CAPTAIN JAMES W. HUDSON, With the war leaving Africa, Jim volunteered to join the Office of Strategic Services as an undercover agent and was assigned to Bari, Italy to assist in the rescue of 13 American nurses that had been on a US plane bound for Italy but that crashed on a mountain top in Albania. This was a high priority mission.
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OSS ALBANIA BILL
Jim was commissioned in 1939 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Infantry after four years of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) taken during his matriculation at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was called to active duty on July15, 1941 for duty with the 28th Infantry Division stationed at Indiantown Gap, PA. In a few weeks he was classified as a Key Employee in industry and ordered to return to his previous employment as Research Chemist, Walker Brothers, Conshohocken, PA. He served there until December 7th and news of the attack on Pearl Harbor forced this nation into war against Japan and Germany. Jim immediately applied for readmission into the Army and was stationed at Ft. Eustis, Virginia for duty as a platoon leader for the Coast Artillery Corps. In a short time he was reassigned go Ft. Monmouth, NJ for duty with the Signal Photomail Company and stationed at Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York.
At Kodak Jim led an attachment of enlisted men in learning the microfilming of documents and the operation of the Kodak Recordak System. He then was stationed in Washington, DC for duty with the Office of the Chief of the Signal Corps where he assisted in the establishment of a world wide system that would use the microfilming of documents for the transmission of both official and personal mail. The latter was called Victory Mail, or V_Mail for short. Jim then asked to be assigned to initiate the first Email station to be in Cairo, Egypt. He left on the first troop ship, a new French Luxury Liner, the Pasteur, from the New York Port of Embarkation to Africa. This was during the heaviest sinking of Allied shipping in the Atlantic by the German U-Boats. They were attacked while cruising south along the coast, but an Air Corps plane sunk the sub within sight of the 5,000 American soldiers on board. They stopped for fuel in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a refueling at Durban, South Africa, then up the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea then to their final destination, Port Tewfik, Egypt at the southern end of the Suez Canal. Jim took a native train to Cairo in time to see the US Embassy destroying all of their files to avoid confiscation by Rommel and his Afrika Corps only a hundred or so miles north at El Alamein. In a few weeks the British 8th Army, with the support of the newly formed 9th US Air Force, began the push of Rommel out of Egypt and his eventual destruction by the advancing Americans that landed on the West Coast of Africa. Jim became the Theater Postal Officer, US Army Forces in the Middle East (USAFIME) in addition to establishing the first V-Mail station. In that position he setup Army Post Offices (APO) in the Western Desert and in Jerusalem, Palestine. Jim later became the USAFIME Theater Photographic Officer and he and his photographers took still and motion pictures of the entire Western Desert campaign that defeated the German Army in Africa. He then took pictures of all of the visiting dignitaries to Cairo such as Cordell Hull, Secretary of State; Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Generals Eisenhower, Marshall, Somervell, Chenault, Arnold, etc.; Admirals King and Leahy; and most of the top military of the British. At the Cairo and Teheran Big Three Conferences, he took the photos of Commissar Josef Stalin with the British and American delegation.
Jim was given the OSS name of BILL.
On his first infiltration by a Yugoslavian fishing boat, Jim was second in command, but the leader, an OSS agent with a pseudo of TANK, got very sick and had to withdraw, so Jim took over as Commander. He was severely challenged, for most of the briefing of the mission had been to Tank, expecting him to lead the mission. But Jim carried on and moved into a cave the Allied mission had dubbed SEAVIEW. A perfect name, for it was high on the western side of the mountain range that formed the Adriatic coast, with nothing but miles of the blue sea in evidence. The last three of the nurses were successfully evacuated, and Jim led in the formation of several intelligence cells that kept the American and British forces fighting in Italy abreast of the enemy in Albania, the German First Mountain Divison. Jim, his radio operator, Nick Kukich, and two British agents of their Force 399, were continually harassed by the Germans, but never caught. Eventually they had to leave the country for the Albanians feared their presence would evoke retaliation by the Germans. In fact, Jim and his three buddies had witnessed on Easter Sunday the Germans destroying the village of Treyas and killing many of its old and young. Jim had many other missions into the country, on one jump into the interior he met Colonel General Enver Hoxha, the top Communist leader in Albania, and was ordered to stop the British Command operation near Sarande, Jim trekked 120 mies in three days to reach the beach before the British had landed. Of course, he had no intention of deterring the British. Now, with the war in Europe over, Jim left his Albanian post as Senior Intelligence Office for Albania and drove north to Caserta and the Brenner Pass to assume Command of OSS Tirol and Voralberg, Austria. In that position he rounded up scientists who had been working for Hitler in the famous Redoubt area where their mission was to find the ultimate weapon that would turn the tide in the German’s favor. Of course, the US found that weapon in the Atomic Bomb and ended the war with Japan.
Jim apprehended the famous aviatrix and test pilot for the German Luftwaffe, Hanna Reitsch, who was probably the last human alive to see Hitler in his last underground bunker. But that is another story.
After the war, Jim became Director of Research for the Walker Brothers Company, manufacturers of Electrical Construction Material, General Manager of Howard Foundry, Principal of King Hudson Consultants, National Manager of Systems, Square D. Company, and Principal of Hudson & Associates, Consultants in Value Engineering and Management.
Captain James W. Hudson
OSS Cairo, Italy, Albania, Austria
7430 Miller Lane, PO Box 399
Spotsylvania, VA 22553-0399
Ph: 540 895 5551
Fax: 540 895 5695
