I have anticipated the arrival of the V1's, and must now retrace my steps to their first appearance. All during that spring, rumors, of increasing authenticity, had been circulating in the office about a terrible new weapon, a new form of bomb, about to be launched by the Germans.

One evening in early June, I believe, I had gone to bed when the alert sounded and the thud of bombs and the chatter of antiaircraft guns began to sound, with steadily increasing intensity. Soon there was a light knock on my door and Harriet's tiny voice announced: "Mrs. "Unter is going to 'ave some tea in the drawing room, if you'd care to join 'er." So I donned my dressing gown and went into the front room where Ysabel and I were soon joined by two old ladies from the flat above, who had brought their cat with them in a basket. There we sat, drinking tea and making general polite conversation amid booms and crashes that shook the house, and the roar of aircraft engines was mingled with a new sound which I half-suspected was that of the armored weapon. Of course, it was still a military secret, so I kept silent about it, appreciating the dramatic irony of their comments. Nothing among my wartime experiences lingers in my mind as a better example of the imperturbability which carried England through the war.

And yet the months that followed came closer than anything else to breaking the English will. The people were already exhausted by four years of bombing, inadequate food, interrupted sleep, long hours of work and a dispiriting diet of bad news. But the earlier bombings had at least been interrupted by periods of calm particularly on nights of storm or in the dark of the moon. (Nights of glorious moonlight had gained the sinister name of "a bomber's moon.") But the V1's never ceased and they fell with little discrimination on military and civilian targets. It was, however, noteworthy how many important buildings were hit, including three out of four RAP offices. Someone was providing the Germans with excellent target information. With malign ingenuity, the Germans used to send particularly heavy salvos in the morning and afternoon hours when people were on their way to or from work. But they fell in night hours too, a constant interruption to sleep. I used to look at the weary faces in the underground as I rode to the office, knowing that many had been up all night as Air Raid Wardens or Fire Watchers.

The very modus operandi of the V1 was particularly nerve-racking. First came the steadily mounting roar of the engine, rather like that of a motorcycle. It rose to a high pitch and then suddenly shut off. One's stomach tightened as one waited for the crash which announced that the bomb had landed and exploded; then, one knew that his name had not been on that one. The V2's, although much more powerful and devastating, were less nerve-racking, for they came more swiftly than the speed of sound, and so one heard the noise of their approach after the explosion. There was no anguish of expectancy; as the Cockneys said: "If you 'eard it, you've 'ad it."

One beautiful Sunday morning, as we were working in the office, a V1 went off with a tremendous roar of explosion followed by the crash of crumbling walls. The noise seemed to come from the direction of the Green Park. A few moments later, someone came in with the news that a direct hit had been scored upon the Guards' Chapel. We later learned that the bomb had struck the roof of the nave in the middle of the morning service. The clergy and choir in the chancel had been unharmed, but before their horrified eyes the entire congregation had been buried beneath the debris of the roof. It was one of the worst incidents of the war and particularly wounding to British pride because, beside the great loss of life, there had been the destruction of memorials of British victory and valor as far back as the 17th century.

That was a spring of unparalleled beauty, like its predecessor in 1940 or the famous summer of 1914. Sometimes, on my day off, I used to escape to Kew Gardens where I would lie under a great oak among myriads of bluebells and watch the fleets of bombers move majestically across the sky on their way to northern France to prepare the way for the Invasion.

The bombing had its lighter moments too. One day a V1 scored a direct hit on a well-known hotel just off Piccadilly Circus. Just before its arrival, a long queue had been waiting to buy the season's first cherries from a barrow in the Circus. As the bomb was heard approaching, everyone had thrown himself prone upon the ground. As soon as the blast had sounded and the rumble of falling masonry had subsided, they picked themselves up and fell into angry disputes as to where each had been in line.

Some rooms in our office faced upon the rear of the Berkeley Hotel. Blast from a bomb nearby had shattered all the glass in these back windows, including the bathrooms. (Glass manufacturers must have made a fortune during the war.) When the panes were replaced, one-way glass was installed in the bathroom windows. The workmen, however, were unfamiliar with it and at first installed it with the transparent side on the exterior. Work in the office was nearly halted as we callously watched the behavior of assorted people in what they mistakenly assumed to be a condition of complete invisibility to the public eye.

Despite, perhaps because of, the constant threat of death from the skies, there is a magical quality in my memories of that spring and summer. Britain was on double summer time, two hours ahead of the sun so the light lasted until about eleven o'clock. The streets were thronged with soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen from every allied nation, wandering as in a dream in a kind of subaqueous twilight. There were British Guardsmen, with their superb carriage and majestic stride; British sailors in pants with legs as wide as skirts; tall, tough British women MP's; the blue-gray of the RAF; American airmen, raunchily capped, the crews, officers and men, in tight little groups, as though they felt the same mutual dependence on the ground as in the air; Free French sailors, with their red pompons; Free Polish officers, with their curious angular caps; GIs; the superb Wagnerian goddesses of the Free Norwegian Navy; troops and seamen from all the British Dominions and from most of the countries lying under the Nazi yoke. Prostitutes solicited custom undisturbed on the streets and in doorways, females near Piccadilly Circus, males around Leicester Square. (There was a story --- whether true or not, I never knew --- that they were a "reserved occupation," free from being called up for the armed forces or industry.) In any case, their untroubled activity supported my long-held contention that London is actually a more immoral city than its sister across the Channel.

There was a universal spirit of camaraderie. I remember one night after darkness fell --- the deep darkness of the blackout -- when, as I walked along Piccadilly, my arm was seized and I was hurried along with a line of five or six dim figures, one of whom cried: "Come on, we're going to the Cavour."

Curious as to what the Cavour was, I submitted to friendly force and was eventually pulled down a flight of stairs into a basement cafe in Leicester Square. I looked at my companions --three or four English civilians, a Canadian soldier and a Guardsman. I had the drink demanded by courtesy and left them.

The general spirit of relaxation of all codes of propriety and morality sprang, I believe, from two causes, both of which I have mentioned above --- the knowledge that not merely the next day but the next hour or minute might bring death, and the feeling that one was far from the censorious eyes of home and safe from recognition by kinsman, friend or fellow-townsman.

When the V1's began, all personnel at our office were required to troop down long flights of stairs to the cellar as soon as the alert sounded. But as these were soon coming eighteen or twenty times a working day and plainly no work could be accomplished under such circumstances, the order went out that only "essential personnel," which meant, of course, the top brass, were to take shelter. The rest of us remained at our posts, with the comforting assurance that our fates were of neither consequence nor vital interest to the powers above us. What we did was to take refuge in the windowless interior corridor during very close or heavy bombardment, since even a shock wave could send deadly glass fragments flying from the windows. I shall return to this custom shortly.

In keeping with the annoying clannishness of AI3C1, none of the American officers there were trusted with the secret of the time and place of the approaching invasion. This was the more galling, as an RAF corporal was allowed to share the knowledge. Those who did so were designated by the code adjective "bigoted." (There is room for a book, or at least an article, upon the fatuous passion for acronyms and code names of every description, as though these deceived the enemy for any length of time. It is much like the fondness of children for dreaming up a special language in their games. But after all there is much of the child in all military leaders.)

As it chanced, someone one day left a table covered with photographs of the proposed landing beaches, with their names printed upon them, as I recall. I found them and took a mean satisfaction of calling the attention of the British Brass to this flagrant violation of security. By another curious chance, "Pop" West, in the Navy Department in Washington, knew the date but not the places. so, we shared between us one of the century's great secrets.

The morning of the Invasion, I reached the office all unaware, to be greeted by an RAF Sergeant. "Good morning, sir," said he. "I see the balloon's gone up." I was unfamiliar with that bit of British slang and supposed that he meant that the barrage balloon in the Green Park nearby had broken its moorings and sailed away. The flat uninterest of my reply must have disappointed him. In a short time, I learned my mistake and the ensuing days became a time of increasing tension for us all until it became clear that a beachhead was securely established. It may be recalled that the superb weather which had prevailed all spring ceased abruptly on D Day and that the remainder of the summer was one of weeping skies.

It was raining softly on the morning of August 20, a Sunday, when a heavy barrage of V1's began in our neighborhood. As usual, we left the offices to gather in the corridor until the flurry should end. Pug Williams, another RAF officer named Lloyd, also a schoolmaster in civilian life, and one or two other RAE personnel were talking with me and we were making our usual Sunday agreement to eat lunch at the American Mess and supper at King George's Club.

I noticed some distance down the hall, an RAF enlisted man, another schoolmaster, who had just been promoted. I considered walking down to congratulate him, pondered whether I should appear condescending, then decided that one should never hesitate to do a gracious or pleasing act, and so went down to speak to him.

I had barely done so when there was a sharp crack. All the lights went out and the air was filled with plaster dust. The next thing I saw was a tall, grey haired RAF officer stumbling from an office with blood streaming down his face; he had been cut by glass fragments. I began giving him first aid, but a WAAF (one of the feminine auxiliary to the RAF) at once took over from me and I turned to the other end of the corridor, where I saw a hole in the ceiling and a smoking pile of rubble. I went down and assisted in digging it away, and there beneath it, blown half-way into the floor below, were the bodies of our friends. My clearest memory of that moment is of standing and looking down at Pug Williams' bald head with its fringe of reddish hair, while the soft summer rain of London fell gently down upon it.

The rest of my memories are disjointed. I looked into our office, where the drawers of the steel filing cabinets had been blown open and their contents scattered upon the floor which was deep in broken glass. The bodies of the dead were dug out and carried to the basement, where an RAF officer and I identified them, and he broke down. As it chanced, none of the American officers was killed.

My uniform and cap were white with plaster dust so I decided to go home and change. As I emerged from the building and turned toward Piccadilly, one of the rare taxis came by. I recall an American officer who out-ranked me by several grades coming out of a hotel with a smartly dressed woman. He hailed the cab at the same time as I, and was by his superior rank, entitled to it, but when I explained my plight and he saw my condition, he said at once: "You take it, Captain." Unbelievably, the woman protested his generosity but neither he nor I paid her the least heed.

I went home and bathed and put on a clean uniform, then went back to the office and spent the rest of the afternoon gathering up top secret papers and putting them away that they might not be blown out into the street through a gaping hole in the building's outer wall. Then I went home, had supper and wrote home. I have just looked at the letter which merely says that I had had a close call with death. (Later I wrote a fuller account, alleging that the incident had befallen a friend. My mother saw through the artifice at once.) Only after I had gone to bed, when a flight of V1's roared overhead, did the delayed reaction set in. I lay and shivered uncontrollably as I realized how very closely death had passed me by.

The experience was a major turning point in my life. Ever since I had joined the service, I had feared that I might prove cowardly or simply useless in a crisis. That night of trembling during the bombing raid in Teddington had undermined my confidence. But now I had met a major disaster and done all that my duty demanded. I had had the most curious sensation that my inner self was a separate person, watching quite dispassionately, like a spectator at a play, a my outer self went through all the necessary motions. Never again was I doubtful of my ability to meet a crisis.

A group of us went down by rail to Cardiff to Pug's funeral. There, for the first time, I met his widow Mabel, and the son David of whom he spoke so proudly. Mabel was expecting another child, which proved to be a girl, Gillian and Mabel paid me the great honor of asking me to be her godfather. That was my first journey to southern Wales, the first of several I was to make in later years. The funeral took place in a green valley which, with its elms, reminded me of my own New England. There I first heard the musical Welsh tongue in the Committal Service.

The Norburys most kindly asked me down to "Sherridge" for a weekend to recover from the shock. I was rather a disappointing guest, for I wished to do nothing but sleep during my entire visit.

With the Invasion of Normandy, most of the work in the office was finished, save for providing a few target sheets for the disruption of German defenses in the South of France. However, that operation moved so swiftly that I suspect they were of little, if any, use. Once more, I seemed about to be at loose ends, when my usual good fortune intervened. One day, I chanced to encounter in the street my Harvard classmate, Harold Jefferson Coolidge. After the usual perfunctory greetings, he asked me what I was doing. "Not much," I said, and added the explanation that our work had dried up. "How would you like to go to France?" he asked. Upon my replying that I should like to very much, he explained that he was the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and that he needed officers who could speak and understand French for work with their teams with the invading armies. He promised to have me requisitioned by OSS, which had top priority in all such requests. As it happened, by a strange twist of fate, my services were being sought at the same time by the Army Historical Section in Washington, and had not OSS seized me, I should have found myself working for Colonel John M. Kemper, who was later to become Headmaster of Andover.

My remaining weeks in London passed swiftly. I was duly transferred to an OSS office, where in true Army fashion, I waited for an assignment.

During this time, the first V2s fell. I recall riding home on a bus one warm late afternoon and hearing a crash, followed by a long, diminishing roar. The first official explanation was that some gas works had blown up, but this assertion was quickly discredited and became the theme of a cockney joke. All that summer, whenever I returned on the underground at night, I found the platforms crowded, all but a narrow strip next to the pit, by whole families with fretful children, bedding spread on the dirty floor, amid an all-pervasive smell of urine and unwashed bodies. Some slept, some knitted, most gossiped with kinsfolk or neighbors. Yet even in those appalling nights, the cockney wit and good humor seldom seemed to fail.

Very soon after I moved to the OSS Headquarters, a change was made in the plans for me. Instead of being sent to a detachment with one of the armies, I was assigned to handle Air Intelligence in the office about to be opened in Paris. So I was to continue my round of world capitals.

We were given an horrendous briefing. Paris had been liberated only a fortnight before, and we were warned that the city was full of Gestapo agents who would like nothing better than to kidnap a member of our organization and use their peculiar methods to extract its secrets from him. (They could have extracted precious little from me.) Under no circumstances must we reveal that we belonged to our mysterious fraternity

So I found myself airborne once more. The flight was not without its perils, for not long before, Glen Miller's plane had been shot down on a similar trip. But we were soon safely across the Channel, gazed down on the heavily bombed streets of Rouen, headed up the Seine valley, and in an incredibly short time saw ahead of us the Eiffel Tower.

We landed at Orly, there saw our first German POW's hitherto an impersonal entity, now personalized. Some of the French were spitting on them, but they maintained a Teutonic phlegm.

We were driven into Paris in buses. As we turned from the Boulevard St. Michel onto the Quais, with Notre Dame just behind us, one of the civilian stenographers, said: "What's that river?'

When we arrived at the hotel at which we were to be billeted, our luggage was piled on the sidewalk. Each piece was stencilled in large white letters: OSS.

Whatever dreams we may have harbored as to wining and dining in Paris, la ville lumière, were soon dispelled by the realities of war. We were forbidden to eat in any French restaurant and were restricted to the OSS Mess in a restaurant called the Doucet. Here a villainous looking French chef struggled with the tastelessness of spam and hot dogs, solacing his despair with deep draughts of brandy, sometimes with bizarre results. We had French waitresses, whose inner thoughts about us I should not have cared to fathom. At the beginning, one of them was an elegant and buxom blonde, whom we nicknamed la Marquice. Once, when asked what the dessert was, she replied: "C'est une fantaisie du cuisinier." She, alas, soon disappeared and rumor had it that it had been discovered that she had previously worked for the Gestapo. I also recall that when she asked Harold Coolidge what he did in civilian life, his French did not extend to "Professor of Anthropology," so he replied, in a horrid accent, after the school of Boston; "Moi, je suis professeur des singes." What la Marquise made of that I cannot imagine; probably she thought that he was a keeper in a monkey house in a zoo.

One of my personal idiosyncrasies is a large consumption of water at meals. We had a pretty, shy young waitress named Hélène, who regarded me with growing consternation, until one evening, as she filled my glass for the fourth or fifth time, she was moved to murmur: "Ah, monsieur, attention la nuit!"

In those first glorious days after the Liberation, we Americans were the darlings of Paris. Two elderly ladies in typical French black, came up to me in Notre Dame and offered their hands, expressing their gratitude to us. On our first Saturday night, a group of us went on the town. (Bars and night clubs were not "off limits" to us.) Late in the evening, in one café I had a struggle with a Frenchman for the honor of paying for the drinks. I won (or lost), only to discover later that he was the proprietor who wished to treat us. It was on that evening --- and the following day --- that I discovered that the French 759 (a mixture of brandy and champagne) was as lethal as the weapon for which it is named.

Paris had been scarcely touched by bombs. The beauty of the unscarred city, the gay dresses of the women, who darted about on bicycles with side skirts in bright colors billowing about them ---all were a refreshment to our spirits, long depressed by the bomb. scarred streets and prevailing grayness of London. We used to watch later arrivals from England revive like parched flowers placed in water.

Two scenes from those early days I shall never forget. One was the Mass of Thanksgiving for the Liberation held in Notre Dame, with the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris and Cardinal Spellman in the procession. I recall my surprise at hearing the choir burst into the Hallelujah Chorus, that most protestant of anthems.

The other remembrance was a very solitary and personal experience. On a night of a full moon, I took a walk along the Seine from the Pont d’Iéna to Notre Dame. I met no one. Because of the blackout, there was no illumination save that provided by the moon. A slight mist diffused the silver moonlight, so that all the dear and famous buildings along my way, with their hundreds of historic associations, shimmered in a sort of supernatural beauty. The final touch of magic came as I was opposite the apse of Notre Dame with its tiny garden. The door of a café on the Isle St. Louis opened and two men emerged, singing a strange song with the melancholy quavers and falling cadences of Spain.

Armistice Day, 1944 was a day of thanksgiving and rededication and mourning for the French. My thoughtful family kept the letter which I wrote them the next day, and I feel I cannot do better than quote the words which I wrote while the day's emotions were still fresh in my heart:

"Of course, yesterday was a very great day here. The celebration began Friday evening. As I came from work, three great beams of light rose to the stars through the arch of the Arc de Triomphe -- the three colors of France -- blue, white and red.

At 7:45 when I went to breakfast yesterday, people and troops were gathering on the Champs Elysées. All morning the crowd grew. The buildings were decked with French, British, Russian and American flags. Every window and rooftop was filled and the broad sidewalks jammed. Every known French institution seemed to have a group out, even down to the boys and girls from the Lycées. Little processions of wounded veterans in small carts and wheelchairs were pushed up the hill. A vast tricolor hung from the Arc de Triomphe. We closed up work and got a fine place in a window on the Champs Elysées. There was the usual French crowd with ladders, boys climbing trees and being hauled down, women standing back to the street and looking in mirrors held high above their heads. Now and then the crowd would push through the police cordon and there would be a great tooting of whistles, terrific waving of arms, shouts, a few blows and two or three kicks, and everything would be forgotten a few minutes later.

Shortly before 11:00 a wave of cheering arose and a procession drove quickly past with DeGaulle and Churchill sitting in one car, Churchill waving his cap at the crowd. Behind them was Anthony Eden and an unidentified Frenchman. Promptly at 11:00, as the sun came out, a cannon-shot was heard and absolute silence fell instantaneously on that tremendous throng. It was the longest and most impressive minute I ever recall.

The parade began about 11:20 --- Koenig leading it, then the Garde Mobile, then British Guards, sailors, kilted highlanders, and Air Force. Americans--- the army band, bless them, was the only one that played going by us except the Moroccans -- soldiers, sailors and MPs. Then came the French ---soldiers in every combination of British, American and French uniforms, sailors, air force, paratroops, Moroccans, Senegalese, armored cars and the inevitable jeeps. Think what it meant to the French people to see their own soldiers once more on the Champs Elysées. Then came the Paris Fire Brigade in full equipment.

There was a long pause. Then came one vast wave of cheering, the loudest I have ever heard. The bands of the Garde Républicaine and the Guards on beautiful, perfectly matched horses, all brave in blue and brass and scarlet crests came down the great street. They made a hollow square around the car in which Churchill, in RAF blue, stood waving his cap, and DeGaulle stood stretching out both his arms to the people of Paris whom the Germans used to taunt with the hopelessness of this day.

So passed the great, but all the long autumn afternoon the little people of Paris, the old veterans, the windows and orphans, mounted the hill in their own little parades to pay their homage to the Tomb to which the Germans had so long forbidden them access."

I have always hated moving, as I hate all change. This feeling may stem, in part, from the frequent moves we made in my childhood and the sense of insecurity they must have bred. My stay in Paris was punctuated by changes of quarters. We were soon transferred from our first hotel on the rue Francois Premier to one on a side street running off the Champs Elysées. There I had a roommate, a pleasant young officer with a most unpleasant habit of coming home tipsy every night and vomiting into our washbowl. I applied for and received another room --- alone. This was a tiny little suite of sitting room, bedroom and bath at the very top of the hotel, with a wide view sur les toits de Paris. Its sense of snug completeness, with no roommate to bother me, suited me exactly. But I had been there only a very brief time when we were told that the hotel had been preempted for embassy personnel and we were to move once more. Our new quarters proved to be the well-known Elysée-Parc Hôtel on the Rond Point, where I had a very elegant room, with two beds in an alcove off the sitting room and, of course, a private bath, At first, a French Major --- in the American Army --- was supposed to share it with me. He, however, had what the French with customary elegance, call une petite amie, -- or so we conjectured, since he never spent a night in the room, which, of course suited me perfectly. However, he was soon sent back to the States --- rumor had it, because of too much attention to la petite amie. So, I once again had a charming room completely to myself.

Then one day I found in the room a strange foot-locker marked 1st Lt. Wm. McKay. I was not pleased, as I envisioned another sozzling night-prowler. When Lt. McKay appeared, he proved to be a young man in the early twenties, with a roguish look on his handsome face. Our first meetings were characterized by coolness on both sides. He saw himself saddled with a bald, middle-aged, and presumably, stodgy captain; my apprehensions I have already made clear. We continued thus for several days until, one night when neither could get to sleep, we gradually began to exchange dirty stories across the alcove. I discovered that he had a delightful sense of humor, he that I was not stodgy after all.

This was the beginning of a happy but all too brief companionship. He was in Communications and usually worked on the evening shift. Every few days, I had a similar duty, that is, we were both dealing with reports radioed in by secret agents in enemy territory. After we came off duty, we would go up to the Red Cross station in the Jockey Club, nearby, for coffee and doughnuts. I may add the aside that in all my contacts with that much touted organization, whether in or out of the service, I never knew them to give or do anything unless they were paid for it.

I recall one incident illustrative of Bill's waggish humor. I was sitting one evening in the Mess at a table with four women ---all from our office --- when Bill, his dinner finished, sauntered up. With a perfectly straight face, he asked, "Have you got that woman out of the room yet, Al? I want to know if I may go home." Four pairs of feminine eyebrows lifted in unison. What was worse, the remark was not in the least improbable. Men and women were billeted in the same hotel and there was a good deal of paramilitary activity. The officer across the hall from us had a French girl in his room much of the time. One enterprising photographer climbed across two balconies, at the risk of his neck, and obtained some action snapshots of a couple which enjoyed wide office circulation. When the colleges began their feverish campaign to integrate the sexes, I could have given them valuable information as to the probable degree of integration in coeducational dormitories.

Eventually, I had to move on to Germany. I saw Bill once in Paris on my return and once after the war in Arlington, when he was still in the army. We lost touch, however, as did so many service friends. There is none from whom I should be happier to hear, and if he ever chances to read these words, I hope he will write me.

Life was not easy in Paris that winter. We had no heat or hot water in the hotel. I would get up first and give a first call to Bill. While I shaved --- agonizingly --- in cold water, he would struggle back from his heavy slumber and follow me in his ablutions. Then we would dress and face the cold winds than swept down the Champs Elysées, which much of the time resembled a mer de glace. Turning down a side street, we would at last reach the blessed warmth of the Mess --- to face once more the omelet made from those accursed powdered eggs. I would hazard a bet that no veteran of those days has ever willingly since eaten either Spam or powdered eggs. One morning in the winter darkness, I misread my watch and dragged the protesting William from his bed one hour too soon. for some weeks thereafter, he called me bitterly "seven-o'clock Chase."

At about fortnightly intervals, when in the opinion of the C.O., the corporate B.O. became too pronounced, word would go out that there would be hot water for baths that night. Dinner would be hurriedly gulped down (usually we lingered, soaking up the warmth), as each hurried to be home before the hot water was exhausted. Those so unfortunate as to be lodged in billets outside the hotel were charitably invited by the lucky ones to bathing parties in their rooms.

There was no heat in the office. Secretaries suffered severely from chill-blains and coffee was constantly being brewed on a tiny electric flat. The fashionable Christmas gift for men overseas that year was fruitcake; I believe my total was fourteen. My secretary would come in with the mail shouting: "Another fruitcake for Captain Chase." These, with the coffee, kept us functioning; those who sent them surely did not realize how important a rôle their kindly gifts were to play in the war effort.

Eventually, our allies, the navy made us a gift of heating oil for our office building. It may interest the medical profession that whereas we had all been conspicuously healthy in the deathly chill, we all came down with virulent colds as soon as the heat came on.

Our office was in a building on the Champs Elysées which had been used by the Germans of the Todt Organization. Both there and in the hotels there were traces of German occupancy --perhaps the most interesting being a sign on a closet of one of my rooms warning German soldiers not to walk the streets or enter the subways of Paris unaccompanied by another soldier.

The OSS was perhaps the most bizarre collection of human beings ever assembled outside the circus. And, indeed, we did have among us a member of the North family, the owners of Ringling Brothers. Since the Organization needed all types of skills, all sorts of persons were recruited. It was rumored that we even had a professional safe-cracker, but I was never able to substantiate that report.

I was in the reports section, which received, evaluated and redistributed intelligence from all sorts of sources and agents --secret spies in enemy territory; single and double agents in such neutral capitals as Stockholm, Lisbon and Istanbul; Intelligence Sections in our own armies; the various undergrounds; and the intelligence offices of allied and friendly powers.

Our personnel was partly military, partly civilian. This caused a good deal of friction among the women, for the WACs, under military discipline, were subject to a curfew, whereas the civilian girls, though dressed in identical uniforms, save for the military insignia, had complete freedom to enjoy the night life of Paris, which still flourished, in spite of all, and had done so throughout the Occupation. Add to that a large salary differential in favor of the civilians, and there developed at once an explosive field for feminine jealousy.

Among our more remarkable members was Philip Horton, a civilian, who was in charge of our Section. His peacetime post had been that of supervisor of the Poetry Reading Room in the Harvard Library. His roommate, a corporal, was a Polish ballet dancer. In charge of Order of Battle Information (disposition of enemy forces) was Harry Rositzky, who was not my favorite, but who, I must confess, did an able job of work. Just recently he has appeared with a change in the spelling of his name to Rositzke, as the author of a book on the covert operations of the CIA, into which he had vanished when it emerged from its larval stage of the OSS. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had charge of Political Intelligence. He was then in the course of publishing his Age of Jackson, which made him a sort of child prodigy. It was impossible not to like the ebullient Arthur of those days, unblown upon by the corruptive winds of Camelot and power. When we first opened, Arthur was a civilian; later, he lost his exemption from military service and was drafted, to the horrified cluckings of all the female staff. However, the OSS had sufficient power to hold him, and so far as I knew, his military service consisted in attending a few weekly drills. He was subject to colds, and I recall him as always having the snuffles and wearing a woolen scarf of immense length wound round and round his neck.

Crossing our orbit now and then were several characters of various' degrees of prominence, whose functions I never knew.

Among them, was Paul Mellon, Andrew's son; Henry Ringling North, whom I have already mentioned; a former bat-boy of the New York Giants, whose name I have forgotten. Then, one afternoon, a tall courteous, modest-appearing man came to see me on a very hush-hush matter, of which more anon. after he left, someone said, "DO you know who that was?" I confessed ignorance, and my informant enlightened me: "That was Moe Berg, the baseball catcher, famous for holding a Ph.D." The head of the whole Paris operation was David Bruce, who had a long and distinguished diplomatic career. One incident which has not been published was an alarm raised when one of his female staff went on a trip to the Front and disappeared for a time. There was justifiable fear that she had been captured and might be tortured to make her reveal secret information, of which she commanded more than a little. Bruce was soundly criticized for allowing her to go on such a foolish trip.

My original assignment in the office had been that of handling all intelligence on activities of the air forces, our own as well as those of the enemy. However, we were short of personnel, and I soon found myself in charge of all translation; all naval and medical intelligence, and all that dealing with new secret weapons of the foe. The reports on these were often extremely bizarre, vis.:

"The Germans had a new shell which produced sound vibrations so high as to kill human beings; hundreds of wretched Jews had been so executed on a mountain in Czechoslovakia."

"A new German bomb lowered the temperature of the surrounding area so acutely as to freeze to death all living things." (This was taken seriously enough for our army to send investigators to a spot near Amiens where such a blast had been reported. It was, of course a false a false rumor.)

"The Germans were sending in secret agents with phials full of bacteria of virulent diseases to spread in the Paris subways." (This occasioned ill-natured comment that no foreign bacteria could hope to contend with the natural strains in that locale.)

"The Germans had a new plane from whose wing tips giant shears could be extended to sever the control cables of our planes."

Most of these reports were so patently absurd that they could be dismissed out-of-hand, but occasionally one was in real doubt as to whether to take them seriously. I incurred a good deal of teasing for disseminating a rumor that the Luftwaffe had a new electrical beam which their planes could project so as to disrupt the electrical systems of our aircraft. Not being competent to determine the feasibility of this weapon, but aware of our own new proximity fuses for shells, I did not dare to kill the report.

In line with this aspect of my work, I was sent all reports on German progress toward an atomic bomb. So secret was this matter, that I forwarded such material only to one person in London, one in Washington, and to Moe Berg, whom I have just mentioned. Yet I had not the slightest hint of our own Manhattan Project.

Each side in the conflict played with "psychological warfare," the spreading of rumors, false and otherwise, calculated to damage enemy morale. OSS had a particularly active department, which achieved its supreme success when our Reports Section picked up one of its rumors and disseminated it in one of our reports.

It was fascinating work all the way. One learned how careful one must be about both sources and the dissemination of Intelligence. There were double agents who were known to be working for both sides and were simply honest ---more or less---intelligence brokers. There were agents working for both the British and ourselves, but of whose activity for us the British were presumed ignorant. accordingly, information from them was not to be sent to British Intelligence. The same situation prevailed with the French and all our other Allies.

The personal contacts were interesting. Certain men would appear at our Mess for a few days and then disappear; and we knew that they had gone to some neutral country to go thence into Germany in the guise of business travelers. Then there were the agents I have mentioned above, who reported by clandestine radio from enemy countries, usually at some prearranged hour of the night. Sometimes the calls would fail to come at the time appointed, and if this silence lasted, we knew that the agent had probably been apprehended and shot by the Germans.

We saw a fair amount of the French Underground, and a very tough-looking lot they were. Their methods of gaining information from prisoners were no gentler than those of the Gestapo; one American officer told me how he had watched the French knock out the teeth of an SS soldier one by one until he talked.

Any account of the Paris Office must include a tribute to my two delightful and loyal secretaries, Alice Hubers and Stella Uzdawinis. They were contrasting types, Alice highly intense and peppery in disposition, Stella relaxed and happy. Both were devoted to me and would do anything for me. Once, when I lacked a waste basket at the time of our opening of the office, Stella procured one for me simply by appropriating a general's. Because, I was somewhat older and, as they discovered, tolerant, they treated me as a sort of father confessor. Being civilians, they were free to devote their evenings until the small hours to the entertainment of young officers on furlough in Paris, to many of whom they showed the expensive delights of Montmartre, sending them back to duty poorer in purse but rich in experience, it was unfair, as life always is, that after such a night Stella would come to work looking as dewy fresh as though she had had eight hours of untroubled sleep, where as poor Alice showed only too plainly how she had spent the evening. It was a happy office, with much laughter. At the end of the long, cold days, as the early winter night closed in, Stella would cover her typewriter, push back her chair and call "Well, Captain, time to put the show on the road."

They took great delight in making plans to visit me after the war. They planned, they said, to buy the tightest black satin dresses they could find in which to stroll across the Andover campus with me, doing wonders --- of a sort --- for my mood. Later she wrote Stella: "I behaved like a perfect lady; after all, every woman has it in her to act one great part in her lifetime." We have kept in touch. Alice, now married, writes frequently, and she and her husband have visited me several times, and I them. Stella, strangely, with her good looks, fine figure, and gay manner, has never married. She has never come east from her Omaha home, despite repeated promises to do so, and Christmas alone brings word from her.

Two other delightful members of the staff were the Kleeman twins, Eliza and Frances. The latter was a gifted musician and an expert linguist, --- my very able assistant in the labor of translation.

There is an anecdote in this connection which has for years furnished me with an argument against the famous high pressure language courses then so popular with the armed forces. One evening, there came in from an agent in Holland a radio message in Dutch, very badly garbled in transmission. In the Communications Section was a soldier who had taken one of the quick courses in Dutch in an Army school; he could make no sense out of the message. As a last resort, it was sent down to me, and Frances and I set to work on it. Neither of us had had a word of Dutch, but both of us were soundly based in German and, of course in Latin; also, we had a small pocket Dutch dictionary. With these tools, because we knew how to analyze the structure of an Indo-European language, we were, after long effort, able to work out a satisfactory version of the garbled text, which proved to be a valuable piece of military information. In other words, the soldier in communications had memorized a small number of Dutch words and expressions; Frances and I knew the nature and mechanics of language.

Just as I was preparing this Ms. for the Press, the following passage appeared in an article on Language Teaching in the United States in the Christian Science Monitor for January 4 1978:

"Notably more students are studying the classical languages, Latin and Greek Latin enrollment showed an increase of 3 percent between 1972 and '74 at the college level and has been gaining since then. Last fall Latin enrollment reportedly doubled at the University of Illinois.

"Latin study is picking up again at the highschool level too. Special Latin programs have recently helped high school students in Philadelphia and Indianapolis make gains in other subject areas like English, math, science, and social studies, school officials claim.

"Greek began its comeback even earlier than Latin, about 1970. Mr. Brod says.

"Reasons behind the revival of a "dead" language such as Latin suggest some needed changes in the approach to modern tongues, he says.

"Solid teaching was maintained in the classics department during the '60s. There was no watering down of the program, he explains. 'It is generally felt someone earning a doctorate in classics is more deeply trained than in other languages."

My nine months in Paris were greatly enriched by the privilege of friendship with two French families, who showed me warm and constant hospitality. Each family had been friends of a different friend of mine at Andover.

The De Costiers had known Chester Cochran for quite some time, and indeed, I had met them with him in the summer of 1938 in Paris and on a delightful excursion to Rheims. In those days, the matriarch of the family had still been alive, a properly imposing figure. but when I called upon them, not long after my arrival in Paris in September of 1944, the family consisted of Madame Mère, a dainty, charming figure like an 18th century marquise; a married daughter, Madeleine, and her husband Ben; their infant daughter, France; and an unmarried daughter, Henriette, who had a prosperous business in painted silk scarves. Despite wartime restrictions, I had many a delicious dinner and evening with them in their Auteuil apartment --- evenings always necessarily brief because in those days the Métro closed at nine and taxis were not to be found. Like my other French friends, they could --- or would --- speak no English. I used to find the evenings of speaking and listening to French exceedingly exhausting after a day's mental labor at the office, but I was grateful for the experience and gradually gained in facility. Ben discovered that a small glass of a liquor which he called gniolle or niolle (I have never been able to find the word in any French dictionary) was highly efficacious in stimulating my fluency or dispelling my inhibitions. I suppose that it was a form of calvados, the potent applejack of Normandy, for it smelled of apples and was amazingly potent.

Guy and Madeleine Du Laurent were friends of my close friend James Grew, who had boarded with Guy's mother during his student days in Paris. The Du Laurents were old French nobility -- Viscomtes --- but during the troubles after the First World War, when Guy's father was an invalid in consequence of wounds received at Verdun, Madame Du Laurent had taken paying guests. M. Du Laurent had been a close friend of De Gaulle's father. It was quite in character that when a friend suggested that le grand Charles' wife call upon Madame Du Laurent, the General replied: 'Ma femme ne rend pas visite à une marchande de soupe."

During the war, Madame Mère stayed on their country estate, but Jim Grew asked me to call upon Guy and Madeleine. I paid a formal call on a Sunday soon after I reached Paris. They spoke no English and my French was still very halting. The call was stiff and difficult, and when Guy said that he would phone me soon and invite me to dinner, I was skeptical of the promise. However, within a fortnight, he did call with the promised invitation. He and Madeleine received me warmly and at once took me to be present when their small daughter Sylvie said her bedtime prayers. It was already far enough along in the fall for the nights to be chilly, but fuel and food were both scarce, so a card table was laid for dinner in the living room, where a fire burned in a small stove. The only other source of heat was the stove in the kitchen. They had a young maid, fresh from the country, awkward at the best of times, and the more so in the presence of a uniformed stranger. As she came in from the kitchen, carrying the one-dish dinner, a sort of baked hash, she tripped and deposited the dish and its contents on the floor. There was nothing else to eat, and so the three of us got down and scraped up the hash from the carpet onto our plates. Never was social ice more effectively broken.

The Du Laurents were exceedingly generous in introducing me to their friends, and as Americans were then popular, I had a rare opportunity to observe the upper circles of French society, not usually open to foreigners. Let me put down briefly a few of my impressions and a few amusing experiences.

Before we went out to dinner or bridge, the Du Laurents always briefed me on those whom I was to meet. This was, of course, a great help in conversation, both on what subjects to discuss and what to avoid. I found French social conversation the most intelligent and sparkling J have ever know. heritage of the salons is still very much alive. Contrary to the Anglo-Saxon tradition that the French are flattering and deceitful, I found them in general, exceedingly frank, saying to one's face exactly what they thought.

I made my share of faux pas. At a very elegant luncheon, I snapped out my carefully folded napkin and a roll concealed in its folds sailed over my shoulder. When a Frenchwoman next to me at the table asked me what was the function of the American women in uniform who were not WACS, I fell into the ever-treacherous trap of word similarity and said: "Elles sont des nourrices." "Des nourrices dans l'armée Américaine" she exclaimed, and I recollected that nourrice in French means "wet-nurse" and that I should have said "infirmières."

Perhaps my most amusing --- and fortunate --- experience in French society came as a bridge party. I had had the usual briefing from the Du Laurents, which had included a warning that one of the players would be a very wealthy manufacturer of porcelain who was a demon player and could not endure to lose. "We surely hope," they added, "that you do not draw him as a partner." Of course, I did, and I sat down to play with fear and trembling. Never have I had such luck; each of my hands was heavy with court cards, and we won and won, as my partner beamed and showered compliments upon me. Luckily, I never had to test my good fortune with him a second time. Several years later, the gentleman's wife was the victim of a famous and mysterious murder. She went out one day on a simple errand of some sort and disappeared, and after weeks of fruitless search, her body was found in the Seine. So far as I know, the case was never solved.

Late in that winter, Americans were permitted to invite French friends to our Officers' Mess. What they thought of the other food they were served they were much too courteous to say, but they fell like wolves upon the white bread, for which they had an intense craving after the poor product which they had been fed throughout the Nazi occupation and the shortages which had continued throughout that winter.

Two incidents at that time were the stuff of which spy dramas are made. Indeed, my experiences with OSS have made such factitious dramas simply a bore to me.

First of all, our liaison with the French Deuxième Bureau was a mystery in itself. We in the Reports Section were allowed to know very little about it, but the scanty facts, so far as we could piece them together, were these. The French link was a French woman, widowed or divorced or separated from an American husband. She apparently had worked with the French Underground. On our side, the only person allowed to have contact with her was a Regular Army Colonel from Virginia, I believe. Thanks to their cooperation, we often received valuable information which the regular French Intelligence withheld from us.

At the time of the Battle of the Bulge, some French collaborators were parachuted into the city by the Nazis on missions of destruction --- or so the report went. We received word that one of these men had been captured by the French and of course, condemned to death. He pleaded for a delay in his execution on the grounds that he could provide important information on German airfields which he had been familiar with in the course of his work as a forced laborer in Germany. I was despatched to interview him in his prison. We met in a small conference room, just he and I, with a guard outside the door. He was a wretched little man, terrified of the fate which awaited him and anxious to postpone it as long as possible. His information was of no value whatever --- merely his observations as he bicycled past one or two airfields on his way to work. We had extensive information on every field in Germany --- indeed, one of my most annoying tasks was cutting and pasting bits of new information which continually flowed in, in order to keep our "directory" up-to-date. Luckily, I did not have to tell him my reactions, but I did have to report that his information was valueless, thereby sending him to a prompt death by a firing squad. I had little pity for him as a traitor, much as a wretched human being. It was the only time in my life when I have knowingly held in my hands the power of life and death; it is not a happy obligation.

The second episode was less tragic and much more romantic. Once again, our mysterious informant sent word that the French were holding captive a very important German. He was the West European Manager of all Focke-Wulf aircraft production plants. He had joined the Nazi exodus from Paris but had stolen back to see his French mistress. Here the story becomes slightly mysterious; the French were supposed to have captured him and to be holding him, yet I have an almost certain recollection that his guards were American soldiers. he was said to have been detected throwing billets-doux for his mistress from the window of the place of his confinement.

In any case, an officer from the 8th Air Force, a secretary and I set out for an apartment house in the most elegant residential section of Paris. We entered a foyer which was in complete darkness. Suddenly, a flashlight beam focused upon us from above and we were peremptorily challenged. Upon our giving satisfactory proof of our identity and of the genuineness of our mission, we were allowed to mount the stairs and enter a luxurious apartment.

There we were cordially received by a suave, exquisitely dressed man in what I judged to be his early forties. His English was impeccable, almost without accent, and also without the Oxford flavor so common among Continental Europeans. This was explained by the fact that he had worked for some years in aircraft factories in the United States. (Training our future enemies seems to be an old American habit.) It took only a very short time for my fellow officer and myself to realize that this was a very large fish indeed, far too important for our small technical knowledge to interrogate. So, after a delightful half-hour or so, we withdrew, after he had begged us to see that he was sent to the United States --- anything to get him out of French hands. We sent in a recommendation that he be flown to Headquarters in England for top-level interrogation. Rumor later reported that he was somewhat irregularly snatched from the French and flown over the Channel in a special 8th Air Force plane. I know no more of his subsequent history save that word drifted back that he was the single most important German captive since the strange arrival of Rudolf Hess.

Not long before Christmas, Dr. Carroll of Duke University and I came back from one of our frequent trips to SHAEF Headquarters in the Grandes Ecuries at Versailles to find the office hushed by the news of the great German offensive of the Bulge, of which I shall have more to say later. There was real panic in Paris, for the French trembled as they recalled threats made by the Nazis at the time of the Liberation. There was a rumor that our office was to be moved to Tours. Several of us had made plans to attend midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at a Parisian church famous for its music --- I believe that it was La Trinité. Then orders went out that all American personnel not on duty were to be confined to quarters after eight P.M. and that officers were to carry 45's and enlisted men carbines at all times. There was an early evening service at the American Episcopal Pro-Cathedral on the Avenue Georges V; to that we went. Of all my memories of the war, none are so poignant as those of that service, as the congregation thronged with armed men, sang the bitterly ironic words:

For we knew that as we sang, men were suffering and dying not too far to the northeast.

The Battle of the Bulge was the occasion of a curious incident in Intelligence which, so far as I know, has thus far remained one of the unrevealed secrets of the war. We received reports from the G2s of the armies, the important items being radioed in, the less important being forwarded by messenger, or as we called it, "pouched." In the weeks before the German attack, our Order of Battle Section --- that, as I have said, being the one which kept track of the whereabouts of enemy units --- had been puzzled by the disappearance of a number of German armored divisions. Our Russian allies, secretive as ever, always refused to give us Order of Battle intelligence, but our people assumed that the missing troops had been moved to the Eastern Front.

A few days after the beginning of the German attack, I was going through a mass of documents pouched to us from First Army intelligence. There, dated a few days before the breakthrough, was a report from a local civilian woman who had slipped across the opposing lines to visit a sister in German-occupied territory.

On her safe return, she had gone to the American Headquarters and reported that she had seen a large number of German troops and tanks carefully concealed in the area. Why, apparently, this vitally important information was not acted upon and why it was not radioed to us at once but nonchalantly sent by pouch days later, must remain one of the war's great riddles. As soon as I read the report, I called my Chief and showed it to him. he read it without comment, walked off with it, and I have heard no more of it from that day to this.

It seems to me that even without consideration of this error, there never has been sufficient blame for this gross blunder on Eisenhower's part in the German break-through. The very area where the Germans had come through in 1870, 1914 and 1940 was left thinly guarded by troops, some of whom were without battle experience. (A corporal in our office had a brother there whose outfit had just landed from the States.) Incidentally, the map shows Bastogne to be but a short distance from Sedan. Nor have I heard Patton sufficiently praised for his rapid and brilliant march northward to the rescue, a march which led across all the main lines of communication.

At some time during the winter, a new officer appeared in our midst --- Roger Griswold, a Boston architect, who was, I should say, in his fifties. If I recall correctly, he was a Lieutenant Colonel, which was the rank usually assigned to men of some distinction commissioned directly from civilian life. He had been laying out airfields in the Arctic, and how he happened to land in the Paris Office of OSS I never learned. He was a big, bearlike man, who wandered rather pathetically about the office, more or less ignored by our pseudo-sophisticates. I felt sorry for him and tried to be friendly. This effort at kindness on my part produced two unexpected results. First of all, he invited me to become a regular guest at the Sunday night suppers for American officers given by Julia Blackington, a Massachusetts Francophile who had remained in Paris throughout the Nazi Occupation. The guest list was small, the suppers simple but delicious, and we were all much too discreet to inquire as to the source of the food. After Roger was transferred to Germany, I was given the task of recruiting the guests, with strict instructions never to invite a woman. Julia was a fascinating person, whom I was to meet repeatedly after the war, several times in Paris, once in Boston at a reunion with Roger, and a few times in Rome. At the last, her mind began to fail, and when I telephoned her in Paris in the Sixties, she denied ever having known me.

Early in May of '45, I had a telephone call from Colonel Griswold from Heidelberg, where he was in charge of an OSS detachment at the Headquarters of the Sixth Army Group there. He asked me if I would like to come down as his assistant. At that point, the war in Europe was obviously fast approaching its end; my work in Paris was drying up; and Heidelberg in May sounded very attractive, with romantic associations with The Student Prince. So I accepted and agreed that he should ask for my services. The orders were quickly cut, and one bright May morning saw me on a train for Strassburg, where Colonel Griswold was to meet me.

In Heidelberg, we had requisitioned three houses in the section across the Neckar from the main town. In one, was our communications equipment, kitchen and mess. This house, which according to report, had been the residence of a prominent Nazi, we occupied completely. Another house served as billets for the enlisted men The colonel and I had ground and upper floors of the house of a local architect, who, with his family, lived in the basement. We had a cook and one or two maids, who were Dutch, having been conscripted as forced labor by the Germans and who would be repatriated at the war's end. Our offices were in the University buildings, which were occupied by the headquarters of the army group.

My entrance upon my new duties was not exactly auspicious. I had been congratulating myself that, after three years, I was at last to make extensive use of that knowledge of German which had been the reason for my being commissioned in the first place. Hardly had I arrived, when our radio operators blew all the fuses in the communications house. It was my task to go to the local electric company and obtain new fuses. Alas, the stately German of Goethe and Schiller on which I had spent my time in college was innocent of any such word. However, by circumlocutions and sign language, I both obtained the fuses and learned their German name --- Sicherung. Another emergency followed. The W.C. in our residence stopped up. Again Goethe failed me; he dealt with no such humble members of society as plumbers. I tried the Military Government Section and they proved as ignorant as I, which was consoling but not helpful. Finally --- and I confess that I have forgotten how-or-where, but most likely by locating a dictionary --I found the word --- Klempner --- and the vital apparatus was repaired.

One of the most interesting features of our Heidelberg assignment was the entertainment of various intelligence personnel who passed through. The most prominent was Allen Dulles, whose visit was a social disaster of major proportions. I was holding down the fort alone one night; the colonel had gone to an official dinner at the Schloss Hotel, taking one of our cars, and I had allowed Fitz, our driver, to use the other to take a Dutch girl to a movie. The phone rang, and a very angry voice announced itself as that of Allen Dulles, who was waiting at the airport in Mannheim, exceedingly annoyed because he had not been met. Apparently, a message warning of his imminent arrival had failed to get through. I told him that I would get someone to meet him as soon as possible. I then called the Schloss Hotel and asked for the colonel. His voice when he came on the line, showed that he was not only dining, but wining well. However, he instantly became very sober when I explained the situation. He told me to get the Dutch cook back on duty to prepare dinner for Dulles and himself; I was not to be included, for which I had cause to be profoundly grateful later on. Dulles evidently utilized the trip from the airport to chastise the colonel thoroughly, for the latter was in a very chastened mood when they arrived. He instructed me to bring over to the dining room two bottles of wine from our small cellar. The disaster reached its climax when both of these proved to be corked.

Heidelberg was a delightful place that May --- full of memories of Karl Heinrich which I had read in German class my freshman year at Harvard. With one exception, the city had felt no bombs; the only real scars of war were the broken bridges across the Neckar, which the retreating Nazis themselves had blown up. The one bomb which had fallen had been dropped carelessly by a returning allied bomber who had mistaken the very modern buildings of the zoo for a factory. There were a few animal casualties, among them a llama suffering from shell-shock --- a truly remarkable spectacle.

I have one incongruous memory of that most Germanic of towns. Near our quarters, a small detachment of Puerto Rican troops was billeted. On the warm May evenings, they would sit on the steps of their quarters and sing their native songs, full of the quavering melancholy of Andalusia.

There were strict rules against fraternization with the Germans, so our only contacts were entirely official and correct. I am afraid that a certain amount of "liberation" went on on the part of our forces, that being the euphemism of looting. I had my own moment of temptation, for the library of the communications house, which was said to have belonged to the Nazi, contained some fine sets of the German classics, and I looked with covetous eyes upon the beautifully bound volumes of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing. The Tempter whispered that a Nazi deserved to lose something in punishment for all the plundering he and his kind had done in the occupied countries. But I heard my father's voice say clearly, as it had so often in my childhood: "Two wrongs do not make a right," and Satan slunk behind me.

One fine morning, I was playing Beethoven on the superb grand piano in the Nazi's house when a soldier came down from the communications room upstairs and told me that news of the German surrender had just come in.

It is characteristic of the anfractuosities of military regulations that I received a Battle Star for my sojourn in Heidelberg, where I never heard a shot fired, whereas I received nothing for my months in London, where I twice missed death by the narrowest of margins.

In the latter part of May, Colonel Griswold was ordered back to Paris and I was left to close out affairs and bring the enlisted personnel back to the same city. I at once learned an interesting lesson. Returning in the evening from a trip, of which more below, and finding that the detachment had already messed, I ate with the two enlisted men who had accompanied me, for it seemed useless to set up and serve separate tables. But I at once sensed that this was an error; the men were so plainly uncomfortable and inhibited by my presence that I never again tried that particular experiment in democratization.

Just before we left Heidelberg, I received orders from Paris to go and make a call upon a German family in the small town of Lörrach on the German-Swiss border. A son of the family was a prisoner of war and in exchange for information given the allies, had been promised that his family would be notified of his safety. It seemed a pleasant mission for the day was beautiful and the errand happy. I set out in a jeep with a driver and another enlisted man. As I recall, they had their carbines and I my .45. We dressed with utmost care, for we had to pass through Patton's army and his MPs were notorious for picking up troops from some other command guilty of some error in uniform.

The journey began pleasantly enough through the beautiful, fertile Rhineland countryside. When we reached Freiburg, we had a choice between two routes and I chose the one marked "Scenic." What I had not realized was that it led through the densely wooded hills of the Black Forest. We had had several reports of fugitive S.S. troops in the area, who had been killing American soldiers in order to obtain their uniforms as a disguise. As we plunged deeper and deeper into the forest, I began to imagine figures in German uniform behind every tree. I held my .45 in readiness, though with my marksmanship I should probably worked more harm by throwing it than shooting it. However, after what seemed an interminable time, we emerged into populated territory quite unscathed. I had a happy interview with the Lörrach family, though it was hard at first to make them understand that I was an American. On our return journey, we held close to the Rhine and reached Heidelberg without making contact with S.S. fugitives or Patton's MPs.

Finally the morning for departure for Paris came. We were to spend one night on the way at either Metz or Verdun. Our small caravan consisted of a small European car, one or two jeeps, and a truck. Departure was delayed by the non-appearance of Fitz; my driver. I eventually tracked him down seated on the bed of one of the Dutch girls who had worked for us. I had almost to drag him away physically from their emotional farewell.

He and I led the procession in the European car --- I believe it was an Opel. This car had mysteriously joined our motor pool some weeks before. Property rights and proper papers were very loosely handled in those days of "liberation." There was no way of learning who was the original owner of the car or whence it came, but it was very dear to Fitz's heart and he was determined to drive it back to Paris. He painted an entirely fictitious official number on the hood, and though my conscience bothered me --- but only slightly --- I agreed to let him try to get it across the frontier.

We drove through the war-ravaged Saar and across the Siegfried Line. Everywhere there were signs reading: "Mines cleared only to road edge." This produced a new complication. My sergeant in the jeep behind us was suffering from the common digestive misery known as the GIs, which necessitated frequent stops. Despite my repeated and often frenzied warnings and entreaties, his excessive modesty compelled him to retreat into the surrounding fields and woods for concealment. Each time, we waited breathlessly for the bang of a mine explosion, but his modesty was evidently dear to providence for he always returned in safety.

The only noteworthy incident of the trip came at the French frontier. There the guard wished to see the papers for our car. At first I pretended the greatest difficulty in understanding him. Then having made sure that he could not speak or, presumably read English, I rummaged in the glove compartment and found one of the official appearing papers which we had to fill out whenever we took a trip on service business. With every appearance of confidence, I handed it to him. He took a quick glance at it, saluted, said: "Passez!" and waved us on. Fitz had his beloved car safe in France. Of its subsequent history or his, I know nothing. I have had faint twinges of conscience for this, the only thoroughly dishonest action of my life, but since no one was harmed, so far as I can tell, my burden of guilt is light.

The remainder of the trip was without incident, save that upon reaching Paris, the other vehicles broke from the convoy and dashed off to the area, elated at the prospect of liberty in Paris. Fitz perforce, had to drive me to headquarters. In the general excitement, I forgot to take my musette bag from the car. It seemed an inconsequential oversight until I learned that officers were required to wear dress uniform in Paris and that the necessary insignia for mine were in the missing bag. Bill McKay came to my rescue by loaning me his old infantry set. "No danger of any difficulty," he assured me. "My old outfit is in the South Pacific." By one of those mad coincidences which have haunted my life, I had barely entered a bar to have my first drink when an officer came up, looked at the insignia, then at me sharply, and said, "I don't remember you in the old __th." I confessed my fraudulent identity and the reason for it and he was enough of a good sport to make nothing of it.

My stay in Paris was short. I was eager to get home after twenty months in Europe so declined a possible assignment to the Commission evaluating the damage done by our bombing raids. So, on June 4, 1945 I took the train for London on the first leg of my journey home.

I had a joyous reunion with Ysabel Hunter, who put me up for a night until I could find a place in Officers' Quarters. As we were conversing after dinner, Ysabel asked her friend Evelyn Peyton, "Tell me, Evelyn, did it ever occur to you that we might lose the war?" "Never for a moment, my dear," was the reply. Therein lies the secret of Hitler's defeat. It is a spirit sadly lacking in the jaded Britain of today.

After the usual bureaucratic delays, I was given orders to return to the United States for reassignment. Our particular group of returning warriors was mustered at 2 A.M. at OSS Headquarters and driven across a sleeping London to Waterloo Station, whence we were carried by train to Southampton, where we detrained on the pier around eight in the morning. There was the ship and there were we, but no contact was allowed for some eight hours, while a large number of wounded were put aboard. We had nothing to eat but K rations, a justly detested invention of some scientific mind, particularly suited to situations where no water was available, since several of its components called for mixing with water.

But what nearly produced a mutiny was the announcement that the inevitable snafu had occurred. We had never passed an exit customs examination. There were rumors that we were all to be taken back to London for this, and tempers were rising very fast when wiser heads decided that officers should examine enlisted men's baggage and be put on their honor to certify their own. I am afraid that it was not a very rigid examination. Eventually, late in the afternoon we were permitted to board the ship. There we discovered that everyone save officers of field rank (from major up) was to berth in the depths of the ship on three tiers of bunks crowded very closely together. The seas were still perilous with floating mines and had we hit one, chances of survival for us in the hold were minimal, but we were so happy to be going home that everyone refused to consider or mention unpleasant possibilities.

The voyage home was a halcyon one, over summer seas. Most of our time was, naturally, spent on deck but each afternoon we were herded into the lounge to watch a film so that the deck might be left free for those suffering from what World War I called Shell Shock and our nicer age called Combat Fatigue. One afternoon the sound of the film was overpowered by a shout of "Man overboard!" We poured out on the deck where we discovered that one of the patients had eluded his attendants and cleared the rail with a running jump. A sailor leaped after him. We could see the two heads, looking unbelievably small in the vast expanse of the sea. As it happened, the would-be suicide changed his mind as soon as he struck the water and began to swim like a seal. It was his intended rescuer who appeared to be in difficulties. With agonizing slowness, the ship swung round in a great arc. A boat was lowered, and both men were soon picked up and returned, bedraggled to the ship.

One of my table companions was a major who in civilian life was, so he claimed, a legal counsel for the New Yorker. Like most of his kind he preened himself upon his savoir-faire and condescended to lecture me, the naive schoolmaster, upon ways and means of avoiding the fate then commonly dreaded by officers returning from the ETO --- that of being thrown into the pool of unassigned personnel and being claimed by the Supply Corps for duty in the Pacific. I listened and said nothing, being aware that, perhaps unfairly, I had an ace in the hole.

We arrived in New York's Lower Bay in the early evening. Because it was too late to pass customs, we anchored for the night, watching the glow of the city's lights and waiting sleeplessly for the long anticipated return to America.

As we approached the pier the next morning, we were serenaded by a band on a boat, and as we disembarked, we were given ice-cold cartons of milk by an eager welcoming committee of ladies. Even I, who am ordinarily no milk drinker, admitted that that first drink tasted very good. It is a token of the mind's bondage to the body that for all the emotional tension of the return home, the things which I really remember are sense impressions ---the glow of the lights from the bay, the sound of the band, the coolness of the milk; I remember nothing of what my emotions were at that time.

We were processed at Fort Hamilton and the next day were sent to Washington by train --- a hot ride, with interminable delays. From Washington we were taken by bus to an OSS area in what had formerly been the Congressional Country Club. There, despite the heat, our fatigue and the fact that it was about six P.M., we were paraded and subjected to a speech of "Welcome Home" by an asinine senior officer.

In no time at all, we were fully initiated into bureaucratic delays. I shouted my head off when my home leave, supposed to be granted at once, was held up by sheer indifference on the part of a minor clerk. That brought a senior officer hurrying to find the cause of the commotion and in short order I was on my way home on a short leave. I arrived home with an image in my mind of Odysseus' faithful hound, old Argus, who died of joy when his master at last returned. My little cocker spaniel, whom I had left with my parents when I went off to war, took one look at me and went back into the house, showing no sign of recognition whatever. Fiction is indeed stranger than truth. My parents had spoiled and over-fed her into a gross travesty of the lithe, well-disciplined dog which I had left in their care. So I let them keep her for the balance of her life.

After a few happy days, I went back to Washington to learn my fate. Once again my good fortune took over. Andover was greatly in need of experienced teachers and housemasters and Henry L. Stimson was, as I have noted, at once Secretary of War and President of Andover's Board of Trustees. And so I was separated, as being surplus --- two unattractive but welcome terms--- and received my Honorable Discharge as of July, 1945. (Having had no leave while over-seas, I had a fair amount stored up with pay after I actually had left the service.) I know that Mr. Stimson had a hand in this because I saw a letter from him on top of my dossier when I was taking my pre-discharge physical examination. Just to send me off with the true service taste in my mouth, I was about to leave when I was badly frightened by a peremptory summons to report to the Pentagon's Medical Section. When I asked the Adjutant if he knew the cause, he said cheerfully: "Something wrong about your physical." Visions of weeks, and perhaps months, ensnared in medical corps red tape sent me to the Pentagon with my heart in my mouth. I was greeted with the welcome news that they had merely lost my papers but had found them again.

As I was signing the final documents, I was asked if I wished to remain in the Reserves. Had I been younger, I might well have said yes. But I was 39 and I felt that I had no desire for further soldiering. If my reply had been in the affirmative, I might well have found myself bound for Korea a few years later.

And this reminds me that a day or so before I left for home, I met my friend the New York lawyer on the street.

"What's your news?" he asked.

"I've been discharged. What about you?"

His face fell. "I'm being sent to Asia," he gloomily announced.

It would be impossible to over-estimate the importance of these three years in my life, an importance reflected in the disproportionate space devoted to them in this autobiography. Not only did they afford a highly interesting diversity of work, personal contacts and incidents, but they brought at last a maturity of character and outlook which I had been tardy in attaining. As I observed in my account of the V1 disaster, I never again doubted my ability to make a prompt and rational response to an emergency. The years were happy ones, despite patches of boredom and frustration, and my memories of them are fond, largely I think, because underlying all else was the sense of sharing actively in what we must now recall as America's finest hour.