The O.S.S. - Part 2

On the train out to Washington in the spring of 1944, we all went first class in Pullman, somewhere northwest of Baltimore, one of the cars back of us, came uncoupled and it came to a halt, it was carrying one of our immediate group, a big old boy from Nebraska by the name of Harvy Myers. For some reason the engineer never got the disconnect signal and we went on into Baltimore where the problem was discovered. Harvy arrived the next morning by special limousine from O.S.S. headquarters, after that we addressed him as General Uncouple.. He lived in our cabin. At breakfast Harvy would always drink a full glass of grapefruit juice without stopping, beat on the table and slap the nearest person to him. This happened every morning without fail.

Poor Harvy later decided the O.S.S. was not exciting enough so he resigned and signed up with the Merchant Marines as a radio operator. We heard later that his ship was torpedoed on the Murmansk Run in the North Sea, losing all on board.

All of us, Civilian, military and agents alike, lived in cabins, eight to a cabin. In our particular cabin we had Lt. Ellis Marshall, our next in command, a real gentleman who had been R.O.T.C. and received his commission in the signal corps at the start of hostilities. They grabbed him up due to his radio training before the ward. He was still living five or six years ago at Falls Church, Virginia. Next was Bill Barlow, my old instructor at Coyne, Mac. McEwen, Corporal Ray Cook, who was drafted at the beginning of the draft and hated every minute of it. He was Captain McCallen's secretary. McCallen being in charge of all O.S.S. activities in the camp. Ray had been an amateur radio operator before the war as had Lt. Marshall. Ray and I became close friends at camp McDowell before we went out to Washington.

Before Helen and Marsha came out, Ray, Barlow, McEwen, and myself went into Washington most weekends - none of us caroused around, were family men and had a lot in common. We would stay at the Ambassador at a good discount, wander around see the sights, spent hours on the Capitol grounds talking about family, radio, home and the war. D.C. was a quite safe place then. How things have changed.

Tim Marsh with 2 O.S.S. Friends in D.C. - 1944

The Commandant of Area "C" was Major Frederick Willis, a disgruntled Marine with ulcers, who wanted to be in the field but was stuck in a camp that few knew existed, where he didn't know who was agent, Army, Navy, Marine or civilian. At review he didn't know by uniform who had rank on him. I'm sure he must have felt about as comfortable with all of the civilians running around dressed in uniforms as he would in a camp full of transvestites. He had to put up a good front and gie the impression that he was commandant of a little dinky camp back in the woods that housed conscientious objectors but was actually a camp where strange things were happening. Where weird dit-dah tones of Morse Code echoed through the pines night and day, a camp where the psychological warfare group, in the barracks on the edge of camp, delighted in broadcasting to the entire camp at night, spine tingling, hair raising ghoulish sounds of women screaming and pleading for mercy, groans of agony, wolves howling, a child crying and screaming as the wolves approach, hear them snarling and growling with increased tempo as they closed in for the kill, then a whimper and it starts all over again. Late at night after lights out, Major Willis must have often thought "What a mad mad world." I know I did. The natives that lived in the area would whisper in the Coffee Shop in Manassas about the weird goings on at that camp out in the woods.

A Morse Code Class at the O.S.S. Training Center

The purpose of the O.S.S. at this camp was twofold. (1) To furnish uninterrupted high speed telegraphy (voice was not used on high security circuits), to and from O.S.S. centers all over the world and to subversive agents and cells behind enemy lines and supply a transmitting vessel for the psychological warfare division. (2) To train prospective agents in the rudiments of basic radio theory and maintenance in the field behind enemy lines, master the Morse code at a speed sufficient to receive and transmit vital coded messages, and learn the art of cryptographics. Most of our trainee agents were of German, Italian, French, Austrian, or Polish extraction. Most Asian agents were trained in O.S.S. headquarters in the Burma-India theatre.

By late Fall of 1944, the allies were rolling across Europe and the axis powers in full retreat. Sighs of the end were in sight. New agent trainees for the European theatre were dropping off as activities began to shift to the Pacific Theatre.

Reunion in 1950 with My Best Friends from O.S.S. after the War in Chicago
Ray, Tim, Sam, Mac and Bill

Blanche Marsh and Helen Marsh are in the Crowd as they Celebrate the end of the War in Chicago