“Sounds great, sir. I’ll take them. Thank you.”
“There are several problems, starting with paying them. The German currency is useless. What Schröder and his people had been working for is food. That isn’t a problem for me here. It’s not hard to find extra food for twenty-odd mouths when Sonthofen is drawing Quartermaster rations for about sixteen hundred people. But how would you handle that at Kloster Grünau?”
“Not a problem, sir.”
Wilson’s eyebrows went up questioningly.
“We draw standard GI rations for our prisoners, sir, as well as for our guard company.”
“Okay,” Wilson said, his tone making it clear that he didn’t believe that was the complete answer.
And it wasn’t.
First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie had explained that what was almost certainly a fraud committed daily upon the U.S. Army had begun as a solution to a deadly serious problem concerning the secrecy of Operation Ost. The solution had been proposed by Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger and approved by Colonel Robert Mattingly.
As long as General Gehlen and the members of Abwehr Ost had been prisoners of war, they had been entitled under the Geneva Conventions to the same rations as their U.S. Army captors.
It was important that everybody in Abwehr Ost be run through a De-Nazification Court, declared to be Non-Nazis, and released to civilian life as quickly as possible.
And this was done. All members of Abwehr Ost, including a substantial number of Nazis, were run through De-Nazification Courts, adjudged to be Non-Nazis, and released from POW status.
This permitted Headquarters, European Command, when the Russians demanded to know if EUCOM had in its POW enclosures any former members of Abwehr Ost, whom they wished to interrogate, to truthfully state that they did not.
The problem then became how to draw rations for Gehlen and his men, now that they were not POWs and had been returned to their civilian pursuits.
Sergeant Hessinger’s suggestion, which after serious consideration Colonel Mattingly ordered put into execution, was to have the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment accept the surrender of a number of German officers and soldiers and place them into its POW enclosure at Kloster Grünau. The number of prisoners equaled that of the Abwehr Ost prisoners, plus ten percent as a cushion.
Names of the prisoners were compiled from a copy of the Munich telephone book, and their organizations from the USFET G-2 Order of Battle. Once this compilation had been made, it was checked against the roster of Operation Ost to make sure that no name on the latter appeared on the Roster of Prisoners.
The vetted list was classified Secret and then presented to the U.S. Army Quartermaster Depot in Munich, which accepted it without question — it was signed by the deputy chief, CIC, European Theatre of Operations — and began its daily issue of rations to feed the prisoners.
Sergeant Hessinger had also been tasked by Colonel Mattingly to acquire the “goodies” the XXIIIrd CIC was going to need. Goodies were loosely defined as those things CIC agents needed to bribe people in the acquisition of intelligence.
Money was one such goody. Mattingly — and only a few other senior officers — could acquire U.S. dollars from a U.S. Army Finance Office and then sign a sworn statement that those dollars had been expended in the service of the United States. But as the reichsmark was just about useless — there was nothing to buy — and U.S. Army Occupation Scrip not much better for intelligence purposes, other things — coffee, cigarettes, candy bars, and spirits (the latter being called “Class Six Supplies”) were necessary.
There were two ways to get such supplies out of Army warehouses and into the hands of the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment and thus into the hands of the men of Operation Ost. One was to go through proper channels and request they be issued. This would inevitably result in all sorts of questions that couldn’t be answered without bringing attention to the function of the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment and Operation Ost.
The second way — the one Sergeant Hessinger put into execution — was to prepare two Morning Reports every day. One was bona fide. It was sent upward through channels. It showed the strength of the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment as two officers — Major Wallace and Captain Cronley — and two enlisted men — First Sergeant Dunwiddie and Sergeant Hessinger.
The second Morning Report was shown only to Munich Military Post and the Munich Quartermaster Depot. It showed a personnel strength of eleven officers and forty-three enlisted men — typical CIC detachment strength — physically present at Kloster Grünau.
Hessinger had created a phantom force within the Twenty-third. And because only the deputy commander USFET CIC, Colonel Robert Mattingly, was authorized to visit Kloster Grünau or would be authorized to visit the Pullach facility when that was opened, detection of the deception was very unlikely.
Sergeant Hessinger had further refined his solution for obtaining the necessary goodies. Not only was each member of the phantom force issued a EUCOM PX ration card (which authorized the weekly purchase of, among other things, 1.5 cartons of cigarettes, a pound of coffee, and a box of Hershey bars) but because of its remote location, Kloster Grünau was authorized a “Mini-PX” under the Munich Military Post PX.
One Sergeant F. Hessinger was assigned as Mini-PX manager.
Further, to accommodate the officers and non-commissioned officers of the XXIIIrd CIC and the enlisted men of Company C, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, which guarded Kloster Grünau, both an officers’ open mess and an NCO club were authorized. At the time of the authorization, Second Lieutenant Cronley was appointed officers’ open mess officer and Technical Sergeant Tedworth NCO club manager. The Kloster Grünau officers’ open mess graciously agreed to give the NCO club access to the Class VI Store it would operate.
“There is another problem,” Colonel Wilson went on. “If I try to truck the second Storch, the parts, and Schröder’s mechanics to Kloster Grünau, that would cause the Air Force to wonder what’s going on.”
“But,” Captain Cronley offered, “the Air Force could be run off by my people?”
“Some of your people — Tiny and Sergeant Tedworth come to mind — can run people off by just baring their fangs. Couple that with those dazzling CIC credentials.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if the Air Force gets really curious, Bob Mattingly can cut them off at the Farben Building.”
“As soon as I get back, I’ll send our trucks here.”
“Good. Any questions?”
Cronley’s face showed both that he had one and that he was reluctant to ask it.
“Go ahead.”
“Colonel, can I ask how old you are?”
“Thirty-two,” Wilson said, paused, and then went on: “That’s what I usually tell people who ask. Actually, I’m almost twenty-five. Class of ’forty at the Academy. And you’re ’forty-five at A&M?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Tiny is — or would have been—’forty-five at Norwich. The next time we get together we’ll have to knock rings and sing ‘Army Blue’ and ‘The Aggie War Hymn’ and whatever the hell they sing at Norwich.”
“Tiny didn’t mention you knew each other.”
“Tiny, like you and General White, is Cavalry. I’ve always thought you Horse Soldiers had odd senses of humor.” He paused, and then said, “Your boss is a University of the South — Sewanee — graduate. I think their school song is ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”