As the nation pauses to remember and honor the military veterans, especially those of “the Greatest Generation,” they might take a moment to offer thanks to women, like the tiny Damariscotta woman who spent World War II in London, France, and Switzerland serving her country.
Cordelia Hood, now 93, sometimes wore a fur coat when she parlayed her talent for languages (French and German), a bit of spunk, and a lot of brains into a job with the OSS.
She was a spy.
As the bombs and buzz bombs rained down on London, she learned to sleep despite the racket and danger. Later she boarded a secret flight into France with Chuck Yeager, and worked for American spymaster Allen Dulles in Switzerland.
Along the way, she had several adventures that would make James Bond sit up and take notice, like her adventure with a college pal, and frequent dancing partner, Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci (yes, that Pucci).
As the war wound down, Pucci, a member of an old and powerful Italian family, sought American help as he tried to smuggle Mussolini’s eldest daughter and her kids out of Italy, after the Germans executed her husband, a former Italian foreign minister.
Dulles, who later headed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wanted to get his hands on the former foreign minister’s diary, she said.
“Mr. Dulles wanted information out of the diary to use at the Nuremberg war trials of German leaders,” she said.
When she speaks of Dulles, she always calls him Mister Dulles.
She said she had known Pucci from college where they were both skiers. He later became an Italian Air Force pilot then switched sides toward the end of the war.
“Emilio was a dashing character and a beautiful dancer. We loved to dance. He was very mad when I married my husband (another Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent),” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
Cordelia Hood was in her 20s and attending a German college when the Nazi’s took over.
Her father wanted her to come back to the states. Instead, she took a river cruise and went skiing.
When she finally came back to Washington, D.C., her language skills took her to the Pentagon. When she figured out she could go back to Europe, she signed on with the OSS, the main American intelligence gathering organization. It was the forerunner of the CIA.
In London, she worked on several top-secret projects becoming one of the few people that knew the British had captured a super secret German cipher machine known as “Enigma.”
“We were able to break the German Naval codes. This saved thousands of American lives and hundreds of ships. Breaking the Luftwaffe’s secret code allowed us to pin point their air attacks,” she said.
In London, she said she worked in a big building that had been bombed so many times, the winter wind blew through the cracks in the walls. When she and her friends got off work in the evening, the streetlights were off so they walked with flashlights on the way to the station where they rode the underground (subway) home.
The subways were one place where people could be safe from the bombing.
“There were thousands of people sleeping in the underground stations, many of them were children,” she said.
“One evening, my friend and I were invited to the Army Officers’ Club for Thanksgiving dinner. It was one of the few times we got to eat fresh food, including fresh oranges.
“My friend and I gathered all the oranges up. When we went to the underground stations, we placed an orange next to each sleeping child. It was the least we could do,” she said.
She still remembers the “doodlebugs,” the V-1 flying rocket bombs that targeted London.
“You would hear their motors. When they shut off, you dove into a doorway or some other cover. That was when they glided down and exploded.
Later, when the V-2 rockets were shot at London for the first time, British officials tried to conceal their existence by telling the public the explosions were gas mains blowing up.
“They were terrible. One landed on an area where American soldiers like to go. Awful,” she said shaking her head.
After a while in London, she was ordered to Switzerland, where Dulles was the station chief.
She flew into Lyon on a midnight mission to deliver two former German POWs into Switzerland. The two were on a mission to sneak into Germany to measure the height of the Rhine River as part of the preparations for the Allied invasion.
She flew on the same plane with Chuck Yeager, an American ace fighter pilot who later was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.
“The fighting was still going on. The runway was potholed from bombs. Yeager praised the pilot, an injured fighter pilot doing duty flying a transport, for his skill. Yeager said he did it despite having a belly full of shrapnel,” she said.
The Americans in Switzerland were supposed to send a car for her and the two Germans, but the Battle of the Bulge broke out and they were afraid they would get stopped so they stayed home. The situation called for a bit of initiative, she explained.
“I thumbed a ride with a GI for myself, and my two German speakers.
“I had to keep them from speaking German. You see, the French hated the Germans and everybody thought there were still a lot of German infiltrators around. You are going to get us shot if you don’t quit speaking German,” she said she told the two.
Along the way, the GI told her to sit in the front seat. If the border guards stopped us, he told her to pretend she was his French girlfriend.
“I was wearing my grey fur coat and looked the part,” she said.
Although Switzerland was a neutral country, the Germans were permitted to do anything they wanted as long as they did not do anything against the Swiss. So could the Americans.
One of her chores was to find clothing for downed US pilots.
“They would land their crippled ships in Switzerland, and the Swiss would confiscate all war materials, including the pilot’s flying suits. Sometimes they were left only their skivvies,” she laughed.
After the war, she said the OSS became the CIA. She and her husband moved to Europe as they worked as Cold War warriors.
“We started working against the Germans, but all along, we were working against the Russians. They were our allies, but were working against us all along,” she said.
Along the way, she and her husband, a Portland, Maine native, bought a house at Pemaquid Point. When they divorced, she got the Maine house.
Today, the retired spy lives with her sister on the banks of the Damariscotta River where she recently reflected on her long career in the intelligence community.
“I met such interesting people,” she said.
“It was fascinating work. That is all I can say.”
