CIC goes tactical

Courtesy Photo | American forces land on the beaches of Morocco on November 8, 1942 as part of Operation Torch. (courtesy photo)  

FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES

08.01.2022

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

In August 1942, Maj. (later Col.) Hugh D. Wise, Jr., executive officer, Office of the Chief, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), received orders to recruit approximately 100 of the CIC’s existing agents for duties in combat conditions overseas. These men would participate in the November 8, 1942 invasion of North Africa as part of Operation Torch.

In the period leading up to World War II, the Army’s counterintelligence agents were scattered throughout nine Corps Service Areas in the United States, primarily conducting routine security matters and potential sabotage and subversion investigations. As the country’s inevitable entrance into World War II approached, the CIC’s leadership discussed the possibility the organization would eventually participate in combat operations overseas. Yet, they had done little to prepare other than drafting a CIC field manual and sending it through War Department staffing (it would not be approved until after the first CIC units deployed.)

In August 1942, Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, the Army’s Director of Intelligence, invited Major Wise to his office. Wise was a 28-year-old Army reserve officer with degrees from Princeton and Yale Law School when called to active duty in 1940. He was initially assigned to the Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP) and, when the CIP was renamed the CIC in early 1942, Wise became executive officer to the chief. Upon arriving in General Strong’s office, Wise received a directive to find “immediately” 100 agents for tactical employment overseas with combat troops—more specifically, for the Allied invasion of North Africa in just three months.

Strong’s order presented challenges for the CIC. Wise and his boss, Lt. Col. Henry G. Sheen, knew few of the CIC’s agents had any combat experience or, for that matter, much combat training or physical conditioning. Furthermore, they had little understanding of what their agents might actually do once on the front lines. Their mission was to prevent foreign acts of espionage, sabotage, and subversion aimed at American forces and to detect and investigate possible cases of subversion and disaffection within American military ranks. But once in a combat situation, landing on a hostile shore of a foreign country, those duties would become increasingly complex as the agents navigated the myriad political, cultural, and social intricacies of French colonial Africa. Adding to their challenges, many of the combat commanders and troops also did not understand the CIC’s mission.

By mid-September, Wise and Sheen had identified thirteen officers and fifty-eight enlisted men for assignment to the Western Task Force that would, under the command of Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, invade French Morocco. Although of diverse backgrounds, the CIC agents all had high IQs, were under the age of twenty-five, and had working knowledge of at least one foreign language. They were first sent to Washington, D.C., for orientation and then to Camp A.P. Hill, Virginia, for two weeks of “seasoning” with infantry troops. They were issued submachine guns and Colt .45 pistols, taught how to erect their tents, and taken on full field road marches to get in shape.

On 18 October 1942, the seventy-one CIC agents assembled in Newport News, Virginia, under the overall command of Maj. Charles Ellis, and boarded the USS Harris. Onboard, they studied the intelligence plan for the landings, discussed how to handle prisoners of war, surveilled the other passengers, gave security lectures, studied the destination languages, and set up an index card system containing the names of 5,000 arrest targets and possible informants in Morocco.

At 1000 on 8 November 1942, the first CIC agents to deploy with combat forces hit the beach at Safi as part of Operation TORCH. Soon thereafter, as American involvement deepened in Europe, CIC detachments would accompany all American divisions and corps into combat.

• Date Taken: 08.01.2022
• Date Posted: 08.01.2022 12:44
• Story ID: 426247
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US