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Two

The Travelers, and Others Who Were Involved in the Trip

And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself!

—Rudyard Kipling, Kim

The Adventurer: Enders

Gordon Bandy Enders was the instigator and driving force behind the trip along the border of Afghanistan and India in November–December 1943. It is very likely a journey that he had wanted to make when he was a child, growing up on the border between India and Tibet, where he imagined that he was an “American Kim.”¹ He saw that the journey became a real possibility when he was appointed as the U.S. military attaché to Kabul in the fall of 1941; he began to plan for the trip at that time. Two years later he drove the jeep that took the three Anglo-American officers from Peshawar over the Lowari Pass to Chitral, and then to Quetta, in Baluchistan.

Gordon Enders was born in the little town of Essex, Iowa, 7 May 1897. He was the second of the three children of E. Allen Enders, a circuit-riding Presbyterian minister, and his wife, a Swiss Huguenot named Frances-Marie Seibert. His older sister Miriam had been born in November 1895, and his younger brother Robert was born in September 1899. In about 1901 the father was accepted as a missionary, and the young family sailed to Bombay. His father began his work as a preacher while his mother raised the family and taught school at Etawah, near the Grand Trunk Road. In 1906 they moved to the village of Almora, about 250 miles to the north, near the border of India and Tibet. Their house was about eight miles outside the village, on the top of a seven thousand–foot mountain known as Simtolah, with the great peak of Nanda Devi in the background. Gordon lived in India in his formative years, from the age of four until he was fifteen.

As a baba (child) his first teacher was Jowar Singh, a high-caste Hindu hillman; from him he learned to hunt and to speak Hindustani. Kipling’s book Kim was published in 1901, and although he was young, Gordon read enough of it to recognize the experiences of the fictional Kim that were similar to his own. While he was recovering from a severe burn, he was taken into the household of Jowar’s father-in-law, a Tibetan named Chanti, who he learned was a spy for the Indian government. Enders became the chela (student or disciple) to Chanti, his guru. This relationship was similar to that of Kim, who was chela to his guru, a Buddhist monk. Chanti taught him the ways of the spies, the “Kim-men,” as Enders called them. Gordon’s imagination was vivid: “Before Chanti left Almora he took Jowaru and me along the Pilgrim’s Trail . . . [where a] bronzed priest of Nepal trudged unseeing through the human stream, a naked boy at his heels. They might have been Kim and his Lama.” He learned that although the Tibetans preferred to remain in isolation, they preferred Britain to Russia.²

Enders’ father died in 1910, and his mother accepted a post as matron of girls at Allahabad College, which was Chanti’s alma mater. Gordon returned to America in 1912 to begin preparation to enter college at the College of Wooster, in Ohio. He spent five years in Wooster—two years finishing high school, and three years in college. One of his housemates was William A. Eddy, who a quarter century later was “a Princeton professor [who] had lived through so many Armenian massacres in Asia Minor that he was always getting them mixed up.” Enders’ friend was already famous by 1935, when Enders wrote these words, and he went on to an even more memorable career in World War II.³

Enders had a remarkable career in World War I. He left college the year before he was to graduate, first serving as an ambulance driver for the French in Picardy and at Verdun, and then, after completing aviation school, as an aviator for the French and American air forces. It was a grim business. Forced down more than once—perhaps three times—he was so badly wounded at one time that he was declared dead. He awoke to find a Red Cross “gray lady” named Elizabeth Crump at his side. He fell in love with her, and they were married at the Hôtel de Ville in La Rochelle on 22 April 1919.⁴

He was in New York until 1920, but he planned to return to the Orient. While he was in New York, he wrote a two-page piece, “Prohibition in Old India,” that was published in the monthly journal Asia. The lead article in this issue of Asia was by Roy Chapman Andrews. It is unlikely that Enders could have known it, but Andrews had until recently been an undercover secret agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a fact not revealed until 2003. Lowell Thomas was then an associate editor of Asia. Three years later Thomas became the first private American citizen to visit Afghanistan, about nineteen years before Enders became the first American diplomat to live there.⁵

Enders took the civil service examination for clerk to trade commissioner, under the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. He was sent to the American legation in Peking (now spelled Beijing), where he was an assistant to the commercial attaché until 1923. He then went into business, selling American cotton to Chinese and Japanese mill operators, and was the China manager for the Carnation Milk Company. He recalled spending at least nine months of each year traveling, and he returned to the United States on at least five occasions. His first book was coauthored with Edward Anthony, a professional writer, and published in 1935.⁶

Enders became aware of the disorganized nature of the Chinese government, and of the unwavering focus of Japan on the conquest of China. He sold twenty U.S. Corsair airplanes to Chiang Kai-shek, and then worked for him as technical aviation advisor for two years (1927–1929). In 1932 he met Chos’gyi Nyimo, Panchen Lama of Tashilhunpo, in Madame Chiang’s living room at the Chiangs’ summer home. The Panchen appointed Enders to the Upper House of the Tibetan National Assembly. This was apparently on the basis of his chela–guru relationship to Chanti, his unique skills as a pilot, and his Hindustani, Tibetan, and Chinese language skills, which were remarkable for a “foreign devil.” Enders’ “Passport to Heaven” is on the endpapers of his book, Foreign Devil, and he described his plan to fly gold out of Tibet for the Panchen Lama in a story published in 1936.⁷

When Enders returned to China in 1936, he found the Panchen Lama had just nominated the boy who would become the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Soon after, Japan invaded North China, and by the first week in September it was clear that Shanghai would fall. The Panchen slowly progressed back toward Lhasa; he died at the monastery of Jyekundo, close to Lhasa, on 30 November 1937. The plan to fly the gold from Tibet collapsed. Enders escaped at night via Nanking, and sailed for home.

After Enders’ return to the United States, he taught history at Purdue University from March 1937 until 29 April 1941, giving lectures there and elsewhere on his wide range of experiences. On 17 September 1941 he was commissioned as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, assigned to G-2 (Military Intelligence Division, or MID). He was superbly well qualified, and he probably had little trouble getting approval from the Army for appointment as a military attaché in the State Department. It appears that during the final weeks before he left for India, when he was en route to Afghanistan, he paid a visit to the British embassy. There he met the assistant military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Reginald “Rex” Benson, who had arrived in March 1941. Copies of Enders’ letters from India in November and December 1941 to his wife, Betty were forwarded by Betty Enders to Gordon’s niece Trudy Enders on 9 May 1942. Betty mentioned that she had heard that Gordon’s brother, Robert, who had been a professor at Swarthmore before the war, was in Washington at that time. Robert Enders later became a translator for the OSS.

The letters from India were typed by Enders over a period of several days. His wife sent excerpts to WBAA, the Purdue University radio station, but the letters have never previously been published. While en route to Delhi in late 1941, Enders wrote the following:

[Tuesday 18 November] Last night before taking the train I had dinner at the Farbos, an Italian-owned restaurant, which is considered the best in Calcutta. Its windows are covered for blackouts but it is gay and full of cooling fans inside. We saw dining two Indian sisters who are reputed to be the most beautiful in Hindustan. They had been done by famous portrait painters. I took the 9:03 train and had a very comfortable two-bunk compartment to myself, and the whole car is air-conditioned. A bearer brought coffee at 7:30. We breakfasted at 9:00—the food being wired for at headquarters was brought to the compartment on trays.

I am drinking in the Hindustan that I knew 30 years ago. The big changes so far have been turkeys. There are large flocks of them in the country tended by half-naked little boys. Of course, there are motor cars everywhere and they are new. The Grand Trunk Road is now paved, and there are Hindu, Mohammedan, and vegetarian restaurants at the big stations. But otherwise I see no marked differences.

Looking at the fields I’ve seen parrots, pigeons, and the big, blue cranes we call sahnus. The lentils, kaffir corn, sugar cane, and grain, the sisal and mustard are still there. The cattle are on the plains—at the kites and vultures [sic]. Little boys still herd the goats and irrigation is still done with Persian wells. There are ponds with water-buffalo and water-chestnuts in them, and the dhobis [washerman/woman (Hindi)] wash their clothes by beating them on stones, while their sway-backed little donkeys graze with hobbled forelegs near-by.

In the villages the trees are still thick, with the cleared off thrashing floors, the mud huts with the animals tied outside, and the women still making dungcakes for cooking. It is India all right!

[Wednesday 19 November] We stopped to take our lunch at Fatehpur-Haswa, where my father is buried.⁸ I saw that the Grand Trunk Road was not paved, and caught a glimpse of the great Peepul Tree in the monkey temple yard where they feed the monkeys in the evening. It’s quite remarkable how I seem to feel the texture of the white dust everywhere, and to know the smell of the grasses, and the sound of the trees.

At Etawah, tea was brought in.⁹ The same old buck-monkeys were in the station courtyard—with the oxen and bullock carts parked by the road side, with the animals lying along side ruminating. I remembered from childhood hearing the Punjab mail going by our house in the early morning at Etawah, and I remembered where the tracks were from our house. Our bungalow wasn’t visible because it sits back from the road. As the train crossed the Grand Trunk Road I was pleased to find it still unpaved, with nary a motor car in sight, but a line of camels, carts, and horse-drawn ekka [buggy], all waiting for us to pass at the same old crossing with its iron gates.

In the fields, during the day, I saw some gorgeous peacocks pecking among the lentils. When evening fell, the cooking smoke streamed out whitely among the mango trees and I could see the little dung fires with dim shapes moving around them. To me it was a kind of reincarnation.

[Saturday 22 November] In a few minutes I must dress in uniform to have dinner with General Sir Archibald Wavell whom I met the first day. It’s to be kind of an American affair with General Wheeler and his party, some of whom I met in Washington and some in Honolulu. . . .¹⁰

[Sunday 23 November] I greatly enjoyed the dinner at which were about fifteen—three of us Americans. General Wavell’s three pretty daughters were included. The long table stretched in front of a large fire-place, with the commander-in-chief sitting in the middle and Lady Wavell opposite. I was placed at her left. After dinner I talked with General Wavell and his very charming wife. . . .

[Saturday 29 November]11 I’m all set to cross the border into Afghanistan on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. The trip from Delhi up took its allotted 24 hours and the journey was very dusty. . . .

[Monday 1 December] . . . My today’s schedule is tiffin [light midday meal] with the R.A.F. [RAF, or Royal Air Force] and dinner with the governor, Sir George Cunningham, to whom I carry Colonel Benson’s letter of introduction. . . .¹²

[Tuesday 2 December] I have had my dinner with the Governor and am now set to go through the Khyber Pass. . . . [Y]esterday, I lunched with the local R.A.F. acting chief, his wife and some friends. We talked a lot of shop (my host and I) up to tiffin, and, after eating, we went out to see his farm. . . . At this point a distinguished Pathan landowner from Kohat [a city in North Waziristan] drove up (by previous arrangement) and two carloads of us went into the native city of Peshawar. The landowner was a “Rai Bahadur,” the holder of a title and has two sons in the Frontier army.¹³ Both of them are Oxford. . . . We went back to tea with our party because we were all late, and then back here to dress for the Governor’s dinner and the dinner was most satisfactory. There were Lady and Sir George Cunningham, a Mr. and Mrs. Joyce of the Civil Service, two A.D.C.’s [aides-de-camp] and myself. The Cunninghams are delightful people and my after dinner talk with him, most informative and helpful. . . .

[Wednesday 3 December] . . . In Delhi I sat in a conference with our General Wheeler and British G.H.Q. [general headquarters] and have received what are practically orders to drive up to Russia and into Iran and down to the Indian border again. It’s about 2000 miles. . . .

[Thursday 4 December] During these busy days here, I’ve taken a tonga only once. The remainder of the time I walk. Perhaps I average six to eight miles a day. This morning I was trying to take in some of the details to pass on to you. There is a profusion of flowering shrubs—poinsettias, bougainvilleas and a low bush with bright henna flowers which are trumpet-like and grow in clusters. The trees are magnificent—huge peepuls with smooth whitish bark and light green and glossy leaves; pines, tamarisks and sheesham. I believe I even saw a eucalyptus tree. Then, too, there’s a pepper tree which looks much like a willow. Out on the dusty plain there are real autumn tints, although no trees seem to be losing their leaves. The flowers, too, are interesting. There are roses everywhere in bloom, and considered almost a weed. They come in all colors. There are many deep red lilies in bloom in a park I pass. The big thing, however, is chrysanthemum. They are everywhere in purples, russets and yellows. The birds are very noisy, especially the grey-necked Indian crow. . . . The big hawk, called chiel, has a note of his own, and he is very bold, like the crow swooping right down on the sidewalks for tidbits. There are sparrows, of course, and minas (which you have seen in Honolulu and Hongkong). This morning I saw 6 brilliant green parrots (very noisy), with long pointed tails and (I suspect) grey-green heads.

On the roads one sees tongas, bicycles galore, not so many cars, but plenty of bullock and buffalo carts with heavy wooden wheels. Then there are the donkeys. . . . Sometimes you’ll see a six-foot Pathan sitting on one and holding his foot [sic] up so they won’t drag. For the most part, these donkeys go in groups of four or five, carrying wood, coal, sugar cane or anything else and in charge of an urchin who is no bigger than they. Men and boys alike, however, sit on the very end of the donkey—directly over its hind legs. I suppose this is to prevent breaking its back in case of a huge man. I have a donkey-boy friend who is very dirty and loves to stare at me out of his good eye as he passes the hotel gate.

One also sees sheep and goats being led singly through the bazaars on leashes like dogs. This morning a boy had a pet (and huge) ram which he was sicking onto his boy friends, much to their terror and delight. The timid ones ran behind a grey-bearded barber who shaved a customer squatting in the dust all unconscious of what transpired.

Last evening, after tea and writing, I walked through the crowded bazaar to see the remarkably fine fruit and vegetable stands, and to watch good Moslems drinking tea out of large and lovely brass samovars. There was what sounded like a riot down the street, but when I went over I found it was only a lot of school boys holding a silver athletic trophy aloft and celebrating at the top of their lungs. But you should see the carrots and cabbages, the grapes and pomegranates they have here. I should think they are unsurpassed anywhere. This (and Afghanistan) is real fruit and vegetable country. The other shops were interesting, too; but rather a hodge-podge of shoddy European stuff mixed in with the native brass, cloth, etc. Plenty of tailors seem to live in the bazaar, and I saw a shop where the big Singer Sewing machine had been sunk into the floor so that the pedal was out of sight, its operator appeared to be legless. Coming out (and passing the old blind beggar who asks Allah to bless you) I heard some tentative drum beating. Ahead, there was a bright light as for a celebration and presently I saw a band of bearded Pathans of the most remarkable aspect. On their heads were bright yellow hats meant to look like tam o’shanters, but managing to look more like chef’s caps. They had abbreviated khaki coats on, and their baggy trousers (believe it or not) were fashioned from Scottish plaid. There were four drummers and about six pipers with bagpipes under their arms. They stood in a circle facing inward, and blocking the sidewalk. When he saw me, the No. 1 drummer exercised his English. He said, ‘bon, thoo, tree!’ With that, the whole crowd burst into allegedly musical action. The old blind beggar came hobbling over, calling on Allah and hoping to find a generous crowd, and I escaped.

Enders left for the Khyber Pass on the morning of Saturday 6 December for the two-day drive to Kabul. He would have arrived there on Monday 8 September, the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked (Asia time). He was the sole representative of the U.S. government in Afghanistan for the next five months. It was an area that seethed in intrigue, although the country was officially neutral in the war. The British and the Americans were on one side, facing the Germans, Italians, and Japanese on the other. The Soviets were the allies of the British and Americans against the Germans and Italians, but not against the Japanese. The fortunes of the Allies looked grim in 1941 and 1942, and Burma—and India itself—appeared to be in peril. Under Rommel the Germans and Italians drove to just outside Cairo. The Germans then turned on the Soviet Union and pushed the Russians back to Stalingrad and Moscow. The Afghans wanted to be on the winning side, and it took all of Enders’ skills to persuade them that the Allies, led by America, would turn the corner. His insouciance, which irritated some of his colleagues, was just right for this mission.

Enders traveled widely in Afghanistan from the time he arrived in December 1941 until he was reassigned to New Delhi in December 1943. Most of his letters are in the archives of Military Intelligence (RG 165), but some are in the State Department archives, on microfilm. As an example, Enders, by letter of 30 March 1943, requested a Dodge carryall for the Afghan king, at the king’s request, and Enders requested it be the U.S. Army Air Force’s Dodge, diverted to be used by the king.¹⁴

Some of Enders’ military intelligence reports were reviewed by one or two and sometimes three different people, using a red pencil and occasionally ink, in different handwriting. They critically, and sometimes sarcastically, reviewed Enders’ comments on geography, history, and politics, with global statements like “False.” They frequently corrected his spelling and distances, sometimes very sharply. I do not know if Enders ever saw these comments, but if he did he must have been furious. The reports show that Enders had many, many problems with the various Afghan factions, foreign diplomats, Axis operatives, the OSS, his counterparts in the American diplomatic service, and the British.

One of Enders’ reports was dated 6 September 1943, on “Afghanistan’s Strategic Geography.” This report describes the area that Enders planned to visit in India in November and December 1943. It implies that he already knew what he planned to see in India. The most relevant portion is Part IV, “Attack from the South”: “Tribal Complications: Any advance from India is complicated by the Tribal Areas which contain uncertain elements of riflemen, totalling some 50,000, who are well known for their warlike qualities and readiness to fight. In order to cope with this potentially dangerous threat in the rear, the sub-bases at Parachinar, Miram Shah, Wanna [corrected in red pencil to Wana] and Fort Sandeman would be necessary.”¹⁵

Other reports in this folder show problems that Enders encountered, some of which were of his own making, and others resulted when he needed to be confrontational. For example, on 20 October 1943 Enders drove in a two-car caravan to Kabul from Peshawar with Sir Aurel Stein, who was eighty-one and in poor health. Because of Stein’s advanced age and illness, Enders went on ahead with Stein and arrived in Kabul at 4:30 p.m. When the other car did not arrive by 6:00 p.m., he went back to look for it. The other car had mechanical problems, and needed assistance. His memo to the minister on 22 October gives the harrowing details of the trip to recover the other vehicle.¹⁶ Stein died on 26 October and was buried in Kabul. Another memorandum for the minister, this one on 4 November 1943, provides details of a trip by a two-car caravan to the border with India at Torkham, where “the Afghan soldiers attempted to stop the car by hanging onto the fenders.” He shook them off and drove on to Quetta.¹⁷

If Enders had the chance to talk about his plans for the trip, he would surely have discussed them, or even bragged about them, to Louis Dreyfus, the U.S. minister to Iran. Charles Thayer stayed with Dreyfus in Tehran on his way into Afghanistan, and Enders met him in Tehran to escort him to Kabul. Dreyfus would later be the host of the successful Tehran Conference of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin that took place while the trip to the NWFP province was under way. Dreyfus left Iran for his next post on 12 December, just before the trip ended. Dreyfus would return to Afghanistan as ambassador in April 1949.¹⁸

Enders arrived in Peshawar to meet the other travelers—Bromhead and Zimmermann—on 15 November 1943, a day later than expected. He was alone in his jeep, nicknamed “Ma Kabul.”

The Baronet: Bromhead

Sir Benjamin Denis Gonville Bromhead, Bart., OBE, IA, known as “Sir Benjy,” was a hereditary knight, the fifth Baronet Bromhead.¹⁹ He was about to make the trip on the NWFP that Enders had been waiting to take ever since he came to Peshawar in 1941. But no matter how much Enders wanted to make the trip, Bromhead’s consent for it was essential.

Benjy Bromhead was born on 7 May 1900 and was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, England. He went to India as a young man and spent his military career mainly in the NWFP. He fought in the Iraq Campaign in 1920 and in the Waziristan campaign from 1922 to 1924, where he was wounded. He fought in the NWFP in 1930, where he was mentioned in despatches. He fought in the Waziristan campaign in 1937, where he was again mentioned in despatches. He was commandant of the Zhob Militia, Baluchistan, between 1940 and 1943. He was invested as an officer, Order of the British Empire (OBE), in 1943.

Bromhead was taking on a new role as assistant public relations officer for the province, working out of the governor’s office in Peshawar. He planned to take an orientation trip along the entire border at the end of November 1943, from the northernmost semi-independent principality, Chitral, to the key southern city, Quetta. The trip would include visits to all of the tribal areas. He knew most of this region already, but the leaders needed to be visited regularly, and he needed to introduce himself to them in his new capacity. He was asked to take Enders along to show him the problems that the British had with the frontier tribes, and how they dealt with them. He and the intelligence officer in Quetta discussed this, and decided that, if possible, a third person ought to be added to the mission. The person selected would be from the naval liaison office (NLO) in Karachi.

Bromhead and his wife, Lady Nancy, and their two young daughters were living at the Services Hotel on Fort Road, near the Governor’s House. She was pregnant with their third child, who they expected would be born at about the time the trip ended.

The Socialite: Zimmermann

The intelligence bureau in Quetta (IB Quetta) asked Bromhead if he could also take one of the Americans from the NLO in Karachi, to be added as a third traveler. Bromhead agreed, subject to the governor’s sanction “which he said he thought would certainly be forthcoming.”²⁰ The man who was picked for this was Albert Walter Zimmermann, USNR. Zimmermann, who for the sake of simplicity is often referred to hereafter as AZ, appears to have been picked at random. However, there are good reasons to believe he was a specific choice, and the message from IB Quetta was carefully written to ensure that he, and only he, would be sent.

Al Zimmermann was the second ranking officer at the NLO in Karachi. He would ordinarily have been the executive officer, but had not been officially named to that position; he would later become the commanding officer (CO). His position as a naval liaison officer (ALUSLO) was analogous to an assistant naval attaché. Like all naval attachés, naval observers, and ALUSLOs, he was trained as an intelligence officer. And, like most of them at this point in the war, he was a reservist.²¹

Albert W. Zimmermann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 11 June 1902, the youngest of seven children of John Zimmermann and Eva Katherine (Kellenbenz) Zimmermann. John Zimmermann had come to America from Gussenstad in the kingdom of Württemberg in 1874 as a nearly penniless man of eighteen with no close friends. He was, however, a member of the hardworking and close-knit German community in Philadelphia, and he achieved the American Dream. As a weaver, he started by selling his own carpets from a push cart on the streets of Philadelphia, where he was spotted by the owners of the Philadelphia Tapestry Mills. They took him in as an employee, and he later rose to be their partner. His patents made it possible to weave enormous carpets, and their company, renamed Artloom Corporation, became one of the largest of its type in America. In his later years, he was a very wealthy but charitable man, and he was bishop of the reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints in the eastern United States. John Zimmermann made each of his children a gift of $1 million when they married.

Albert Zimmermann received a degree in electrical engineering when he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1923, where he had been a member of Sigma Tau (Honorary Engineering Fraternity), a member of the Sphinx Honorary Senior Society, and president of the Glee Club. He entered the family carpet and fabric business and eventually became a vice president of the company. In 1926 he married the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia ophthalmologist in what was said to be the society wedding of the season. In contrast to Zimmermann’s second-generation roots, his wife’s went back to the fleets of William Penn and John Winthrop. After a grand honeymoon, they settled in a new home, Cotswold Corners, in Haverford. He joined the usual golf and country clubs of the Philadelphia gentry, who lived along the Main Line: the Philadelphia Country Club; Merion Cricket Club; Fourth Street Club; and a men’s singing group, the Orpheus Club. With his interest in textiles, he formed a wool brokerage in partnership with another Orpheus Club member. Financially, he was very comfortable, but not ostentatious; he was a shrewd observer, but he kept his mouth shut about what he saw. When he was in the Navy, he wrote to his wife that she need not worry about spending money. He assured her that they were wealthy, although he would never have said it aloud.²²

One of his friends before the war was a naval reservist named Jack Kane, who was the district intelligence officer for the Third Naval District, headquartered at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. AZ’s wife’s best friend was Kane’s wife, Amelie. It may have been Kane who encouraged him to take pictures of the German Bund in Philadelphia, when the Bund turned out in uniforms with swastika armbands for the wedding of one of the Zimmermanns’ household employees. AZ sent these photos to the FBI, and they were AZ’s first contact with the federal intelligence service.²³

After the war broke out in Europe in 1939, AZ’s friends began making plans for what they would do when the United States entered the war. Some, like AZ’s father-in-law, who had been a major, were too old to serve again, but they encouraged others to prepare. Some decided to join the reserves, or to reactivate their previous commissions. AZ was a bit too old to be a fighter, and he was color-blind, so some areas of service were closed to him. Intelligence was a consideration. Army G-2 was a possibility, but he had no connections with Army intelligence. Kane encouraged him to join the ONI. AZ also knew Captain Tom Thornton, a naval intelligence officer in the Third Naval District, and he, too, was encouraging. His good friend Joseph Freeman Lincoln and his next-door neighbor Clarence Lewis joined the OSS. But the OSS did not even exist until 13 June 1942 (it had previously been known as the coordinator of information, or COI), and AZ was already talking with the Navy by then.²⁴

AZ also had a couple of other door openers for the ONI. The head of ONI in the First Naval District (New York) was Commander (later Captain) Vincent Astor, who led “the Room,” a secret intelligence operation in New York City. Astor had been secretly named by FDR to vet candidates for the ONI, and AZ had at least two connections with this group. His good friend John “Jack” Thayer Jr. had survived the sinking of Titanic as a young man; Jack’s father and Vincent Astor’s father had gone down together on the ship. And AZ’s friend Malcolm Aldrich, who he called “Mac,” had been a member of Skull and Bones at Yale. He was a cousin of the banker, Winthrop Aldrich, who was also a member of the Room.²⁵

By September 1942 AZ had decided on Navy intelligence. He tidied up his personal affairs, got a waiver for color-blindness, and on 21 September he took the oath of office as a lieutenant, I-V(P), USNR—the “P” standing for probationary. His appointment was backdated to 1 August 1942, and his appointment was effective on 8 September. He went to basic training as an officer at the Washington Navy Yard from 18 October to 14 November. He then reported to the ten-week intelligence indoctrination course at Dartmouth from 18 November to 28 January 1943. While he was at Dartmouth, the new naval intelligence officers developed a sense of camaraderie, and it was not all work: AZ noted that a singer named Paul Robeson performed there on Colgate weekend, in late November. They treated with suitable respect the director of naval intelligence (DNI), Rear Admiral Harold C. Train, and his ambitious deputy, Captain Ellis Zacharias—later called “The Man Who Wanted to Be DNI.”²⁶ Admiral Train and Captain Zacharias both spoke at their graduation from the school. How much the students knew about the conflict between these two men is unknown, but they were smart fellows, and it was probably a good introduction to the arcane and back-biting world of intelligence. A classmate there, in another platoon, was another Philadelphia socialite, and brother of his friend in the Orpheus Club, Jim Winsor. The brother, Curtin Winsor, a somewhat younger man, went to Washington in the Far East desk of ONI. Curt Winsor later became AZ’s desk officer, or handler.²⁷

AZ began French language school in Washington, DC, in preparation to go to Dakar, Senegal, French West Africa, as a naval observer. He enjoyed the course in French and was doing well, but his orders were canceled after two months, and he was instead sent to the Advanced Operational Intelligence School in New York City. He began the course at the Henry Hudson Hotel on 19 April and completed it on 28 May 1943. He was then assigned to the NLO, Karachi. He would spend nearly two years there. It would be a challenging and sometimes trying experience, but the most interesting adventure of his life.

AZ’s trip to Karachi would be familiar to anyone who lived through World War II, but it seems exotic to others. After saying good-bye for what would be at least a year, and perhaps eternity, on 23 June 1943, AZ boarded a commercial airline flight from Washington, DC, for New York. From there, he flew to Botwood, Newfoundland, and on to Foynes, near Limerick, in what had recently been the Irish Free State. All his letters passed the censor, and in the next two years only a few words—the names of some of the places on commercial postcards on his route to Karachi—were ever redacted by the censor. He touched down in Port Lyautey and Casablanca, Morocco; Oran and Algiers, Algeria; Constantine and Sousse, Tunisia; Tripoli and Benghasi, Libya, and arrived in Cairo on 1 July to get in line to continue on to the east.

He stayed in Cairo in relative comfort at the famous Shepheard’s Hotel, and—as was the custom with expats and intelligence officers—he made good use of the time. He saw the Sphinx and the pyramids, and visited Philadelphia physicians who were at Army General Hospital 38. They started to receive casualties from the invasion of Sicily, which began while he was in Cairo. While there, he met Edgar Snow and Tom Treanor, who were also staying at Shepheard’s. They were war correspondents who had been in India and China and were on their way to cover the invasion of Sicily. Treanor gave AZ an earful of the struggle that was going on in India. Treanor wrote that Gandhi and Nehru wanted the British to leave India so the Hindus could rule it; on the other hand, there was Jinnah, who refused to bargain with the British, and intended to put three-fourths of the Muslims of India into a new country, Pakistan. All three men postured for their political constituencies, and none was willing to compromise. (AZ would see that this was also the British perception of Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah, and would transmit this in an intelligence report in 1944.) And “despite protestations and promises of the British that India one day is to get her independence, no apparent step is being made in this direction.”²⁸

On 4 July AZ took movies of a baseball game with Quentin Reynolds at bat and General Strong umpiring. Reynolds was a well-known war correspondent and Strong was doubtless the Army chief of intelligence (G-2) who detested General William Donovan of the OSS. AZ’s host on several days was a naval reservist from Philadelphia, Captain Thomas Anthony “Tom” Thornton, who was now with the U.S. Forces-Cairo. He had seen Lieutenant Commander Jack Kane only the previous week. Thornton planned to take AZ and Commander Gene Markey to Alexandria to pass the time while he and Markey were waiting for a flight out of Cairo, but AZ could not make the trip because he was placed on standby for his flight to the east. On one of his last nights in Cairo, he dined with Henry Hotchkiss, the assistant naval attaché, and several other old friends from Philadelphia. He finally flew out on a Royal Air Force (RAF) B-24 Liberator bomber on 16 July via Habanniah, Iraq, and another unnamed remote airfield. He commented to his wife in a letter that “I didn’t need the parachute so I didn’t find out whether it worked or not. They say you can always get another if it doesn’t.” He arrived in Karachi at 5:00 a.m., Monday 19 July 1943.²⁹

The NLO in Karachi was a spacious two-story stucco-on-stone residence at 254 Ingle Road, on a frontage of about one hundred yards, and equally deep—a typical American square block. It was surrounded on three sides by a five-foot wall, and was enclosed at the rear by the houses of the twenty or so household servants and their families. In the real estate market in India it was called a bungalow, but this hardly expresses its size and beauty. The first floor of the house had twenty-five-foot ceilings, and the table in the dining room seated eighteen people with ease, and could be expanded to hold more. The first floor was for offices for the leading petty officer and the CO, and the code room, and spaces for guests, including a lounge and library; and the dining room, with its fireplace and George Washington’s portrait over the mantel. The second floor was the residence: the CO’s suite, the executive officer’s suite, a small library, and dormitories for the junior officers and about six enlisted men. There were social events there on many evenings, and grand parties, too, but there also was an ever-present reminder of the war; a locked gun closet was on the stairway with a dozen M-1 rifles, with slings and ammunition.

When AZ arrived there were four officers at the NLO in Karachi: the CO, Lieutenant Commander Francis H. Smith, USN; and Lieutenants Burns, Callahan, and Browning. Except for Smith, all were junior in years to AZ. Browning developed eye trouble and soon headed for home. The rest worked long days, taking their turn on duty call. It was secret work, and AZ said almost nothing about what they did during the days. The Navy’s long-distance radio network provided service for the Army and the State Department, so the code room must have been very busy. Karachi was a busy seaport, located near the mouth of the great Indus River. It was the entry point for everything that passed on land into India from the west, and to the north. The State Department cables show that Afghanistan was interested in selling and transshipping wool, of which AZ had special knowledge. Karachi was the entry and exit port for Axis diplomats who traveled under safe conduct to and from Kabul.

AZ was introduced to the strange ways of the NLO almost immediately on arrival, when he received an invitation to dinner with a Madame Dubash. He soon learned that she was a “good-looking” Russian woman of about fifty who was the “girlfriend” of the CO.³⁰ He also believed that the NLO in Karachi was spending U.S. government funds for lavish entertainment, that they were living in a fool’s paradise. He believed all of this was contrary to the instructions to naval intelligence officers, and eventually he was proved right.³¹

In the evenings and on weekends, AZ played bridge with Brigadier N. Godfray Hind and his American-born wife; and with Major D. Montgomery (Monty) Smyth and his wife Joan Smyth.³² AZ played tennis and partied at the Sind Club, where Governor and Lady Dow held forth, and at the Boat Club. He was a frequent guest in private homes, where his ability to sing was much appreciated. He was also invited to the Karachi Club, which was for Indians (Parsi, Muslim, and Hindus), a rare invitation for an American. He was invited to dinner by his prewar Indian wool supplier, where he learned (with some difficulty) to eat Indian food, and to appreciate the customs of that part of the world. On weekends he often went to the private offshore beach known as Sandspit with members of the American commercial community. He was there on 12 September 1943 with Arlo Bond, who was with Standard Oil. The war rarely intruded; by then it appeared that Japan would not attempt an invasion of India, and the Germans were slowly retreating. In his first three months he mentioned the war only twice in letters to his wife: the fall of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy on 10 September.

The visitors who passed through the NLO were often mentioned in language that only AZ and his wife, Barbara (hereafter BSZ), could understand. Four groups of “Freeman’s friends” (sent out by Joseph Freeman Lincoln, a major in the OSS in London) were so secret that he could not mention their names, but he was able to identify some of them to BSZ because she knew them, too. Others who were named included Senator Richard Russell on 23 August, Ambassador Clarence Gauss “and his attachés” on his way to China on 15 September, and a Mr. Preston, the consul general at Lorenzo Marques, on 9 November. The new American commander, General Julian Haddon, arrived in town on 15 September.³³

Tropical diseases were always threatening. The insect-borne diseases included dengue (which Zimmermann caught), yellow fever (hopefully protected by vaccination), and malaria (although you could take atabrine to prevent it, most people decided to use mosquito netting at night). And there was diarrheal disease, known as dysentery, which could be from amoebae (lingering and bad) or bacteria (even worse).

Through all of this, AZ was being observed by Clarence Macy, the hardboiled but wise American consul in Karachi, who AZ met for the first time on 15 August and who he saw at least twice after that, but prior to the trip to the NWFP. Macy was in frequent contact with J. R. Harris, the British intelligence officer who received the message on 26 October, asking for an American at the ALUSLO to go to the NWFP. AZ had made a lot of new friends, and he had not made any enemies. Charles Thayer in Kabul probably gave him the nod to make the trip.

AZ was sent to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), on a courier mission on 29 October—only three days after Harris received the message from IB Quetta. His courier mission was surely just a cover; he must have been there to be briefed by Navy intelligence on what to look for and how to comport himself on the NWFP. He stayed in Colombo for two nights and a day with a Lieutenant Commander B. W. Goldsborough. He wrote to his wife that Goldsborough was from Baltimore, and that he “knew the right people.” Indeed he did; Brice Worthington Goldsborough II was the son of Phillips Lee Goldsborough, who was governor of Maryland in 1911, and later a U.S. senator. Ceylon had just been designated as the headquarters of the new South East Asia Command (SEAC), and the supreme commander of SEAC, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was moving his staff from Delhi to Kandy, in the interior of Ceylon. AZ would visit Kandy later, but this trip was just to visit Navy intelligence in Colombo. He left on Friday 29 October via Ahmedabad, Bombay, Hyderabad, to Colombo; and he retraced his route, going back to Bombay and then to Karachi, where he arrived on Tuesday 2 November. He saw another ALUSLO, Lieutenant Al Payne, presumably passing on information orally to him, on both trips through Bombay.

The purpose of the trip on the NWFP was stated in the message from IB Quetta, to make “it clear to the American Legation in Kabul what are our frontier problems and our ideas and policy in dealing with them and the Afghans.”³⁴ This was restated with little change by AZ when he sent his typed report to his family: “The trip had been already instigated by the Military Attaché to Kabul (Maj. Enders) to give him an opportunity to see what was on the other side of the fence.”³⁵ But there were many more things that AZ and Enders were looking for. Some of these would be details that provided depth to the main goal, but others were quite different. They may not have been told about some things to watch for, but as good intelligence officers they would be on the lookout for whatever they could see.

Zimmermann was added to balance Enders. Those who had heard Enders speak, and those who had read his books, knew he could tell a good story, but his story was often very selective. It was hard to know if Enders was telling the truth, and he often exaggerated. Zimmermann, on the other hand, though not always an interesting writer, would be inclined to tell it as he saw it, not as he wished it to be.

The Governor: Cunningham

The trip would have been impossible if the governor of the NWFP, Sir George Cunningham, had not approved it. He knew the tribes along the border were quiet at that time, in November 1943, so he was willing to allow the Americans to join Bromhead on his tour.

Sir George Cunningham was born on 23 March 1888, third son of the late James Cunningham and Anna Sandeman, at Broughty Ferry in Forfarshire, now called Angus. His parents later had another son and a daughter. His father was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and received an honorary LLD from St. Andrews.³⁶

Cunningham was a good student and was even better at sports at Fettes College, Edinburgh, and later at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was president of the Junior Common Room and captained the Oxford University rugby team that defeated Cambridge by a record score. He entered the Indian Civil Service and left Scotland on 26 October 1911, and except for home leaves on regular occasions, he remained in India for his entire career until he retired in 1946.³⁷

Cunningham was posted to Lahore and paid his first visit to the NWFP in the winter of 1913–14; he returned to the NWFP at the end of October 1914 on appointment to the Foreign and Political Department of the government of India. He received the word of his transfer to the NWFP and immediately rode thirty-six miles on horseback to headquarters at Peshawar. He left for Kohat a few days later. It was his first assignment to the tribal territory. The so-called Durand Line of 1893 separated Afghanistan from British India, and it left a depth of tribal territory of about forty miles.

In May 1918 he took a “most memorable tour” to Malakand and Dir, and over the Lowari Pass to Chitral. In his diary, he wrote that he saw yellow crocus, hyacinth, and saxifrage, and in Chitral he had this remarkable experience:

On the left of the road the ground rises in terraces, and along the edge of each terrace were rows of the Mehtar’s men, each man with his musket. There must have been three or four thousand of them. . . . We came first to an open expanse of grass where a body guard of the Scouts, Rajputs, and Bodyguard were drawn up. Then horsemen galloped past the popinjay—four little gourds hung from a pole, about 30 feet from the ground—firing their enormous jezails [rifle, Pashtun] as they passed underneath. . . . We passed between heavy iron doors and under an arched entrance and found ourselves in the outer courtyard of the Mehtar’s fort. . . . Due north, thirty miles away, Tirich Mir, like a frosted cathedral, towers to heaven!³⁸

Cunningham’s two brothers were killed in service in World War I. He was assistant commissioner in Tank, NWFP, in December 1918, and he was involved in negotiations in the brief war with Afghanistan in 1918–19, as he spent two months traveling between Peshawar and the Khyber Pass. He then went home on leave, and returned in the summer of 1920, posted to Kohat, and was in Peshawar in January to be invested with the OBE.

He was involved with the tour early in March 1921 of the Prince of Wales, for which he was officer in charge of the press. Then the viceroy came to visit Kohat and was to be given a picnic lunch “under the trees,” where there were no trees, at an altitude of six thousand feet.³⁹ There were other duties and complicated arrangements in the Kurram Valley and Thal, and in North Waziristan in Bannu, Razmak, Wana, and Jandola. He went home again on leave in the spring of 1925. When he returned, he was for a short time stationed in Kabul as the counselor to the British legation. He was then appointed private secretary to the viceroy, 1926–31, Lord Irwin (later Lord Halifax), who set a good model for him in his later postings. During this time, he met and married, in 1929, Kathleen Mary Adair, of Tullow, County Carlow. He went home on leave again until 1932, and was a member of executive council, NWFP, from 1932 to 1936. He was on home leave again, and returned to be governor of the NWFP until he retired. He had accumulated more honors and was knighted just before he took over the governorship.

His tenure was marked with many jirgas (councils) and much travel, especially in the two Waziristan agencies. On the same morning he took the oath of office he traveled to Bannu to discuss the issue of the faqir (also spelled fakir; Muslim mendicant) of Ipi, who had “just appeared on the scene, who would be a constant source of trouble for the next ten years.”⁴⁰ In 1939 Cunningham traveled to Kaniguram for a jirga, and to Razmak, Ladha, and Wana, all of which are places that were seen by the travelers in December 1943. In 1940 he went to Bannu and Ramzak, and Miram Shah and Mir Ali, and Kohat—sometimes on horseback and sometimes by airplane. He frequently walked about and showed great courage.

Propaganda in support of Pakistan first came to Cunningham’s attention in 1941. At that time, it “was not expected to be a separate dominion [but would be] a Northern Muslim State strong enough to claim a half share with the Hindus in a Federal Government.” The northern territories were unusually peaceful, and one of the few times he mentions them was on 20 November, when he had a very friendly Mohmand jirga at Shabkadar. His memoirs did not mention the visit of Enders early in December, and he mentions the outbreak of war in the Pacific without additional comment on 8 December.⁴¹ Early in 1942 he had the unusual experience of entertaining Chiang Kai-shek for two days. The generalissimo traveled to Khyber and was back in time for a banquet in Peshawar on 13 February. In March 1942 Cunningham held an Afridi jirga in the Khyber, and was back in the Upper Kurram again in August.⁴² He received a visit from the commander in chief, General Sir Claude Auchinleck, who flew in from Karachi.

At the time of the trip by Enders, Bromhead, and Zimmermann, a visitor from Dir said that Dir state was “‘more peaceful than it had been for 45 years.’ . . . 1943 is remarkable so far as the War was concerned only by the extraordinary few mentions of it which he felt the need to make.” “But on the whole the shadow of the war seems to have been removed.”⁴³ In April the viceroy went into Waziristan and landed at Miram Shah, then flew over Razmak and got back in time for Peshawar to shoot snipe. On 25 October Cunningham commented on the ministers in his cabinet, and on 20 November he was at a governors’ conference in Delhi with the new viceroy—Wavell having become viceroy in October. Cunningham mentions there was a “bad affair” at Razmak on 14 December, when two Gurkha battalions suffered many casualties during an “ordinary exercise.”⁴⁴ This was only days after the travelers passed through Razmak on their way to Quetta, and it was on the day before AZ reached Karachi.

Cunningham believed the British were a benevolent presence in the NWFP, because they kept peace between the warring tribes. This benefited Britain and the empire, and it was also the humane thing to do. He quoted Kipling: “At any price that I can pay, let me own myself.”⁴⁵

It is remarkable that there is so little about World War II in Cunningham’s memoir. In fact, while there is much about the problems with the tribal areas, especially in the Waziristans, and about politics in Peshawar and Delhi, there is much that is not here—either because it did not appear in the diary, or, more likely, because it was not included by Norval Mitchell in his book.

The Commanding Officer: Smith

The CO at the NLO in Karachi had to agree to send someone on the trip, and he would also have had to decide whether to send himself or to designate someone else. The trip would take at least a month, and in the event it took longer. What good would this trip do for the Navy, and could he spare a man for it? We do not know the answers to the questions, but there are indications for the reasons that he said yes, and sent Zimmermann. He would be glad to get AZ out of Karachi for a while, for although Zimmermann was properly obedient, it was obvious that he did not enjoy Smith’s company. He was, as the saying goes, upstaging Smith, and Smith would have been hard-pressed to find a reason to say no.

Lieutenant Commander Francis Howard Smith, USN, known at that time as Howard Smith, was a regular Navy officer who came originally from Akron, Ohio. He was born 27 August 1892, and he had worked in India for the past thirteen years as an employee of the Firestone Corporation, which was headquartered in Akron. He was said to be fluent in Hindustani His regular Navy commission and his work in intelligence suggest that he had been under cover for a long time. He was well connected in the local community. As Zimmermann relates it, his girlfriend was a Russian émigrée, Nadia, who had been (or was still) married to an Indian. Madame Nadia Dubash and a man named Sheikh were employed in some sort of counterespionage activity. The ONI in Washington was wary of this, but had not (yet) put an end to it. Smith threw a birthday party for himself at the NLO in Karachi on 27 August 1943, shortly before the request came to send someone to the NWFP.⁴⁶

Smith was apparently a bit of a martinet to those who worked for him. AZ called him “Com Smith” and wrote to his wife that Smith was “short—quick-witted and cocky—. . . . He knows a lot about this country, having lived here a number of years—can speak Urdu and loves to bask in his importance.”⁴⁷ On the other hand, he was appreciated by his superiors, or at least by one who had flag rank. Commodore (later Vice Admiral) Milton E. Miles wrote, “‘Smitty’ didn’t fluster. . . . So we requisitioned [him] from the Office of Naval Liaison, Karachi where most of his work had been for SACO [Sino-American Cooperation Organization].”⁴⁸

Kiss up and kick down, the saying goes, so it is not surprising to have two different views of his ability. Smith finished the war in Calcutta, doing cumshaw work for Miles, and then left the Navy. He probably returned to his native Ohio. A “Francis Smith,” born on 27 August 1892, died in Akron in January 1975.

The Minister Plenipotentiary: Engert

The message on 26 October 1943 from IB Quetta to J. R. Harris said that it “would be up to Smith to explain the presence of a Naval Liaison Officer to Enders and Engert.”⁴⁹ Cornelius Engert was the U.S. minister to Afghanistan.

We do not know if Lieutenant Commander Smith, head of the NLO in Karachi, ever contacted Engert or Enders about this message, but after the trip was over Enders wrote to AZ asking him to “remember me to Commander Smith,” and it is possible that Smith also contacted Engert. The trip, however, is never mentioned in Engert’s personal papers or his official correspondence, nor did his son, Roderick, know about the trip. There is a coded message in Engert’s papers that could (and I think probably does) relate to the trip after it was over, which we will see later. There was a lot else going on in Afghanistan that was of concern to Engert, and he and his wife and daughter were in India, two of them sick with typhoid, just before the trip began. He would not have wanted to admit that the trip happened without his knowing it, and he was good at bluffing his way through things. In fact, his entire life as a diplomat was never quite what it seemed to be, but it was, nevertheless, a remarkable career. It was only after he died that his granddaughter pieced together the facts of his life.⁵⁰

The Honorable Cornelius Van Hemert Engert (1887–1985), CBE, was the first U.S. diplomat to serve as a resident chief of mission in Afghanistan. Engert was the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary in Kabul in November to December 1943, at the time the Enders-Bromhead-Zimmermann mission was proceeding in the NWFP.

Engert was born in Vienna, 31 December 1887, the son of John Cornelius Engert, who was of Dutch origin but a Russian citizen, and Irma Babetz, a Hungarian Jewish physician. Jane Engert says that her grandfather, Cornelius Engert, falsely claimed that he was a great-nephew of Alexander Francis Charles Engert, who was from Hamburg, Germany, and that the Dutch and German Engerts were separate lines from the seventeenth century on. Furthermore, although Cornelius claimed California as his boyhood home, he did not grow up there. His birth name was Adolf Cornelius Van Hemert-Engert. His father had immigrated to St. Petersburg and married for the second time in 1881; he adopted Russian citizenship and died a year later. His wife, Cornelius’ mother, went back to her native Hungary, although she also may have returned from time to time to St. Petersburg. After many attempts to have the first name, Adolf, deleted from the official record, he apparently had succeeded by about 1924.

He had gone to school at the K. K. Oberrealschule in Gorz (then Austria-Hungary, now a town divided between Italy [Gorizia] and Slovenia [Nova Gorica]). He traveled to America with his mother in 1904, attended high school in California, and became a naturalized citizen. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1908 and a master’s degree in 1909 from the University of California, Berkeley, and he was a law student there from 1909 to 1911. He was a Le Conte Memorial Fellow at Harvard in 1911–12, with a scholarship awarded by UC Berkley. He did not matriculate at Harvard, but he nevertheless struck up a friendship with President A. Lawrence Lowell and they continued to correspond for many years. His granddaughter said that from his perspective, “the more times he and Harvard were mentioned in the same sentence, the better.”⁵¹

Engert started working for the U.S. Foreign Service as a student interpreter in Constantinople in 1912, and he was American vice-counsel in Chanak in 1914. He was vice-consul at Constantinople, February 1915; vice-consul and interpreter at Baghdad, August 1915; on detail at Constantinople, September 1915 to December 1916; and on detail in Syria and Palestine, December 1916 to April 1917. He was attached to Viscount Ishii’s mission to the United States from Japan in San Francisco. Engert then served as assistant to and secretary to the American legation at The Hague from August 1917 to September 1919. He served as second secretary to the legation in Tehran from 1920 to 1922.

In May 1922, when he was chargé d’affaires in Iran, he became the first American diplomatic officer to visit Afghanistan. His letter to Robert Woods Bliss on 2 September 1921 requesting the trip included the comment that he had made to the Afghan minister to Persia, suggesting “that it would be a good thing for this country if some American oil experts could be allowed to sniff around a bit and see if there was anything in Afghanistan.” Bliss replied on 12 December 1921 that Engert could make an “entirely informal and unofficial” visit to Afghanistan on his way home, at which time he “would doubtless be able to gather much information which would be useful to this and other Departments of the Government.”⁵²

To reach Afghanistan, Engert traveled to Kabul via ship from Persia through the Persian Gulf to Karachi, by train from Karachi to Peshawar, and by car through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar to Kabul. He was received with great courtesy, and was told that only two Americans had ever been there before him. While he was in Kabul, he heard that Lowell Thomas needed help securing a visa, and he nudged the emir to offer a visa to Thomas. Engert submitted a “Report on Afghanistan” to the State Department in 1923, more than two hundred pages long, which became the department’s unofficial guide to the country. Engert then served at the State Department in Washington, DC, from October 1922 to September 1923. During this time, he worked on a deal securing oil concessions from the Iranian government for American oil companies. He was, however, always somewhat controversial. Jane Engert called him a “social climber.” She said his efficiency reports commented, “Engert had never been taught in his youth the enormity of false and inaccurate statement.”⁵³

Engert met his future wife, Sara Cunningham, in San Francisco. She was from a wealthy and well-connected family and had been a nurse in Europe in World War I, for which she received the French Médaille de la Reconnaissance. In September 1923 Engert began eight years of service in Latin American countries, beginning with Cuba, San Salvador, and finally Venezuela. Their first child was born on 10 December 1924; the little boy died at ten hours of a cerebral hemorrhage. Sara had two more children: Roderick (who was interviewed for this book), born in 1925 in El Salvador; and Sheila, born in 1929 in Venezuela.⁵⁴

Engert served as first secretary to the American Embassy in Peiping (now spelled Beijing), China, from June 1930 to June 1933. After serving in Cairo from June 1933 to July 1935, Engert was named consul general and resident minister at the American legation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Engert and his wife were instrumental in saving the personnel of the U.S. mission from rioters during the collapse of Ethiopia as it fell to Italy, and he and Sara were commended by FDR. As a result, he developed a personal relationship with the president, which he utilized outside of State Department channels.⁵⁵

In January 1937 Engert was named consul for the legations in Tehran and Kabul, and in August 1940 he was posted as consul general in Beirut and Damascus, where he served during the invasion of France. The minister to Iran, Louis Dreyfus, was accredited by Washington to represent the interests of the United States in Afghanistan. On 28 January 1941 Dreyfus was directed to visit Kabul, and he was expected to make the trip when the weather was good enough in the spring. He was told that “an American diplomatic mission had not been established [because] our interests in Afghanistan continue to be slight.” Dreyfus reported to Washington on 27 June 1941 that “the Afghans have a sincere and deep rooted desire in the absence of a friend or neighbor to whom they can turn to have a disinterested third-power friend to assist and advise them and they have always hoped that the United States would be willing to fill such a role.”⁵⁶

Over the next several months, the Afghans and Americans negotiated over what the senior U.S. diplomat would be called. It was difficult, because travel and message traffic was slowed by the war. The break in negotiations was made by FDR personally, who wrote on 16 March 1942, “Why not name the regular Minister to Afghanistan now and get it over with.” Nine days later, Sumner Welles recommended Cornelius Engert. Charles Thayer was given approval by the Afghans to move to Kabul on 22 April, and he opened the U.S. legation on 6 June 1942. Engert presented his credentials to the king on 25 July 1942.⁵⁷

At the same time, the India issue was a problem. It would always be there in connection with Afghanistan, whether India was unified or divided. At the time, it appeared that India would be unified after independence, but as we will see below, Engert was considering a “Pakistan” solution. FDR was concerned about India, too. He wrote to John G. Winant, who was ambassador to England, on 25 February 1942: “In the greatest confidence could you or Harriman [W. Averell] or both let me have a slant on what the Prime Minister thinks about new relationships between Britain and India?”⁵⁸

On 2 August 1942 Enders sent a warning telegram from Peshawar to Engert in Kabul. It shows the ease with which Enders moved across the border, and that he worked for G-2 in New Delhi as well as in Kabul. Enders visited the Valley of Tochi in Waziristan, and he would visit it again on the trip to the NWFP.⁵⁹

There is nothing in the trip reports that suggest that Donovan or the OSS had any role in the initiation of the Enders-Zimmermann trip, or that Engert recorded anything about the trip in his notes, or that he made a definite statement about it after it was over. There was, however, in Engert’s correspondence an indication that something was going on at this time that was too sensitive to write about. Engert’s telegrams from September 1942 to November 1942 include several exchanges with Donovan and Charles Thayer. This correspondence shows that Engert’s communications with Donovan were intact, and Thayer later worked for the OSS, but neither man mentioned the NWFP trip specifically.⁶⁰

Completely out of context, but of interest because it involves the NLO in Karachi, on 2 December 1942 the NLO in Karachi requested permission to send a U.S. Navy lieutenant on a special mission to Kabul. Engert wrote a long response in which he did not actually refuse the request, but gave many reasons to show that it would not be a good idea, and he actively discouraged it. That was apparently the end of the matter, but the question is, Why did the NLO in Karachi request it, and what was the “special mission” the NLO had in mind? It is very likely that Enders had by this time become acquainted with the CO of the NLO in Karachi. However, there is no indication of why Smith or Enders would have initiated this request.⁶¹

The letters from Engert to Enders and others in India show his knowledge of the people involved in intelligence, if not the actual events of the trip. In a letter of 13 January 1943, Engert mentions Brigadier General (later Lieutenant General) Raymond Albert Wheeler, then commander, U.S. Forces Services of Supply in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater; and Major General Clayton Bissell, G-2. Bissell later became head of G-2 in Washington in February 1944; he continued in that position until January 1946.

MAJOR GORDON B. ENDERS, U.S. ARMY, HQ REAR ECHELON, U.S. FORCES, CBI, NEW DELHI.

Dear Major,

We are all looking forward to your return to Kabul. . . .

P.S. Please give my best regards to Generals Wheeler and Bissell, Colonel Ferris, and my old friend from Peking, Colonel Wyman. Also my salaams to everybody at the Diplomatic Mission.⁶²

It is clear that Engert saw Afghanistan as a linchpin in the war effort. He commented to the State Department on 27 January 1943, “Any weakening of the present regime [here] would react unfavorably upon the Allied war effort in the Middle East and in India.” And on 14 February, he said that when the Axis attacked Russia, “it looked as if the traditional menace from the north were eliminated or at least postponed.”⁶³

A mysterious visit was proposed in April 1943 at a very high level by an “officer of the United States Army handling Afghan matters.” It was then just as mysteriously dropped. It was understood that this officer would “enter Afghanistan openly as an Army officer and would travel in uniform” for about two weeks. It was probably General Patrick Hurley, who was then circulating in the Middle East as a personal representative of the president. The request was from Secretary of State Cordell Hull to Engert on 28 April. Two days later, Engert replied coolly, “I would suggest that a high ranking officer, nothing less than a brigadier or major general be sent out or perhaps detailed from India. . . . Quite frankly, I do not believe he could possibly collect any information which the Military Attaché or I could not obtain.” Engert is territorial enough to be on the defensive; regardless of how he felt about Enders, he protected Enders, too. Hurley was determined to get to Afghanistan, however, and he finally got there in 1944, following the trip to the NWFP that is the subject of this book.⁶⁴

On 29 April 1943 Engert stated more explicitly the Russian threat, as the Afghans perceived it: “The Afghans are convinced that when the war is over Russia will demand substantial territorial concessions of her neighbors and that neither the US nor Great Britain will be able to stop her.”⁶⁵ This led to a remarkable series of meetings in Kabul, that Engert reported on 16 May 1943, of Cunningham, governor of the NWFP; Sir Olaf Caroe, secretary to the government of India (only the second foreign secretary of India to visit Kabul); Sir Denys Pilditch, director of intelligence, Delhi; the political agent at Khyber; and the director of IB Quetta. They were in Kabul “entirely unofficially [but were] very much interested in ascertaining Afghanistan’s attitude toward India but more especially in her attitude toward Russia.”⁶⁶

Presumably because he met Pilditch at this time, Engert wrote a letter to him the next day, 17 May 1943. It is a most interesting letter because Engert introduces the word “Pakistan” into the dialogue, yet the existence of Pakistan was more than four years away. The letter was sent to Pilditch, a shadowy figure if ever there was one:

I have for some time been trying to collect a little information regarding “Pakistan,” but not had much success. I am therefore wondering if you could help me, either by referring me to some published material, or perhaps by lending me some Memoranda or Reports which I could return to you. . . .

The reason I want to study the question a little is that the Afghans are—albeit cautiously and quietly—following its development and trying to figure out just how it may ultimately affect them. . . . Quite a number of officials, including the Prime Minister, have already asked me what I thought of Pakistan, but I have always answered evasively. . . . However it occurs to me that I could perhaps be helpful to you and Caroe if I expressed myself in a sense that would be in harmony with the views and hopes of the Government of India and with the interest of a post-war world such as you and we are fighting for.⁶⁷

On 20 July 1943, at the end of his first year in Afghanistan, Engert submitted a report noting that “there is little room for doubt left in the minds of the majority of thinking Afghans that the Axis is losing the war.”⁶⁸ The “hinge of fate,” as Churchill put it, had turned.

In the summer of 1943 Engert was in India, where his daughter had typhoid; his wife was taking care of her, and he was sick, too. Thayer was in charge of the American mission in Kabul. Thayer transmitted a memo to the secretary of state on 31 August 1943 regarding the safe conduct via Karachi of the members of the Axis legations who were returning to Europe. Within a month the situation had changed, and Hull sent messages to Thayer on 14 and 16 September, encouraging him to establish contact with the Italians on an informal basis—Italy having surrendered on 8 September. Enrico Anzillotti, secretary of the Italian legation, and Pietro Quaroni, the Italian minister, remained in Kabul. Thayer said that, with regard to the tribes, “Quaroni said Axis operations have been very much hampered by inept German management. Less than a million Afghanis (80,000 dollars) have been delivered to the Faqir of Ipi. He himself succeeded in sending the Faquir only one Lewis gun and several thousand rounds of ammunition.” He continued, “Military Attache requests pertinent portions of above be communicated to G-2.”⁶⁹

Engert got back to Kabul on 1 October 1943 and sent a telegram at 4:00 p.m. to the State Department: “Returned and resumed charge today. Owing to the serious illness of my daughter in Simla I was unable to fix any definite date for my return until a few days ago. I myself was ill between August 8 and 24.”⁷⁰ On his return to Kabul, he immediately was involved in the events of the day, including brigands on the border, and the desire of Sir Aurel Stein to visit Afghanistan. He wired the State Department via Peshawar:

OCTOBER 9, 1943

Secret. I learn indirectly from the Prime Minister that four widely separated bands of robbers have during the past week held up and killed a number of Afghan travelers. One of these bands operating this side of the Khyber area had already held up several trucks when I passed through there last week; some bandits are operating near the Shibar Pass, and two bands are reported active in the provinces of the North.⁷¹

Stein had a long relationship with Engert, which had begun with correspondence in June 1922. He was attempting to complete his travels to the highlands of Asia with a visit to Afghanistan in 1943, but because he was English he was having trouble getting a visa. Stein wrote to Cunningham in Peshawar on 5 April 1943, and to Caroe on 16 July, but it was apparently from Engert’s help, not the British, that he finally got permission to enter Afghanistan. Engert wrote to the State Department: “October 9, 1943, 8 p.m. I suggest the Department inform Harvard University that Sir Aurel Stein, the distinguished archeologist, has just received permission from the Afghan Government to make a reconnaissance trip to Afghanistan.”⁷²

Stein wrote to Engert four days later, just before he left in a U.S. legation car for Kabul:

OCTOBER 13, 1943

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PESHAWAR, N.W.F.P.

Dear Mr. Engert,

Your very kind letter of the 6th inst and telegram, apparently of the 7th, greeted me on my arrival here this morning. . . . The departure on October 18th will be most convenient for me and give me a little more time for various tasks I shall be glad to dispose of before the start. I shall, of course, follow closely your kind advice about the halt at Jelalabad, etc.

I am delighted to know that you could welcome your son at Karachi and then bring your family from Simla to Kabul, fully reassured of the health of your daughter. It must be a great comfort to you and Mrs. Engert to find yourselves reunited with your children.⁷³

We see from this letter that Engert passed through Karachi in October 1943. He probably met with the consul, Clarence E. Macy, and perhaps the CO of the NLO, but there is no written record that confirms this.

Stein arrived in Kabul on 19 October. He developed a slight cold a few days after he arrived. His condition worsened, his heart failed, and he had a stroke. He died at Engert’s residence on 24 October 1943. His last written words were but a scrawl, giving a London address; these words are preserved in the Engert Papers.

There are eighteen pieces of correspondence in October, November, and December 1943 in the Engert Papers. One shows that direct personal communications were often utilized, rather than trusting anything to a written document. On 12 October 1943 a vague “same activity” is not given any additional description by either Lieutenant Colonel Edward O. Hunter of the rear echelon, Headquarters U.S. Army Forces, CBI, or by Engert. Hunter wrote,

I am most anxious to meet you and discuss several matters, so would appreciate it very much if you would let me know the next time you are in Delhi, so that I may call.

For your information I am engaged in the same activity as Col. Fleming with whom you have been in touch.⁷⁴

Engert replied to this letter twelve days later, and it was also uninformative. It was apparently too sensitive a matter to discuss in a letter, no matter how guarded the wording. On 24 October Engert wrote to Hunter:

Thank you very much for your letter of the 12th instant.

I am afraid I shall not be in Delhi in the near future [emphasis in original], although I try to go there once in three or four months. The next time I am down I shall, of course, be glad to let you know in advance.

In the meantime, I believe it to be quite safe for you to communicate with me through Colonel Fleming on the subject that interests you. Be sure to let me know if I can help. The opportunities here are considerable.⁷⁵

This Lieutenant Colonel Hunter was known after the war as Edward Hunter. He had an interesting career in the OSS in China, and later in the CIA, and he was also a journalist. He is noted for coining the word “brainwashed.” Whether he knew of AZ and the trip to the NWFP is unknown, but he surely must have known, or known of, Gordon Enders, who came to Delhi in December, and at other times before then.

In the meantime, as the memo from IB Quetta to Harris was being formulated, Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle had a conference with the Afghan minister. Berle reported this memo for the record on 22 October 1943. The minister told Berle that the Afghan government had tried hard to keep the arrests of Axis sympathizers in Afghanistan a secret, “but the British Government has decided to take advantage of the situation to put a stop to Axis intrigues also on the Indian Border.” The faqir of Ipi was reputed to be behind all of this.⁷⁶

There was another interesting point raised that “relates to the northwest frontier and to territory on the Indian side of the present frontier claimed by Afghanistan,” in which “by agreement with the British,” the Afghans “reserved their right to re-open the question should India gain her independence.”⁷⁷ This point resonates to the present day.

Engert wrote another long letter to the State Department on 4 November 1943, describing the many bands of “brigands” operating in the south of Afghanistan, with details of their numbers, provinces in which they operated, and depredations they had caused, including deaths and robberies. It is clear that the southern border was a dangerous place, at the very time Enders and Zimmermann were planning to go there.⁷⁸

Two items are in Engert’s papers during the dates of the trip, from 11 November to 15 December 1943, and neither of them mentions the trip.

HULL TO KABUL

23 NOVEMBER 1943

TELEGRAM

113. November 23, 9 p.m. The Navy Department requests (with reference to your 215 of November 5) that you convey to the Department by telegraph any additional information available regarding the possible manner and method of routing materials overland to Germany from Japan.

Hull / File No. 711.9⁷⁹

The second telegram, however, shows Engert and Thayer had a good relationship, not the just barely speaking relationship that Engert had with Enders at this time.

ENGERT TO DEPARTMENT VIA PESHAWAR TELEGRAM

4 DECEMBER 1943. NO. 235. 5 P.M. URGENT.

With my dispatch 329, November 18, I transmitted Thayer’s request for home leave. As he has not been in the United States for nearly five years he would appreciate it very much if he could be permitted to proceed to London via Washington and be granted a few weeks leave unless urgency precludes it.⁸⁰

Roderick Engert was Cornelius Van H. Engert’s son. I spoke with him by phone at his home in Washington, DC, on 13 August 2009. He was born in 1925, and he was in the American mission in Kabul when the trip took place November to December 1943. He later joined the OSS, and was a translator of Hindustani documents. He was with the OSS in Kandy, Ceylon, where he knew Julia McWilliams (later Julia Child). He later went to Yale in the class of 1950, and retired after a career as a civil servant.

I asked Roderick Engert if he had any knowledge of the trip AZ, Bromhead, and Enders took. He replied, “No, that would have been kept very secret. It was the sort of thing that my father would have discussed with Cunningham—they were in frequent communication—and he would have been careful not to let any word about it get out.” Then he asked me, “What do you know about the purpose of the trip?” I said I thought it was all about the Great Game, and he agreed. The message from IB Quetta said that it was to give the Americans a chance to see what problems the British had with the frontier tribes and how they were dealing with them, and that a Navy man was to be added to the trip for reasons that were not very clear to me. I thought maybe it was to provide some balance to the report that Enders would be making. Roderick Engert said, “Yes, I think that would be a good reason to put someone else on the trip, such as Zimmermann.” I speculated that these were the first Americans ever to make this long trip along the border, and they were probably the only ones ever to do it, and he replied, “Yes. That must be true.”

Roderick Engert said Pietro Quaroni, the Italian minister, might have provoked unrest along the border. “Quaroni was the best the Axis had in Kabul. He organized the Axis operations there, and did a very good job of it. In September of ’43 he made a clean breast of it to my father and the British minister, and my father gave him a great write up, said he was the ablest diplomat he had ever known. They became good friends after the war, and my father always looked him up when he traveled.”⁸¹

The Intelligence Officer: Harris

John R. Harris, esquire, central liaison officer, Karachi, was the British intelligence officer in Karachi. He is usually referred to as J. R. Harris. He probably knew AZ before the trip, and he certainly knew him well thereafter. He was first mentioned in the caption of a photo on 21 August 1943, at which time AZ had to forgo dinner with an incoming American general because he was, at the same time, hosting the U.S. ambassador to China, Clarence Gauss, for dinner. He was photographed with AZ on 28 December 1943, and he is mentioned on that date in AZ’s letter to BSZ.

The Staff Officer: Voorhees

Lieutenant (jg) Howard Voorhees arrived at the NLO in Karachi on 24 October 1943, bringing a personal letter to AZ from Curt Winsor, the desk officer for the Far East Section of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI/FE). Voorhees is one of several relatively low-ranking officers and enlisted men who were aware of the plans for Zimmermann’s trip. How much AZ told them about the trip is unknown, but it was probably just enough for him to get what he needed—a sleeping bag, warm clothing, a pistol and ammunition, and so forth. They had no reason to know anything more than his plan to “proceed to Peshawar and other such places.” What he was to look for was none of their business. All of their letters that might have mentioned the trip were censored at the time, and are now lost. We know the name of only one enlisted man, a chief yeoman named Frank R. Leavitt, although there were as many as six enlisted men at the NLO in Karachi at one time. Voorhees is mentioned by name at this point because he had the longest connection of any of these men with AZ, and would have learned more about AZ’s trip than any of them.

In addition to AZ and the CO, Lieutenant Commander F. Howard Smith, two other Navy officers were at NLO in Karachi in the fall of 1943. They were Lieutenant Harmon Burns Jr., who had arrived on 13 September 1942 and would depart on 28 November 1943, while AZ was on the trip; and Lieutenant Frank J. Callahan, who arrived on 3 October 1942 and would depart on 5 January 1944, three weeks after AZ returned from his trip to the NWFP. Lieutenants Burns and Callahan would certainly have known about the trip, if not the details.

Two other Navy officers arrived at NLO in Karachi in December 1943, and would soon have learned that AZ was away on a confidential mission. They were Lieutenant (jg) Walter G. Hebford, who arrived on 3 December (while AZ was in Waziristan), and Lieutenant (jg) Paul M. Baker, who arrived on 26 December 1943, less than two weeks after AZ returned. Lieutenant (jg) Philip Halla, USCG, arrived later in 1944, and would surely have learned of the trip, too.⁸²

Comments in AZ’s letters to his family, and in Winsor’s letters, suggest that Howard Voorhees may have been known to AZ personally before he came to Karachi. After Smith departed and AZ became CO at NLO in Karachi, his right-hand man—his executive officer, in fact, if not in name—was Lieutenant Howard Voorhees. (The “jg” was dropped in conversation.) He was tall and suave, a gentleman, well liked by other Americans and British military and civilians. He and AZ were often invited out as guests. All else that was known about him was that he was a Roman Catholic, and that he had no middle initial. None of the official records shows a middle initial or name, and the Navy is precise about this. He and AZ worked well together, without ever a problem that deserved mention in AZ’s letters. Every CO should have such an executive officer. He signed AZ’s orders and remained at Karachi for at least a few days after AZ returned to the United States in 1945. He then departed from Karachi for parts unknown. He remains a mystery, however, and he has since disappeared.

The Spy: Benson

Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Lindsay “Rex” Benson, MVO, DSO, MC, was military attaché of Great Britain in Washington in 1941. Gordon Enders presented Benson’s card of introduction to Sir George Cunningham, governor of the NWFP, when he was on his way to Kabul in December 1941. Cunningham’s warm welcome included dinners on two nights at Government House. Enders and the governor must have enjoyed recalling their many years spent in the high mountains of Asia, and Enders may have broached the notion of a trip along the border with him at that time. Enders was the sort of man who would have found a way to meet Cunningham anyway, but there was no one who could do it better than Benson. Benson knew India well. He had personally been to the border, and had served in Kabul. He was the right person to vouch for Enders.

Like many intelligence officers, Rex Benson led two separate lives, and because of the Official Secrets Act in Britain, it is especially difficult to get the details of the secret side of his life. The service for which he worked, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6), was not officially acknowledged even to exist until recently—although it has appeared in fiction and fact for many years. Now that the official history of MI6 has been published, one might think that much about Benson and his work would be there, but he is not mentioned by name in the index, and I cannot find him in the text.⁸³ In order to find out about Benson and what he did for British intelligence, one has to turn to other sources. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has revealed American sources, and those sources in turn have enabled an unofficial history of MI6 to be written. Some of those in Washington probably knew that Benson was a very rich man, married to an American heiress, and head of one of the largest banks in England—and that he was a relative of the head of the MI6. Whether they would have told Enders about this is uncertain, for in intelligence you only tell someone what he or she needs to know. Here is the story of Rex Benson, assembled from various sources.⁸⁴