Chapter ten: my hand is itching for drawings

“Lt. Steinberg states”: Interview with Lt. (j.g.) Steinberg of MO by Major (AUS) Carleton S. Coon, November 8, 1944, Declassified document 84s099, YCAL, Box 48, Folder “Nato Anthology, Algiers Vol. II.”

“a very unromantic sickness”: ST to HS, November 6, 1943, AAA.

lumbered across the equator: ST’s handwritten notes on the first page of a pamphlet distributed on board troopship Nieuw Amsterdam, YCAL, Box 20.

“funnies on Sundays”: ST to HS, May 1, 1944, 1943. AAA: “Today is exactly one year since I left San Francisco.”

he had lost all his money: Ibid. ST liked to gamble, and in ST to HS, January 20, 1944, AAA, he boasted that he lost over $900 before he left China.

“not a good place to live in”: ST to HS, July 3, 1943, AAA.

clear sight of the Himalayas: The Hump was the name given to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains, over which Allied planes flew after April 1942, when the Japanese blocked the Burma Road. It was the main supply route from India to China. ST drew the plane trip for a lithographed pamphlet, no. 69895, “China Theater: An Informal Notebook of Useful Information for Military Men in China,” put out by the Reproduction Branch OSS. It was later reprinted in All in Line and TNY, February 5, 1944, p. 20. ST gave his copy of the pamphlet to his studio assistant, Anton van Dalen, in October 1979. A copy is in SSF.

“perspiring like a waterfall”: ST to HS, July 20, 1943, AAA.

even though there were only chopsticks: ST’s first TNY cover, January 13, 1945, depicts soldiers eating with chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant. He gave the original drawing to a SACO colleague, Cmdr. Ray Kotrla, and signed it “To Cmdr. Kotrla, Happy 1945, S. Steinberg.” Copy in YCAL, Box 9, Folder 12.

“the extraordinary Chinese diarrhea”: R & S Outtakes; “Chinese diarrhea” [AB # 37].

he would have been lost: ST to HS, July 24, 1943, AAA.

he drew his for Hedda: ST’s drawings are in Milton E. Miles, USN, A Different Kind of War: The Unknown Story of the U. S. Navy’s Guerrilla Forces in WW II China (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), photo insert, pp. 8–9. Some of these drawings, in slightly different form, are in All in Line.

“a table, two chairs”: Captain Frank Gleason, e‑mail to Sheila Schwartz, November 29, 2005, SSF.

the little English bulldog: John Horton to ST, September 25, 1991, YCAL, Box 87. Horton wrote that they spent part of the summer of 1943 in Chungking and that he brought “the small white bulldog, Skipper, there from Perth.” He asks if ST still has the drawing of the men on the veranda with their feet on the railing and Skipper sleeping in the background. He wants to use it for a memoir and asks ST to draw another if he no longer has the original. Another copy of this letter is in YCAL, Box 69.

he had everything he desired: ST to HS, July 24, 1943, AAA.

he was despondent: ST to HS, August 2, 1943, AAA.

“a special mood”: OSS Pamphlet no. 69895, p. 14; reproduced in All in Line and TNY, January 15, 1944, p. 18.

“the atmosphere is quite different”: ST to HS, August 2, 1943, AAA.

“the Rice Paddy Navy”: To write this account of ST’s China service, I have benefited from (among many others) the following sources: Miles, A Different Kind of War; Charles Barton, Capt. USN (ret)., “The Rice Paddy Navy,” The Retired Officer, January 1989; Lou Glist, China Mailbag Uncensored (Houston: Emerald Ink, 2000); John Ryder Horton, Ninety-Day Wonder: Flight to Guerrilla War (New York: Ivy, 1994); Clayton Mishler, Sampan Sailor: A Navy Man’s Adventures in WWII China (New York: Macmillan, 1994); Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol. XII, The Liberation of the Philippines (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), pp. 301–2; Michael Schaller, The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938–45 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), and “SACO! The United States Navy’s Secret War in China, 1938–45,” Pacific Historical Review 44, no. 4 (November 1975): 527–33; Roy Stratton, SACO: The Rice Paddy Navy (Pleasantville, N.Y.: C. S. Palmer Publishing Co., 1950); Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). I am grateful to Del Leu for correspondence about his father Donald Leu’s service in SACO, and whose information can be found at www.delsjourney.com/saco/saco.htm. Del Leu’s website will lead the interested reader to many more sources for information about SACO.

useful for an Allied invasion: Miles, A Different Kind of War, p. 137.

“psychological warfare artist”: From Officer Qualifications Questionnaire, 5/29/45, YCAL, Box 20.

the somewhat puzzled Saul: SACO correspondence, YCAL, Box 9; Miles, A Different Kind of War, index, p. 621.

Surprisingly, it worked: Miles, A Different Kind of War, p. 137.

“one of China’s most mysterious”: “Generalissimo’s Man,” Time, April 8, 1946.

Miles was effectively marginalized: Miles, A Different Kind of War, p. 159: “Looking back now, I do not understand why we did not see from the beginning that the OSS was trying to bypass the Chinese, and why we did not recognize the fact that in order to do it they had to get rid of me.”

“politically checked”: Ibid., pp. 138–39.

A third banner at the bottom: The first two banners are from Les Hughes’s article “SACO (Naval Group, China),” http://www/insigne.org/SACO-I.htm, 10.23/2007. Steinberg’s drawing is in YCAL, Box 9, Folder 14, and is reproduced in S:I, p. 31. There is also extensive correspondence in Box 9 between ST, Mrs. Miles, and fellow officers Henley Guild and Ray Kotrla. On May 23 and July 27, 1989, Guild asked Steinberg to verify that he made the drawing so it could be auctioned at a SACO reunion. ST apparently replied that the drawing was a fake because he would not have surrounded the figure with “cross hatching.” Guild replied that of course it was not cross-hatching but the ubiquitous mosquito netting, and that it had to be authentic because it bore ST’s “distinctive signature.” He also writes on November 9, 1989, “Mrs. Miles showed me the Happy Valley drawings which you have given to her husband and told me of the John Ford film she has of you attempting to eat Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks. This film is now on videotape and available for showing at SACO reunions.”

On December 8 he told Hedda: ST to HS, December 8, 1943, AAA.

“some excitement”: ST to HS, January 1, 1944, AAA; ST’s handwritten itinerary is in YCAL, Box 20, and his navy pay statements are in YCAL, Box 1. Information that follows is from these sources.

“curious outfit”: ST to HS, January 6, 1944, AAA.

He was even more noticeable: ST to HS, January 1, 1944, AAA.

At work, he had problems: NATO Anthology, ST interview conducted by Major Carleton S. Coon, November, 8, 1944, YCAL, Box 48, Folder 2.

Most of the agents were transplanted Europeans: Edward Lindner, interview with Sheila Schwartz, September 17, 2002, SSF.

“dropped in millions of copies”: Peter M. F. Sichel, e‑mail to Sheila Schwartz, August 27, 2002, SSF. Sichel served with ST in Algiers throughout 1943 and 1944.

“publisher, editor, and lover”: ST to HS, “Africa,” January 20, 1944, AAA. The following information comes from this source.

“happy, happy, happy”: ST to HS, January 22, 1944, AAA.

“sick of being attached to the Army”: ST to HS, January 24, 1944, AAA.

“this war is a war of pants”: ST to HS, “Monday Feb 14 44,” AAA.

the orders he had been hoping for: Allied Force Headquarters official orders, February 23, 1944, YCAL, Box 20.

he would be in Naples such a short time: ST to HS, April 2, 1944, AAA.

“I was really scared”: ST to HS, March 1, 1944, AAA.

Most likely he was in Bari: The 2677th was also in Siena for part of 1944–45, but ST was not there.

“I’m finally here”: ST to HS, February 24, 1944, AAA.

“some of the real war”: ST to HS, March 11, 1944, AAA.

“this sort of scenery”: ST to HS, March 20, 1944, AAA.

“In Italy, I used to be”: ST to HS, March 11, 1944, AAA.

“silly and sad”: ST to HS, March 30, 1944, AAA.

“coming attractions”: ST to HS, April 24, 1944, AAA.

off by himself to buy postcards: ST to HS, April 27, 1944, AAA.

“almost cried for days”: ST to HS, May 10, 1944, AAA.

gave up on reaching Rome: ST to HS, letters of May 12, 19, and 22, 1944, AAA.

“I don’t know what’s wrong”: ST to HS, May 25, 28, and 31, 1944, AAA.

He also had to censor: From “List of Officer[s] of the Day, August 13, 1944, YCAL, Box 20.

news of the Normandy invasion: ST to HS, June 7, 1944, AAA.

“running around and busy as hell”: ST to HS, June 15, 1944, AAA.

“a bastard who ate him”: ST to HS, July 1, 1944, AAA. In ST to HS, March 20, 1944, he enclosed a drawing of the baby goat visiting him as he sits in a chair examining his feet.

“frightened villages”: The notebook is in YCAL, Box 3.

“entire cities completely forever destroyed”: ST to HS, July 1, 1944, AAA.

“accumulated for days”: ST to HS, July 21 and 22, 1944, AAA.

“fancy beds in fancy houses”: ST to HS, July 1, 1944, AAA.

“I’m very much disgusted”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests August 1944, AAA.

If he saw nothing but the ugly side: ST to AB, September 5, 1945, New York.

“I changed in many ways”: ST to HS, August 4, 1944, AAA.

One old friend he met by happenstance: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests late August 1944, AAA. In the letter, ST identifies Stille by his birth name, Mikhail Kamenetzki, misspelled as Kamenetsky. ST writes: “I invited for lunch today Kamenetsky and his new wife.”

two of his Bertoldo friends: ST to HS, August 4, 1944, AAA.

A furlough to Bucharest: Walter M. Ross to ST, April 22, 1978, YCAL, Box 22. Ross was the lieutenant-colonel chief of the OSS in Bucharest. He handled ST’s request and visited the Steinberg family: “I went to see them and wrote you that they were well, happy, and in no need of monetary assistance which you had authorized me to supply.” He thought they were “a lovely couple.” Ross took two officers who spoke French and Romanian to verify the conversation, and he remembered that ST sent a thank-you letter afterward. This letter was inspired, like so many others from military friends and colleagues, by the WMAA retrospective and the cover story in Time.

To let her know he was back in Rome: ST to HS, August 2, 1944, AAA.

“in a neighborhood”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests the last half of August 1944, AAA.

“the exciting news”: ST to HS, August 16, 1944, AAA.

his assignment was to deliver: Letter from Eugene Warner, Chief MO, to Lt. j.g. Robbins, USN, PRO, re: Saul Steinberg, September 11, 1944, copy in YCAL, Box 20.

some of the most important information: In “Prologue,” OSS Records, Spring 1991, p. 15, William J. Casey, head of the OSS Secret Intelligence (SI) Branch in Europe during the war and later the director of the CIA, described how the two field offices between which Steinberg shuttled “gathered intelligence on everything, down to the location and condition of every last pillbox or pylon.”

King Michael of Romania staged a royal coup: Jelavich, History of the Balkans, p. 254.

Steinberg learned that an American plane: Travel orders signed by “Col. Glavin,” September 15, 1944, YCAL, Box 67. Lt. j.g. USNR Frederick Burkhardt wrote to ST on March 22, 1962, YCAL, Box 16, describing how both men were assigned to OSS in Italy: “I happened to be assigned to operation ‘Bughouse’ which took me to Bucharest ostensibly to arrange for the evacuation of our air crews shot down during raids on Ploesti but actually to assess the damage done to the oil refineries by our attacks … You came to see me [in Caserta] to find out if I could get you to Bucharest … I did succeed in cooking up some reasons for sending you.” Burkhardt reminded ST that he had promised to give him a drawing after the war was over, but they never saw each other again. He was writing in 1962 to ask for a drawing, which ST sent. Also, Iosef Eugen Campus, Deschizand noi orizonturi, Insemnari critice, Israel, 1960–2001 (Opening New Horizons: Critical Notes, Israel 1960–2001), vol. I (Libra: Bucharest, 2002), translated by Emil Niculescu as “Nature and Art (Conversations with Saul Steinberg),” pp. 54–56, first published in Viata Noastra, December 1981, pp. 12, 15, from conversations with ST in Tel Aviv, December 1981. Copies in SSF.

he was back in the homeland: ST to HS, September 3, 1944 (in Romanian), AAA.

He knew that his parents: From a genealogy of the Rotman/Roman family prepared by Ilie Roman, copy made available by Dana Roman; additional copy SSF. Dana Roman said the family had changed the name from Rotman to appear “less Jewish,” even though Jews were less likely to be deported or harassed as long as Germans controlled the capital; but a cloak of invisibility was still advisable.

he had managed to get to Bucharest: ST to AB, September 12 and November 23, 1945.

“caricature of Prince Charming”: Campus, “Nature and Art (Conversations with Saul Steinberg),” Viata Noastra, December, 1981, pp. 12, 25, trans. Emil Niculescu.

“a closed chapter”: ST to AB, December 27, 1955.

a printing plant had been commandeered: For complete documentation of the kind and quantity of work produced at the Stabilimento Aristide Staderini, see Herbert A. Friedman, “The American Propaganda Postcards of World War II,” German Postal Specialist, February 1987, p. 55ff.

probably the most sustained and valuable contribution: Information that follows (unless noted otherwise) is from DB interview with Barbara Lauwers Podoski, January 30, 2008; Sheila Schwartz transcript of telephone conversation with Barbara L. Podoski, September 11, 2002, SSF; correspondence from Barbara L. Podoski to Sheila Schwartz, September 2, 2002, SSF; Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS, (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1998); Sheila Schwartz, interview of Elizabeth P. McIntosh, September 11, 2002, SSF; “Prologue,” OSS Records, Spring 1991, pp. 13–14.

“straight out of [journalism’s] Central Casting”: Edward Lindner, who was a member of the unit, interview with Sheila Schwartz, September 17, 2002, SSF.

The deception succeeded so well: Norman D. Atkins, “Steinberg’s Wartime Cartoons,” Washington Post, June 30, 1984.

determine which could be persuaded to assist the Allies: Lindner became an advertising executive after the war. Williams was born Willi Haseneier and was a graduate of the Dusseldorf Art Academy; he later became a well-known artist in the Washington, D.C., area. See also Robert A. Erlandson “The Artist of Military Intelligence,” Baltimore Sun, April 13, 1955; untitled typescript version of “Operation Sauerkraut” article, National Archives, McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, chapter 6, pp. 60ff.

One of his more imaginative creations: Copies are reproduced in OSS Records, pp. 13–14.

The subterfuge was so credible: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 65; “German Soldiers on Leave from the Front Have Only to Wear a Heart on their Uniform,” Washington Post, October 10, 1944; Herbert A. Friedman, “Propaganda Ricocheted ’Round Both Sides,” American Philatelist, November 1985, p. 1018. Copy in YCAL, Box 9, Folder 6.

Steinberg was able to indulge: Information that follows is from Edward Lindner, interview with Sheila Schwartz, September 17, 2002, SSF. Photos of ST’s works are in Friedman, “American Propaganda Postcards.”

all of which showed the new turn: ST to AB, November 23, 1945. ST writes that he has not used a pencil “in ages.”

Around this time, he began to decorate his letters: ST to HS, August 10, 1944, AAA.

After the war, he took delight in telling: The story appeared in P.M., March 11, 1946, among many other places. Hedda Sterne verified that it was apocryphal in several conversations.

a group execution he had witnessed: ST to HS, February 14, 1944, AAA.

“just kids 16, 17 years old”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests late September 1944, AAA.

Steinberg feared that the Italy he knew: YCAL, Box 67, 2 pp. in ST’s hand, interview with “Marchi, born 1925.”

After the war, he wanted: Undated letter to HS.

“Give me all your Tootsie Rolls”: Information that follows is from DB interview with Barbara Lauwers Podoski, January 30, 2008.

Sichel wondered how much: Peter Sichel, interview with Sheila Schwartz, September 13, 2002; Sichel, e‑mail to Sheila Schwartz, August 27, 2002; both SSF.

Lindner remembered how Steinberg hid under a desk: Edward Lindner, interview with Sheila Schwartz, September 17, 2002, SSF.

“had a lot of Weltschmerz ”: Edward Lindner to ST, December 1, 1988, YCAL, Box 9, Folder 6.

nostalgic for the work of “the Miles organization:” Correspondence in YCAL, Box 67, Folder “Correspondence 1944,” includes postcards wishing Captain Bob Corrigan “Ding-hao” greetings for the New Year and thanks for “the lift over the Hump.” Cards to Lt. Henry Gibbins were returned to ST with the envelope marked “deceased.” He wrote about it to “McGonigle” and asked him to “drop me a line about what’s new.” Phil Talbot’s letter filled him with “nostalgia” when he wrote from Chungking to tell how Gibbins’s plane had been ambushed by Japanese fighters.

this became his first cover: January 13, 1945.

was proud to be in “the society service”: This appellation is one that is often applied to the Navy.

he continued to wear: There are photos of him wearing these clothes in East Hampton with Tino Nivola as late as 1948–49. The photo of him in full uniform with HS was taken at a time when he was authorized to wear civilian clothes.

he was interviewed by an intelligence officer: Information that follows is from “Interview with Lt. j.g. Steinberg of MO, 8 November, 1944,” National Archives (declassified), copy in YCAL, Box 9, and SSF.

it arrived safely at Hedda’s: HS, interviews throughout 2007, listed these things at various times. Also, many of them are distributed throughout YCAL boxes.

Some of the elaborate engravings: These too are distributed throughout the YCAL boxes.

“splendid teamwork”: Eugene Warner to ST, November 20, 1944, YCAL, Box 20; Brig. Gen. William J. Donovan to all MO Personnel, 2677th Regiment, November 3, 1944, YCAL, Box 20.

“a difficult officer to appraise”: Officer’s Fitness Report, December 1, 1945, National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), Officer Fitness File (OFF); copies in YCAL, Box 20, Folders “US Navy,” 1 and 2.

he had to secure permission: ST to Commandant Third Naval District, August 28, 1951, YCAL, Box 20.

“I don’t want two weeks leave”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests September 1944, AAA.

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