Episode 91: The Spymaster Who Created Modern American Espionage, Part II

William Donovan's final battlefield action of World War I is to countermand an order he received to attack - an order the would needlessly cost more lives than the Irish Regiment had already lost during an ineffective battle plan draw up by their division commander. Not only does he live to defend his actions, but he is eventually awarded the Medal of Honor and the commander who issued to attack orders is relieved. After the war, he returns to Buffalo and his law practice but when he becomes US Attorney General in Western New York, he makes many enemies enforcing prohibition laws. He is all but run out of town, but lands on his feet when his legal mentor from Columbia Law School is appointed Attorney General in President Calvin Coolidge's cabinet and Donovan is asked to come to Washington to join the Justice Department... which is where he runs afoul of a young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover.  

Episode 90: The Spymaster Who Created Modern American Espionage, Part I

 

After a privileged upbringing in Buffalo, NY, an Ivy League education at Columbia Law School, and starting a successful law practice back in Buffalo, William Donovan got permission to start a National Guard Cavalry troop. Troop I started as a way for privileged young professionals to ride horses and sleep outside, most of whom had never done either (Donovan excluded). When Donovan was elected the troop's captain, he took his role seriously and though it took four years, turned them into a well-drilled military unit. The troop was deployed to the Mexican boarder with General Black Jack Pershing in 1916 to chase down Pancho Villa and his bandidos and Donovan was promoted to major.

After returning from the boarder in 1917, he was recruited to command a battalion in New York's 69th Infantry Regiment - the Irish Regiment - who was looking for Irish American officers to lead her Irish soldiers. The regimental chaplain, Father Francis Duffy personally recruited Donovan with a vision that he would one day command the entire regiment.

Donovan was promoted to lieutenant colonel, the unit was federalized and reflagged the 165th, and shipped out to Europe. Donovan soon gained a reputation for leading from the front and earned the nickname "Wild Bill." He publicly disavowed the moniker but his wife revealed that he secretly loved it. In the above image, General Pershing in pinning the Distinguished Service Cross on Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur (also a member of the 165th). Donovan (farthest right) awaits his DSC for valor in combat.  

Episode 89: A Marine in the European Theater of Operation, Part II

You may be cool, but you will never be wearing-your-service-uniform-AND-SUNGLASSES-in-German-occupied-France-while-the-Nazis-are-actively-hunting-you cool. Peter Ortiz was that cool. This week we finish the story of French Foreign Legionnaire turned OSS operative Peter Ortiz, after he jumps behind enemy lines, deep into Nazi-occupied France to stir up mayhem and cause as many problems for the Germans as he can.

What would you do if the Germans were hunting you and you happened to end up in the same bar as several German officers? I can almost guarantee that your answer to that question is completely different from Ortiz's answer -  know mine was! My answer also would not have earned me a Navy Cross.

After the war, Ortiz returned to Hollywood, and while he never made it big as an actor, he was friends with John Ford and counted a few John Wayne movies (Including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) among the 25 or so he got small parts in.

Marine Corps Colonel Pierre "Peter" Julien Ortiz died on May 16, 1988; he was 74 years old. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 59, Grave 1269.

Episode 88: A Marine in the European Theater of Operation, Part I

With his Clark Gable good looks and an appetite for adventure, Peter Ortiz left college after one year in 1932, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, and fought in the Moroccan Rif before returning to southern California and becoming a consultant in the motion picture industry. But when World War II broke out in Europe, he couldn't sit idly by so he hoped a ship back to France, reenlisted in the Foreign Legion, and was taken prisoner when France fell. To make a long story short, he escaped back to the states, joined the Marine Corps, and got back into the fight as quickly as he could.

 

Episode 87: Extra Innings - More Baseball Players at Arlington

It turns out that beside Spottswood Poles, there are six other professional baseball players interred at Arlington so I figured that I would present a short vignette for each of them. The story that stood out the most to be was baseball player turned bomber pilot Elmer Gedeon who was awarded the Soldiers Medal before being killed in action in WWII.

Army Captain Elmer Gedeon is buried in Section 34, Grave 3047

Civil War Army veteran and post-Civil War Navy veteran Oscar Bielaski learned to play ball in the service and would go on to become the first Polish American professional Baseball player.

Army Private Oscar Bielaski is buried in Section 17, Grave 17991

I couldn't find a playing picture or image of Bill Stearns, but when he was 45, after he had retired from professional baseball, he volunteered as a an Army private during the Spanish American War. He was posted to Puerto Rico, came down with malaria, and died of the disease, becoming the first Major League Baseball player whose death was directly related to military service, even if it wasn't a combat-related death. Army Private William Stearns is buried in Section 13, Grave 13931.

Doc Lavan used his initial earnings as a baseball player to pay for medical school was a player and practicing doctor at the same time. He was also a Navy doctor in both World War I and World War II.

Navy Commander John Leonard "Doc" Lavan is buried in Section 3, Grave 1352-E

Spottswood Poles is not the only Harlem Hellfighter pro ball player at Arlington. Future Hall-of-Famer Jud Wilson was younger than Poles and after serving in France, was in his prime at the height of the Negro League.

Army Corporal Ernest Judson "Jud" Wilson is buried in Section 43, Grave 1114

Hal "Hoot" Rice served as a tank platoon leader in the Pacific during World War II before playing pro ball after the war.

Army Second Lieutenant Harold Housten "Hoot" Rice was cremated and his ashes placed in Columbarium Court 5, Section MM, Column 8, Niche 3. 

Episode 86: One of the Best Baseball Players You've Never Heard of, Spottswood Poles

Record keeping was haphazard in the early days of baseball - it was even less standardized for African American players in the Negro Leagues. Even so, with the statistics that are available, we can say for certain that Spottswood Poles was one of the best. With hitting like Ty Cobb and speed that rivaled Cool Papa Bell, it is likely that if Poles had played in the heyday of the Negro League, not long before Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier, that he would be in the Hall of Fame today.

Poles baseball career was interrupted by World War I. He joined the unit that would go on to be known as the Harlem Hellfighters (see Episodes 31-32) and see some of the heaviest fighting of any American unit in the Great War. Army Sergeant Spottswood Poles was 74 when he dies in 1962 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 42, Grave 2324.

 

Episode 85: The First Arlington Burial

The first person buried at Arlington wasn't a soldier or a sailor killed in the Civil War, but Mary Randolph, a socialite who decided to publish a cook book as a way to earn money when her family hit on hard times.

Originally published in 1824, The Virginia House-Wife was the first-of-its-kind cookbook published in America. It is still in print today with its most recent edition published in 2013. Intended for a regional audience, the book emphasized fresh ingredients common to Virginia and other areas of the South.

After Mary's youngest son was injured from a fall while serving in the Navy, her cousin George Washington Park Custis, the owner of Arlington Plantation, allowed him to stay at the estate during his convalescence. Mary moved to Arlington House to care for her son and her devotion took a toll on her own health. He died and Mary passed away four years after the publication of her book, not realizing that she would continue to be one of the most famous women in Virginia for the next forty years, though the civil war.

When it became clear that Mary would not regain her health, she selected one of her favorite spots on the plantation as her final resting place, about 100 feet south of the Arlington House front porch. She died on January 23, 1828. She was 65 years old. Today her grave is located in Section 2, Grave S-6. The brick wall surrounding her grave was to protect it from free roaming cattle.