Proceed to Peshawar. George J. Hill
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