Rear Admiral Harold C. Train, and his ambitious deputy, Captain Ellis Zacharias—later called “The Man Who Wanted to Be DNI.”26 Admiral Train and Captain Zacharias both spoke at their graduation from the school. How much the students knew about the conflict between these two men is unknown, but they were smart fellows, and it was probably a good introduction to the arcane and back-biting world of intelligence. A classmate there, in another platoon, was another Philadelphia socialite, and brother of his friend in the Orpheus Club, Jim Winsor. The brother, Curtin Winsor, a somewhat younger man, went to Washington in the Far East desk of ONI. Curt Winsor later became AZ’s desk officer, or handler.27
AZ began French language school in Washington, DC, in preparation to go to Dakar, Senegal, French West Africa, as a naval observer. He enjoyed the course in French and was doing well, but his orders were canceled after two months, and he was instead sent to the Advanced Operational Intelligence School in New York City. He began the course at the Henry Hudson Hotel on 19 April and completed it on 28 May 1943. He was then assigned to the NLO, Karachi. He would spend nearly two years there. It would be a challenging and sometimes trying experience, but the most interesting adventure of his life.
AZ’s trip to Karachi would be familiar to anyone who lived through World War II, but it seems exotic to others. After saying good-bye for what would be at least a year, and perhaps eternity, on 23 June 1943, AZ boarded a commercial airline flight from Washington, DC, for New York. From there, he flew to Botwood, Newfoundland, and on to Foynes, near Limerick, in what had recently been the Irish Free State. All his letters passed the censor, and in the next two years only a few words—the names of some of the places on commercial postcards on his route to Karachi—were ever redacted by the censor. He touched down in Port Lyautey and Casablanca, Morocco; Oran and Algiers, Algeria; Constantine and Sousse, Tunisia; Tripoli and Benghasi, Libya, and arrived in Cairo on 1 July to get in line to continue on to the east.
He stayed in Cairo in relative comfort at the famous Shepheard’s Hotel, and—as was the custom with expats and intelligence officers—he made good use of the time. He saw the Sphinx and the pyramids, and visited Philadelphia physicians who were at Army General Hospital 38. They started to receive casualties from the invasion of Sicily, which began while he was in Cairo. While there, he met Edgar Snow and Tom Treanor, who were also staying at Shepheard’s. They were war correspondents who had been in India and China and were on their way to cover the invasion of Sicily. Treanor gave AZ an earful of the struggle that was going on in India. Treanor wrote that Gandhi and Nehru wanted the British to leave India so the Hindus could rule it; on the other hand, there was Jinnah, who refused to bargain with the British, and intended to put three-fourths of the Muslims of India into a new country, Pakistan. All three men postured for their political constituencies, and none was willing to compromise. (AZ would see that this was also the British perception of Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah, and would transmit this in an intelligence report in 1944.) And “despite protestations and promises of the British that India one day is to get her independence, no apparent step is being made in this direction.”28
On 4 July AZ took movies of a baseball game with Quentin Reynolds at bat and General Strong umpiring. Reynolds was a well-known war correspondent and Strong was doubtless the Army chief of intelligence (G-2) who detested General William Donovan of the OSS. AZ’s host on several days was a naval reservist from Philadelphia, Captain Thomas Anthony “Tom” Thornton, who was now with the U.S. Forces-Cairo. He had seen Lieutenant Commander Jack Kane only the previous week. Thornton planned to take AZ and Commander Gene Markey to Alexandria to pass the time while he and Markey were waiting for a flight out of Cairo, but AZ could not make the trip because he was placed on standby for his flight to the east. On one of his last nights in Cairo, he dined with Henry Hotchkiss, the assistant naval attaché, and several other old friends from Philadelphia. He finally flew out on a Royal Air Force (RAF) B-24 Liberator bomber on 16 July via Habanniah, Iraq, and another unnamed remote airfield. He commented to his wife in a letter that “I didn’t need the parachute so I didn’t find out whether it worked or not. They say you can always get another if it doesn’t.” He arrived in Karachi at 5:00 a.m., Monday 19 July 1943.29
The NLO in Karachi was a spacious two-story stucco-on-stone residence at 254 Ingle Road, on a frontage of about one hundred yards, and equally deep—a typical American square block. It was surrounded on three sides by a five-foot wall, and was enclosed at the rear by the houses of the twenty or so household servants and their families. In the real estate market in India it was called a bungalow, but this hardly expresses its size and beauty. The first floor of the house had twenty-five-foot ceilings, and the table in the dining room seated eighteen people with ease, and could be expanded to hold more. The first floor was for offices for the leading petty officer and the CO, and the code room, and spaces for guests, including a lounge and library; and the dining room, with its fireplace and George Washington’s portrait over the mantel. The second floor was the residence: the CO’s suite, the executive officer’s suite, a small library, and dormitories for the junior officers and about six enlisted men. There were social events there on many evenings, and grand parties, too, but there also was an ever-present reminder of the war; a locked gun closet was on the stairway with a dozen M-1 rifles, with slings and ammunition.
When AZ arrived there were four officers at the NLO in Karachi: the CO, Lieutenant Commander Francis H. Smith, USN; and Lieutenants Burns, Callahan, and Browning. Except for Smith, all were junior in years to AZ. Browning developed eye trouble and soon headed for home. The rest worked long days, taking their turn on duty call. It was secret work, and AZ said almost nothing about what they did during the days. The Navy’s long-distance radio network provided service for the Army and the State Department, so the code room must have been very busy. Karachi was a busy seaport, located near the mouth of the great Indus River. It was the entry point for everything that passed on land into India from the west, and to the north. The State Department cables show that Afghanistan was interested in selling and transshipping wool, of which AZ had special knowledge. Karachi was the entry and exit port for Axis diplomats who traveled under safe conduct to and from Kabul.
AZ was introduced to the strange ways of the NLO almost immediately on arrival, when he received an invitation to dinner with a Madame Dubash. He soon learned that she was a “good-looking” Russian woman of about fifty who was the “girlfriend” of the CO.30 He also believed that the NLO in Karachi was spending U.S. government funds for lavish entertainment, that they were living in a fool’s paradise. He believed all of this was contrary to the instructions to naval intelligence officers, and eventually he was proved right.31
In the evenings and on weekends, AZ played bridge with Brigadier N. Godfray Hind and his American-born wife; and with Major D. Montgomery (Monty) Smyth and his wife Joan Smyth.32 AZ played tennis and partied at the Sind Club, where Governor and Lady Dow held forth, and at the Boat Club. He was a frequent guest in private homes, where his ability to sing was much appreciated. He was also invited to the Karachi Club, which was for Indians (Parsi, Muslim, and Hindus), a rare invitation for an American. He was invited to dinner by his prewar Indian wool supplier, where he learned (with some difficulty) to eat Indian food, and to appreciate the customs of that part of the world. On weekends he often went to the private offshore beach known as Sandspit with members of the American commercial community. He was there on 12 September 1943 with Arlo Bond, who was with Standard Oil. The war rarely intruded; by then it appeared that Japan would not attempt an invasion of India, and the Germans were slowly retreating. In his first three months he mentioned the war only twice in letters to his wife: the fall of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy on 10 September.
The visitors who passed through the NLO were often mentioned in language that only AZ and his wife, Barbara (hereafter BSZ), could understand. Four groups of “Freeman’s friends” (sent out by Joseph Freeman Lincoln, a major in the OSS in London) were so secret that he could not mention their names, but he was able to identify some of them to BSZ because she knew them, too. Others who were named included Senator Richard Russell on 23 August, Ambassador Clarence Gauss “and his attachés” on his way to China on 15 September, and a Mr. Preston, the consul general at Lorenzo Marques,
