Thompson recalls past as Allied spy

Since about the time following the Civil War, people around the U.S. have taken time to remember on Memorial Day, even before the holiday became official in 1967.

Frequently, that remembering takes place in the nation’s cemeteries for those who have passed away in service of the nation.

William Thompson of Leavenworth, on the other hand, is a living history lesson.
The 89-year-old is a World War II veteran, having served in both the European and Asian theaters. But he wasn’t on the front lines in places like Normandy Beach or Iwo Jima. Instead, Thompson was far behind enemy line as part of a small, elite group of soldiers in what at the time was a new intelligence organization — the Office of Strategic Services.

That organization, formed in 1942 during World War II at the direction of President Franklin Roosevelt, was to serve as a sort of precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Sixty-seven years from his service, Thompson can’t recall everything. But once his memory is jogged, details begin to surface. His story with the OSS started in late 1943, when Thompson was at Camp Crawford, Mo., teaching young recruits code — a skill he said he had knowledge of from his youth as an amateur radio operator.

“I got sick of that real quick,” he said of the training. “Then they called for volunteers who wanted to go overseas and I said yeah.”

Excited at the chance to see action, Thompson said he didn’t know at the time that the assignment was for covert operations.

Thompson was among 100 officers and 60 radio operators who met the requirements for OSS service, according to “Cloak and Dagger in World War II: Behind the Lines with a Secret Agent of OSS in Europe and the Far East,” a 2007 project for the Command and General Staff College by Maj. William Linn.

Thompson recalls in the book that the rate at which he could transmit Morse code was about twice the standard rate of the OSS — 30 words per minute as opposed to 15. Thompson also had skills as a sharpshooter, having led his high school rifle team in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to a state championship, and some experience with foreign languages such as French and German.

All of that experience would come in handy during the roughly six months of training at Area B, the OSS’s training ground, in exercises that sometimes included explosives and live ammunition that narrowed the field of OSS candidates event further.

Training then moved to England, where Thompson said he trained for parachuting alongside English and French soldiers and the number of American recruits was further whittled down to 43 who would become part of Operation Jedburgh.

That training and the years of subsequent combat together, would forge bonds between the different nationalities.

“I had good friends,” Thompson said of his international counterparts. “Particularly with the British. In fact, I corresponded with them for years.”

He said he remembers being taught how to eat like a French person — he said being able to pass as French could help them blend in while in Europe. Also helping to that end were the false identities they assumed.

It wasn’t long after training that Thompson said he was sent to North Africa, where the headquarters for one of Operation Jedburgh’s missions in the European theater was to be based.

A team of Thompson and two other officers, dubbed Team Novocaine, were dropped into France behind enemy lines with a list of strategic transportation-related targets and instructions to make contact and work with members of the French Resistance in the area.

The mission was not without sacrifices, according to Linn’s account, based on 2006 interviews with Thompson and pieces of correspondence from the mission. When Team Novocaine and other U.S. troops were forced to abandon the town of Briancon due to a German advance, Linn writes “enemy forces maneuvered into position, they isolated the young, eager group of Maquis (French Resistance) with which Team Novocaine had enjoyed such success and solidarity. One by one the Germans eliminated the group until the last one had died for France. Their display of resolve still haunts Thompson.”

But for the most part, documents from the time indicate Operation Jedburgh’s mission in the area was a success — Thompson said he recalls accepting surrender from a group of Germans who did not want to surrender to the French.
It was only a short time later that Thompson, now part of five-member Team Alpaca, would be headed to China to fight the Japanese in the Asian theater. This mission, even from the beginning, turned out to be a totally different experience from Europe, he said.

“I’ve often thought about the Army’s wisdom,” Thompson said, before chuckling. “We parachuted into North Africa and France. We walked into China.”

Aside from considerations of transportation, Thompson said cultural differences, too, abound during the mission. He said one instance sticks out in his mind of a pregnant woman who was working in a rice field.

“What I remember about that is she left the rice field, went up on the bank, had her baby, wrapped the baby up and went back to work,” Thompson said.

The mission that time was deep in enemy territory. Team Alpaca again relayed messages about troop positions and coordinated air strikes and ground attacks against key infrastructure.

That mission would last through the end of the conflict, Thompson said.

“When the war ended, I took the surrender of a Japanese colonel,” he said. “Who was from San Francisco.”

Through all of those operations, Thompson said the nature of his assignments remained a secret to his family — though he said he did send a portion of his paycheck back to Ohio.

“I sent a lot of it home because my dad had had a stroke and was unable to work,” he said.

Despite how dangerous the missions and lauded the OSS operatives were after the war, Thompson said he ended his military career as an enlisted master sergeant. He said he turned down two commissions — because officers had to buy their own uniforms, he said the pay was actually better as an enlisted man. Thompson said he did finally accept a commission as a first lieutenant in China, though he said he was told by a clerk upon returning from China there was no record of that promotion.

“I said to hell with that,” Thompson said, recalling the prospect of waiting to get the situation fixed. “I’m going home.”

Eventually, he said he ended up in Leavenworth working for the Chamber of Commerce and later with disaster relief services in places like Haiti and Puerto Rico for the American Red Cross — it’s an experience that he said yields a whole other set of stories.

Looking through Linn’s book, Thompson points to many familiar photos and images of insignias and certificates. These days, Thompson still attends meetings of the Leavenworth Rotary Club and — harkening back somewhat to his days as a covert communications operative — still fires up his HAM radio at 7:15 p.m. each night.