It takes courage to be a spy. The women who volunteered to be spies and came to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) unit attached to the 36th Infantry Division–with which I was serving in the Vosges Mountains of France in the fall of 1944–had plenty of courage.

As soon as our OSS unit debarked on the Riviera on August 16, it was apparent that the Seventh Army campaign in Southern France would be unusual. The army's lightning advance in the first two days caused plan after neatly conceived plan to be scrapped. Two days after D-Day, it was evident that the Strategic Service Section's (SSS) plan to work only at army level was ineffective, and on August 18 (D-plus-3), small SSS detachments were dispatched to the three divisions of the Seventh Army.

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The experiences of the SSS detachment working with the 36th Division comprised two very different phases–the period prior to the crossing of the Moselle River on September 21 and the period of the advance from the Moselle to the Meurthe River.

After the 36th Division crossed the Moselle, the fluidity of the front decreased. Opposition became increasingly fierce as the division approached the Meurthe River in the Vosges region, and the relatively stationary German front became harder to penetrate.

There are no hard-and-fast rules of procedure for securing intelligence by infiltration through enemy lines. Recruiting, briefing and infiltration must be adapted to the peculiarities of the existing situation. Most of the agents our detachment used were locally recruited for specific missions in the region that the 36th Division was operating in at the time.

Our main sources of agents were the various Free French Intelligence (FFI) organizations. France was rich in courageous men and women whose hatred of the enemy made no risk insurmountable to them. Women were found to be valuable for short-range intelligence work. They attracted less suspicion in enemy territory than men, and although they usually lacked the necessary background for reporting technical data, they were often able to extract otherwise-unavailable knowledge of German military intentions from enemy officers.

For several days after the 36th Division crossed the Moselle in late September, the 3rd Division, operating south of the 36th, lagged behind and had not yet reached the river. This left the 36th Division's right flank exposed, and the division command was extremely worried that the Germans might counterattack on that flank.

The division needed information on German plans, but our recent experience with agents had not been good. The Germans were obviously taking greater precautions against agent activity, so there was a great need for agents with better 'cover.' Fewer intelligence operations with better planning were also a must.

On October 1, it was decided to put two 29-year-old women, Odette and Simone, who came from the FFI at Epinal, into enemy territory, placing them as close as possible to the town of Granges sur Valonne. They were remarkably good spies. One had been helping the Maquis resistance fighters for two years, and the other had been in the intelligence game for six months.

I took them to Tendon by jeep, but there was a roadblock 500 yards beyond the town, on the road toward Le Thuly. I turned back, and though there was scarcely a minute during the trip when we could not hear the sound of cannons and small-arms fire, we reached St. Jean de March. There I found the nearest American outpost. There were infantry patrols in the hills to the right and left of the town. No Americans had yet gone down the road to Houx. Nobody knew for sure if there were Germans in the town or not, but it was assumed that there were.

I proceeded down the road to Houx with Odette and Simone; we went to within 200 yards of the town, where I could see it. There the road turned and was under observation by Germans on the many hills beyond the town. I left Odette and Simone there and returned to our lines. Their instructions were to infiltrate the German lines and return to Lepanges that night.

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