Ahhhh, ‘Twas the Fall of 1944 and Nat Geo Ran Romania

My Pops recounted a funny story about one of his SFOD-D buds who was in charge of an entire province in Afghanistan. A US Army master sergeant tellin’ everyone what’s what, handing out parking passes to high-ranking officials, and making the locals play nice with the invading soldiers from 10 different countries.

You Served At West Point, Huh? Take A Number

Sadly, lowly US Army colonels (especially those who served a grueling, four-year tour of duty at West Point) had to call higher headquarters for permission to say Yessir! to this impressive NCO who sported a full beard, long hair, and custom green running shoes with gold laces. Not at all unusual for those American cowboys who love to muddle in everyone else’s foreign affairs.

The Now-Forgotten War of the World

If the Afghan War is a little too painful to consider, let’s drop back to a time conveniently forgotten: In the Fall of 1944, the Nazis began a long and painful retreat from every continent, country, province, city, town, village and outhouse they had occupied during the war, except Antarctica. Nazi and German soldiers were desperate to return to their homes, most of which were confiscated and handed over to jewish refugees from eastern Europe. Some called it The Marshall Plan. The good Germans called it Straßenraub (highway robbery). There were no good Nazis, but those who still had a pulse replied in typical Nazi fashion: Fick dich. Look up the translation yourself. Marshall Plan realtors didn’t react too much to the fick dichs; they simply told the former occupants of their dwellings that they were no longer welcome in town. After capture and intense interrogations, some were shipped off to the dozen-plus POW camps in Minnesota, where they worked the lumber yards and fields. Here’s a POW camp in Remer, Minnesota:

Others, as we all know, were tried at Nuremberg; some hanged, some imprisoned, some committed suicide in their jail cells. I wonder who supplied the leather belts and cyanide capsules? For those victims of the American education system, I have been discussing @realWWII. Not the fucken video game.

The Wild Wild West, Part Deux. Or Dos.

The wild wild west was alive and well throughout the war, thanks to the well-choreographed antics of Wild Bill Donovan, a good Irish jesuit whose boundaries extended to the ends of The Universe. Donovan was yanked from his prestigious Wall Street law firm by his jesuit bosses to head America’s first central intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and was given carte blanche across the table, including purchasing $600 toilet-seat covers and $1,000 socket wrenches.

The jesuits chose Donovan over all other candidates because he had the knack for bringing together and creating coherent groups of people whose political and religious ideologies couldn’t be more different. Under anyone else’s command, there would’ve been a bloodbath. Under Donovan’s wing, however, there always seemed to be enough candy (secret ca$h) and geography and girls to around, so all were happy enough not to maim or kill each other. By the by, Donovan’s method is similar to the one used when working with lions, hyenas, wild dogs and crocodiles in southern Africa.

Donovan learned dirty warfare from my ancestor, Pancho Villa, who kicked the US Army’s ass all over the American southwest just before WWI. Donovan, along with George Patton and Carl Spaatz, served in the Army at the time under General Blackjack Pershing, the one who was given credit for the ass-kicking by Papa Villa and his Montecito Villistas. Pershing went on to command American Expeditionary Forces in WWI, even though he’d failed at capturing just one bad-ass Mexican in an 11-month-long expedition a year before.

The Donovan Clan had one goal in common: win the war at any and all cost. And so Donovan’s socialists, communists, fascists, republicans and democrats all banded together in a happy medium of Donovan’s Guerrilla Glue, and proceeded to infiltrate and destroy the enemy, mostly from the inside out. Kinda like what a virus does when it’s up inside your butt, giving you the runs for weeks. Besides, after the war, they all knew they would be baptized with cushy jobs in the CIA, State Department, White House, Supreme Court, Wall Street, Hollywood, New York publishing, etc.

Relax, It’s Only Money, and It’s Not Ours

Few are aware, but Donovan and his 12,000 OSS officers spent more money during the war than any allied division or air force, and this included $$$ for big big bombs, tanks, bullets, B-17s, P-51s, and petrol.

Donovan’s expenditures: sizable bar tabs at the finest establishments across the world, the best call girls money could buy, the tastiest food and cigars available, the most-talented academics and misfits and badasses anywhere, and the most valuable intel the world had ever known. Word on the street: Donovan had so much dirt on J. Edgar Hoover that G-Man backed off investigating Donovan and his troops. Their armistice was a very loose one, certainly not put down in writing, and Donovan took advantage of this, leaking intel about Hoover’s homosexual exploits. But we won’t go there.

Who Runs This Romanian Gin Joint? The OSS, Of Course

Near the end of the war, the OSS ran just about every country in Europe, Africa and Asia, sending its finest Ivy League pedigrees to the farthest reaches of space, even as far as the USS Enterprise, which was off on one of its “to boldly go” missions in the Northern Klingon Territories. From OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency: “Behind enemy lines, the most casual word that fell from the unguarded lips of the youngest second lieutenant in the American army—he might have been a writer, lawyer, corporation executive, or artist in peacetime—would be considered holy writ by leaders of the resistance. His views had no importance in the eyes of State Department representatives thousands of miles away, but for the fighters of the underground, they were taken as inspired declarations of Washington’s policy.” In Romania, 1944, Beverly Munford Bowie, a brash 30-year-old Harvard grad (class of 1935) assistant editor of National Geographic, was the first member of the OSS to enter Bucharest after the Nazis turned tail. Soon as the Nazis rolled out their last man, under Soviet escort, Bowie stepped out from his hiding spot in the bushes and walked right up to the Romanian Prime Minister’s office, introduced himself as Captain Fuckin’ America, and took a seat near the head of the table. Some weeks later, other American officers arrived to find Bowie already a regular guest at meetings of the Romanian cabinet.

“Before they vote on anything, they ask me what I think. I go into a trance and figure out what Franklin D. Roosevelt would do, then give ’em the answer. They pass all my laws unanimously. I never thought running a country was so easy.”

Bowie would die from cancer in 1958, just 44 years young. Guess running a country took its toll … from the inside out. But, hey, it was fun while it lasted.

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Tripsy South is the author of the novel SUICIDE TANGO. Trained in physics at a cool surfer university, she lives and plays in Los Angeles where she’s a freestyle writer/editor and copywriter. Ring her here.