During the 1990s, a few years before my father, Dave, passed away in December of 2000, he wrote a 35-page autobiography. Excerpts from it will be published here, as companions to the diaries my mother, Dorothy, kept in 1945 and 1946—the year she met Dave. My dad was born in 1927, in Hamilton, Ohio. The family eventually moved to the south side of Chicago.
Part 12
Washington, D.C.
It was a warm, spring day in 1943 when I arrived at Union Station, in Washington, D.C., a 16-year-old U.S. Army recruit who had just volunteered for an assignment about which I'd been given no information except that it would mean jumping out of airplanes in places unknown.
The letter I'd been given said to report to an address in Southwest D.C., which turned out to be an old building in a factory district. The windows were boarded-up, and above the door was a sign with the faded word, “Brewery,” barely still visible. I rang the bell.
A plainly-dressed man opened the door. “Come in and follow me,” he said. We came to a warehouse space in which an office section had been built out of plywood. Facing me were a group of men, all in civilian clothes.
After each person reviewed my papers and questioned me about the basic training I had so far received, I was shuttled outside to a waiting Army staff car. A 10-mile journey followed, northwest, to Washington D. C.'s Congressional Country Club. This would be my home for the next six months.
Congressional Country Club, Washington D.C.
Along with other enlisted men like me, I lived in an eight-man tent, over a wooden platform along the driveway that led to the club building itself. The second floor of that structure, which before the war were overnight residences of the country club members, were the officers' quarters. African-Americans were housed down in the basement, in what was called “the black section.”
Our training over the next weeks and months covered a variety of subjects and skills. Things such as how to disable vehicles, and how to create explosives out of commonly-available materials. Lessons in the art of penetrating the enemy, map reading, topography, message encoding, and, for those gifted among us, telegraphy.
Outdoors, in what had up until recently been a 36-hole golf course, we learned to use pistols, .45 caliber automatic rifles, Thompson sub-machine guns, and my personal favorite, the carbine. Hand-to-hand combat and knife skills were taught to us by an Englishman, a Major Fairburn. The Major had been the Chief of Police in Shanghai, China, prior to the war.
Congressional Country Club was great for our training, and a beautiful place, to boot. The card and billiard rooms were oak-paneled, the food was the best, and during our leisure time we had the use of a large swimming pool. Of course, the city of Washington, with its sightseeing opportunities and its women, was just an hour ride away. However, being so young and looking it, and having no experience, I didn't do too well with the women. My batting average was about zero in that regard.
The six months of training ended, and it was time for assignments. With eleven others, I was placed into what was termed the “JED” group, and given the job title of Medic and Demolitions Helper. Right at this time, however, I became sick, and was pulled from the group, a replacement taking what was to have been my spot. The JEDs were shipped out, and dropped into Norway, where a “quisling,” a Norwegian traitor, gave them up to the Germans, who summarily executed the entire group.
Members of a JED or “Jedburgh” special operations group
As soon as I recovered from my illness, I was ordered to report to the Commanding Officer.
“How old are you?” were his first words to me. I was wise enough to realize, from the C.O.'s tone and demeanor, that it was best to be truthful.
“I am 16, sir,” I answered.
“Wait outside,” he replied.
I sat nervously in the outer office, awaiting an immediate discharge from the service, or worse.
The door opened, and I stood as the C.O. approached me. “Report back to duty.” He turned and walked away.
Nothing more ever came of the incident and, to my knowledge, no one else besides the C.O. from that day forward would ever know what my true age was.
As I found out later on, the FBI, a few days earlier, had visited my mom back in Chicago to perform a background check—a requirement due to the nature of the operations I was to be involved with. Mom, however, let it slip somehow that I was only 16, and the bureau included this fact in a report sent to the Army C.O.
My conclusion as to the reason I wasn't discharged was because simply, by that time, I knew too much. It was safer to keep me in, than to put me out.
And exactly what it was that I was now in was something they called the OSS—the newly-formed Office of Strategic Services.
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) training film, directed by John Ford (Stagecoach, Sands of Iwo Jima, etc.)
