They Passed Through Ritchie

Rosenberg spent two months in intelligence training at the Military Intelligence Training Camp at Fort Ritchie, Maryland, then followed this up with a short period of intense psychological warfare training at Camp Sharpe in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

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For a few days in 1943, the rumor rocketed around Camp Ritchie... A famous and cartoonishly muscled professional wrestler would be giving the new soldiers a crash course in hand-to-hand combat before their dispatch to the Western Front; the WWII equivalent of, say, The Rock, suddenly showing up at basic training as an instructor.

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He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in March, 1943, then made Executive Officer of the 104th Infantry Division. In October of that year he was transferred to Camp Ritchie, “probably,” he said, “because of my language skills.” Upon his arrival he was sent on to the Camp Ritchie sub-camp, Camp Sharpe, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the 2nd Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company was being developed. 

Like so many of the men who trained at Camp Ritchie, Hans Anton Pawlak was a German emigrant to this country. Unlike most of them, however, he moved to the United States in 1923, before Hitler’s ascendancy to power.

With the outbreak of World War II, Lewen enlisted in the U.S. Army. Lewen and other émigré European Jews like himself, fluent in German, were trained in psychological warfare, intelligence gathering, and interrogation techniques at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Lewen was then sent to Camp Sharpe for specialized training as part of the Third Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company.

The Army took note that Daniel was conversant in French, Spanish, German, and Italian, and he was called to Camp Ritchie to train with its 7th class in interrogation of German and Italian prisoners of war. He was one of only two Black trainees in the 7th class.

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Stephen was well-liked by his teammates and his fellow soldiers. Already at Camp Ritchie fellow soldiers shortened his family name and called him “Moose.” It was common for soldiers to shorten family names to nicknames in this manner, but Stephen reportedly acquired this particular name for another reason: he had a voracious appetite, and was always first in line at chow time in the mess hall.  

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He initially joined the U.S. Army 1942, where he graduated from OCS in the Field Artillery, where he was sent over to Northern Africa. There he was injured and returned to the U.S. to recover at the Walter Reed Hospital. He was transferred to Camp Ritchie's Military Intelligence Training Center where he graduated from the 10th Class and specialized in German tactics. As a second Lieutenant, he then became an instructor at Camp Ritchie.  

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At the end of his basic training, he was sent to Camp Ritchie, to train in psychological warfare and propaganda services. He was part of a new venture, called the First Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company. Klaus was no longer among American infantrymen; in fact, he said, “The place is jumping with old friends from Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Budapest; it is almost as if one is in a club or one’s regular coffeehouse.”

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As Herb put it: “If the government wants you to use your brains, they have to treat you humanely.” In fact, Herb said, “Camp Ritchie was the most unmilitary place in the US Army, no spit and polish there, or there was a minimum of it.”

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He was given intelligence training at Camp Ritchie in the Maryland Blue Ridge Mountains, became an assistant instructor and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant before being sent to Great Britain in September 1943.

We always made fun of the cadre at Camp Ritchie, as we had Turks, Egyptians, French, Russians, Poles, and nearly every other ethnic group. We were in classrooms a lot of the time and there was just a lot of training. I was trained as an interrogator. In the training battalion there were dozens of German Jews in my class.

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Jere threw herself into her work, was commissioned a lieutenant and, after working at the Pentagon under Oveta Culp Hobby, and  completing  her stateside service at Camp Ritchie, was sent to England to work at SHAEF headquarters. Here she directed a team of cryptographers active in translating decoded messages into English; she reported directly to General Eisenhower.

Rubén was called up for army service in January 1944, had his basic training at Fort Sam Houston, and then was sent to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie. as a member of its 18th class (April 13-June 10, 1944). Here he specialized in French. During his time at Camp Ritchie he was a frequent performer at the area USO clubs.

Akira came to Camp Ritchie as part of PACMIRS. He had already made himself indispensable by starting to file and index Japanese reference material in Washington; at Ritchie he was transferred to the Operational Intelligence Section, or Japanese reference library. He was the only Nisei, and the only non commissioned officer, to be mentioned by name in the official history of PACMIRS.

He was a classical musician, a gastronome, an historian, a biographer, and a novelist. First and foremost, he was an American journalist—one of the most widely published journalists of his age. His seemingly effortless writing style belied the effort he had had to put into acquiring written fluency in English.

Hans Habe awakened contradictory emotions in his men. They laughed at his aristocratic air, at his uniquely designed dress uniform (always carefully accessorized), and at the strange mix of Anglo-French words and expressions that colored his English. Behind his back they called him “Goldilocks,” because he added blond tints to his chestnut brown hair. But at the same time they deeply respected his contributions to the war effort.