“You can’t succeed without taking chances.”

– Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan, OSS founder

“I’m responsible for a group of very dangerous senior citizens.”

– Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society

Ask any American adult about the CIA and there’s a good chance he’ll be able to identify its basic intelligence-gathering functions. Ask the same person about military special operations and he’ll probably be able to speak somewhat about the Green Berets in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ask him what he knows about World War II’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and he’ll likely stare blankly at the question. Such is the state of public knowledge about America’s first central intelligence agency.

The Office of Strategic Services was the first organized American intelligence initiative, conceived and put into action on June 13, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the advice of the top British intelligence officer in the Western Hemisphere, William Stephenson (known as “the man called “Intrepid”) and William J. Donovan, a World War I hero, leading attorney, and an informal advisor to the president. Prior to that time, intelligence gathering was achieved on a piecemeal fashion. With the commencement of hostilities and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the need for a central intelligence office to amass information, analyze it, and make recommendations for appropriate action became clear overnight. During its brief lifetime, just a few months short of four years, the OSS overshot these goals, setting the stage for the creation of both the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. special operations forces (SOFs). Eschewing the limelight, its recruits performed amazing feats of derring-do befitting the movies, and counted among its operatives several Hollywood figures such as swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Academy Award-winning director John Ford, and Sterling Hayden, who won a Silver Star for bravery behind enemy lines. The majority were above-average Joes, and some Josephines, recruited from the ranks of the U.S. military, along with civilian trades and well-traveled intellectuals. An ideal OSS candidate was once described as a “Ph.D. who can win a barfight” and Donovan described OSS personnel as his “glorious amateurs.”

The man who assembled this stellar cast was perhaps the biggest and quietest swashbuckler of them all: Medal of Honor recipient Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan. Donovan was one of those larger-than-life characters who strides across the landscape of history when he is needed most. He had been performing ad-hoc intelligence work well before Dec. 7, 1941. Roosevelt called Donovan his “secret legs.” Since that time, military and intelligence professionals have appreciated and admired Donovan’s depth of perception and breadth of vision. Richard Helms, director of central intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973 and an OSS alumnus, said: “He was truly the father of American intelligence. Before him, our efforts were trivial.” Donovan’s personal qualities became the recruiting criteria for the infant OSS: a potent combination of brains, brawn, and bravado.

Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan poses with members of the OSS Operational Groups, forerunners of today's U.S special operations forces, at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., which served as the primary OSS training facility. OSS Society photo.

Recruits were encouraged to improvise and innovate. Donovan placed a high value on initiative and courage, saying that he would “rather have a young lieutenant with enough guts to disobey a direct order than a colonel too regimented to think and act for himself.” He encouraged risk-taking or, as he called it, “calculated recklessness.” He backed up his people when they stumbled. However, these unorthodox principles didn’t win friends within the regular military and government circles. William J. Casey, one of Donovan’s OSS recruits and DCI from 1981 to 1987 remembered, “You didn’t wait six months for a feasibility study to prove that an idea could work. You gambled that it might work. You didn’t tie up the organization with red tape designed mostly to cover somebody’s ass. You took the initiative and the responsibility. You went around end; you went over somebody’s head if you had to. But you acted. That’s what drove the regular military and the State Department chair-warmers crazy about the OSS.”

This is the part of Donovan’s legacy that lives on in the special operations community. Two units within OSS, the Jedburghs and operational groups, forerunners of today’s U.S. SOF, parachuted into Europe and Asia behind enemy lines to work with resistance groups. They had to become instantaneous peacekeepers and diplomats when dealing with partisan bands bent on revenge against certain elements of their own countrymen, improvising all the way. Nearly anyone can be trained to be a killer. Only the very best can synthesize the attributes of citizen, soldier, spy, and diplomat into one remarkable human being. With an outrageous élan, OSS was an organization designed to do great things. What Ford said about Donovan applied equally to OSS: “Gen. Donovan was the sort of guy who thought nothing about parachuting into France, blowing up a bridge, pissing into Luftwaffe gas tanks, then dancing with a German spy on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel.” This was the OSS ethos.

War does not last forever, and in April 1945, Donovan’s strongest supporter, Roosevelt, died. The succession of President Harry S. Truman to the presidency meant trouble for Donovan and the OSS. It was a clash of personalities and wills from the start. Donovan’s iconoclastic leadership style simply did not mesh with the organizational-man mindset of Truman, who knew little about intelligence gathering. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a longtime Donovan and OSS nemesis, drew out his long knives. With his signing of an Executive Order on Sept. 20, 1945, the Office of Strategic Services was no more, its activities split up between the Department of War and the Department of State. Just two years later, however, the need for one main intelligence organization became apparent as the Soviet Union emerged from World War II bent on surpassing its former allies. Passage of the National Security Act in 1947 found the Truman administration creating a new clandestine agency to replace the defunct Office of Strategic Services, the Central Intelligence Agency, using a plan created by Donovan. Most of its early members were OSS alumni.

Adm. Eric Olson presenting the OSS Society's Distinguished Service Award to Dr. Christian Lambertsen, father of American combat swimming, at the 2009 William J. Donovan Award Dinner. OSS Society photo.

But most demobilized OSS personnel scattered across the county, either picking up professions interrupted by the war, advancing in rank within the military, or committing themselves to lives as public servants. Donovan himself returned to the practice of law for a time, serving as special assistant to Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals. After obtaining justice for OSS personnel killed, sometimes gruesomely, by the Germans, he went back to his highly successful Wall Street law firm while still offering his unique experience and insight to American presidents, eventually serving as ambassador to Thailand for a year under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Upon learning of Donovan’s death in 1959, Eisenhower said: “What a man! We have lost the last hero.” Other OSS graduates continued careers in the intelligence community. Allen Dulles, William Colby, Helms, and Casey went on to lead the CIA. To a man, each credited Donovan for setting worthy goals and core values for their community. Other OSS veterans such as Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, who was a member of the Jedburghs, remained in the military and left an indelible mark on what was to become the U.S. Army Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, and other SOF communities among the service branches.

The men and women of the Office of Strategic Services shared a brief and unique experience under Donovan’s tutelage. Unable to truly share their tales and life-changing experiences with others who served in World War II, it was perhaps only natural that they would stay together after the war. Thus, the Veterans of Strategic Services (VOSS) was born in 1947 as a means of keeping the organization’s spirit alive. Estimates of the number of OSS members during the war are in the range of 13,000. Of these, perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 participated in the activities of the VOSS at its peak. Initially social in nature, VOSS evolved over time to preserve its unique history and to honor those who followed in Donovan’s footsteps. The first William J. Donovan Award®, which honors the outstanding attributes of the OSS’s founder who had passed away in 1959, was presented to Dulles in 1961. Other recipients have included Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan, Lord Mountbatten, Sir William Stephenson, Gen. David Petraeus, and Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. Ross Perot will receive the award this fall at their annual dinner in October.

Charles Pinck, president of The OSS Society. John D. Gresham photo.

In the late 1990s, as its members were aging and concerned that the contributions of Donovan and his OSS might be forgotten over time, VOSS changed its name to The OSS Society and moved its headquarters from Rockefeller Center in New York City to Washington, D.C. The son of one of the VOSS members, Charles Pinck, urged his father, Dan Pinck, who served behind enemy lines in China, to attend one of the last big gatherings of OSS veterans in the mid-1980s, an event populated with people like Casey, Colby, and Helms. Intrigued and inspired by his father’s OSS service, Pinck volunteered to help VOSS when he moved to Washington in the early 1990s and became president of The OSS Society in 2002. Today, Charles Pinck is a man on a mission to keep the memory of OSS alive, and to apply lessons learned by the OSS in World War II to present-day challenges. The OSS Society recently held a symposium, for example, with the Joint Special Operations University (“Irregular Warfare and the OSS Model”) that is available online at www.ossreborn.com.

The OSS Society is no longer limited to OSS veterans. Its members include descendants of OSS veterans, current and retired members of the U.S. intelligence community and U.S. special operations forces, academics, and others with a serious interest in the OSS. Its board of directors includes Adm. Eric Olson, Gen. Bryan Brown, President George H.W. Bush, and five former directors of central intelligence.

In addition to presenting the William J. Donovan Award, The OSS Society also bestows its Distinguished Service Award. Usually reserved for OSS veterans, there have been notable exceptions, such as it’s presentation to an Eastern European partisan, Maria Gulovich, who saved the lives of an OSS team in Slovakia. In 1946, Donovan personally awarded Gulovich the Bronze Star at West Point in front of the Corps of Cadets, the first woman so honored. In 2009, the recipient was Dr. Christian Lambertson, Ph.D., who was instrumental in the development of combat rebreather systems for the OSS and post-war SOF organizations. The OSS Society publishes The OSS Society Journal, offers research assistance and speakers upon request, hosts an online discussion group with more then 1,200 members, and has erected OSS memorials throughout the United States.

Pinck’s major goal is the creation of an OSS museum in the Washington, D.C.-metro area. “This wouldn’t be just an archive or a library, but a fully interactive museum that would tell the remarkable story of Gen. Donovan and OSS and the contributions made to it by all our military services. Too few Americans know about the OSS: The most remarkable organization ever created by the U.S. government.” But at its core, the OSS Society will always be about the values and achievements of the OSS and its founder, Gen. William Donovan. For in the middle of the greatest conflict in the history of the world, for a few years, it was OSS that put forward America’s best, brightest, and bravest.

To learn more about The OSS Society, please visit its Web site at www.osssociety.org

This article was first published in The Year in Special Operations: 2010-2011 Edition.

This nursing deficit comes at an especially alarming time as the baby boomers become senior citizens beset with the diseases of aging. The nursing shortage will not resolve itself without some fast and effective means of growing the supply of care providers. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) anticipated the gap early and began taking steps to fill it. Its initiatives are shaping the way the private sector will meet the challenge.

While the reasons contributing to the nursing shortage are manifold, there are key issues facing both the private sector and the VA. A widespread nursing faculty shortage contributes to the turning away of qualified students in baccalaureate nursing programs, while an insufficient number of clinical sites dampen clinical education opportunities. Anticipating the shortfall, the VHA began developing an array of innovative strategies for filling the need for nurses in the very near future.

“The expanded role of the Department of Veterans Affairs in the education of nurses will ensure the department has the nurses needed to continue our world-class health care for veterans. The VA Nursing Academy [VANA] expands the teaching faculty, improves recruitment and retention, and creates new educational and research opportunities,” according to Dr. Linda D. Johnson, then-director of the program, in the report by the National Commission on VA Nursing, 2002-2004, “Caring for America’s Veterans: Attracting and Retaining a Quality VHA Nursing Workforce.”

The VHA began exploring which course of action it would take to ensure the recruitment and retention of nursing students as early as 2004. First, it decided to establish national policy guidelines for schools that would be comparable to the VA’s medical school model instituted in 1946 and actively promote nursing school affiliations. To enhance the status of nursing with the VHA, the organization worked toward creating a sense of value and mutual respect between and among other medical professionals and organizational stakeholders at all levels.

Dr. Mary B. Dougherty, RN, MA, MBA, DNSC, the national program director for the Veterans Affairs Nursing Academy, described the initial concepts of her organization and its mission. She said, “Acting Deputy Secretary Gordon H. Mansfield began looking at some ways to facilitate innovation and help move the mission forward, both within the academic community and in the delivery care community. Out of that came the concept of developing essentially a five-year pilot to assess its ability to contribute to the education of nurses as well as impact or perfect the care delivered on the veterans’ side.” Dougherty continued, “There was a peer review of each applicant and decisions were made for each of the three years as to which sites would be awarded this grant for the pilot program.

“On the faculty side, on the college side, they would have loved to increase their enrollment but they didn’t have the faculty and they didn’t have the clinical sites. What is value-added about the college sites is that obviously their focus is on research, scholarship, and the research on evidence-based practice, as well as just gerontology, as well as trauma, etc.” The idea was to create partnerships, not parallel processes that wastefully duplicated what was already in operation. “We could create a force multiplier that would add value to the veterans, add value to students, add value to the college, and add value to the staff nurses.”

The Enhancing Academic Partnerships Program facilitates closer cooperation and collaboration between nursing schools and VA facilities. Dougherty explained, “It combined two entities into a partnership that would enable the Veterans Affairs facilities with their extraordinarily competent, high-quality, academically well-credentialed nurses to work with the academic institutions as faculty and would also allow the academic sites to work within the VA teaching students, contributing to the service, working with the nursing educators, working on faculty development, as well as partnering within the persistent changes, and to explore innovations both in education as well as in the patient care delivery models and practices.

“The goals, to be more specific, were to enhance faculty and professional development of the VA nurses, increase nursing school enrollment primarily in baccalaureate programs, provide opportunities for innovation, education, and practice, and increase the improvement and retention of the VA nurses as a result of their enhanced role in nursing education.”

According to Dougherty, the main thrust was to add value to the VA’s nursing education while increasing the recruitment and retention of nurses. Relatively scarce, VA nursing faculty members are augmented by the expertise of senior nurses who are highly skilled, knowledgeable, and intelligent. She explained further, “The senior VA nurses involved in this program are quite expert, well-credentialed, many of them doctorally prepared, with significant years of experience, with many publications and much research, who are now given the opportunity to expand their knowledge, so to speak, through faculty development programs and participation on the university side, whether that’s in faculty meetings or human development meetings, scholarship meetings of that sort.”

Adapting a technique from the field practices of the U.S. Army, the VANA has also begun embedding staff nurses within its affiliated nursing schools and VA facilities. It’s a win-win, not only for nursing students but also for the veterans they care for. “This became a sort of synthesis of knowledge, experience, and value, which is enhancing not only the education but also enhancing the care for the veterans, as well as providing a very rich and fertile ground for the staff nurses that are working on the embedded education use. It actually allows us to refine some processes so that it brings more value to the veterans,” Dougherty said.

Dougherty expanded on some aspects of this initiative, saying, “[The Academic Partnerships Program] is virtual in the sense that it’s managed through my office. It’s initiated through a request for proposals. We have articulated what the overarching goals are and what the expectations are, in terms of the number of new students recruited each year, the number of faculty that are authorized based on the increase in students, what the expectations are relative to practice and education and innovations, faculty development for the VA faculty. It’s a virtual organization but it’s a partnership that enables the schools to increase their admissions or increase the number of slots in their nursing programs that was limited before because they didn’t have the faculty.”

The interface between senior VA nurses and young nursing students has taken some interesting turns. The younger generation’s familiarity with computer technology, their introduction to it beginning in preschool, offers another teaching strategy. “Schools are experimenting with gaming technology to teach patient safety to young student nurses. When you begin to think of our age, the younger generation seems to be much more comfortable with interactive and different types of technologies. We’re experimenting with using the same type of technology to educate and focus the individual on safety issues that are of concern in the best care of a veteran.”

There have been some surprising developments from these synergies, not just from a clinical perspective but also from the veterans’ point of view. Dougherty said, “We have a partnership in Ashville, N.C., with the Charles George VA Medical Center and Western Carolina University School of Nursing. Together, they developed an interactive, interdisciplinary education series focusing on the experiences of veterans and their influence on clinic, clinician, caring, and prevention. Together, the faculty of the school and the faculty based in the VA, the nurses, have developed topics which included ‘Introduction to War and Generations,’ ‘Winning Veterans’ Issues,’ ‘Caring for the Elderly Veterans,’ and ‘Grieving and Loss in the Veteran Population.’ For the [latter topic], they brought together veterans of Vietnam and World War II to discuss their losses during combat and their needed effort in struggling to go forward with life.

“To some, this may seem like a minor issue, but for us it’s a focus on our core mission, which is to really provide the absolutely best we can to our veterans. And to do that, we have to have a true appreciation of what they’ve gone through in defending us and enabling us to have all that we have in the United States of America.”

The student nurses gained invaluable insight into the values and experiences of the veterans they care for, providing a deeper understanding of issues that lie far beyond the physical manifestations of health issues.

Dougherty credits part of the success of the program with the Veterans’ Pride movement. “There is more and more awareness in the academic community of the value of these veterans in terms of their leadership skills, their commitment, their integrity, and their caring for each other. How do we help them leverage that through various scholarship programs in a way that we can get them into a clinical program, or get them into an educational situation so that they can appropriately care for themselves and their families in the years ahead?

“As to providing value to students and increasing supply, one very positive outcome that we’ve seen in just the short two years is that there are more and more students opting or requesting to come to the VA for clinical placement or to be part of VANA clinical education and learning. The more people see value in working within the VA and the more the students see the opportunities for increased learning in the VA, the more active the VA becomes and the more it becomes the employment of choice.”

The VHA’s early recognition of a looming nursing shortage and the actions it took to ensure excellence of care to the nation’s veterans began with a visioning process that took wing. Partnering with existing academic nursing programs, the VANA encouraged synergies and eliminated costly duplication of effort. This vision is today manifest in a curriculum that incorporates the efficiencies of technology with a holistic approach to treating the total veteran. In addition, it encourages the growing of more nursing faculty members, enabling more qualified baccalaureate admissions, ensuring an expanding supply of nurses to fill not only current vacancies, but that will provide expanded capacity as a large portion of the United States’ population ages.

The VANA’s initial price tag of $59 million in 2007 resulted in the creation of 14 centers around the United States. They are:

Western Carolina University, Asheville, N.C.; University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala.; University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii; Pace University, N.Y. (Manhattan & Brooklyn); Waynesburg University, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, S.C.; University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Saginaw, and Saginaw Valley State University, Battle Creek and Ann Arbor, Mich.; University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.; Loyola University Chicago, Hines, Ill.; University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Okla.; Rhode Island College, Providence, R.I.; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego State University, San Diego, Calif.; University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla.; and Fairfield University, West Haven, Conn.

This article was first published in The Year in Veterans Affairs and Military Medicine: 2009-2010 Edition.

Design work on what would become the LRPV began in 1987. Essentially, the old Land Rover Series 2A (with a 2.25-liter gasoline engine ) was used as a template for development of the LRPV, with the inclusion of ideas from the classic British SAS “Pink Panther” Land Rovers providing unique modifications. An almost total redesign of the base Land Rover 110 was needed if the LRPV were to meet the needs of the SASR, and in particular the chassis and suspension required a more complex configuration than the older Land Rovers had. The designers went to work, and the first generation of LRPVs went operational in 1989.

The power plant used in the LRPV is a turbocharged four-cylinder, 3.9-liter Isuzu 4BD1diesel engine, which delivers a top speed of 59 miles per hour. Feeding an engine of this size requires oversized fuel tanks to hold 365 liters (80.3 gallons) of diesel, enabling the LRPV to travel 1,600 km (994 miles) without refueling. Auxiliary “Jerry” cans of fuel can be mounted on either side, usually near the tailgate.

A 119-inch wheelbase was required to handle the 6×6 capabilities of the LRPV. As with all the Land Rover 110 variants, the LRPV featured constant four-wheel drive. However, the LRPV was equipped with a vacuum-operated inter-axle differential lock that fitted into the standard LT95A transmission. When activated by the driver, the vehicle is transformed into a six-wheel drive behemoth. Because of the sheer size and weight of the LRPV, it is fitted with a 4.7:1 differential, rather than the standard 3.54:1 used in the 4×4 version.

Troops of the Australian Special Operations Task Group during Operation Slipper dismount to confer during a patrol in July 2002. In the background is an LRPV mounting a .50 caliber heavy machine gun and 7.62 mm Mag 58 medium machine gun, among other armament. Australian Department of Defence photo by Cpl. Wade Laube.

Transporting equipment, sufficient fuel, team members, and armament creates quite a load on the LRPV. The crew compartment features threeseats and two doors, and to handle the extra weight, the LRPV is designed with coil springs in the front. The leaf springs in the rear are designed with a load-sharing rocker on either side for better weight distribution. While a base Land Rover 110 has a rated capacity of three quarters of a ton, the much beefier LRPV is rated at two tons.

Safe and efficient weight distribution has continued to be a concern throughout the various models of the LRPV. Early configurations saw the spare tires mounted on the brushbars in front and on either side of the Thomas winch in the rear. Perforated Steel Plates (PSP) for ballistic protection are affixed in the later versions to the brushguards in front, while the spare tires were remounted on the sides. Normal armament for the LRPV are a pair of FN 5.56mm Minimi and a Mag 58 7.62mm machine guns. Additionally, there are rear stowage lockers on either side of the rear bed of the vehicle. Anticipating occasions when a motorcycle might be needed to traverse a more rugged piece of territory, mounting brackets for a Suzuki 250 cc trail bike are also provided on the rear bumper.

The old 2A Series patrol vehicles of the 1970s taught the Australian SAS some important lessons regarding rollover hazards to vehicle occupants. In the LRPV, the now-standard Roll Over Protection Steel (ROPS) frame functions as support for the canvas soft-top variant. In addition, given the attention to ruggedization, the LRPV is equipped to handle being tied down on a ship’s deck, dropped from an aircraft, and being recovered by an RAAF Hercules transport. The first generation of the JRA 6×6 Long Range LRPV is now long retired, and the last generation is due to soon be phased out. Out of an original production run of 600, 27 LRPVs are still in operation, mostly operating in Afghanistan.

Specifications:

Engine: Isuzu 4BD1, Turbocharged, 3.9-Liter Diesel, 4-Cylinder

Transmission: LT95A , Modified

Differential: 4.7:1 Vacuum-Assisted, Inter-Axle

Armament: Typically  2 MINIMI, 1 FN Mag 58 7.62mm machine gun

Crew: Typically 3

Capacity:  2 Tons (1.8 Metric Tons)

Length: 119 in. (302 cm)

Top speed: 59 mph (95 kph)

Fuel capacity: 80.3 gal. (365 liters)