Photo By Lori Stewart | 20 Grosvenor Square, London, the Allied Forces Headquarters and later the European...... read more read more
by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS GETS CIC DETACHMENT
On 1 September 1942, Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army (ETOUSA), officially stood up its own Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment in London, England. The unit eventually provided administrative control of all theater CIC personnel during the war.
On 14 July 1942, Capt. Kirby M. Gillette, along with fifteen enlisted men and five officers, arrived in England after a long overseas voyage from New York. Gillette’s CIC detachment was destined for the newly established Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) in London, which was preparing for Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. Inadvertently diverted to Cheltenham approximately 88 miles to the northwest, Gillette’s detachment spent a month conducting security surveys and investigating possible cases of sabotage in the resort town before finally receiving authorization to hop a troop train for London.
Upon arriving at AFHQ, the 32-year-old Gillette was promoted to major and designated the chief, CIC, ETOUSA. A Michigan native, Gillette had received his commission through the ROTC program at the University of Michigan in 1932. After completing his law degree at Wayne State University, he opened his own practice in Detroit. From 1939 to 1941, he was employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in both Michigan and Texas. He resigned from the FBI after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and joined the U.S. Army’s CIC.
The early months in London were tumultuous. Gillette was initially given the additional duty of staff officer in charge of planning the Counter Intelligence Branch (CIB) in the AFHQ G-2 Section. As part of his CIC duties, he also had to manage the resulting chaos when almost all CIC personnel already assigned in the ETOUSA, except those stationed in Iceland, were called up for participation in Operation TORCH. Gillette juggled these dual responsibilities until 18 September, when Lt. Col. Henry G. Sheen finally arrived to take over as chief of the CIB, and Gillette’s CIC Detachment was separated from the G-2.
Major Gillette was exempted from the deployment to North Africa, and as the rest of the CIC personnel shipped off for that “special operation,” he was left with just two other officers and four enlisted men in his detachment. With so few personnel, his unit was again combined with the CIB, now under Col. C. R. Abraham. When Abraham was reassigned in February 1943, Gillette again took over the combined CIC-CIB operations until April, when he was reassigned to teach at the CIC School in Chicago.
Through much of 1943, ETOUSA’s CIC Detachment experienced consistent turnover in leadership and was responsible only for counterintelligence and security operations in the London headquarters. Without much direction, other CIC detachments in the theater were described as having an “appalling” lack of coordination, morale, and knowledge of the CIC’s mission, both inside and outside the organization.
In October 1943, Maj. Howard E. Wilson took command of the detachment. Redesignated chief, CIC, ETOUSA, he oversaw changes that enhanced the efficiency and morale of the theater CIC personnel. All CIC units and personnel were assigned to Headquarters, ETOUSA, giving the theater G-2 overall responsibility for their operations. A Table of Organization and Equipment standardized the CIC detachments that would be attached at army, corps, and division levels, in the Communications Zone, and with the Army Air Forces. The unit G-2 sections would exercise operational control of their detachments, usually through the individual detachment commanders.
Meanwhile, Wilson, as the chief, CIC, retained administrative control over all CIC personnel in the theater. That gave him responsibility for personnel transfers and unit deployments, supervision of training, and long-range planning for the CIC in the theater. In May 1944, he was managing 110 officers and 831 enlisted CIC personnel. By the end of the war, these numbers had increased to 508 and 1,526, respectively.
When war ended in Europe, ETOUSA became U.S. Forces European Theater (USFET). At that time, the ETOUSA CIC Detachment was inactivated, and the counterintelligence function in Occupied Germany was turned over to the 970th CIC Detachment at CIC headquarters in Frankfurt.
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| Date Taken: | 08.30.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 08.30.2024 16:54 |
| Story ID: | 479888 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 93 |
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