Sep 28, 2017 - Sale 2455

Sale 2455 - Lot 296

Price Realized: $ 1,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(WORLD WAR TWO.) [Darlington, Helen P.] Pair of letters from the wife of an American spy in Madrid. Autograph Letters Signed as "Buddie" or "B" to her parents Mr. and Mrs. William H. Peters in Pasadena, CA. 16, 6 pages on loose sheets of legal-sized paper; all pages struck through in pencil, minimal wear; with 3 original stamped envelopes giving H.P. Darlington as return address. [New York], 14 September and 4 October 1945
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New York native Helen Boden Peters (1908-1958) married Joseph H. Darlington (1908-1991), who was apparently recruited during World War Two to serve in the Office of Strategic Services--the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fluent in Spanish, he was sent to Madrid, where he worked with a small team of agents posing as diplomats. Spain was nominally neutral, but had close ties to Germany, and the OSS was tasked with reporting on Nazi agents and shipping. His service has not been verified in historical accounts of the Madrid bureau, though the exploits of bureau chief Herbert Gregory Thomas are well known.
After the fighting ended in Europe, the OSS remained on for several months in Madrid, tracking the efforts of the defeated Nazis to stash their ill-gotten loot abroad. In May 1945, Helen went to Madrid to join her husband, posing as a diplomat's wife--but helping with his spy work. She knew not a word of Spanish upon her arrival, but was plunged into a grueling regimen of parties and late-night gatherings at their apartment. She and her husband left Madrid in early August and then debarked from Seville on 25 August, according to passenger lists. Upon her arrival in New York, she wrote these two long and detailed letters, breaking the news to her parents that their daughter had been a spy.
Here are some excerpts from her more detailed first letter: "I was the only OSS wife to go to Spain, so my position vis a vis the Embassy was most critical. . . . The OSS people (each one in his way) were the most intelligent group I have ever seen, and each was a rare genius in his or her line. . . . Joe was the head of Spain for the OSS and of course he was wanted by the German Gestapo. . . . Even after I arrived in Madrid a man we knew was murdered by the Germans. . . . This is so confidential a letter that I ask you to burn it. . . . You cannot possibly imagine how glad I am to be in America. My time in Spain was extremely successful and extremely difficult. In Madrid, Joe knew everyone and my job was to entertain and to go to parties, which I did at the most appalling rate. . . . There is nothing a Spaniard loves so much at this moment of victory as an American diplomat. . . . My 2 months in Madrid were one long rush of events. . . . I saw & talked to his agents at the apartment many times and I met people & saw them for him. When I arrived in Madrid, I was good friends with the wife of the president of the Bullfighters Association (met her on the boat going over) . . . that was like knowing President Truman, so I brought Joe that. . . . The squeeze between the Embassy & OSS came in July and the top man in the Embassy next to the Ambassador flew to Washington to insist that this burden (as they felt we were) be removed from their backs. Amazingly he was successful and a cable came ordering the entire OSS organization in Spain to close up & go home as fast as possible."
The second letter has less discussion of the OSS, but does complain that "the Embassy actions toward the OSS come under treason, and there should be an investigation." She also notes that "Allen Dulles, the OSS man in Italy, is a friend of Joe's. . . . This letter is getting as confidential as my other one. You'd better lock it up, too." She claimed that on her return trip to New York on the USS Eugene Field, she became just the second woman ever to travel on an American battleship, after the daughter of President Roosevelt. These two letters provide a rare candid glimpse into the nation's pioneering intelligence agency.