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Contact Info
Home Town Mason City, IA
Last Address Mason City, IA
Date of Passing May 26, 1954
Location of Interment Memorial Park Cemetery - Mason City, Iowa
Wall/Plot Coordinates Section: S Tower, Lot 69, Grave 6
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
The aircraft carrier, USS Bennington (CVA-20) was cruising in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island on May 26, 1954 when a launching catapult exploded killing over 100 crewmen.
Other Comments:
Service number: 555475
The information in this profile was compiled from various internet sources.
Shadow Warriors: The OSS
The Office of Strategic Services was the product of Major General William O. Donovan, an energetic visionary whose propensity for freewheeling activity earned him the nickname ?Wild Bill.? Donovan was a tough and smart veteran of World War I who received the Medal of Honor for heroism on the Western Front in October 1918, and who made a fortune as a Wall Street lawyer during the 1920s and ?30s. When World War II erupted in Europe and threatened to engulf the United States, Donovan convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt that a new type of organization was needed, one that would collect intelligence and wage secret operations behind enemy lines.
In 1941, President Roosevelt directed Donovan to form this agency, called the Coordinator of Information, or COI, and Donovan, who had been a civilian since World War I, was reinstated as a colonel. COI blossomed quickly, establishing operational sites in England, North Africa, India, Burma and China. In 1942, the agency was renamed the OSS. Donovan became a major general in 1944. The primary combat operations of the OSS in Europe were those of the Jedburgh?s missions and the Operational Groups. The Jedburgh mission consisted of parachuting three-man multinational teams into France, Belgium and Holland, where they trained partisan resistance movements and conducted guerrilla operations against the Germans. The OGs were 34-man elements designed to operate in two sections and perform sabotage missions and raids behind enemy lines. Other OSS operations took place in Asia, most spectacularly in Burma, where OSS Detachment 101 organized 11,000 Kachin tribesmen into a force that eventually killed 10,000 Japanese with a minimal loss of its own. Other OSS detachments operated in China and Southeast Asia. Soldiers John K. Singlaub, Caesar Civitella and Herbert Brucker were among the many former OSS members who later served in Special Forces. After the war, President Harry S. Truman disbanded the OSS, but not before creating a legacy still felt today. Many veterans of OSS were part of the cadre of the early SF groups.
