The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was created during the Second World
War to be a central collector, producer, and disseminator of foreign intelligence. Its
secondary role of clandestine warfare did not come easily. One OSS unit, Detachment
101, surmounted numerous problems to become a model clandestine and special
operations unit able to create its own indigenous army that waged war behind Japanese
lines in Burma. This study uses previously unexplored primary source materials from
the OSS records held by the U.S. National Archives to examine the unit and its
organizational changes from 1942 to 1945.
Detachment 101 succeeded in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI) for the
simple reason that it was able to function independent of immediate control from either
the U.S. Army or OSS main headquarters. Source documents reveal that the unit’s
commander was left on his own to decide how the unit would operate, and how to
incorporate various OSS branches and capabilities into its operational matrix. The CBI’s
lack of resources dictated that the Detachment 101 had to streamline its efforts to be successful. Its officers needed to get acquainted with the entire operation and then
integrate their disparate elements into where they best fit as the whole.
An exploration of the documents reveals that each of the unit’s two commanders
molded the unit into an organization that reflected their personalities. Colonel Carl F.
Eifler, was bold and impetuous and modeled the group to accomplish any task—even if
it could not. Colonel William R. Peers, focused the group’s efforts on assisting the north
Burma campaign. Under his direction, the unit rapidly became a much more cohesive
unit able to help the Allies win control of north Burma. His direction was instrumental
in Detachment 101’s first real test; the Myitkyina Campaign. Examination of the
primary documents uncovers that by the end of the war, the unit had become so
successful and so flexible that it was the only ground combat unit fighting in north
Burma, and was able to adopt a variety of dissimilar missions. Although other OSS
combat operations gave exceptional service, none was as central to the conduct of an
entire campaign as was Detachment 101.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-3280 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Sacquety, Troy James |
| Contributors | Linn, Brian McAllister |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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