P.O. Box 1142: Top-Secret Intelligence Gathering in World War II

Just outside the limits of the nation’s capital, a top-secret military intelligence facility was created in 1942 with the task of interrogating high-value German prisoners of war. Code-named P.O. Box 1142, the facility was located at Fort Hunt, Virginia, on lands that had previously been owned by George Washington.

Many of Germany’s foremost scientific minds passed through P.O. Box 1142, including Wehrnher von Braun and Heinz Schlicke, the inventor of infrared detection. Not only did the camp aid in the Allied effort during World War II, the information obtained from men like von Braun had direct effects on the subsequent Cold War.

Despite its importance, P.O. Box 1142 remained a secret for decades following the war due to the sensitive nature of its operations. For 60 years, veterans who served there kept silent, sharing their experiences with no one. Recently, the surviving veterans were reunited at Fort Hunt, and a memorial was dedicated in their honor. And, for the first time, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy officially recognized them for their work. At the 11th Annual Conference, two of these veterans – George Frenkel and Dr. George Mandel – shared their experiences at P.O. Box 1142. Moderating the panel was Brandon Bies of the National Park Service, who has led the effort to record these veterans’ stories.

George Frenkel: I was born in Berlin, Germany in 1919 and spent a very happy childhood in both Switzerland and Germany, mostly in Germany. In 1933, as I am sure you all know, Adolf Hitler came to power and a very trying period ensued for members of the Jewish faith. Eventually, because we were lucky enough to have family in the United States, we managed to emigrate, and I arrived in New York.

I spent four years in New York doing menial jobs because I was a high school graduate. Then I was drafted and was assigned – as a city boy from New York who had only seen horses off and on – to the horse cavalry. This was incidentally the division that made George Custer famous. Some of my friends have jokingly said that I was probably the last survivor of “Custer’s Last Stand,” but that was a little bit before my time!

I received my basic training in Kansas and was subsequently transferred to El Paso, Texas, where the 1st Cavalry Division was stationed. In those days many of the men in the 1st Cavalry, were refugees from the “Dust Bowl” in Texas and Oklahoma, who were excellent horsemen whereas I was strictly a neophyte. I did manage to ride a horse military style.

Because of my academic background (I was fairly literate in those days) I was assigned as the personnel clerk. But I felt that my proficiencies were not properly exploited because I was a speaker of both English and German. So I tried to get into military intelligence, but I wasn’t a citizen. I became a citizen only in 1943.

Brandon Bies: Dr. Mandel, could you similarly tell us when and where you were born and how you came to this country and a little bit about your early life in the United States?

George Mandel: Actually my early history is in many ways similar to what you just heard. I was born in 1924 in Berlin. My father was a decorated World War I officer, but he fought on the wrong side because he was fighting for the Kaiser. We thought that living in Berlin was perfectly fine except that we had some American relatives who said, “You have to get out of this place.” They said this because of our Jewish background, so we emigrated to the United States in 1937. I went to high school outside of New York City in Scarsdale, New York.

Then I went onto college. I decided to major in chemistry, largely because I had a high school teacher who was teaching chemistry, and I thought that was very exciting. I was in college just about three months when Pearl Harbor was bombed. At the time America had tried to stay out of the war until this happened. The question was: What do you do next? I was told that the development of science was extremely important in the national interest, and I should by all means finish my college education in chemistry, which I did. I got a bachelor’s degree at Yale.

As soon as I finished that, I was drafted and served in the infantry for basic training. When the Army discovered that because I had lived in Germany for some twelve to thirteen years and that I spoke German, they thought that might be of interest to the American war effort. Also they thought the fact that I could use a typewriter was very significant.