Vic Socotra

09 September 2009

Dumb Luck

(The Memo to the President)

It is entirely possible that George Dasch had misgivings about his deadly mission from the beginning, and it was just dumb luck that Punchy Cullen happened to stumble across his four man team in the middle of the black night on the Long Island beach.

It was even luckier for John Edgar Hoover that Punchy was a patriot, and turned in the $260 in bribe money to his superiors, even as the Coast Guard rushed a party to the scene of the landing.

George Dash certainly claimed that it was his initiative the foiled the plot, along with the compliance of Ernest Peter Burger during the 19-days that the Military Commission met to decide his fate.

It must have shocked him no end when the Commission sentenced him to death along with the seven others at the end of the secret proceedings.

It had to be secret, after all, since if the public knew that it was just dumb luck and self-appointed stoolie that unraveled the plot, the public would know how vulnerable America was, and that the imposing myth of the infallible G-men was just that.

A myth.

For all the nasty stories about J. Edgar Hoover, there must have been at least a kernel of compassion in his withered breast, and in the short hours that passed between the banging of the gavel, a reprieve (of sorts) came for Dasch and Burger.

Their sentences were commuted to thirty years and life, respectively.

Everyone else was to die in the seat of Old Sparky at the DC jail, as quickly a possible.

On August 8th, the six Germans were executed, one after another. Had the two who cooperated not been spared, the afternoon would have set an American record for the largest number of sequential electrocutions.

It was not an easy process, but I will not dwell on it. At least one of the Germans lasted nearly seven minutes in the chair before he was pronounced dead. I’ll leave it at that. I think I would prefer to be shot, like a soldier.

I am not making an argument for compassion here, just to be clear. It was wartime and 1942 was a bad year in a big conflict. The men who were executed would doubtless have done something awful, just as they had been ordered to do. The Kaiser’s men had set fires and bombed factories in the First War, after all, and the plans for this mission were much grander.

If some of the saboteurs volunteered to return to America to see family and girlfriends along with the mission, oh well. War is an unpleasant business and is not an enterprise to undertaken lightly.

Anyway, once the grim work was complete, the bodies were taken away in secret, just as the Commison had worked its business.

The memo that describes what happened next was not declassified until 1957. It is a remarkable document, and it outlines some extraordinary procedures and places. Many of them no longer exist, like Death Row on the DC Jail, or the National Home for the Aged and Infirm down at the very lowest part of the District, on which grounds was located Potter’s Field, the resting place for the indigent.

The six bodies were transported in two Army ambulances to Walter Reed Hospital, which is in the process of being closed right now. They arrived at 4:15 pm, escorted by Major Bob Higdon, and identified by Colonel Marty DuPrenne and Major Tom Rives when they arrived.

Individual name tags- their last- were attached to the corpses, and a hand-receipt was signed by Colonel Paul Schule.

The Germans were stored in the refrigerated morgue under and armed guard to ensure that they were not seen by “any unauthorized person.”

The six bodies were embalmed on the evening of by Mr. Bill Durisoe of the Tabler Funeral Home, under the watchful eye of Major Carl Lind., and the next night, at 6:00 pm, after the day shift was gone, the bodies were loaded into a light truck. Accompanied by Major Lind, Major Harland Layer and three armed guards, the truck pulled out of Walter Reed and headed south across the District toward Blue Fields.

What they were guarding, I don’t know, though I suspect that the government was nervous, since the wives and families not under arrest had asked for the remains, and that was not how this was going to be played.

You cannot get away form Mr. Lincoln in this town, whether it is the tribunal system that revenged his death, or the city on which he set his seal in life.

The Confederates had shot at President Lincoln from the fields that became the hospital when he visited Fort Stephens during the invasion of 1864. The truck would have come down Georgia Avenue, passing the Lincoln cottage at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

Six graves were waiting- I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

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