expected. He was alone in his jeep, nicknamed “Ma Kabul.”
The Baronet: Bromhead
Sir Benjamin Denis Gonville Bromhead, Bart., OBE, IA, known as “Sir Benjy,” was a hereditary knight, the fifth Baronet Bromhead.19 He was about to make the trip on the NWFP that Enders had been waiting to take ever since he came to Peshawar in 1941. But no matter how much Enders wanted to make the trip, Bromhead’s consent for it was essential.
Benjy Bromhead was born on 7 May 1900 and was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, England. He went to India as a young man and spent his military career mainly in the NWFP. He fought in the Iraq Campaign in 1920 and in the Waziristan campaign from 1922 to 1924, where he was wounded. He fought in the NWFP in 1930, where he was mentioned in despatches. He fought in the Waziristan campaign in 1937, where he was again mentioned in despatches. He was commandant of the Zhob Militia, Baluchistan, between 1940 and 1943. He was invested as an officer, Order of the British Empire (OBE), in 1943.
Bromhead was taking on a new role as assistant public relations officer for the province, working out of the governor’s office in Peshawar. He planned to take an orientation trip along the entire border at the end of November 1943, from the northernmost semi-independent principality, Chitral, to the key southern city, Quetta. The trip would include visits to all of the tribal areas. He knew most of this region already, but the leaders needed to be visited regularly, and he needed to introduce himself to them in his new capacity. He was asked to take Enders along to show him the problems that the British had with the frontier tribes, and how they dealt with them. He and the intelligence officer in Quetta discussed this, and decided that, if possible, a third person ought to be added to the mission. The person selected would be from the naval liaison office (NLO) in Karachi.
Bromhead and his wife, Lady Nancy, and their two young daughters were living at the Services Hotel on Fort Road, near the Governor’s House. She was pregnant with their third child, who they expected would be born at about the time the trip ended.
The Socialite: Zimmermann
The intelligence bureau in Quetta (IB Quetta) asked Bromhead if he could also take one of the Americans from the NLO in Karachi, to be added as a third traveler. Bromhead agreed, subject to the governor’s sanction “which he said he thought would certainly be forthcoming.”20 The man who was picked for this was Albert Walter Zimmermann, USNR. Zimmermann, who for the sake of simplicity is often referred to hereafter as AZ, appears to have been picked at random. However, there are good reasons to believe he was a specific choice, and the message from IB Quetta was carefully written to ensure that he, and only he, would be sent.
Al Zimmermann was the second ranking officer at the NLO in Karachi. He would ordinarily have been the executive officer, but had not been officially named to that position; he would later become the commanding officer (CO). His position as a naval liaison officer (ALUSLO) was analogous to an assistant naval attaché. Like all naval attachés, naval observers, and ALUSLOs, he was trained as an intelligence officer. And, like most of them at this point in the war, he was a reservist.21
Albert W. Zimmermann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 11 June 1902, the youngest of seven children of John Zimmermann and Eva Katherine (Kellenbenz) Zimmermann. John Zimmermann had come to America from Gussenstad in the kingdom of Württemberg in 1874 as a nearly penniless man of eighteen with no close friends. He was, however, a member of the hardworking and close-knit German community in Philadelphia, and he achieved the American Dream. As a weaver, he started by selling his own carpets from a push cart on the streets of Philadelphia, where he was spotted by the owners of the Philadelphia Tapestry Mills. They took him in as an employee, and he later rose to be their partner. His patents made it possible to weave enormous carpets, and their company, renamed Artloom Corporation, became one of the largest of its type in America. In his later years, he was a very wealthy but charitable man, and he was bishop of the reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints in the eastern United States. John Zimmermann made each of his children a gift of $1 million when they married.
Albert Zimmermann received a degree in electrical engineering when he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1923, where he had been a member of Sigma Tau (Honorary Engineering Fraternity), a member of the Sphinx Honorary Senior Society, and president of the Glee Club. He entered the family carpet and fabric business and eventually became a vice president of the company. In 1926 he married the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia ophthalmologist in what was said to be the society wedding of the season. In contrast to Zimmermann’s second-generation roots, his wife’s went back to the fleets of William Penn and John Winthrop. After a grand honeymoon, they settled in a new home, Cotswold Corners, in Haverford. He joined the usual golf and country clubs of the Philadelphia gentry, who lived along the Main Line: the Philadelphia Country Club; Merion Cricket Club; Fourth Street Club; and a men’s singing group, the Orpheus Club. With his interest in textiles, he formed a wool brokerage in partnership with another Orpheus Club member. Financially, he was very comfortable, but not ostentatious; he was a shrewd observer, but he kept his mouth shut about what he saw. When he was in the Navy, he wrote to his wife that she need not worry about spending money. He assured her that they were wealthy, although he would never have said it aloud.22
One of his friends before the war was a naval reservist named Jack Kane, who was the district intelligence officer for the Third Naval District, headquartered at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. AZ’s wife’s best friend was Kane’s wife, Amelie. It may have been Kane who encouraged him to take pictures of the German Bund in Philadelphia, when the Bund turned out in uniforms with swastika armbands for the wedding of one of the Zimmermanns’ household employees. AZ sent these photos to the FBI, and they were AZ’s first contact with the federal intelligence service.23
After the war broke out in Europe in 1939, AZ’s friends began making plans for what they would do when the United States entered the war. Some, like AZ’s father-in-law, who had been a major, were too old to serve again, but they encouraged others to prepare. Some decided to join the reserves, or to reactivate their previous commissions. AZ was a bit too old to be a fighter, and he was color-blind, so some areas of service were closed to him. Intelligence was a consideration. Army G-2 was a possibility, but he had no connections with Army intelligence. Kane encouraged him to join the ONI. AZ also knew Captain Tom Thornton, a naval intelligence officer in the Third Naval District, and he, too, was encouraging. His good friend Joseph Freeman Lincoln and his next-door neighbor Clarence Lewis joined the OSS. But the OSS did not even exist until 13 June 1942 (it had previously been known as the coordinator of information, or COI), and AZ was already talking with the Navy by then.24
AZ also had a couple of other door openers for the ONI. The head of ONI in the First Naval District (New York) was Commander (later Captain) Vincent Astor, who led “the Room,” a secret intelligence operation in New York City. Astor had been secretly named by FDR to vet candidates for the ONI, and AZ had at least two connections with this group. His good friend John “Jack” Thayer Jr. had survived the sinking of Titanic as a young man; Jack’s father and Vincent Astor’s father had gone down together on the ship. And AZ’s friend Malcolm Aldrich, who he called “Mac,” had been a member of Skull and Bones at Yale. He was a cousin of the banker, Winthrop Aldrich, who was also a member of the Room.25
By September 1942 AZ had decided on Navy intelligence. He tidied up his personal affairs, got a waiver for color-blindness, and on 21 September he took the oath of office as a lieutenant, I-V(P), USNR—the “P” standing for probationary. His appointment was backdated to 1 August 1942, and his appointment was effective on 8 September. He went to basic training as an officer at the Washington Navy Yard from 18 October to 14 November. He then reported to the ten-week intelligence indoctrination course at Dartmouth from 18 November to 28 January 1943. While he was at Dartmouth, the new naval intelligence officers developed a sense of camaraderie, and it was not all work: AZ noted that a singer named Paul Robeson performed there on Colgate weekend, in late November.
