working hard with the ACRU team to organize the rescue. But as soon as he got the go-ahead from Washington, Vujnovich realized he was facing a big challenge. With the rescues that already had been carried out in Yugoslavia, the idea of going in to pick up downed airmen was not radical in itself, but the situation had changed a lot in the past year, and Vujnovich knew this rescue would not be like the ones before. There was no real support from the British and only a grudging acceptance of the president’s order, unlike previous missions that had been carried out as joint operations between the Allies with complete cooperation. And the previous missions had brought out a few dozen airmen, mostly by shuttling them through Yugoslavia’s underground railroad to a safe zone where they could be picked up in relative safety. As recently as December 1943, OSS Lieutenant George Wuchinich parachuted into Yugoslavia with two other agents and, while pursuing other mission objectives to gather intelligence, managed to rescue ninety downed airmen over a four-month period.