108 IB MELCHIOR CASE BY CASE 109 The value of the OB book to the interrogator, whether IPW or CIC, cannot be exaggerated. It served not only as a check on the veracity of statements and claims made by the subjects but also as a source; the knowledge of one small fact would be sufficient to release a vast fund of information. For the commander in the field, the book was of tremendous value in facilitating the planning of military operations and in judging the enemy's local capabilities. By far the largest number of officers and men at Camp Ritchie were being trained as IPWs, German, training that I also received. The schooling was as tough as it was thorough. First was a compact course in the organization of the American army, the British army, the French army, and the Italian army. Then came careful training in communications, sabotage, photo intelligence, and keeping intelligence records and in,~Wbie various other aspects of intelligence. Terrain intelligence was high on the list. Maps and1 li eof them were painstakingly studied and explained, and several times the trainees would undergo the same test I had in the OSS. They would be taken by closed trucks at night to some unknown district and handed a map of the area on which every village, stream, hill, or other terrain feature had been given a name either in German or Italian. It was up to the student to find his way back by picking out landmarks, studying the nature of the terrain, and comparing it with the map and orienting it. Asking the local population did little good for those who tried. It was difficult to make people understand that you didn't really want to go to Salerno or Bittendorf but to some little village right there in Maryland. And people were apt to become suspicious of someone with a heavy foreign accent and a foreign map asking directions. But the real purpose of the IPW course was to impart a thorough knowledge of the German army, its organization and tactics, its maps and map symbols, and its documents and records of every description. The future IPWs learned German army organization directly from the training manuals of the German army itself, until they knew by heart the exact breakdown of every type of unit, including the nmber and types of weapons and all other equipment carried. Even suci outlandish units as a Nachrichtenhelferinneneinsatzabteilung (female signal operations battalion), an Astronomischer Messzug (astronomical survey platoon), and a Kraftfahrzeuginstandsetzungabteilung (motor vehicle repair battalion) were studied and remembered. They learned German army identification, from the colors of all the various services and arms and the insignia of all the ranks, to the individual emblems of specialized jobs in the German army, right down to the special insignia of the apprentice to the noncommissioned officer in charge of shoeing horses. And they learned German army abbreviations and German map symbols-and the Germans, being a thorough race, had thousands of them, from army group headquarters to breadbaking platoons, right down to the individual bicyclist who had a special symbol that could be varied to distinguish him as the Number One man or the Number Two man of his squad. Even messenger dogs and carrier pigeons had their own symbols. And, of course, IPWs would learn the art of interrogation-always remembering that PWs were to be treated according to the Geneva convention-all the little tricks and psychological devices and ploys that would make an unwilling man talk, that would break the stubborn prisoner. The record of the IPWs' contribution and experiences on the battlefield makes exciting reading. It is not a history of a few spectacular achievements, although such do exist, but of a continuing flow of information of the utmost importance to the commander in the field. Here is just one routine periodic report from one IPW in combat in Italy, Leo Handel. The intelligence officer's summary of the information his team had given to their field commander, covering a period of five days during which an American attack was launched, reads as terse military jargon, enlivened only by a few humorous touches: Activities of 87 Mtn Inf Regt IPW Team from 20 Feb to 25 Feb 1945 The PW interrogation center of the 87 Mountain Infantry Regiment was established night of 19 Feb at map ref 505152 (vic [vicinity] Vidiciatico). The setup consisted of an interrogation room, sleeping quarters for the interrogators and attached personnel, and one cage for incoming and one for outgoing PWs. The first members of the master race to take advantage of the facilities provided arrived shaking from cold and recent experiences early morning 20 Feb. They had been captured on the right flank of the regimental sector, and as was determined later, did not know what hit them. The enemy MLR [Main Line of Resistance] running from Rocca