Welcome to Intelligence School

U.S.A.I.C.S. is the Army’s big intelligence center and school located at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona outside Tucson and not far from the Mexican border.  I was sent there to train on the divisional level for Intelligence Analyst; the Marine Corps had no such facility.  I used to think southern California was arid and devoid of real trees until I saw Hauchuca: Dust Devils, tumble weeds, sand, rocks and dirt – all out in the middle of nowhere like Area 51.  On the other hand, it was February and reasonably cool at night.  In some places there was snow in shaded places up in the mountains overlooking the base.  To put 1976 in perspective for most people, the radio was playing or would play Barry Manilow songs like Mandy, Shake You Booty by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band.

Towards evening I reported to the receiving barracks strewn with broken and dilapidated tables and chairs.  By this time in my life, I felt like the Army Captain who gave me a ride to the fort.  People like him seem to be always on the move and reporting to strange places and living in dorms and barracks.  You never know what to expect.  In the morning I took my Service Record Book (SRB), had breakfast at the chow hall (all I could eat and without being beaten by drill instructors), and reported to a Major Lamb, the Marine Corps liaison.  His office was among several set in two parallel lines of one story buildings like those in TV westerns.  He told me what I was there for and warned me that if I got into a fight – no matter who started it – I would end up in the brig (jail) several yards from his office.  Ft. Hauchuca was a dangerous place before the military clamped down on the pot heads and began drug testing.  When I was there MPs and dogs would sweep the barracks for drugs – to no avail.  Race was also a big problem.

After the interview, the routine began.  I quickly signed up for the next Intelligence Analyst course (0231) and I learned Ft. Hauchuca was a popular place.  In fact, it was international.  There were people from all over the world coming here and not just for my course.   There were olive drab trailers with co-axial cable running to and fro and satellite dishes too.  There were advanced courses in Order of Battle, Photo Interpretation, and Counter Intelligence (CI).  Vietnam era field sensors like PISIDS (listening devices) were popular.  Then there was the vehicle familiarization area where we got to explore an M-60 tank and manually crank its turret.   Aberdeen Proving Grounds back east is a wonderful place for intelligence specialists on the officer level, but Hauchuca offered the basics and more for both officers and enlistees.

Officers presented a problem for me right off the bat because there were so many there and so many varieties.  (I hardly saw any in basic training in San Diego except for a rare lieutenant or captain.)  One morning a Marine Corps Warrant Officer walked by me and I failed to salute.  I can still hear it, “Do you know who I am?”  My turn: “No sir.”  His turn: I am a Marine Corps warrant officer.”  My turn: “I’ve never seen a warrant officer before.”  He let me go with a warning.  I ran into more people I’d never seen before like the German officer with the storm trooper boots.  They were everywhere and from all sorts of countries – lots of brass and medals.  Even to the army private friend who took my first picture in the barracks the problem was universal and unwinnable.  His simple advice - “If it shines, salute it.” 

The Lost World of General Oxx

The photos in this post are from government sources and are for educational purposes only.  Much of the research and photos comes from Tools of War: An Illustrated History of the Peninsular Base Section, Army Service Forces, Mediterranean Theater of Operations From Salerno Landing, 11 September 1943 to V-J Day, 2 September 1945, U.S. Army Military History Institute.  My first non-NARA (National Archives) operational documents were found in Peninsular Base Section – Italy, Declassified 19 December, 2009, WWII Operational Documents, Combined Arms Research Library Digital.  Why it took almost 65 years to de-classify is beyond me.  The stories of General Francis Oxx who commanded PBS in Leghorn and my father who served in the Transportation Corps are just two among many hundreds of thousands of GIs who supported combat forces in North Africa and Italy. 

Other than the picturesque vistas of Mediterranean sunsets and the snow-capped Atlas Mountains and their valleys of orange groves and olive trees, PBS was a material world of combat rations, food, ammunition, and gasoline, and the land and ocean convoys that delivered them.  It was also the story of hospitals, German POWs, and services provided by the Engineers and Signal Corps.  Maybe that’s the reason for theirs being a lost world; it was an unglamorous world of heavy lifting and bombed out harbors like Leghorn.  That’s where General Oxx and my father lived and worked.  Until recently I knew little about it and I gave up on finding WWII topographical maps of Leghorn.  I also knew that the layout of PBS’s command might prove it to be the operational headquarters for all the Services of Supply 1944-1945.

The final incarnation of the entire supply function for the Mediterranean Theater of Operations that had been headquartered in Oran, North Africa came to rest in Leghorn on the Arno River Delta. The Mediterranean Base Section was replaced by the Peninsular Base Section.  As the documents indicate, the theater headquarters (big shots) were housed in a Bldg. “E”: (Via Ventotto Ottobre) and called Headquarters Command: Provost Marshal, Judge Advocate, Finance, Chaplain, Army Exchange, I&E Section, Public Relations.  I figured this was a symbolic watchdog for PBS’s operations because there were only a handful of hand ranking officers.  On the other hand, Penbase Headquarters (Via Mameli) was a self-sustaining headquarters company I was looking for: Bldg. “A”: G-2, GS Div, G-4, GS Div, POL, Radio, Base Purchasing Agency; Bldg. “B”: Command Group, GS Div, G-3, GS Div, Billeting Officer; Bldg. “C”: Chemical, Medical, Ordnance, Adjutant General; Bldg. “D”: Signal, Engineers, Transportation (TC), Inspector General.

As I read the documents, references to the location of the buildings puzzled me.  It would be nice to actually locate them on a map, but I don’t speak Italian.  “Via” which means “way” kept popping up.  Maybe it was possible.  How I found the buildings (PBS’s headquarters) which exist today is the subject of my next post in this personal story of WWII.

Obama's Golden Opportunity

Seldom do favorable civil rights conditions present themselves.  America has its first black President.  It has its first black Attorney General.  The race riots in Henderson, Missouri occurred in a state with a Democrat governor and an activist Democrat federal senator.  Congress is sleep-walking and President Obama governs by the spurt of the pen.  National incidents where white policemen arrest Blacks with unpleasant or tragic results are almost a monthly occurrence.  The Media’s coverage moves from town to town like a Barnum and Bailey circus encouraging the mob.  What more fortuitous conditions have presented themselves for Lame Duck President Obama and Attorney General Holder and his Justice Department? 

Is Henderson a watershed moment for the Left?  A pattern and crusade has presented itself.  Finally, with every arrest there is executive comment or intervention.  President Obama’s advisors are probably asking themselves, “Why let a tragedy go to waste?”  Is Henderson the start of a national dialogue so longed for by Socialists?  That dialogue could begin innocently enough.   Its manifestation could be The President’s Report on Civil Disorders.  It would be printed in book form by the New York Times with a special introduction by Al Sharpton.  Of course, it would become a mandatory read in all public colleges and universities.  But first, careful preparation is needed.

To give the report credibility President Obama would have had to appoint a committee of experts to support its contents and conclusions.  The makeup of the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders would also dispel any notion of bias.  President Obama could appoint learned men and women of the Media like Chris Matthews and Melissa-Harris Perry with an ample sprinkling of PhDs and practitioners of the Social Gospel like Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan.  The advisory staff should include members of the ACLU, NAACP, and the New Black Panthers.  Jesse Jackson could be the commission’s chairman.

The report’s conclusion would confront racism in post-racial America by naming the culprits and suggesting ways of alleviating the conditions of ignorance and discrimination.  Of course, the biggest culprits are whites in general who created slavery.  Police brutality is a major concern and proportional hiring (Affirmative Action) in Henderson’s police department should be implemented.  Arrests of Blacks in Henderson and elsewhere in America can be done by black policemen only.  Call it “Peer Arrest.”  Sensitivity Training (education) should be undertaken at once in all government facilities and by all government contractors.  A second War on Poverty should be declared by massive funding of government programs.  The possibilities are endless.  Will America’s first black administration seize the opportunity?

JFK: Sequencious Interruptus

Even shortly after the Kennedy assassination Americans still lived in their make-believe world.  Magazines were stuffed with cigarette ads telling us to “Take a puff.  It’s spring time.”  Tareyton smokers would rather “fight than switch.”  Carltons had “precision air vents, high porosity paper, and activated charcoal.  Pall Malls were smooth and mild and if cigarettes caused the deaths of millions of Americans, who raised an eyebrow?  Shrewd businessmen and politicians counted on our deep seated gullibility and naiveté then and more so after the Warren Commission published its whitewash of the Kennedy assassination in 1964. 

It was understandable because we were a different people who tolerated distraction and loved happy endings.  Stories of the sophisticated young President being gunned down in Dallas were softened and modified for public consumption.  The Media played its part in the cover-up with endless stories of John Kennedy often written by enraptured young intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.  JFK read 1200 words a minute and went to Ivy League schools like Choate, Princeton, and Harvard.  He was handsome and well dressed.  He called LBJ a “riverboat gambler.”  He thought Nixon had no class.  All that fluff and rubbish was the problem.  Even in its tabloid aspect, who cares if he slept with Marilyn Monroe, the girlfriend of Sam Giancana or a Kennedy maid?  Americans just wanted to know who shot him and why.

Among the Media’s wailing and sobbing can be found the beginnings of the assassination’s cover-up techniques still in use today.  I call one “Sequencious Interuptus” and refer to Life Magazine’s October 2, 1964 “Facts and Photos that Shaped the Warren Report.”  Of course, tinkering with the Abraham Zapruder film by reversing or eliminating frames is nothing new.  What was new to me was the passing off of Life’s eight color sequences as “crucial” – especially frame 6 – the head shot.  (Show all of Zapruder’s frames and in sequence).  It was the first time I noticed Sequencious Interruptus which was to become a classic disinformation technique.

By freezing the frame anyone can interrupt the others and defy the laws of physics that say in part that a body in motion tends to stay in motion (JFK’s head snapping back).  It’s like in football where the runner reaches out for the goal post and the ball stops in mid-air.  Did the ball make it into the end zone?  The referees make their decision upon review of the whole sequence.  If the Zapruder frames are interrupted, anything can be assumed like: the shot came from behind or from the pergola area.  Sequencious Interruptus was a cheap, but effective trick to try to prove Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in order to cover-up a conspiracy.  

The Patch

Hopefully, the serious family WWII researcher will have his father’s Honorable Discharge or what it is commonly called today, the DD214.  It is a rich source of facts which will help in putting the pieces of his military experience from basic training to his last duty station.  In my case I didn’t take those facts seriously enough and the pieces never fit his real story from Ft. Riley, Kansas to Oran, Algeria in North Africa and, finally, to the bombed out Port of Leghorn, Italy in 1944.  “TC HQ 3^rd P of E”: but what did that mean?  It could have been hundreds of units by my hasty determination.

On the other hand, I had other supporting evidence.  I remember some of Dad’s stories which placed him in Leghorn and I had a limited number of pictures he took.  They were just enough to identify his parent unit and shed light on what he was doing in Italy from October, 1944 to September, 1945.  The first photo looks like the one you see from Art Appreciation 101 of Hadrian’s Tomb on the Tiber River in Rome.   Dad is on its roof in a typical GI-on-leave shot.  It took me several years to be curious enough to get a magnifying glass to identify what the patch on his shoulder was, but it paid off.  The half image looked something like an onion dome you see on Russian Orthodox churches. The photo of him in the chair was the clincher.  It was taken in his tent compound somewhere in Leghorn during the winter months (uniform sweater).  It was an onion dome with a red star in the center. 

The Internet has lots of sources identifying WWII shoulder patches: groups, clubs, government entities, and companies specializing in military memorabilia.  I bought my PBS patch at a gun show and that’s what it turned out to be – the patch of the Peninsula Base Section responsible for all the Services of Supply (SOS) in Italy.  With few exceptions, the war in North Africa and Italy is overlooked by historians with few exceptions like Rick Atkinson.  Combat units were just the tip of the iceberg.  There were truck parks, medical facilities, salvage yards, horse and mule units, endless convoys of Liberty and Victory ships, major ports like Oran and Naples, and stockpiles of spare parts, gasoline, and food.  The scope of the combat supporting elements is unimaginable and hidden from the public.  I know I’m not the only one who’s curious about it.  

In the months ahead I'll tell how I found answers to questions many of us have on this largely unknown front of World War II.  Oddly, the process involved the recent declassification of routine and benign Army documents.  The Internet has travel companies that specialize in WWII sites and battlefields, so I know I’m not the only Baby Boomer or elderly veteran interested in this.  I’ve said it before: Do as much research as possible before going to the National Archives.  I’ll analyze a few documents, the Tools of War (book), photos, and a 1945 map of Leghorn I found online.  It shows the probable location of PBS’s headquarters in Leghorn that housed the TC’s (Transportation Corps) headquarters – the same as indicated on my father’s discharge.