Five Forks

 

 

Virginia, Dinwiddie County,

 

April 1, 1865

 

By Christopher M. Calkins

 

Five Forks was the intersection of the White Oak Road, Scott’s Road, Ford’s—or Church—Road, and the Dinwiddie Court House Road. Located six miles northwest of the Dinwiddie county seat, Five Forks was crucial in protecting CS General Robert E. Lee’s last supply line into Petersburg, the South Side Railroad. Southeast of the junction stood a little white frame building called Gravelly Run Methodist Episcopal Church; nearby were the Barnes and Sydnor farmhouses. There were a few large plantations in the area, including those of the Gilliam and Boisseau families. Tangled thickets and pine woods were interspersed with swampy bogs, open spaces, and woods dotted with large outcroppings of granite.

 

While the battle of White Oak Road raged on March 31, CS Major General George E. Pickett’s cavalry and infantry left their position at Five Forks, forced a passage over the swampy bottomlands of Chamberlain’s Bed, a branch of Stony Creek, and pushed US Major General Philip H. Sheridan’s troopers back to Dinwiddie Court House. That night Sheridan’s forces entrenched a mile north of the village, with Pickett’s force interposed between them and Five Forks. US Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant responded to Sheridan’s request for infantry to reinforce his 9,000 cavalrymen by ordering US Brigadier General Romeyn B. Ayres’s division of US Major General Gouverneur K. Warren’s V Corps to move quickly on March 31–April l by night march along the Boydton Plank Road to Dinwiddie Court House. (Warren’s two other divisions took another route.) The soldiers’ arrival was delayed because they had to build a forty-foot bridge to get across Gravelly Run.

 

Earlier on March 31, after gaining a foothold on the White Oak Road, Warren had dispatched a brigade to a position behind Pickett’s left flank, facing Sheridan. Realizing that the Union army had him in check, the Confederate commander decided to withdraw his men to Five Forks. Soon the lead elements of Warren’s V Corps column began arriving on the Dinwiddie Court House Road following Sheridan’s troopers, who were pressing Pickett to the strategic crossroads.

 

When the Confederates arrived at Five Forks, Pickett set the men to strengthening their log and dirt fortifications. This line covered a one-and three- fourths-mile front, with a return on the left flank about 150 yards long. The cavalry guarded each flank, and artillery was placed at key points along the works. Pickett had received instructions from CS General Robert E. Lee: “Hold Five Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford’s Depot and prevent Union forces from striking the Southside Railroad. Regret exceedingly your forces’ withdrawal, and your inability to hold the advantage you had gained.” While Sheridan impatiently awaited the arrival of the remainder of Warren’s forces, he received a dispatch: “General Grant directs me to say to you, that if in your judgment the Fifth Corps would do better under one of the division commanders, you are authorized to relieve General Warren, and order him to report to General Grant, at headquarters.” Warren’s fate as a corps commander was in Sheridan’s hands. Later that night, after the battle had ended, Sheridan replaced Warren with US Brigadier General Charles Griffin.

 

It was nearly 4:00 p.m. when Warren had his 12,000 men ready to attack. Because of faulty reconnaissance by Sheridan’s staff, the map they drew for Warren erroneously showed Pickett’s left flank as extending to the intersection of Gravelly Run Church Road and the White Oak Road. Warren formed his battle lines in a bottom near Gravelly Run Church and instructed his three division commanders to advance until they intersected with the White Oak Road. Sheridan’s dismounted troopers were to press the Confederate line all along its front. Ayres formed the left of Warren’s line, and US Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford the right, with Griffin in support. When Warren’s advancing columns reached that area and began to wheel, they found the Confederate flank was still three quarters of a mile to the west. Although the mapping and reconnaissance errors caused the three columns to diverge from the original intended alignment, they did overwhelm the Confederate angle and line. One of Warren’s divisions swung around to the north of Pickett’s position and attacked the Confederates in their rear at Five Forks. On the Confederate right flank US Brigadier General George A. Custer’s troops battled with cavalry led by CS Major General William H. Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee. CS Brigadier General Thomas C. Devin’s dismounted troopers pushed forward between Custer and Warren.

 

Groups of Pickett’s men formed pockets of resistance along the line but to no avail. Their commander did not arrive on the scene until the fighting was well under way, having spent most of the afternoon at a shad bake two miles in the rear with some of his officers. By the time he addressed the situation, it was too late. Those who were not taken prisoner scattered into the pine forests and escaped the best way they could. Darkness brought an end to the fighting, and Union campfires were lit around Five Forks, the key to the South Side Railroad.

 

Estimated Casualties: 830 US, 3,000 CS

THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON

Lt. Col. Friedrich Baum set out on August 11th. The heavily loaded German troops, slow moving under the best of circumstances, plodded towards Bennington. On August 14th, Baum encountered an American scouting party at the Sancoick Mill–about eight miles west of Bennington. His report early that day to Burgoyne was confident:

Sancoick, Aug. 14, 1777, 9 o’clock
Sir: I have the honor to inform your Excellency that I arrived here at eight in the morning, having had intelligence of a party of the enemy being in possession of a mill, which they abandoned at our approach, but in their usual way fired from the bushes, and took the road to Bennington. . . . They left in the mill about seventy-eight barrels of very fine flour, one thousand bushels of wheat, twenty barrels of salt, and about one thousand pounds’ worth of pearl and potashes. . . . By five prisoners here they agree that fifteen to eighteen hundred men are in Bennington, but are supposed to leave it on our approach. I will proceed so far today as to fall on the enemy tomorrow early, and make such disposition as I think necessary from the intelligence I may receive. People are flocking in hourly and want to be armed. The savages cannot be controlled; they ruin and take everything they please.

I am, etc. F. Baum

P.S. Beg your excellency to pardon the hurry of this letter, it is written on the head of a barrel.

The scouts headed back with news of Baum’s approach. Far from retreating, Stark immediately advanced to meet the Germans as they moved towards Bennington. Although Baum had little respect for the fighting ability of Stark’s poorly trained and poorly equipped backwoodsmen, he realized he was outnumbered and sent for reinforcements. By the close of the day on August 14, the American and British forces were at a standoff about four miles east of Sancoick. Stark’s advantage of superior numbers was offset by Baum’s strong position on a high elevation with professional troops supported by cannons and protected by earthen fortifications.

The steamy summer heat produced heavy rains throughout the next day. Both armies waited for the rain to stop, contemplating their strategies. Baum spent the day improving and expanding his position on “Hessian Hill,” and posting a small force of Loyalists on a lower hill across the river, later known as the “Tory Fort.” At dawn Burgoyne had sent about 500 German troops under Col. Breymann to reinforce Baum, but the heavily burdened army made little progress over the rain-sodden roads.

On the 16th, the weather cleared. Stark set in motion an elaborate plan to dislodge the British:

I divided my army into three Divisions, and sent Col. Nichols with 250 men on their rear of their left wing; Col. Hendrick in the Rear of their right, with 300 men, order’d when join’d to attack the same. In the mean time I sent 300 men to oppose the Enemy’s front, to draw their attention that way; Soon after I detach’d the Colonels Hubbert & Stickney on their right wing with 200 men to attack that part, all which plans had their desired effect.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, the colonial militias that had gradually surrounded the British position attacked from all sides.

By five o’clock, the British were routed. A German observer described the fight on Hessian Hill:

Our Dragoons fired at the enemy with cool deliberation and much courage but it did not last long. They loaded their carbines behind the breastworks but, as soon as they raised up to aim their weapons, a bullet went through their heads, they fell backwards and no longer moved a finger. Thus in a short time our largest and best Dragoons were sent to eternity.

Their ammunition exhausted, the remaining Germans were overrun, and the fleeing survivors were pursued down the wooded slopes to be captured or killed. Baum himself was mortally wounded. The Indians escaped early in the fighting and slipped away to the west to rejoin Burgoyne’s main force.

The Patriots also drove the Loyalists from their hill, picking off the fleeing Tories as they attempted to escape across the river. Col. Peters described the fierce action there:

The Rebels pushed with a Strong party on the Front of the Loyalists where I commanded. As they were coming up, I observed A Man fire at me, and I returned, he loaded again as he came up & discharged again at me, and crying out Peters you Damned Tory I have at you, he rushed on me with his Bayonet, which entered just below my left Breast, but was turned by the Bone. By this time I was loaded, and I saw that it was a Rebel Captain, an Old School fellow & Playmate, and a Couzin of my wife’s: Tho his Bayonet was in my Body, I felt regret at being obliged to destroy him. 

The colonial troops had suffered few losses, but were widely dispersed–looting, guarding prisoners, and pursuing the retreating survivors. At this point, Breymann’s reinforcements, ignorant of Baum’s disaster, finally arrived. Col. Stark described the contest that saved his victory from reversal:

Luckily for us Col. Warner’s Regiment [of Green Mountain Rangers] came up, which put a stop to their career. We soon rallied, & in a few minutes the action became very warm & desperate, which lasted till night; we used their own cannon against them, which prov’d of great service to us. At Sunset we obliged them to retreat a second time; we pursued them till dark, when I was obliged to halt for fear of killing my own men.

The end of the day on August 16 found the British foraging force virtually annihilated and Burgoyne in a more dangerous position than before. His army had lost approximately 10 percent of its men and was still short of supplies. The defeat at Bennington greatly discouraged Burgoyne’s uneasy Indian allies. For the Patriots it was a great psychological victory, bringing in hundreds of new militia enlistments. Three months later, on October 17, Gen. Burgoyne surrendered his entire army following his humiliating defeat at the decisive Battle of Saratoga. By the terms of the Convention of Saratoga, Burgoyne’s depleted army, some 6,000 men, marched out of its camp “with the Honors of War” and stacked its weapons along the west bank of the Hudson River. Many historians believe that the outcome of that battle might have been different if Burgoyne had gathered the support that he expected from Baum’s expedition to Bennington, making it possible for the British to engage the Americans before they could collect enough men to oppose them.

Friedrich Baum

The only German cavalry unit in North America, the Brunswick Prinz Ludwig Dragoons who arrived in Canada the previous year with no horses, but encumbered with saddles and tack and wearing riding boots.

(d. August 18, 1777)

Hessian Army Officer

Baum, a tough professional soldier, was entrusted with the vitally important mission of securing food and transportation for the British army in New York during the early stages of the American Revolution. However, he underestimated the determination of the New England militias to resist his designs and came to grief at Bennington, Vermont.

By 1775, the government of Great Britain realized that even though it possessed a well-trained, professional army, its numbers were far too small to crush the rebellion in America. It therefore resorted to the time-honored and typically European expedient of hiring foreign auxiliaries to augment its military strength. In strictly legal parlance, foreign auxiliaries were distinct from mercenaries inasmuch as they were hired directly from the government of a willing state (i.e., the soldiers were not hired individually). At this time, Germany consisted of more than 300 states and principalities, each with its own dynasty and army. Various princes, eager to raise money for their own purposes, gladly rented out soldiers at a fixed rate. Moreover, monarchs were entitled to recompense for each soldier wounded in action, greater sums if one were killed. Therefore, between 1775 and 1782, the British hired an estimated 30,000 soldiers from Germany for service in America. They originated mostly from six small principalities: Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Hanau, Brunswick, Ansbach-Bayreuth, Anhalt-Zerbst, and Waldeck. As a group, German soldiers were savagely disciplined in the strict Prussian manner, bravely led, and they acquired a reputation for coolness and ferocity under fire. Regardless of their state of origin, all became collectively known as “Hessians” by their adversaries and were hated as symbols of tyranny.

One such hired soldier was Lt. Col. Friedrich Baum of the Brunswick Dragoon Regiment (mounted infantry). Nothing is known of his birth and prior background, but he was clearly a long-term professional who knew his business. Baum departed Germany in February 1776 with a large Brunswick contingent commanded by Col. Friedrich von Riedesel. He commanded 336 cavalrymen in his regiment, a colorful lot sporting bright-blue jackets and bicorn hats, armed with both swords and muskets. Horses had yet to be procured, yet Baum’s command, being trained as dragoons, was equally adept fighting on foot or in the saddle. The Brunswick contingent arrived in Quebec that summer as part of an ambitious military operation to be headed by Gen. John Burgoyne. Here an army of 8,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops, assisted by large numbers of Native Americans, would invade northern New York via the Lake Champlain corridor. Burgoyne’s goal was to seize Albany, the state capital, as its capture would cut off New England from the rest of the country. The government entertained high expectations for Burgoyne and fully expected to end the war in a single campaign.

Burgoyne’s juggernaut began rolling southward into New York that June, quickly captured Fort Ticonderoga, and brushed aside a large militia force at Hubbardton on July 7, 1777. Pressing onward, the British advance then became bogged down thanks to bad terrain and rear-guard actions by small groups of determined Americans. By August, Burgoyne could barely manage a snail’s crawl toward Albany. He was running short on supplies and, furthermore, lacked the necessary draft animals to move his huge column of cannons over the broken terrain. Because the Americans were enacting a scorched-earth policy—destroying all livestock and foodstuffs they could not carry—the British were hard-pressed to meet their needs. Eventually, Burgoyne was alerted to the fact that farmlands in the neighboring New Hampshire Grants (Vermont) were as yet untouched by war and thus were a potential source for draft animals, cattle, and other valuable commodities. The British especially needed horses to mount Baum’s dragoons. Accordingly, on August 8, 1777, Burgoyne instructed Baum (who spoke no English) to take 800 men through central Vermont, gather up the requisite supplies, and invite Loyalist sympathizers in the region to flock to his colors. It was considered an important but not overly complicated mission, and little difficulty was anticipated.

Baum departed the British camp on August 11 with 374 Brunswick Dragoons, 30 artillerymen, 50 jaegers (riflemen), and roughly 300 Loyalists, Canadians, and Indians. His movement through the woods was leisurely, and occasionally—in good German fashion—Baum would halt to redress the ranks and ensure an orderly procession. The following day his column trudged into Cambridge, where shots were exchanged with some militiamen. Baum’s scouts also reported that a large party of rebels was thought to be in the area, so he sent a dispatch back to Burgoyne requesting reinforcements. He then resumed his casual march, somewhat perturbed that the expected surge of Loyalist recruits did not materialize.

Unknown to Baum, Gen. John Stark of the New Hampshire militia was en route to Bennington with 1,400 men, many of whom were crack shots and veterans of various Indian wars. He carefully observed Baum’s men digging small redoubts and establishing a defensive perimeter, so he determined to attack the Hessian the moment his own troops were positioned. Baum and several of his outposts were aware of the movement of Americans on the periphery of his camp, but repeatedly Baum had been assured that they were actually groups of Loyalists intent on joining him. Stark took advantage of this mistaken belief, sending several spies into the camp who, feigning friendship, observed the German defenses closely and reported back. On the morning of Saturday, August 16, 1777, Stark’s command had nearly enveloped the unfortunate Baum, and he gave the order to attack.

The ensuing Battle of Bennington was over in two hours, a complete victory for the Americans. The disciplined regulars of Baum’s command fought ferociously, but they were outnumbered and hopelessly surrounded. Stark’s men massed and picked off the German defenses piecemeal, for they were not placed in mutually supporting distances of each other. Baum attempted to make a last stand at his redoubt on what the Americans dubbed “Hessian Hill” until his ammunition gave out. Collecting the dragoons, he then ordered the men to draw sabers—and charged into the astonished militiamen to cut their way out. However, only seven dragoons ever reached Burgoyne’s camp. Baum was mortally wounded while bravely leading his men and was captured. He died two days later.

Meanwhile, a relief column of 640 Germans under Lt. Col. Heinrich Breymann made its appearance toward the close of the action. He had been dispatched by Burgoyne following the receipt of Baum’s letter, but rain and bad roads prevented him from reinforcing Baum at the critical moment. Pressing ahead, Breymann was suddenly assailed on both flanks by militia under Col. Seth Warner and was routed. This last action concluded the victory at Hubbardton, which cost Stark less than 100 casualties, including a handful of dead. In return, he accounted for 200 German killed, 700 prisoners, and four brass cannons. More important, the defeat of Baum’s foraging expedition ensured that Burgoyne lacked the food and draft animals he so desperately needed. It was the first nail in the coffin that ultimately buried British aspirations at Saratoga two months hence.

Bibliography

Arndt, Karl. “New Hampshire and the Battle of Bennington.” Historical New Hampshire 32 (1977): 198–227; Eelking, Max von. German Allied Troops in the North American War for Independence. Baltimore: Genealogical, 1969; Gradisch, Stephen F. “The German Mercenaries in North America During the American Revolution: A Case Study.” Canadian Journal of History 4 (1969): 23–46; Haarman, Albert V. “Notes in the Brunswick Troops in British Service During the War for Independence.” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 48 (1970): 140–143; Ketchum, Richard M. “Bennington.” MHQ 10, no. 1 (1997): 98–111; Lowell, Edward J. The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. New York: Harper and Bros., 1884; Parks, Joseph W.P. The Battle of Bennington. Old Bennington, VT: Bennington Museum, 1976; Stephens, Thomas R. “In Deepest Submission: The Hessian Mercenary Troops of the American Revolution.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, 1998; Wohl, Michael S. “The German Auxiliary Troops of Great Britain in the Saratoga Campaign.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Tulane University, 1976.

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CONQUEST OF TIBET

 

The story of the conquest of Tibet is amazing! It could do with a book on its own (Khampa horseback warriors by the thousands, Hordes of PLA with early soviet-supplied air support and studebaker truck transport towing US-made 105mm, CIA trained Tibetans parachuting back into Tibet from eastern-European crewed Flying fortresses….etc)

Most people think of Tibetans as kind and peaceful. While that is true for many regions of Tibet, it isn’t necessarily true of the Tibetans from Kham. Kham Tibetans have long been known as a violent group of bandits terrorizing the Tibetan Plateau on horseback. In his book “Seven Years in Tibet” Heinrich Harrer described Kham Tibetans as forcing their way into nomad tents stealing anything of value. He also reported that they would sometimes kill pilgrims, monks and nuns. Even today, it is rare to find a Kham man without a large knife (more like a sword) on his side. It was these same people that gave the communist government of China the most resistance. Long after the Tibetans of Lhasa gave up, the Tibetans of Kham continued to fight. The Chinese who live in the Kham region are often fearful of Kham Tibetans.

The initial People’s Liberation Army invasion of Tibet in 1950 met little resistance in the heart of the country. The 14th Dalai Lama, on the urging of his elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, proposed reforms including limitation on the land holdings of the monasteries, abolishing of debt bondage and other government and tax reforms as a response to the invasion. These were designed to forestall expected revolutionary initiatives of the Communists. However these ideas found little support among the entrenched Tibetan power structure. The Chinese leadership were wary of being able to control Gyalo but had determined to support him as a vehicle to advance consolidation of their control of the region. Their plan was to re-educate him in Beijing. Seeing that he would fail in his project he fled to India in 1952 eventually locating in Darjeeling near Kalimpong on the, now Chinese, Tibetan border.

Gyalo Thondup has represented that he appealed to the Nationalist Chinese and the United States for aid in resisting the Communist Chinese occupation and together with others in the Darjeeling/Kalimpoing area formed a small resistance group. Other leaders included Tsipon Shakabpa, who participated in the 1947 trade delegation and Khenchung Lobsang Gyaltsen, a monk who was the Tibetan trade representative in Kalimpong. Communications were established with the Tibetan officials in Lhasa and with the aid of its publisher, the Tibetan language newspaper, The Tibetan Mirror, began to cover events within Tibet. The CIA whose contacts in the area were through the Royal family of Sikkim is sceptical about Gyalo’s claims but was in contact with him in August, 1952. Gyalo was also in contact with Bhola Nath Mullik, director of the India’s intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau from 1953 on.

The United States, engaged as it was in a war with the Chinese who had intervened in the Korean War, was receptive to aiding any Tibetan resistance movement. When in the summer of 1956 rebellions broke out in Amdo and Kham the CIA got back into contact with Gyalo. There was a small group of refugees from the fighting in Kalimpong, mostly from wealthy trading families, who were eager to resist the Chinese. In early 1957 Gyalo selected eight candidates from the group for CIA training for scouting missions into Tibet in order to assess the nature of Tibetan resistance. They were trained at the CIA’s training facility on Saipan, the Saipan Training Center, and dropped in two groups by parachute back into Tibet in 1958. The first group, dropped near Lhasa, traveled there and requested that the Dalai Lama request aid from the United States for their movement. That request was refused by the Dalai Lama but the CIA continued their support. The second group was inserted near Litang in Kham and made contact with a Tibetan resistance group. However that group was soon attacked and all but one of the inserted group killed. He managed to find his way to central Tibet where a resistance force was mobilizing.

The Tibetans’ tendency was to form large groups complete with their herds and families and were an easy mark for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. They also welcomed battles with large deployments of Chinese soldiers during which they suffered heavy casualties. Thus they were unsuccessful in conducting traditional guerrilla warfare. This failure led to their ultimate retreat into India in 1959.

Neither the Republic of China nor the People’s Republic of China have ever renounced China’s claim to sovereignty over Tibet. The Chinese Communist government led by Mao Zedong which came to power in October lost little time in asserting its claim to Tibet. In 1950, the People’s Liberation Army entered the Tibetan area of Chamdo, crushing resistance from the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951, Chinese representatives in Beijing presented Tibetan representatives with a Seventeen Point Agreement which affirms China’s sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later

The Chinese government at first attempted to reform Tibet’s social or religious system in Ü-Tsang. Eastern Kham and Amdo were incorporated in the provinces of Sichuan and Qinghai respectively. Western Kham was put under the Chamdo Military Committee. In these areas, land reform was implemented. This involved communist agitators designating “landlords” — sometimes arbitrarily chosen — for public humiliation in “struggle sessions.”

The Chinese built highways that reached Lhasa, and which then extended the Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani borders. The traditional Tibetan aristocracy and government remained in place and were subsidized by the Chinese government. During the 1950s, however, Chinese rule grew more oppressive with respect to the lamas, who saw that their social and political power would eventually be broken by Communist rule. Prior to 1959, Tibet’s land was worked by serfs which represented a majority of the Tibetans.

By the mid-1950s there was unrest in eastern Kham and Amdo, where land reform had been implemented in full. These rebellions eventually spread into western Kham and Ü-Tsang. In 1959 (at the time of the Great Leap Forward in China), the Chinese authorities treated the Dalai Lama, by now an adult, with open impiety. In some parts of the country Chinese Communists tried to establish rural communes, as was happening in the whole of China. These events triggered riots in Lhasa, and then a full-scale rebellion occurred.

The Tibetan resistance movement began with isolated resistance to PRC control in the late 1950s. Initially there was considerable success and with CIA support and aid much of southern Tibet fell into Tibetan hands, but in 1959 with the occupation of Lhasa resistance forces withdrew into Nepal. Operations continued from the semi-independent Kingdom of Mustang with a force of 2000 rebels, many of them trained at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, USA. In 1969, on the eve of Kissinger’s overtures to China, support was withdrawn and the Nepalese government dismantled the operation.

Qamdo (Chamdo) was invaded by Communist Troops not more than a year after their control of mainland China.  This occurred in October 1950, and by May 1951 the Tibetan government conceded to the Chinese and gave up their independence.  They signed a treaty that gave the Dalai Lama (who was 15 at the time) domestic power, but any affairs related to foreign matters or the military was to be deferred to the Chinese government.  Improvements were made to communications in Tibet, as well as improving transportation - military highways and airfields were built in a number of areas in the region.

Thing began heating up around 1956, when a committee was established to plan for Tibet’s constitution as an autonomous region of China.  This caused some rebellions in Sichuan province against the Chinese by ethnic Tibetans.  The Dalai Lama was in India at the time and threatened to stay away from Tibet.  When the Chinese government halted the process of transferring Tibet into a socialist region, the Dalai Lama returned, even though the eastern rebellion hadn’t been stopped.  Things didn’t improve, especially with the US’s CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) involvement.  By 1959, with the CIA’s help, the rebellion escalated into a revolt in Lhasa that lasted until 1971.  Although it lasted over 10 years, after 1959 it wasn’t really considered to be a threat by the Chinese, just an annoyance.  During this time the Dalai Lama went back to India, and the acting head of the region became the Panchen Lama.  Tibetans fled the region in the tens of thousands, with most going to India and others going to Nepal and Bhutan.  Tibet formally became an autonomous region of China in 1965 and was reorganized to become a socialist region.

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Intermountain Airlines also known as Intermountain Aviation and Intermountain Airways was a CIA airline front company. Intermountain performed covert operations for the CIA in Southeast Asia and elsewhere during the Vietnam War era.

Intermountain’s main base of operations was Marana Army Air Field near Tucson, Arizona. In 1975 it was bought by Evergreen International Aviation, a company also believed by many to be connected with the CIA. Other CIA “proprietary” airlines such as Air America and Air Asia also operated out of Marana during the Vietnam War years.

Intermountain’s best known operation was “Operation Coldfeet” in which intelligence operatives were dropped in the Arctic to reconnoiter an abandoned Soviet drift station and then recovered by using a Fulton Skyhook recovery system mounted on an Intermountain B-17 Flying Fortress. The modified B-17G, N809Z, can be seen at the end of the film Thunderball, and had previously operated out of Clark Air Base, the Philippines, in an all-black scheme for the CIA for agent insertions and other unspecified covert operations in Southeast Asia.

Intermountain is also believed to have been involved in the delivery of a number of A-26 Invader bombers to be flown by Cuban exile pilots supporting the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

During its years in operation Intermountain used several types of aircraft, including the Curtiss C-46 Commando, the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter and the B-17 Flying Fortress.

The CIA and USAF had a couple B-17’s that they used to make supply drops into Laos and Vietnam while the French where still there.

The reason that aircraft was picked was they thought it looked more “Soviet” then other aircraft types available.

The Fulton Skyhook STAR System

Final Cut

The Post War B-17 Flying Fortress

by Scott A. Thompson

Operation Cold Feet

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A Secret War On The Roof Of The World

Spooks, Monks And The Cia’s Covert Gamble In Tibet

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 12:19 PM ET Jan 10, 2008

In 1958, the Dalai Lama was a 23-year-old god-king on the verge of losing his realm. The Chinese communists were closing in, and Tibet’s spiritual leader was desperate. That’s when he first heard that the Central Intelligence Agency was stepping up its activities in his domain. The Dalai Lama’s lord chamberlain arranged a meeting for him with two CIA-trained guerrillas, so they could demonstrate their skills. The Tibetan warriors pulled out a bazooka, fired it, then took 15 minutes to reload before they fired again. His Holiness was incredulous.

“Will you shoot once and then ask the enemy to wait 15 minutes?” he asked his disciples. “Impossible.” But the lord chamberlain and other advisers were enthusiastic. Although the Dalai Lama would have to flee into exile in India, freedom fighters were already battling China’s Army, and they had direct radio contact with the CIA. “They gave the impression that once I arrived in India, great support would come from the United States,” the Dalai Lama told NEWSWEEK in an earlier interview. “It’s a sad, sad story.”

How the CIA took the Dalai Lama’s disciples under its wing is one of the most exotic episodes in the annals of Western intelligence. The intimate details of Operation ST CIRCUS are only just now emerging, as retired spooks publish memoirs and graying guerrillas publicly contemplate the violent karma of their past. Tibetan veterans still fondly recall training secretly in Colorado with Americans they knew as “Mr. Ken” or “Mr. Mac,” then parachuting into Tibet out of the silver C-130s they called “sky ships.” Their operations scored spectacular intelligence coups–including, NEWSWEEK has learned, early hints that China was developing the atomic bomb.

Yet the Dalai Lama, a devout pacifist, was reluctant to cooperate with the CIA from the start. Washington’s bureaucratic spymasters never really understood these maroon-robed idealists from the roof of the world. Some spies had an ethos that rarely allowed them to see beyond the next intelligence bonanza; the Tibetans were fighting for their eternal freedom. The spies and the monks did share common goals, especially the defeat of the communist Chinese. But looking back now–when Beijing’s grip on Tibet is as tight as ever–many Tibetans and some ex-CIA operatives believe that this story was always destined to be a tragedy. “What began as a pure Tibetan resistance looked quite different when the CIA came in, making it easy for China to discredit it as ‘Western imperialist activities’,” says the Dalai Lama. “And the U.S. help was very, very limited.”

The covert war began as far back as 1956, three years before the Dalai Lama, disguised as a bodyguard, mounted a horse and fled to India after a failed Tibetan uprising. Chinese commissars had annexed the Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo. Then they told the Tibetan Khampas, a mountain people famous for horsemanship and sharpshooting, to surrender their guns. The Khampas resisted, and with advice from the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, they turned to the CIA for help. Gyalo Thondup now says he didn’t inform his exalted sibling about all of his intelligence connections at the time: “This was very dirty business.”

U.S. officials were entralled by the fierce Khampas, many of whom wore pictures of the Dalai Lama in tiny silver amulets around their necks, charms they believed could ward off bullets. CIA agents saw them as “can-do guys,” says John Kenneth Knaus, who handled Tibetan matters at the CIA from 1958 to 1965. “We romanticized them… They were orphans seeking to be adopted.” Under a full moon in October 1957, the first two-man team of CIA-trained Tibetans took off from a grass airstrip in East Pakistan. They rode in a B-17 “sanitized” of all markings. The parachutists were Athar Norbu and another Tibetan named Lhotse–”Tom” and “Lou” to their handlers. They were equipped with dried beef and radios, signal mirrors and submachine guns. They landed smack on target, 60 miles from Lhasa, and quickly hooked up with a local resistance leader and several thousand guerrillas. But many of the fighters were surrounded and starving only a few months later. “We kept hoping the CIA would drop us some weapons, but they never came,” recalls one survivor. “I went 15 days without food–even shoe leather tasted delicious.” The CIA didn’t give up. Beginning in 1958, American operatives trained about 300 Tibetans at Camp Hale in Colorado. The trainees were schooled in spy photography and sabotage, Morse code and mine-laying. Between 1957 and 1960, the CIA dropped more than 400 tons of cargo to the resistance. Yet nine out of 10 guerrillas who fought in Tibet were killed by the Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, according to an article by aerospace historian William Leary in the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Magazine. One veteran guerrilla said the parachute drops were like “throwing meat into a tiger’s mouth.”

Under the Kennedy administration, the CIA moved the covert program to Mustang, a remote kingdom in Nepal surrounded by China on three sides. The guerrillas ran hit-and-run operations into Tibet. In one of several key raids into Tibet during the early ’60s, commandos ambushed a military convoy and made off with a bulging stash of bloodstained documents. Among the captured “work papers” were Beijing’s plans to move many more troops into Tibet, and documents that provided the first concrete evidence of the Sino-Soviet rift. “It was one of the single greatest intelligence hauls in history,” says Knaus, who recently published a book on Tibet called “Orphans of the Cold War.” The Tibetans provided human intelligence and other important “insights into China’s… early efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability,” a former U.S. operative told NEWSWEEK.

By the mid-’60s, the Tibet operation was costing Washington $1.7 million a year, according to intelligence documents. That included $500,000 to support 2,100 guerrillas based in Nepal and $180,000 worth of “subsidy to the Dalai Lama.” But it was at this time also that Washington became disillusioned with the operation, which had no hope of reversing the Chinese occupation, and scaled back. After the United States cut its support, Beijing pressured Nepal to close the Mustang camps. From his exile in Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama wanted it to end. In July 1974 he sent a 20-minute-long recorded message asking the fighters, now led by a CIA-trained Khampa named Wangdu, to surrender their weapons to local Nepalese authorities. Wangdu and a handful of bodyguards tried to escape and made their last stand against Nepalese soldiers only 20 miles from the Indian border. At nearly 18,000 feet, where the air is thin and a man can see forever, all but one died in a barrage of gunfire.

Wangdu’s death marked the end of the CIA-trained guerrilla movement, but Chinese authorities have long memories. They heatedly opposed the Kosovo war, for instance, because they fear future U.S. intervention in their own separatist hot spots. As they fret about Taiwan, Xinjiang and, yes, even Tibet, they can’t help but recall the secret war they fought four decades ago over the high Himalayas.

The Heraclian epoch (610-717)

 

The Byzantine Empire by 626 AD at the end of the Byzantine-Sassanid wars after Heraclius reconquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt from the Sassanids. Striped sections are territories raided by the Sassanids

 

Heraclius and his immediate successors on the Byzantine throne form a dynasty which was probably of Armenian descent. At least this may be inferred from the Armenian historian of the seventh century, Sebeos, the invaluable source on the time of Heraclius, who writes that the family of Heraclius was related to the famous Armenian house of the Arsacids. Somewhat contradictory to this assertion are references in several sources to the light golden hair of Heraclius. He reigned from 610 to 641. By his first wife Eudocia, he had a son Constantine, who reigned after the death of his father for a few months only and also died in the year 641. He is known in history as Constantine III (one of the sons of Constantine the Great being considered as Constantine II). After the death of Constantine III the throne was occupied for several months by Heraclonas (Heracleon), a son of Heraclius by his second wife, Martina. He was deposed in the autumn of 641, and the son of Constantine III, Constans II, was proclaimed emperor and ruled from 641 to 668. The Greek form of his name, Constas (Latin, Constans), is probably a diminutive of Constantine, his official name; on Byzantine coins, in the western official documents of the period, and even in some Byzantine sources he is called Constantine. The people apparently called him Constans. He was succeeded by his energetic son Constantine IV (668-85). Constantine IV is usually surnamed Pogonatus, meaning “the bearded,” but modern scholarship attributes this surname to the father rather than to the son. With the death of Constantine IV in the year 685 ended the best period of the Heraclian dynasty, although his son, the last ruler of this dynasty, Justinian II, surnamed Rhinotmetus (”with a cutoff nose”), ruled twice, from 685 to 695 and from 705 to 711. The period of Justinian II, distinguished by many atrocities, has not yet been sufficiently studied. It seems reasonable to suppose that the Emperor’s cruel treatment of the representatives of the nobility was due not only to mere arbitrariness, but also to the concealed dissatisfaction of those members of the aristocracy who were not willing to become reconciled to his strong will and extreme autocratic policy and who strove to dethrone him. Some sources reveal clearly a traditional hostile tendency toward Justinian II. He was dethroned in 695. His nose and tongue were cut off and he was exiled to the Crimean city of Cherson; he fled to the Khagan (Khan) of the Khazars, whose sister he later married. Still later, with the aid of the Bulgarians, he succeeded in regaining the Byzantine throne, and upon his return to the capital took cruel revenge on all those who had participated in his downfall. This tyranny called forth a revolution in the year 711, during which Justinian and his family were massacred. The year 711 marks the end of the Heraclian dynasty. During the period between the two reigns of Justinian II there were two accidental emperors; the military leader from Isauria, Leontius (695-98), and Apsimar, who assumed the name of Tiberius upon his accession to the throne (Tiberius III, 698-705). Some scholars are inclined to consider Apsimar-Tiberius of Gotho-Greek origin. After the cruel deposition of Justinian II in the year 711, for a period of six years (711-17) the Byzantine throne was occupied by three accidental rulers: the Armenian Vardan or Philippicus (711-13); Artemius, renamed Anastasius during the coronation ceremony (Anastasius II, 713-15); and Theodosius III (715-17). The state of anarchy which prevailed in the Byzantine Empire from the year 695 ended in 717 with the accession of the famous ruler Leo III, who initiated a new epoch in the history of the Byzantine Empire.

 

External Problems

 

The Persian wars and the campaigns of Avars and Slavs.

 

Heraclius, a very gifted and active emperor, seemed practically a model ruler after the tyrannical Phocas. He proclaimed that “power must shine more in love than in terror,” reported the poet George of Pisidia, a contemporary, who described in good verse the emperor’s Persian campaigns and the invasion of the Avars. “Heraclius was the creator of Mediaeval Byzantium,” Ostrogorsky said, “whose state conception is Roman, whose language and culture are Greek, whose faith is Christian.” Heraclius’ achievements are the more noteworthy because at the time of his accession the position of the Empire was extremely dangerous. The Persians were menacing it from the east, the Avars and Slavs from the north, and internal affairs, after the unfortunate reign of Phocas, were in a state of complete anarchy. The new Emperor had neither money nor sufficient military force, and profound disturbances shook the Empire during the early part of his reign.

 

In the year 611 the Persians undertook to conquer Syria and they occupied Antioch, the main city of the eastern Byzantine provinces. Soon after they seized Damascus. Upon completing the conquest of Syria, they moved on to Palestine, and in the year 614 began the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted for twenty days. Then the Persian towers and battering-rams broke through the city wall, and, as one source put it, “the evil enemies entered the city with a rage which resembled that of infuriated beasts and irritated dragons.” They pillaged the city and destroyed the Christian sanctuaries. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, erected by Constantine the Great and Helen, was robbed of its treasures and set on fire. The Christians were exposed to merciless violence and slaughter. The Jews of Jerusalem sided with the Persians and took active part in the massacres, during which, according to some sources, 60,000 Christians perished. Many treasures from the sacred city were transported to Persia, and one of the dearest relics of Christendom, the Holy Cross, was taken to Ctesiphon. Numerous prisoners were sent to Persia, including the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Zacharias.

 

This devastating Persian conquest of Palestine and the pillage of Jerusalem represent a turning point in the history of this province.

 

This was a disaster unheard of since the occupation of Jerusalem in the reign of Titus, but this time the calamity could not be remedied. Never again did this city have an era similar to the brilliant epoch under Constantine, and the magnificent buildings within its walls, such as the Mosque of Omar, never again created an epoch in history. From now on the city and its buildings constantly declined, step by step, and even the Crusades, so abounding in results and various spoils for Europe, caused only trouble, confusion, and degeneration in the life of Jerusalem. The Persian invasion immediately removed the effects of the imported artificial Graeco-Roman civilization in Palestine. It ruined agriculture, depopulated the cities, destroyed temporarily or permanently many monasteries and lauras, and stopped all trade development. This invasion freed the marauding Arabian tribes from the ties of association and the fear which had controlled them, and they began to form the unity which made possible their general attacks of a later period. From now on the cultural development of the country is ended. Palestine enters upon that troubled period which might very naturally be called the period of the Middle Ages, were it not for the fact that it has lasted to our own times. The ease with which the Persians conquered Syria and Palestine may be explained partly by the religious conditions in these provinces. The majority of the population, particularly in Syria, did not adhere to the official orthodox faith supported by the central government. The Nestorians, and later the Monophysites, of these provinces were greatly oppressed by the Byzantine government; hence they quite naturally preferred the domination of the Persian fire-worshipers, in whose land the Nestorians enjoyed comparative religious freedom.

 

The Persian invasion was not limited to Syria and Palestine. Part of the Persian army, after crossing all of Asia Minor and conquering Chalcedon on the Sea of Marmora near the Bosphorus, encamped near Chrysopolis (present-day Scutari), opposite Constantinople, while another Persian army set out to conquer Egypt. Alexandria fell, probably in the year 618 or 619. In Egypt, just as in Syria and Palestine, the Monophysitic population heartily preferred Persian to Byzantine domination. The loss of Egypt was a heavy blow to the Byzantine Empire, for Egypt was the granary of Constantinople. Stoppage of the supply of Egyptian grain had heavy repercussions on economic conditions in the capital.

 

With the heavy losses in the south and east caused by the Persian wars, there appeared another great menace to the Byzantine Empire from the north. The Avaro- Slavonic hordes of the Balkan peninsula, headed by the Khagan of the Avars, moved southward, pillaging and destroying the northern provinces and reaching as far as Constantinople, where they broke through the city walls. This expedition was not a campaign, but rather a series of raids, which furnished the Khagan with numerous captives and rich spoils which he carried off to the north. These invaders are mentioned in the writings of Heraclius’ western contemporary, Isidore, bishop of Seville, who remarked in his chronicle that “Heraclius entered upon the sixteenth (fifth) year of his reign, at the beginning of which the Slavs took Greece from the Romans, and the Persians took Syria, Egypt, and many provinces.” At about this time (624) Byzantium was losing its last possessions in Spain, where the Visigoths’ conquest was completed by King Suinthila (Swinthila). The Balearic Islands remained in the hands of Heraclius.

 

After some hesitation the Emperor decided to begin war with Persia. In view of the exhaustion of the treasury, Heraclius had recourse to the valuables of the churches in the capital and the provinces, and ordered a large amount of gold and silver coins to be made from them. As he had anticipated, he was able to remove the menace of the Khagan of the Avars in the north by sending him distinguished hostages and a large sum of money. In the spring of 622 Heraclius crossed to Asia Minor, where he recruited a large number of soldiers and trained them for several months. The Persian campaign, which incidentally aimed at recovering the Holy Cross and the sacred city of Jerusalem, assumed the form of a crusade.

 

Modern historians think it probable that Heraclius conducted three Persian campaigns between the years 622 and 628. All three were brilliantly successful. A contemporary poet, George of Pisidia, composed an Epinikion (Song of Victory) for the occasion, entitled the Heraclias; and in another poem, the Hexaemeron (”The Six Days”), on the creation of the world, he alluded to the six-year war in which Heraclius vanquished the Persians. A twentieth-century historian, Th. I. Uspensky, compared Heraclius’ war with the glorious campaigns of Alexander the Great. Heraclius secured the aid of the Caucasian tribes and formed an alliance with the Khazars. The northern Persian provinces bordering the Caucasus formed one of the main arenas of military action for this reign.

 

While the Emperor was absent leading the army in distant campaigns, the capital became exposed to very serious danger. The Khagan of the Avars broke the agreement with the Emperor and in the year 626 advanced toward Constantinople with huge hordes of Avars and Slavs. He also formed an agreement with the Persians, who immediately sent part of their army to Chalcedon. The Avaro-Slavonic hordes besieged Constantinople to the extreme apprehension of the population, but the garrison of Constantinople was successful in repelling the attack and putting the enemy to flight. As soon as the Persians heard of this repulse, they withdrew their army from Chalcedon and directed it to Syria. The Byzantine victory over the Avars before Constantinople in 626 was one of the main causes of the weakening of the wild Avar kingdom.

 

Meanwhile, at the end of 627 Heraclius completely routed the Persians in a battle which took place near the ruins of ancient Nineveh (in the neighborhood of modern Mosul on the Tigris), and advanced into the central Persian provinces, collecting rich spoils. He sent to Constantinople a long and triumphant manifesto, describing his successes against the Persians and announcing the end of the war and his brilliant victory. “In 629 Heraclius’ glory was complete; the sun of his genius had dissipated the darkness which hung over the Empire, and now to the eyes of all a glorious era of peace and grandeur seemed opening. The eternal and dreaded Persian enemy was prostrated forever; on the Danube the might of the Avars was rapidly declining. Who could then resist the Byzantine armies? Who could menace the Empire?” At this time the Persian king Chosroes was dethroned and killed, and his successor, Kawad Sheroe, opened peace negotiations with Heraclius. According to their agreement the Persians returned to the Byzantine Empire the conquered provinces of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and the relic of the Holy Cross. Heraclius returned to the capital in great triumph, and in 630, with his wife Martina, he left for Jerusalem, where the Holy Cross was restored to its former place to the great joy of the entire Christian world. The contemporary Armenian historian Sebeos gave an account of this occasion:

 

There was much joy at their entrance to Jerusalem: sounds of weeping and sighs, abundant tears, burning flames in hearts, extreme exaltation of the emperor, of the princes, of all he soldiers and inhabitants of the city; and nobody could sing the hymns of our Lord on account of the great and poignant emotion of the emperor and of the whole multitude. The emperor restored the Cross to its place and returned all the church objects, each to its place; he distributed gifts to all the churches and to the inhabitants of the city and money for incense.

 

It is interesting to note that Heraclius’ victory over the Persians is mentioned in the Koran. “The Greeks have been overcome by the Persians in the nearest part of the land; but after their defeat, they shall overcome the others in their turn, within a few years.”

 

The significance of the Persian campaigns of Heraclius. - This Persian war marks a very significant epoch in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Of the two main world powers of the early Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire, and Persia, the second definitely lost its former significance and became a weak state soon to cease its political existence because of the attacks of the Arabs. The victorious Byzantine Empire dealt the death blow to its constant enemy, reclaimed all the lost eastern provinces of the Empire, restored the Holy Cross to the Christian world, and at the same time freed its capital of the formidable menace of the Avaro-Slavonic hordes. The Byzantine Empire seemed to be at the height of its glory and power. The sovereign of India sent his congratulations to Heraclius on his victory over the Persians, together with a great quantity of precious stones. The king of the Franks, Dagobert, sent special ambassadors to make a perpetual peace with the Empire. Finally in 630 the queen of the Persians, Borane, apparently also sent a special envoy to Heraclius and made formal peace.

 

Heraclius officially assumed the name basileus for the first time after the successful outcome of the Persian war, in the year 629. This name had been in use for centuries in the East, particularly in Egypt, and with the fourth century it became current in the Greek-speaking parts of the empire, but it had not previously been accepted as an official title. Up to the seventh century the Greek equivalent of the Latin “emperor” (imperator) was the term “autocrator”, that is, an autocrat, which does not correspond etymologically to imperator. The only foreign ruler to whom the Byzantine emperor consented to give the title of basileus (with the exception of the distant king of Abyssinia) was the king of Persia. Bury wrote: “So long as there was a great independent Basileus outside the Roman Empire, the emperors refrained from adopting a title which would be shared by another monarch. But as soon as that monarch was reduced to the condition of a dependent vassal and there was no longer a concurrence, the Emperor signified the events by assuming officially the title which had for several centuries been applied to him unofficially.”

Danish West Indies

 

Also known as the Danish Virgin Islands, these islands in the northeastern Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles accounted for all the Danish New World colonies. They consisted of settlements on the islands of Saint Thomas (28 square miles), Saint John (20 square miles), and Saint Croix (84 square miles). The Ciboney, an Arawakspeaking people, first inhabited the islands. Around 1300, the Caribs migrated to the islands of the Caribbean Sea from northeastern South America. Caribs had conquered the Lesser Antilles when Christopher Columbus and his crew became the first Europeans to visit the Caribbean.

 

During the seventeenth century, the Virgin Islands were divided between Denmark and Britain, although the British occupied the Danish islands from 1801–1802 and 1807–1815. Denmark’s first settlement on Saint Thomas in 1655 failed. In 1670, Christian V ascended to the throne of Denmark and Norway. The next year, the new king chartered the West India Company in Copenhagen to resettle Saint Thomas. In May 1672, Governor Jorgen Iversen arrived with settlers, many of whom were indentured servants and convicts, and established the town of Charlotte Amalie, named in honor of the wife of King Christian V.

 

Company land grants attracted immigrants and a lucrative plantation economy emerged. Most were not Danes, but other Europeans, including Dutch, English, and French settlers. The planters’ labor needs were met by importing African slaves, the first slave ship bringing 103 Africans in 1673. African slaves, who vastly outnumbered Europeans in the Danish West Indies, primarily produced sugar, along with cotton, indigo, and tobacco. In 1674, the company changed its name to the West India and Guinea Company, reflecting merged Danish interests in both West Indian and African colonies. The company claimed Saint John in 1684 but did not settle it with colonists and slaves from Saint Thomas until 1718.

 

Saint Thomas opened its harbor in 1724 to the flags of all nations and subsequently thrived as a free port trading center. Saint John also became a free port 40 years later. Slave-cultivated agricultural commodities remained the basis of the Danish West Indies’ prosperity throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dependence on slave labor was problematic and authorities brutally suppressed several slave revolts. Newly arrived slaves from the West African kingdom of Akwamu led the most infamous rebellion, which destroyed a quarter of Saint John’s plantations in November 1733. That same year, Denmark purchased Saint Croix from France.

 

Convinced by private investors’ arguments that the company monopoly was no longer necessary to colonize the West Indies and was impeding the nation’s economic progress, the Danish government bought out the shareholders and liquidated the company in 1754. The following year, the Danish Crown took over administration of the islands. Crown rule increased economic prosperity. Freed of the company’s monopoly, planters could now sell their products at higher free-market prices. A Lutheran mission under the national church of Denmark was also created after the establishment of Crown rule.

 

Slavery in the Danish West Indies accounted for nearly 90 percent of the total population from the 1750s to the 1830s. The slave population peaked at 35,000 in 1802, the year before abolition of the slave trade restricted the slave supply, despite persistent illegal importation. An ordinance in June 1839 provided for free and compulsory education in the islands for both freepersons and slaves. Literacy became a distinctive feature of the Danish West Indies thanks to state support, the Lutheran Church, Moravian missionaries, and black educators.

 

Only those considered white could vote and hold office before April 1834, when a royal decree granted all “free people of color” the status of citizens, allowing them full legal and economic rights. In 1847, King Christian VIII issued a decree of free birth and declared the emancipation of all slaves in 12 years. Thousands of impatient slaves gathered in Frederiksted, Saint Croix in July 1848 to demand immediate freedom under the leadership of the slave Moses Gottlieb, also known as General Buddhoe. Consequently, the startled Governor-General Peter von Scholten issued an emancipation proclamation on July 3, 1848, which the Crown soon confirmed; however, financial qualifications continued to restrict the franchise to economically privileged men.

 

The Labor Act of 1849, which regulated and restrained the newly freed workers, established a system of yearly contract labor to replace slave labor. Opposition to the system erupted into violence on contract day in Frederiksted on October 1, 1878. Protesters pillaged and burned homes and shops in town, along with plantations and cane fields in the countryside. Mary Thomas, hailed as Queen Mary by her supporters, was one of the leaders of the rebellion, which led authorities to abolish the act and allow contract negotiation. The first labor union in the islands was organized by D. Hamilton Jackson in 1915.

 

Profits from plantations, commerce, and shipping dwindled in the Danish West Indies after the mid-nineteenth century. In 1850, Denmark ceded its properties in West Africa to Great Britain. Continuous budget deficits bolstered economic arguments in Denmark for selling the Danish West Indies to the United States, which first became interested in buying them during the American Civil War. Denmark desired to sell the islands for economic reasons, whereas the United States wished to purchase them for strategic purposes. The United States sought the islands as a naval base for controlling the sea lanes between the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914, and southern U.S. ports and Europe. Fearing that Germany would acquire control over the islands during World War I, the United States paid $25 million for the Danish West Indies. Formal transfer of the islands, henceforth known as the United States Virgin Islands, took place in March 1917. The islands have the distinction of being the most expensive land acquisition in the history of the United States.

THE RESCUE THAT TIME FORGOT

Looking for any information about this particular B-17 (probably late F or early G model).
According to some sources, the Serbian community in the United States brought this plane and gave it to the USAAF in 1943.

OPERATION HALYARD

“Our total for the whole month of August amounted to 383 Americans, and the work of the subsequent months carried out under Lt. Nick Lalich’s direction brought the grand total to 432 Americans and eighty Allied personnel.  This work was considerably hampered by Tito’s forces, which finally drove the Chetniks from the Pranjane air-strip while they were awaiting another evacuation.” - Captain George Musulin US Army Commanding Officer of Air Corps Rescue Unit, Team 1, which was known as ACRU

One of the most daring OSS missions in history resulted in the rescue of more than 450 American airmen who had been shot down following air raids on oil installations and communications in Romania. Three waves of C-47’s lifted the men to safety from a makeshift airfield only 90 miles from Nazi occupied Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In subsequent missions, the total of rescued airmen reached 800.

During the first part of 1944, hundreds of Allied sorties were flown from Italian bases against the Ploesti oil complex in Romania, Hitler’s most important source of oil during World War II. The losses were heavy. Since the route home led across Yugoslavia, and because the Serbian area was under the control of General Draja Mihailovich, Royal Yugoslav resistance leader, hundreds of American airmen who had to bailout over Yugoslavia were picked up by Mihailovich’s fighters. The rescued airmen were thus saved from capture and imprisonment by German troops who occupied Yugoslavia.

Under cover of darkness, C-47’s flew the men from the airfield. Within a radius of 20 to 30 miles from there were half a dozen German garrisons ranging in size from several hundred to several thousand men. A Luftwaffe unit was stationed at an airfield just 30 miles away.

It is believed the rescue–code named `Operation Halyard’–was one of the largest and most daring operation of its kind conducted anywhere in Axis-occupied Europe during World War II.

Ww2 in Yugoslavia

In some ways the Axis victory remained a hollow one. For the writ of the Axis powers ran little beyond the towns and main roads. In the remote mountain regions, embryonic resistance forces soon emerged. But before the Germans could crush these nascent movements, their forces were redeployed from Yugoslavia to the east, in preparation for the now-imminent Operation Barbarossa.

Subsequently, those substantial Axis forces that did remain in the conquered Yugoslavia became locked in a protracted and appallingly brutal anti-partisan war, which raged across much of the territory. The resistance groups divided into two main movements - the Chetniks and the Partisans.

After the surrender of the Yugoslav royal army in April 1941, some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers organized Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Dragoljub (Draža) Mihailović to fight the German occupation. They were almost entirely ethnic Serbs. Mihailović directed his units to arm themselves and await his orders for the final push. He avoided actions which he judged were of low strategic importance. The reason behind his resolve was the fact that he had been a World War I officer.

Between 1941 and 1943, the Chetniks had the support of the Western Allies. TIME Magazine, in 1942, featured an article which boasted of the success of Mihailović’s Chetniks, and heralded him as the sole defender of freedom in Nazi-occupied Europe. However, Tito’s Partisans fought the Nazis as well during this time. Both Tito and Mihailović had a bounty of 100,000 Reichsmarks offered by Germans for their heads.

Consequently, at the Tehran Conference in November 1943, a decision was made by the Allies to cease their support of the Chetniks, and switch allegiances to Tito’s Partisans who were the main anti-fascist resistance group in Yugoslavia.

Mihajlovich was executed together with nine other Royalist officers in the early hours of 18 July 1946, in Lisiciji Potok, about 200 meters from the former Royal Palace, and buried in an unmarked grave on the same spot.

His execution was a sticking point in Franco–Yugoslav relations and Charles de Gaulle, Mihailović’s friend, refused to visit Yugoslavia due to what he viewed as Mihailović’s murder by Marshal Tito’s communist regime.

President Harry S. Truman, on the recommendation of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, posthumously awarded Mihailović the “Legion of Merit”, for the rescue of American Airmens by Chetniks.

Almost sixty years later, on May 9, 2005, Draža Mihailović’s daughter Gordana was presented with a decoration bestowed posthumously on Draža Mihailović by President Truman in 1948, for the assistance provided to the crews of US bombers that were gunned down on the territory under Chetnik control in World War II.

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The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

(New American Library, August 2007)

By Gregory A. Freeman

Book recounts top-secret airlift of 500 caught behind enemy lines in WWII Monday, February 25, 2008 BY SHARON ADARLO Star-Ledger Staff

The Star-Ledger is published in Newark, New Jersey

For five weeks Anthony Orsini’s family thought he was dead. Killed in action fighting the Nazis.

The Woodbridge, New Jersey, man was one of more than 500 U.S. airmen shot down behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia in 1944 while bombing oil fields in Romania. Watched over by Serbian Chetnik guerrillas who hid them in local villager’s attics, cellars and barns, the group was rescued by Allied forces in a daring top-secret airlift mission.

“Operation Halyard,” considered by some military historians as the single largest evacuation from Axis-occupied Europe, normally would have made bold front-page headlines and been featured in movie house newsreels. But the U.S. State Department put a gag order on it all, not wanting to draw attention to the mission because of political wrangling.

The soft-spoken, well-dressed Jersey City, New Jersey, native remembers vividly what happened and recounted his tale to Gregory Freeman, who wrote, “The Forgotten 500,” a book now bringing renewed awareness to the rescue and Orsini, who is basking in the attention.

“I can’t believe this excitement is happening 63 years after the fact,” said the 85-year-old Orsini, one of only a handful of survivors who is now getting a chance to see his story told.

Freeman spent two years researching and writing the book after he became intrigued with the rescue, which took place in present-day Serbia, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

“This is the kind of story I am drawn to — stories that are significant but overlooked,” said Freeman, of Marietta, Ga., whose two previous books on slavery and an aircraft fire are currently in film development.

Orsini, who was a navigator on one of the bombers, remembers “the most exciting day of my life.” It was July 22, 1944.

Assigned to the 449 Bomb Group, attached to the 15th Air Force, 716 Squadron, Orsini was on a B-24 bomber approaching the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. The sky was full of aircraft when guns started to fire and black clouds of flak filled the air.

“My blood ran cold,” Orsini said.

When the bomber violently shook, Orsini said he knew they were hit.

The pilot screamed, “Abandon ship!” and Orsini strapped on his parachute and threw himself off into the sky.

He struck a tree and blacked out on the landing. When he woke up, Orsini was in the arms of a peasant woman, who was happily chattering. Villagers and Chetnik guerrillas shielded the airman from roving German patrols.

Gen. Draza Mihailovich, a Chetnik guerrilla leader and Serb nationalist, immediately started coordinating a rescue plan with the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, a forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. His people brought the airmen to the small village of Pranjane where they transformed a farm field into a makeshift airfield.

The first C-47 cargo planes began to airlift the Allied soldiers out of harm’s way in August 1944 and continued for several months, Freeman said. Each plane carried a little more than a dozen men at a time.

Orsini was rescued on Aug. 27. and when he returned to his base in Bari, Italy, he was shocked to discover that he was on the “killed in action” list. He immediately telegraphed his family back in Jersey City to tell them he was still alive.

What he couldn’t tell them until later, however, was how he got home.

OSS officials wanted to keep the news secret to avoid disrupting the ongoing missions, Orsini said.

PLACATING TITO

Even after the war ended, the State Department kept the rescue quiet because it did not want to anger Josip Broz Tito, who after allying with the Americans and Russians against the Nazis, became the longtime dictator of Yugoslavia.

Tito hated the Chetniks and in particular Mihailovich, said Jonathan Gumz, a history professor at West Point, who called Operation Halyard probably one of the biggest rescue missions of the war.

Tito was fighting the Chetniks in a civil war at the same time World War II raged around them, Gumz said. In the ensuing power struggle, Mihailovich lost and was executed by Tito for collaborating with the Nazis, Gumz said.

When the U.S. airmen tried to put up a small monument honoring Mihailovich, they were silenced by the State Department.

“It was a great disappointment not to be able to honor him,” Orsini said. “We tried. We tried.”

Mihailovich posthumously received a Legion of Merit medal from President Harry S. Truman, but Freeman said the award was kept secret not to offend Tito. The medal was finally given to Mihailovich’s daughter, Gordana, in 2005.

After his discharge in 1945 with the rank of first lieutenant, Orsini married Gloria Cleaver, whom he had known before the war at his job at the North Bergen Trust Co. He earned a degree in accounting from Pace Institute in 1954 and worked in banking until he retired in 1984 from the National State Bank in Elizabeth as a senior vice president and cashier. His wife died five years ago.

In his tidy apartment in Woodbridge, among the pictures of his three children and seven grandkids, Orsini displays a Purple Heart (he was wounded twice in three dozen bombing missions) and an Air Medal.

One of Orsini’s prized possessions from his days in Yugoslavia is a steel dagger, made from the parts of a downed bomber, that a Chetnik guerrilla fighter gave him for protection. The metal sheath is dull and tarnished, but the silver blade is sharp, just like Orsini’s memories.

“They have my undying gratitude for all they did for me,” Orsini said about the Chetniks. “I think back now on how they treated us and we got the best of everything.”

WELTPOLITIK

A concept of foreign policy emerging in the late nineteenth century in Imperial Germany against the background of the country’s rise as a major industrial and trading nation. Coming out of the period of retarded economic growth known as the Great Depression of 1873–1895, German entrepreneurs were pushing for the acquisition of colonies in search of raw materials and markets for their goods. Already in the 1880s, Reich chancellor Otto von Bismarck had responded to these pressures and, in the larger context of the European “scramble for colonies,” had acquired territories in Africa and Asia. His successors, and Bernhard von Bülow in particular, promoted this overseas expansion even more vigorously after becoming the trusted adviser of Kaiser Wilhelm II, first as foreign secretary and from 1900 as chancellor. He was the person who coined such popular slogans of imperialist power politics as that of Germany seeking “a place in the sun” next to the other Great Powers. In the twentieth century, he added, Germany would either be “the hammer or the anvil” of world politics when it came to a redistribution of colonies and the allocation of territories that had not yet been annexed by the Europeans. Nor did he leave any doubt that he wanted Germany to be a hammer.

Given these claims, there has been a good deal of debate among historians as to the meaning of Weltpolitik. In the early years after World War II, most scholars tended to interpret it as some rather aimless yearning for prestige and for recognition of Germany as a latecomer to the international system, especially by Britain, then the dominant power in the world. No doubt Weltpolitik lacked precision in the public discourse of the time. But later work, based on newly discovered archival sources, has shown that this indeterminacy was more deliberate and that behind the slogans of the day there was a precise and well-thought-out strategy to make certain that Germany would succeed at the bargaining table when, as was widely expected, there would be a redistribution of colonies in the new century. Thus the ailing Portuguese Empire was thought to be an object of future power-political negotiation.

The kaiser and his advisers in the late 1890s were convinced that the German voice would not be heard unless it was backed up by military might. Although Germany had the strongest army in Europe, it was also clear that it would be useless against British naval power. Only a large German navy would be able to buttress future German claims. This is why it has been argued more recently that Weltpolitik, the vagueness of its definition for popular consumption notwithstanding, did have a hardcore plan to expand the Imperial navy into a powerful instrument that was capable of challenging even the Royal Navy. The fate of Weltpolitik was therefore inseparably linked to the success or failure of the kaiser’s naval program. By 1910–1911, both had run into serious trouble. In 1909 Bülow lost his job, not least because his Weltpolitik diplomacy had led to the isolation of Germany. He could not prevent the conclusion of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale in 1904, nor the formation of the Triple Entente of 1907, which brought in Russia. By 1911, it was also evident that the Tirpitz Plan was at its end, because the British, suspicious of German naval expansion, had “outbuilt” the kaiser in the arms competition that also began around 1904–1905.

Weltpolitik was now replaced by a retreat by Germany to the European continent. Stepped-up expenditure for the army began to replace the earlier massive funding of the navy. Berlin began to support its only reliable ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and developed a siege mentality that contributed to the attempt to break out of the perceived encirclement of this Dual Alliance by Britain, France, and Russia in July 1914. The unleashing of World War I was therefore a preventive strike against France and Russia before the position of the two Central European powers had deteriorated to the point where the armies of the former could no longer be defeated, that is, before it was too late and the latter would become the “anvils” of the great power system.

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EUROPE’S FOLLY

Moroccan Crisis (1905)

 

One of a string of international incidents that threatened to embroil Europe in war before 1914. In April 1904, France and Britain resolved some of their longstanding differences over Morocco and Egypt. When France attempted to enforce a reform program in Morocco in early 1905 and to extend its influence in the region, Germany decided to challenge France and provoked an international crisis. Arguably, Germany was less concerned for its economic interests in the region than for its international prestige. Resentful at not having been consulted by France and Britain over Morocco and worried about the recently concluded Entente Cordiale, Germany wanted to demonstrate that it was a power that could not simply be bypassed on important colonial matters. Friedrich von Holstein, a senior figure in the German Foreign Office, felt that Germany could not allow its “toes to be trodden on silently.” The German Chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, persuaded a reluctant Kaiser Wilhelm II to land in the port of Tangiers on March 31 to stake Germany’s claim and to ensure the Sultan of Germany’s support.

In addition Germany sought to undermine the Entente and to intimidate the French. During the ensuing diplomatic crisis, Germany insisted on the dismissal of the anti-German French Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé and even threatened France with war. In 1904–1905, the Russians were losing their war against Japan, and in January 1905, revolution further weakened Russia, so that France could not rely on Russian support during the crisis. Germany’s bullying had the opposite effect, however, and led to a strengthening of the Entente. At the international conference at Algeciras in 1906, convened at the insistence of the German government, Germany was diplomatically isolated and unable to achieve its aim of limiting the extension of French interests in Morocco.

During and after the crisis, Germany began to feel the full effects of its own expansionist foreign policy. British involvement in a future war was now more likely and as a result, Italy, allied to Germany and Austria since 1882, would be a less reliable ally, for it would be unable to defend its long coastlines from Britain and might therefore opt to stay neutral in a future war. France also looked on Germany as a likely future enemy. Far from splitting its potential enemies, Germany had only managed to strengthen their resolve to oppose Germany if necessary.

Algeciras Conference (1906)

 

The Algeciras Conference was an international conference convened to resolve the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905; it was held at the Spanish port of Algeciras from January 16 to April 7, 1906. Germany had insisted on a conference to resolve its dispute with France over Morocco but found itself isolated at the conference, with support only from Austria-Hungary. Although the conference confirmed Moroccan independence under a Sultan, it granted France and Spain the right to police the country under a Swiss inspector-general and gave France economic control over Morocco. This amounted to a diplomatic defeat for Germany, leading to the resignation of Friedrich von Holstein from the Foreign Office. There could now be no talk of a Franco-German reconciliation. The Entente Cordiale between France and Britain was therefore strengthened by Germany’s diplomatic blunder. In 1911, Germany provoked a further confrontation over Morocco in the Agadir Crisis, arguing that France had breached the Algeciras agreement.

Agadir Crisis (1911)

 

A Great Power crisis aggravating the tense atmosphere of European diplomacy leading to World War I. In the early part of the twentieth century, German’s leaders viewed their country as increasingly “encircled” following a number of international crises. These fears increased following the Agadir, or Second Moroccan, Crisis of 1911. Specifically, Berlin resented French military intervention in Morocco in 1911, a move that amounted in effect to the establishment of a French protectorate in Morocco and ran counter to the Algeciras Conference of 1906 and to the Franco- German agreement on Morocco of 1909. In response to the French “dash for Fez” in the spring of 1911, Germany wanted to assert its status as a Great Power, achieve compensation for France’s territorial gains, and possibly weaken the Entente Cordiale in the process. State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter acted forcefully and was rewarded with an enthusiastic response in Germany. Germany’s military leaders advocated a war, but Berlin instead dispatched the gun-boat Panther to the Moroccan port of Agadir to intimidate the French, an event that marked the beginning of the crisis. Berlin demanded the French Congo as compensation for the extension of French influence in Morocco, but France received diplomatic support from Britain so their Germany’s action only strengthened rather weakened the links between the Entente partners. This was demonstrated by British Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, in his famous “Mansion House Speech” of July 21, 1911 in which he threatened to fight on France’s side against Germany if necessary.

Thus, the crisis produced another German diplomatic defeat despite the fact that Berlin secured a small part of the French Congo as compensation. In Berlin, the defeat resulted in a bellicose anti-French and a particularly anti-British mood. Kiderlen-Wächter did not seek war in 1911, but he was willing to threaten it for diplomatic gains. But in the aftermath of the crisis, demands for a preventive war became widespread. Public enthusiasm for the army became more pronounced, especially as a result of the propaganda work of the German Army League, founded in January 1912. Agadir also had serious international consequences. In France, public mood turned distinctly anti-German. Because Britain and Germany were compensated for French gains in Morocco, Italy decided to annex Libya and Tripolitania in November 1911. Thereafter, enfeebled Turkey became an easy target for the Balkan League during the Balkan Wars of 1912/13. Italy became a less reliable alliance partner for Germany and Austria-Hungary, while the newly strengthened Serbia and Montenegro posed a more serious threat to the Dual Monarchy. The crisis gave rise to the Anglo-French naval agreement, discussed against the backdrop of the events of 1911 and signed in February 1913. Germany’s “encirclement” was fast becoming reality.

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THE HORSE IN THE GERMAN ARMY IN WWII

 

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