Within twenty-four hours, the war ripped us apart again. Dick waved forlornly, shin-deep in mud, as Ethel, Jean, and I climbed into Gen Eisenhower’s 6-17 dispatched to make certain that we proceed to Allied Force Headquarters without further delay. When the plane pulled itself from Oran’s swampy airfield I could scarcely keep from bawling as Dick gradually diminished to a mere pinpoint near the airstrip far below. His last words still rang in my ears : Im trying to get up to the front, darling.
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Mar
06
2009
Within a fortnight I was driving a new general, Carl (Tooey) Spaatz. The now-famous and retired Tooey Spaatz was, in early 1942, a grimly silent major general. As chief of the new Eighth Air Force, he had a gigantic job. And he spent every waking moment pondering over problems involved in the daring principle of daylight bombing. A rather unspectacular, balding man who would hardly stand out in a crowd, he called to mind that pensive statue : The Thinker. He concentrated so intensively that I often thought he was asleep. Naturally, he had no time for the ordinary little details of everyday life. He was, in fact, coldly impatient with them. That’s how I came to drive for General Spaatz. His temper had finally boiled over because his sergeant was late again in arriving at a conference. The Yank chauffeur was naturally bewildered like many other Americans by the maze of tangled little streets which history had forced upon London. When the General heard of my MTC experience, he requested that I be loaned out to his headquarters immediately.
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Mar
02
2009
Category : OSS & SOE
Special Operations Executive Summary of Operations in Western Europe
This summary refers only to those operations with the fullest material in the files. For reasons of space it does not refer to every operation mentioned in the records. Similarly, the newly released records do not contain evidence on every operation which was mounted by the sections.
Source : Adam Matthew Publications
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