“And I’m about halfway through the course, they decided they needed people in Europe right away, so they gave me credentials and put me on a plane.”
“Much the same happened to me, Hammersmith,” Cronley said. “I like to think the Holabird authorities recognized that Al and I were already so smart that further education would be a terrible waste of the CIC’s time and money.”
“Jesus Christ!” Wallace exclaimed, smiling.
“So I’m in a repple depple—the Tenth Replacement Depot—in Le Havre, and a CIC officer shows up and tells me he’s really glad to see me, they’re having a problem. They got word that the Communists are trying to cause trouble in the Negro units. And because the white officers aren’t too close to the black troops, they can’t get a handle on it.
“So he says instead of looking for Nazis because I speak German, I am going to be sent to a Negro unit, undercover, which means as a private, to root out the Communists. I have visions of myself in the . . . I don’t know, the 711th Stevedore Battalion. I’m not that lucky. I get sent to Charley Company, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, of ‘Hell on Wheels.’ The first sergeant there turns me over to a great big buck sergeant . . .”
“By the name of Chauncey Dunwiddie,” Cronley furnished.
Hammersmith wondered: Dunwiddie? Some relation to this black captain?
“. . . who asks me what I know about destroying tanks—which is nothing—and then starts teaching me how to destroy tanks. I was into that school about five days when the Germans started to come through the Ardennes Forest.
“And guess what outfit was ordered to hold in place while we tried to destroy German tanks?
“Cutting to the chase, when the Battle of the Bulge was over, Charley Company was down to no officers and sixty-seven troopers, including Sergeant Dunwiddie, who was now first sergeant.”
“And wearing the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts,” Cronley said. “And Finney, who in his undercover role as Private Finney, had been promoted to sergeant and awarded one each Bronze Star and Purple Heart.”
Finney went on: “While the Bulge was going on, the CIC tried to contact me. When they couldn’t, they decided I’d been captured, and they sent my folks a telegram saying I was missing in action.
“When they finally pulled Charley Company off the line, I went to Tiny and fessed up that I was CIC, and told him I was going to take off and go back to the CIC.”
Dunwiddie picked up the story: “So I told Al . . .”
Hammersmith wondered, incredulously: You were this sergeant, now first sergeant?
“. . . by then we were pretty close, that I had learned Charley Company was about to be assigned to provide security for OSS Forward, and that I thought the smart thing to do was stick around until that happened. It would be smarter than wandering around France with nothing to prove he was CIC, that he’d probably get grabbed by the MPs as a deserter. He asked how I knew Charley Company was going to go guard the OSS, and I told him.”
“And how the hell did you know?” Hammersmith blurted.
Dunwiddie looked at Hammersmith for a moment before saying, “General White told me.”
“The commanding general of the 2nd Armored Division personally told you, a first sergeant, where your unit was to be assigned?” Hammersmith challenged.
“Yes, he did,” Dunwiddie said.
“What happened, Hammersmith,” Wallace said, “was that when SHAEF ordered White to come up with a company to be put on indefinite temporary duty with the OSS, he looked at the morning reports to see which company he could best spare. He came on Charley Company, which was down to zero officers and sixty-seven EM, and was being temporarily commanded by its first sergeant.
“And then he noticed the first sergeant’s name—Chauncey L. Dunwiddie is not a common name—so he got on the horn and called First Sergeant Dunwiddie and learned he was indeed his godson. General White and Tiny’s father, Colonel Dunwiddie, are Norwich classmates—class of ’20. First Sergeant Dunwiddie was supposed to be ’45, but he resigned from Norwich and enlisted because he was afraid the war would be over before he got in it.
“General White then got on the horn again and tried to call Bob Mattingly at OSS Forward, to tell him who was commanding the company he was sending him. Mattingly was off somewhere, protecting the OSS from the Army, so I took the call.
“Tiny reported to me at OSS Forward, and as soon
as I’d told him what was going to be expected of Charley Company, he told me one of his sergeants had ‘an unusual personnel problem.’ Enter Al.
“I got on the horn to General Greene, and asked him about CIC Special Agent Finney. Greene said he thought he was MIA, either dead or a POW. I told him he was alive and well and had gotten himself promoted to sergeant and had picked up a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star while looking for Communist agitators during the Battle of the Bulge . . .”
“Which resulted,” Finney put in, smiling, “in my dad and mother getting three more telegrams, one saying I had been ‘recovered,’ a second saying I had the Bronze Star, and a third saying I had been wounded in action but was expected to recover. They were going crazy.”
“. . . and how I had found this out,” Wallace continued. “Then I asked Greene what he wanted me to do with Al. After thinking it over for maybe ten seconds, he said something to the effect that if he was such a lousy CIC agent that he couldn’t find Communist agitators in a unit commanded by the son of an old pal, he probably couldn’t find them anywhere, so why didn’t I just keep him. ‘And tell Tiny to say hello to his dad.’
“A couple of days later, orders came down transferring Al to the OSS, and we’ve been stuck with him since.”
“Why don’t we get back to why Jim thinks Commandant Fortin is interested in Odessa?” General Gehlen asked.