When I first started looking at Opapa’s papers, I was drawn to his doodles. I’ve always liked doodles as historical sources: they offer unusual information about a person. When we doodle, we do so with less intention and as a result, doodles can be very revealing: they capture a moment in time, a thought or a feeling, or of a piece of information that would otherwise go unrecorded.
These two doodles, in particular, caught my eye. They are sketches that were tucked into a folder called “OSS files”:
These doodles, which were drawn in succession on the same pad of paper, seem to be in conversation with each other. But they leave much to be interpreted. Who is the man reading the newspaper? Who is eating the bread? And who is imprisoned?
The doodles have no date. But based on my research from last week about Opapa’s secret intelligence mission, I now think they are from Yugoslovia (and specifically, Slovenia), sometime between July 17-23, 1945. This is when Opapa and his OSS colleague Bob Perry were planning to go on a mission, and I think they were arrested soon thereafter. Here is why:
Slovenian Newpsaper: If you look closely at the man in the doodle, you can see that he is reading a newspaper with a title: Slovenski poročevalec. This translates to “The Slovenian Reporter,” and it was the name of the Slovenian communist newspaper, which ran as a daily in 1945. It was an important source of information for the Slovenian Partisans. Below, I’ve copied the July 18, 1945 edition of the Slovenski poročevalec. If you compare it to Opapa’s doodle, it has roughly the same layout (photo in top right, text in the left and center columns).
The other two clues are not directly related to the doodle, but I think they provide evidence that Opapa was imprisoned for 5 days in Slovenia:
Franklin Lindsay, Beacons in the Night: Franklin Lindsay, like Opapa, was an OSS agent. He was stationed in Yugoslavia during and after the war, and worked directly with Tito. Opapa owned Lindsay’s book, although he didn’t make any distinctive notations in it.
In his book, Lindsay desccribed his own trip from Belgrade to Trieste (where Opapa was stationed) in July 1945 — the same month Opapa was planning his secret mission to Yugoslavia. Lindsay was traveling with a member of the Slovenian Partisans but, despite this, he was arrested by the Fourth Zone partisans near Trieste. Luckily for Lindsay, his prison was “a large chalet on the shore of Lake Bled, a beautiful lake in the mountains northeast of Trieste.” (419)
Lindsay then added a piece of information that made me jump: “We later discovered that two of our junior American officers had not fared as well. They had spent five days in a Ljubljana jail because their passes were asserted to be not in order.” (419-20)
Could the two “junior American officers” have been Opapa and Bob Perry, I wondered?
Opapa’s typewritten notes:
I went back to Opapa’s typewritten notes, and noticed a new piece of evidence: Opapa mentioned Franklin Lindsay in his notes. The two men were, in fact, in contact. I suppose this shouldn’t be too surprising, since they were both members of the OSS, but it was still very exciting to realize the connection.
On July 6, Opapa sent a message to Bob Perry saying “LINDSAY EXPECTED HERE SUNDAY.” But on July 8, he wrote that “Lindsay has not come.” Now that I’ve read Lindsay’s book, I think this is probably because he was under house arrest in Slovenia.
Lindsay finally arrived in Trieste on July 9 “with 3 others,” and Opapa writes that Lindsay talked about an “inside job for Bob.” Could this have been connected to their mission to Yugoslavia?
Letter from the Slovenian ministry:
Finally, all of this information aligns perfectly with the letter from the Slovenian ministry, which I mentioned in my last post.
From this letter, we know that Opapa and Bob Perry did enter Yugoslavia, and they were deemed to be “without any right documents.” This is the same thing that Franklin Lindsay reported about the “two junior American officers” who spent “five days in a Ljubljana jail.”
With this information, we can answer (some of) the questions I set out at the beginning of this post:
Who is the man reading the newspaper?
Two options: either the prison guard (my first guess) or Bob Perry, Opapa’s OSS colleague, who probably spoke (and read) Slovenian
Who is eating the bread?
Unclear, but if Opapa was sitting at the same table as the man reading the newspaper, it was probably his food and drink.
And who is imprisoned?
George Gerbner and Bob Perry.
Case (pretty much) closed.
Excellent sleuthing, Katie! The July 17, 1945 newspaper with the photo in the upper right corner is a dead ringer for the one drawn by Opapa. And you connected him squarely with Franklin Lindsay. Great work!
Love the detective work :)