CHAPTER SEVEN

Joining the OSS

AFTER ENLISTING IN THE MARINE CORPS IN LATE OCTOBER 1942, STERling Hayden arrived by bus at boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. He was with about seventy other recruits from the New York area. Immediately upon arrival, he received a taste of what life was going to be like for a boot camp trainee, especially one who was immediately recognized as a Hollywood movie star. As they lined up as instructed, their drill sergeant bellowed out: “You! You big guy there in the middle. Take three steps forward!” After Hayden complied, the sergeant proceeded to walk around him twice. Then, striking his own thigh with his swagger stick, he exploded, “So this is the big-shot actor from Hollywood. Well, Hayden, let me tell you if you think just because you’re married to Madeleine Carroll you’re going to get special treatment down here, you got another think coming.”

“Yes, sir,” Hayden dutifully replied.

“Because, Buster, let me tell you, and this goes for the rest of you slobs, beginning now I want you to know the shit’s on good!”¹

Hayden was wondering if he had made a big mistake by enlisting. Here he was in boot camp for only a few minutes and he was already being singled out. He quickly came to the conclusion that he needed to seek a commission. As an officer, he figured he surely would not have to deal with such nonsense. He learned that two men were always selected from each recruit platoon and sent to Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. This was the incentive he needed to stay focused. The rugged, physically fit Hayden performed in an exemplary manner during the seven-week boot camp curriculum. His drill instructor, Private George S. Featherstone, described him as a “hell of a good Marine.… Life as a DI would be a pleasure if all were as good recruits.”² In the end, he was one of the two graduates selected for OCS. He was assigned as a drill instructor for several weeks before being ordered to report to Quantico to begin the Twenty-Third Officer Candidates Class.

Hayden was one of 270 OCS students, virtually all of them recent college graduates. His life at Quantico was somewhat more palatable than his experiences at Parris Island, but he nonetheless found the regimented discipline distasteful and too confining for his individualist ways. He sarcastically observed that “it seemed incredible that any man in his right mind could spend his life in the Service.”³

After completing his officer training, he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps Reserve on April 30, 1943. He was very disappointed to learn that he was being assigned to the Training Section at Quantico for the next two years.⁴ This was not the type of work he had in mind. Now that he was a Marine, he saw himself in a more unorthodox role, one where his background as a sailor and a world traveler could be put to good use. He also detested the fact that he was recognizable to most of his fellow Marines and that his name was well-known. He was looking for a certain type of role, one that could be performed in relative anonymity. He had not sacrificed his Hollywood career to become 2nd Lt. Sterling Hayden, USMCR, a training officer at Quantico, Virginia. But he had two ideas that just might solve his problem. Both ideas reflected the constant out-of-the-box-thinking that he demonstrated his entire life.

The first idea concerned both Hayden and his wife. They were determined to pursue their goals in anonymity and were willing to take legal action to further their plans. That summer, acting on both of their behalves, Madeleine had gone to court and legally had their names changed. By late June, Sterling Hayden had legally changed his name to John Hamilton, a name he would use for official purposes for the rest of the war. Madeleine was henceforth officially Madeleine Hamilton.⁵ The second idea involved the Office of the Coordinator of Information (OCI), which on June 13, 1942, had been renamed as the Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS. Hayden had decided that the best way to serve his country as a Marine, while maintaining some of the idiosyncratic individuality that he had always expressed, was to join the OSS. On Saturday, May 1, 1943, Sterling Hayden telephoned Gen. William Donovan and expressed his desire to transfer to the OSS. Donovan told him that he would see what he could do.⁶

• • •

William Donovan, or “Wild Bill” as he was called, was a polished infighter in Washington in charge of the Office of Coordinator of Information, or COI. Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned a centralized intelligence agency under Donovan’s direction but there was stiff opposition to this from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Gen. George V. Strong, head of the War Department’s Military Intelligence.⁷ Both men coveted the position of director of all US intelligence activities for themselves.⁸ In June 1942, Donovan met with British intelligence officials to discuss an alliance between their two intelligence agencies. Each had much to offer the other—the British had the experience, training, contacts, and equipment, while the Americans had manpower, wealth, and political reputation.⁹ The meeting resulted in the creation of the London Agreements, dividing the world into spheres of control of intelligence activities. Donovan’s COI controlled Asia, Australia, Finland, and the Atlantic Islands. The British SOE was responsible for India, East Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans.¹⁰

With support from and alliance with the British intelligence officials, Donovan was able to persuade Roosevelt to transfer the COI from presidential authority to the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The COI would evolve into the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS. But opposition from Gen. Strong continued until Donovan was able to convince Gen. George Marshall to take over the OSS himself. Marshall directed Gen. Joseph McNarney, Adm. Frederick Horne, and Gen. H. H. “Hap” Arnold to create a charter for the OSS. In December, 1942, JCS Directive 155/4/D established the OSS and made it coequal to other military intelligence agencies.

One portion of JCS Directive 155/4/D created Operational Groups, or OGs, which were responsible for “organization and conduct of guerilla warfare” and execution of “independent organizations against enemy targets.”¹¹ These men with commando training would parachute into enemy-held territory to sabotage and harass the enemy and support local resistance movements.

The OGs were looking for men in good physical condition with language ability who were willing to do hazardous duty, had specific guerilla and army training, good judgment and stability, and had political sympathies compatible with the area in which they operated.¹² The OSS was open for business and Sterling Hayden wanted to be part of it.

• • •

To Donovan, Hayden must have seemed like a gift from Heaven. Given his background, he was to all appearances a natural for the OSS, as well as a qualified candidate for the newly formed Operational Groups. Hayden’s qualifications were impressive. He had already completed commando training in Scotland with the SOE and was a qualified parachutist. He was a commissioned Marine Corps officer and would complete his OCS training shortly. He had a working knowledge of the French language, was extremely fit, and was eager for the challenge. According to Hayden, the only problem was that he was not scheduled to finish his training at Quantico for another six weeks. He was hoping that Donovan could pull some strings with the Marine Corps to expedite his transfer to the OSS.

The strings that Donovan did pull on Hayden’s behalf reveal the high regard that the OSS director had for the young Marine. The very next morning, Sunday, May 2, 1943, Hayden reported to OSS Headquarters for his interviews. Hayden was interviewed by Lt. Cdr. R. Davis Halliwell, the head of the Special Operations branch at OSS Headquarters, and Col. Ellery Huntington.¹³ Huntington was the commanding officer of Operational Groups and would soon head the OSS mission to Tito’s Partisans in Yugoslavia. Under the section of OG qualifications for special skills, Halliwell commented on Hayden’s extensive small boat experience and its potential in commando operations.

Despite having passed the interviews, the OSS Officers Board for selection consideration did not approve Hayden’s transfer. In response, Huntington wrote a memo to one of the dissenting board members on May 22, 1943. He ended his memo with a question: “These officers were specifically requested by General Donovan. Does the Board know this?”¹⁴

The subtle message from Huntington was understood by the OSS Selection Board. On May 24, 1943, they approved the selection of Sterling Hayden for transfer to the OSS. Charles S. Cheston, the assistant director of the OSS, requested that Hayden be transferred immediately from Marine Corps officer training to the OSS, explaining that Hayden was to be assigned as Area Commander for Operational Groups in France.¹⁵ Cheston also wrote to the Selection Board with a none-too-subtle reminder: “Colonel Huntington has interviewed Lt. Hayden, and General Donovan is specially [sic] interested in his transfer.” Out of Hayden’s Marine Corps OCS class, only three men received transfer orders to the OSS.

The Marine Corps was opposed to the premature transfer of Hayden before the end of his officer training at Quantico. In a June 3, 1943, memo to Cheston, Huntington explained that the early transfer would enable Hayden to be part of the French Operational Groups that were being recruited and would be of great benefit to the OSS.¹⁶ However, the OSS did not push the issue, and Hayden eventually completed his final four weeks of training before transferring to the OSS.

Hayden reported to Q Building at OSS Headquarters in Washington on July 15, 1943, to begin his in-processing. On his OSS personnel forms, he listed Emory Land and Irving Johnson as two of his character references, and Lincoln Colcord and Capt. Ben Pine among people he had known for five years. Notably, he did not list Warwick Tompkins on either list. On the section regarding language skills, he listed “yes” for French as far as speaking and writing, and “fair” as far as reading. Under special trainings and proficiency, he listed his qualification as a parachutist and mentioned attending “Special Schools” in Scotland and England in the winter of 1941–42 while employed by COI.¹⁷

At first glance, it would seem that Hayden was out of place with the other officers at the OSS. Most were college graduates and many had Ivy League pedigrees, in contrast to his tenth-grade education. He sarcastically noted that Brooks Brothers was the official costume-maker for the OSS, and Abercrombie and Fitch functioned as their Quartermaster Corps. It was at the OSS where “businessmen overnight became majors and colonels” and were mixed in with a small number of enlisted men and junior officers who were able and willing to fight.¹⁸ But, like Hayden, many who joined the OSS were unique individualists, men with distinctive talents and a desire for adventure that they perhaps felt wasn’t available to them in the conventional armed forces. There was another trait that many of the OSS volunteers shared with Hayden: they were idealists.

The majority of OSS operatives who, like Sterling Hayden, volunteered for action behind enemy lines were under thirty years old. Some of the psychological screening that these applicants underwent was designed to identify officers who possessed an “ability to get along with other people” and a “freedom from disturbing prejudices.”¹⁹ Social idealism, the belief in the ability of the common man to improve the world through a common effort, was a shared ideal of many of these men who volunteered. In this regard, Sterling Hayden was right at home with his fellow recruits.

Donovan hired the best candidates, regardless of their politics, who were eager to join the fight against fascism. He was just as likely to hire an anti-Franco communist as he was to hire a Wall Street broker—if that person could help him win the war. After the war, the FBI and the National Security Agency would identify at least twenty-two people who were Soviet sources inside the OSS. Between fifty and one hundred OSS employees actually belonged to the Communist Party of the United States.²⁰

In July and August 1943, recruitment for French OGs was in progress and the first group consisted of thirteen officers and eighty-three enlisted men.²¹ Correspondence indicates that Hayden was originally scheduled to be one of those officers. However, shortly after his in-processing, Hayden’s assignment was changed. On July 21, 1943, G. R. Holden, Assistant Operations Officer, Middle East Special Operations, contacted both OSS Headquarters and Hayden directly, requesting a transfer of Lt. John Hamilton’s orders to their theater of operations.²² They had an immediate position for Hayden in Greece as a liaison officer to the Greek resistance, and Ellery Huntington approved the transfer.

The exact reason why Hayden/Hamilton was selected for the assignment is not clear. He was unable to speak, read, or write the Greek language. Perhaps it had to do with his sailing skills, which would play a crucial part in the upcoming job. Regardless of the reason, it appeared that he was being groomed to be an officer of a liaison team in Special Operations.

After a delay of several weeks, Hayden contacted Capt. Carl Hoffman, the head of the OSS Special Operations. Hoffman promptly cut orders for Hayden and on October 10, 1943, Sterling Hayden, now officially Lt. John Hamilton, embarked on a US Army troopship headed to North Africa. Three weeks later, he arrived at Arzew, near Oran. Billeted at the Navy’s bachelor officer’s quarters, he was informed that transportation out of Arzew was sketchy at best and could not be predicted. He immediately began to raise hell to get on to Cairo. “I contacted the OSS representative, Mr. Lovering Hill, who took less than no interest in our situation.”²³ He finally succeeded in getting on a Navy transport plane to Cairo. He would soon be entering a theater where there was not only a war raging between the Allies and the Axis powers, but one where the Allies, specifically Great Britain and the United States, were waging a turf war over control of covert operations. The British SOE and Donovan’s OSS were already clashing over control in the Balkans by the time Hayden, who, for the rest of the war, would officially be known as John Hamilton, arrived there.

• • •

As promulgated in the London Agreements the previous year, intelligence and espionage operations in the Balkans fell under the British sphere of influence. For the SOE, the Balkans fell under the authority of the Middle East headquarters in Cairo. The headquarters had always been dysfunctional and rife with mutual suspicion and intrigue amongst its members. Already the SOE had been through three directors in as many years. Upon arrival at the headquarters in 1943, the OSS personnel assigned to work alongside the SOE quickly noticed the factionalism and bitter rivalry of support for the competing Balkans resistance movements.²⁴

Hayden would see the dysfunctionality firsthand when he arrived in Cairo. He couldn’t help but notice the opulent lifestyle in which the OSS director lived, observing that his Cairo villa looked like a “bastard version of the Taj Mahal.”²⁵ He reported in to Lt. Col. Paul West, Chief of SO Cairo, whose first words were, “Sit down and tell me what they told you you were going to do here, because it is always interesting to see how different the situation really is.”²⁶ West went on to explain that he was not expecting Hayden’s arrival and had no definite assignment for him in Greece or anywhere else for the time being. Staring at the tall, handsome Marine sitting opposite him, West asked, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied Hayden.

“Your face is familiar; did you play football in college?”

“No, sir, I never went to college.”

“Oh,” replied the puzzled officer. Reaching into his desk, West pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed it to Hayden. “I suggest, Lieutenant, that that you study these intelligence reports. Familiarize yourself with the situation in Greece. But I warn you, you will find it a most complex situation.”²⁷

For the next ten days, Hayden reported in to headquarters and read the daily intelligence briefs for Greece. During this time and for the next few weeks, West was in Washington for high-level conferences. When he finally returned, Hayden tried to pin him down for a definite assignment and he brought up the situation in Greece that he had been studying since his arrival in Cairo. That was now a British function, West informed him. As fate would have it, Hayden was rooming with OSS Maj. Louis Huot, who had just returned from setting up a shipping line in Italy to run supplies though the Nazi-controlled waters of the Adriatic Sea to the Partisans in Yugoslavia. Huot had suggested that Hayden go out to Italy and put his superior sailing skills to use in support of the operation. Mentioning this to West, he replied, “Well, Hamilton, a report has just come in that there is this man named Tito up in Yugoslavia. They say he’s a Communist, but apparently he’s in control of a large guerilla organization, so why don’t you hop out to Bari, Italy … and see whether you can be of service.”²⁸ Orders were promptly cut for Hayden’s transfer.

Three days later, Hayden reported to Alexandria to board a British liberty ship where he and a fellow OSS officer were placed in charge of several OSS vehicles on board. After a week, they left Alexandria and reached Taranto, Italy, about two weeks later. After supervising the unloading of the vehicles, Hayden reported in to the OSS’s Special Bari Section (SBS), Bari, Italy. He was about to embark on a phase of his military career that would change his life forever.