Anniversaries

In Sisterhood of Spies, her 1998 memoir about the women who served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during  WWII, Betty McIntosh highlighted several events in her recent recollections of her time with the new intelligence agency.  She commented, “Sometimes a bright light will flash across the dark corridors of memory.” 

Three events in particular stood out to her from one particularly significant year, 1994.  

First, she recounted the lowering of the flag at the former OSS Headquarters, a government office building known as the “E Street Complex” on Observatory Hill.  

It was beside the State Department and across from the Kennedy Center. This facility served as the wartime headquarters of the OSS. Betty served there briefly before being assigned overseas.

Following the war, it was a Central Intelligence facility, used for planning covert operations. The Agency ceased using the Foggy Bottom location in 1961 but it wasn’t finally closed as a CIA site until 1997.

But as Betty recalled, the American flag was lowered and then Director of the CIA, the Hon. R. James Woolsey presented the flag to Betty. 

She accepted it on behalf of the late OSS Director and Betty’s mentor, Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan and the more than 21,000 men and women of the OSS. It brought back a flood of memories, those young men and women Betty served with, that “undisciplined collection of volunteers” she called them, casual in their wear of the uniform and even more casual in their understanding of military courtesies and the chain of command.

But those were the times of her life and she held those memories close.

Maj. Gen. Donovan visiting Betty’s OSS detachment in Burma.

She also vividly recalled that the 50th anniversary of D-Day took place in 1994.

Just days earlier, Betty was at Arlington National Cemetery where she was privileged to introduce President Bill Clinton where he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.  There were about fifteen OSS veterans there that day as well. 

Betty commented that their wartime experiences were ones she could never forget.  She also noted that so many of her former colleagues were buried there, among them Maj. Gen. Donovan and her former husband, Col. Richard Heppner, head of the OSS office in China.

In August 1994, Betty was part of the U.S. delegation in Czechoslovakia to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Slovak uprising against Germany.

The ceremony was led by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the Honorable Madeleine Albright.  Ambassador Albright, who was returning to the part of the world where she was born, honored the outnumbered Czech and Slovak partisans who fought six Nazi divisions in the war, until they were forced back in a rout. With them were members of an OSS team, later captured and killed.

The sound of taps being played that day stayed with Betty for the rest of her life.

Just three years later, in 1997, NATO offered membership to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. 

Speaking to the people of Prague, Albright said of the journey ahead, “You were the passion of my parents. You are the land of my birth. And now you and I, my nation and yours, will build and defend a new Europe together. God bless you.”

Words to remember today.