Patrick Nolan Clark's Blog

I went to see the movie Twelve Strong which is based on the book Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan that I had read when it was first published. As with the book, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

I was glad to see the movie stressed the close relationship between the Special Forces operators and the Afghan warriors they fought with. Here in the US, I have seen first hand how many Americans, being war-weary, have come to view all Afghans as terrorists and near-savages. But many Afghan soldiers, policemen, and interpreters have fought hand in hand with Americans and have risked their lives in this common effort fighting against the darkness that is Salafism. I hope Americans can remember this and not paint all Afghans with a common brush.

And as I listen to the heated immigration argument in this country, with many defending the visa lottery rationale and extended family admission, it pains me that so many interpreters who worked side by side with our soldiers and diplomats are having trouble getting visas to come to America. Many of these in Iraq and Afghanistan are at great risk due to their cooperation. This will be an even greater risk in Afghanistan if we abandon that country. I have worked with some of these people and it just seems to me that immigrants who have proven their commitment to our cause and have risked their lives in that effort should get preferential treatment when it comes to immigration.

I have come across an organization that is helping these military interpreters obtain visas and make the adjustment to American life. It was founded by former soldiers who felt as I do. If you're interested, check it out: nooneleft.org.

Patrick Nolan Clark

The recent release of Doug Stanton's 12 Strong as a book and movie reminded me of Stanton's earlier book Horse Soldiers. Both books are accounts of the American Special Forces exploits in northern Afghanistan in the wake of September 11th. I much enjoyed Horse Soldiers, and when I got the opportunity in 2011, a few associates and I took a drive from Mazar e-Sharif into the rugged territory south of the city where the mounted ODA team operated. It is a rugged, barren land in keeping with the rugged, hardy, and often violent men and women who live there.

I have added some photos I took of the area to my author's profile. As we negotiated the dirt tracks that serve as roads in the area, we were reminded of the bravery of that small team of American men who parachuted into this harsh land to make contact with hard men whose loyalties weren't fully known or understood. One can see why the American operators resorted to horses to negotiate the mountains and rocky valleys.

I will make a point of seeing the new film. I am interested in learning where it was filmed, and I wish Doug Stanton good luck on the new book.

Patrick Nolan Clark

I have published the second novel in my series Central Intelligence Group as a Kindle e-book. The book is titled The King David: The Sun Sets on an Empire, and it will be on sale at an introductory price of 99 cents for the next month. It features former OSS agent Tom O'Brien as he and America move into the post-war difficulties.

With the end of World War II, the Palestine mandate threatens to blow itself apart. From their headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British try to keep the lid on the situation as pressure to find a home for Europe's Holocaust victims runs head on into Arab resistance to Jewish immigration. American intelligence officer Tom O'Brien is sent to Palestine to make contact with the Jewish underground to try to stop the violence while President Truman and the UN search for solutions to difficult problems. O'Brien finds it to be an impossible task as he is sucked into the moral and political conundrum. He struggles to find a balance among the competing interests of the troubled land, and finds he and his wife are in danger for his troubles.

An action novel based on true events, I hope you will enjoy it.

Patrick Nolan ClarkThe King David: The Sun Sets on an Empire

The recent immigration crisis in Europe is tragic, but I find it ironic because of the project on which I am currently working. It's a new novel centered on my OSS protagonist Tom O'Brien using the flood of refugees and displaced persons in Poland and Czechoslovakia as concealment while he operates in Soviet occupied lands at the end of World War II. Many of the refugees of that era were Jews and I've discovered the Haganah and the nascent Mossad operated quite actively and openly in Czechoslovakia to help Jewish refugees, often with the assistance of the Czech and Soviet intelligence organizations. Many of the Soviet intelligence officers were Jewish and it was only natural they would try to help their people. The recent scenes of North African and Syrian refugees crowding onto boats and trains remind me of what was going on in June of 1946. I am watching what is happening now with interest as I weave the events of the past into my story. An interesting book on the work of the Mossad and American Jewish organizations in helping the refugees flee from Germany and Eastern Europe is The Secret Alliance: The Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews Since World War II by Tad Szulic.

Similarly, the murderous conduct of ISIS in their crusade against the Christian Yazidis in Iraq reminds me of events in 1933. Although I am neither promoting nor discouraging contributions to the organization that produced it, an interesting video that poignantly depicts the current plight of the Yazidis in Iraq can be seen on YouTube at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TONAm...

I have done some writing on the similar persecutions of the Christian Assyrians, also called Chaldeans, who lived in northern Iraq in the 1930s. I wrote it for a novel I never published, but might some day. The following is an excerpt from the unpublished work concerning the persecution of the Iraqi Assyrians in 1933. The scene is the road north of Mosul, Iraq as Sam Henderson struggles to return to Palestine to get together the ransom to free his kidnapped daughter:

Malouf gently slowed the truck so that it came to a gradual stop about twenty-five feet from the advancing Iraqi soldiers. Sam looked beyond the soldiers to two figures kneeling beside the horse cart. By the time their truck came to a stop, Sam saw that the kneeling figures were a man and woman. The woman wore no veil, but wore an elaborate headdress. The man wore a felt conical shaped hat that reminded Sam of pictures he had seen in Bible school of the helmets of ancient Assyrian warriors. An Iraqi soldier was standing behind the kneeling man, holding a rifle pointed at the man’s head.
Three Iraqi soldiers approached Malouf’s truck. One came up to the driver’s window, while the other two stood in front of the truck with their rifles generally pointed in the direction of Sam and Malouf. The soldier at Malouf’s window started yelling at Malouf in Arabic, and Malouf yelled back in kind. After a few seconds of obvious argument, the soldier bent down a little and took a good look at Sam. Sam guessed the soldier had at first taken them for locals and was now re-evaluating the situation. Malouf looked like a local, but the trucks were clearly marked as Compagnie Francaise des Petroles’ vehicles, and that carried a lot of political weight in Iraq. After a few seconds more of argument, the soldier began walking back to the horse cart and joined the larger group of soldiers. The other two soldiers stood their ground, still holding their rifles half raised toward the truck.
“He says the road is blocked and no one is allowed to travel onward to the border. The border is closed, he says, due to a state of emergency resulting from the ‘mutiny’ – his words, not mine – of the Assyrian soldiers. He is going to talk to his sergeant, probably so they can figure out how much bakhshysh they can extort from us.”
“Will we be allowed to go north? I have to get over that border into Syria,” Sam said nervously. He wasn't afraid for himself, but the gnawing fear that his daughter Ann needed him ate at Sam viscerally.
“Oui, my friend. I will get us through. Don’t worry.”
The soldier and a rather portly sergeant started walking toward them. The sergeant is certainly taking his time, Sam thought. Is it a bargaining ploy, or is it just that he can’t move any faster?
Finally, the Iraqi soldiers arrived at the truck and the sergeant started yelling in what sounded to Sam like abusive Arabic. Malouf lit into him and they argued for about five minutes. Finally Malouf reached into his pocket and came out with a wad of Iraqi dinars. He peeled off a few notes, talking continuously as he did. It must not have been sufficient, for Malouf peeled off a few more notes before surreptitiously handing the money to the sergeant who palmed it and quickly put it in his pocket. “Give me a minute, Sam. I’m going to see what I can do for these poor Assyrians they have detained.”
“Are they Assyrians?” Sam asked, just beginning to understand what was going on.
“Yes, he says Assyrians are not allowed on the roads and they are going to be arrested.”
“Arrested my ass,” Sam said bitterly, having heard of the violence being afflicted on the Assyrians in the past few days.
“Exactly! Give me a minute!”
Malouf began talking to the sergeant again, and the exchange between them again became contentious. After four of five minutes of talking, Malouf again reached into his pocket and peeled off even more dinars which he handed to the sergeant. The sergeant quickly pocketed the money and began yelling at the other soldiers.
“He says he will let them go back to Tal Afar if they don’t find any weapons, but they have to finish searching their cart.”
“Do we wait?” Sam asked, afraid of either answer.
“No, we keep moving before an officer gets here or something else happens.”
“How will you know they are safe?”
“We won’t, but I’m afraid it’s the best we can do. I pray Allah will help them.”
The sergeant waved them forward and the soldiers started to clear a way for them. As they drove slowly by the kneeling couple, Sam could see two young children in the horse cart. They were crying and hugging each other. The young couple stayed on their knees as Malouf drove by, but the soldier no longer had his rifle pointed at the husband’s head. Sam could see that the wife was very pretty, and tears were running down her cheeks. She and her husband both looked very frightened.
Malouf had to drive off the road to get around the horse cart. Malouf pulled back onto the road and slowly drove on, watching closely in the mirror to see if they let the Assyrian couple get up off their knees. After a couple of minutes they went over a small rise. Sam turned to look back and could no longer see the cart or the soldiers. “Did they let them go?” he asked.
“Not yet, but by Allah’s mercy, they will. Insh’allah!”
Later, when Sam learned that several thousand Assyrians, including women and children, had been slaughtered during the week, he wondered what happened to the little family. He would always wonder and would never be able to forget the mournful look on the young mother’s face as they had driven past.

I am opposed to the administration's deal with Iran. Don't get me wrong, this is not a black and white issue and I could well be wrong in my assessment. I'm more like 60-40 in my opposition. There are compelling arguments on both sides of this. I have two friends - one a retired CIA officer and another who fled Iran as one of the Shah's relatives in the 1970s - who both argue in favor of the deal. But my purpose in writing this isn't to argue pro or can, it's to point out what I feel are frightening parallels to events in Europe that led to World War II. The bellicose threats by Iran remind one of Hitler in his early days as Führer. At the time, commercial interests served to mask the rhetoric coming from Hitler as today they patronizingly rationalize recent utterances from the theocratic regime in Iran. Not surprisingly, many of the actors in today's drama were key players in yesterday's tragedy. In this dangerous world, it would be wise to draw some lessons from history.

Russia Until six months after Hitler came to power in 1933, the Soviet Union allowed Germany the use of secret bases in Russia to train future Luftwaffe pilots and Panzer commanders in violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Soviets got technology transfer out of the deal and were willing to tolerate the ideological divide for a time. In 1936, despite increasingly strident anti-Soviet rhetoric by Hitler, the Soviet Union's economic interests trumped politics. Stalin went forward with a trade agreement with Germany that provided Hitler with metals and oil he needed for Germany's rearmament. Two years later, Hitler was ready make his move and Czechoslovakia came into his sights. The Soviet Union had a treaty obligating it to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia, as did France and Britain. The Soviets made the appropriate, but half hearted, pronouncements supporting Czechoslovakia as Hitler moved to occupy the Sudetenland, but when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler and announced "peace in our time," Stalin folded and Czechoslovakia was doomed. In the following year, Stalin negotiated the infamous non-aggression treaty with Hitler that led a week later to the invasion of Poland. Ostensibly a move to buy time to prepare the Soviet Union to be able to defend itself against Germany, it also involved a land-grab: a secret protocol to the pact that split Poland and the Baltic states between Germany and the Soviet Union. The non-aggression pact alleviated Hitler's fear of a two front war, as the Soviet Japanese non-aggression pact six months before Pearl Harbor relieved the Japanese of that fear. The result of these Soviet miscalculations led to world war and tens of millions of deaths.

France The French too mouthed worthless platitudes in defense of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The difference was that on paper, the French had a powerful army larger than that of Germany and probably could have backed Hitler down if they'd truly stood up to him. This was certainly the case in 1936 when Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland on horses and bicycles, another violation of the Versailles Treaty. "They have a right to station troops within their own borders," those who feared armed conflict said. "The Versailles Treaty was unreasonable and unjust." These are positions I personally agree with, but the mistake was in letting Hitler and the Nazis be the ones to right those wrongs. There were also commercial interests at play. Many of France's business people and industrialists leaned toward fascism and admired Hitler. They argued against standing up to Hitler. By the time the Czech crisis peaked, two years later, the risks of opposing Hitler were greater, but not beyond the capability of France and Britain, particularly if the Soviet Union had stood with them. But they all folded and paid a price for it later.

Germany Germany was the aggressor, but Hitler couldn't have succeeded in seizing power and launching a world war without the support of German industrialists. When it became apparent the monopolistic capitalism inherent in National Socialism would allow them to maintain their power and riches, the industrialists jumped in with both feet. Accepting slave labor into their plants and turning a blind eye to the death camps, they built the war machine Hitler needed.

America As the crisis in Europe escalated, the United States hid behind its two oceans hoping the storm would pass them by. A futile hope as it turned out. Still smarting from the death of a hundred thousand American soldiers in World War I, most Americans saw the European crisis as something far away that had nothing to do with them. But American businessmen weren't put off by the distance. It was business as usual between America and Nazi Germany until well into the war. Building truck factories and helping Germany develop synthetic rubber and fuels they would need for the coming war, American businessmen helped build the German war machine.

Iran Iran was also a player, but they were a victim of the war that came out of the European crisis. In August 1941, as depicted in my novel A Strange Murder in the Persian Corridor, Britain and the Soviet Union launched an armed invasion of Iran. The Soviet efforts to assuage Hitler having failed, they were in desperate need of arms and supplies as the Wehrmacht approached Moscow. The railway that ran through Iran from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet border was seen as the solution to get American Lend Lease supplies to the Red Army, and it was seized by force. Blood was spilled, the Iranians capitulated, and Britain and the Red Army occupied the country for the duration of the war. In 1953, in response to fears of increasing Soviet influence in Iran, the CIA and the British MI6 conceived an operation to drive left-leaning Prime Minister Muhammad Mossaddeq out of office. The "Western Democracies" for some reason chose Fazollah Zahedi, a former Nazi sympathizer the British had arrested during the war, to succeed Mossaddeq. These are all events the Iranians remember well, and they don't help our efforts to affect regime change and moderation in Iran.

Today we are being told the agreement is the proper course because the rest of the world will move forward without us to remove the sanctions on Iran, that the vile rhetoric coming from the Iranians is for internal political consumption and shouldn't be taken seriously, and that the Iranians have an inherent right to pursue a nuclear power program. To me, these arguments all have a familiar ring.

I just finished reading The Third Man by Graham Greene. I hesitate to criticize such a well respected author, but a found the prose a bit clumsy and at times hard to understand. I wondered if others have read the book what their thoughts are. It was a good story written my a former MI6 officer and I still recommend it. I just wonder what others on Goodreads think?

In researching my next book, in particular some details of the Battle of the Bulge, I came across the 333rd Artillery Battalion. Two companies of this segregated "Negro" battalion were caught behind the lines when the Wehrmacht jumped off on its Ardennes Offensive, and along with other orphaned units wound up being stranded in Bastogne with the 101st Airborne Division. The 333rd fought with distinction at Bastogne and suffered heavy casualties. A tragic event was the torture and execution of eleven soldiers of the 333rd by SS troops after this handful of Americans was separated from their company in the village of Wereth, Belgium. The highly ideological SS troops who found them were inculcated with the Nazi Aryan supremacy philosophy that considered peoples of African descent as sub-human. Similar atrocities were committed by the SS on French Senegalese troops and other African colonial troops having the misfortune to be captured by the SS. I salute the troops of the 333rd and all the other American soldiers who made their heroic stand at Bastogne.

I have been working on the preface for my latest novel, tentatively named Camel Beach Red, and thought I would share it.

This is my fifth novel, all written as part of the Tom O'Brien: OSS Agent series. All five are centered on America's involvement in World War II. I have considered writing historical fiction about other time periods, but keep coming back to the this war. I ask myself why, why do I have such a fascination with this particular period of history. Part of it is personal. I was born during the war, two years after Pearl Harbor and almost two years prior to Hiroshima. I had uncles and cousins who fought in the war, my father was killed in the war, my stepfather was a B-29 mechanic on the island of Tinian, and my wife's father was a tail gunner on a B-17 and a prisoner of war in Germany. But there is more to it than the personal element.

World War II marked a sea change in the history of this country. Before Pearl Harbor, America was isolationist, had a second rate military, and was a country with few colonial interests. We came out of the war as one of the world's two superpowers, economically as well as militarily. Roosevelt's "arsenal of democracy" began its evolution into President Eisenhower's "military industrial complex." The knowledge that he had the atomic bomb at his disposal came to Harry Truman only after his president died and left him in charge. Four months after Truman learned of the existence of this revolutionary weapon, he was faced with the morally excruciating decision as to how to use it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki radically changed the world and the perception of America, for better and for worse. President Truman also inherited the world's most powerful navy and air force, and powerful ground forces that had proved their mettle in battlefields from Wake Island to Morocco, as he faced a shift in focus from Germany and Japan to the Soviet Union as the greatest enemy of the Western democracies.

Psychologically we were moved from being dragged reluctantly into a war with Germany, to being dragged reluctantly into near war to save Germany after the war. We went from a country staunchly opposed to European colonialism to one supporting the grip of the British and French on their remaining colonial empires, including such problematic colonies as Algeria and Vietnam. We became the mainstay of a NATO that stood against our former Soviet allies and we got used to the concept of America being the "world's policeman." During the war, young Americans were sent to such diverse places as Tunisia, Iran, Burma, and China, and brought back a new awareness of exotic cultures. After the war, the GI Bill changed our system of university education. Little in America was ever the same again after V-J Day.

The end of the war marked the beginning of the Cold War and the prolonged and frightening nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. More significantly, it marked our acceptance that we could no longer sit in isolation behind two vast oceans that protected us, that we had to step forward and take a position of leadership in the world.

Why did I choose the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, as a vehicle for my fiction, one might ask? The OSS marked another sea change in American thought. It was the transition from a philosophy espoused by Henry Stimson as Secretary of State between the wars that, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," to a recognition that the collection of intelligence could make the difference between war or peace, between victory or defeat if war could not be avoided. The OSS also introduced the synthesis of intelligence gathering and special operations as epitomized in current CIA and JSOC doctrine.

I believe World War II was a transformative event for America and the world, and that significant lessons can still be drawn from it as America faces the challenges of the future. I will stick with it for a while, hoping to use fiction to shed light on some lesser known facts and to connect dots that have gotten little attention in the past. I just hope my stories are entertaining as well as educational.

A recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post concerning the crisis in the Ukraine referred to the massacre of more than thirty thousand Jews at Babi Yar in Kiev during World War II. I have written of this incident in my book The Taurus Express: Double Cross Gone Wrong. I tried to recreate what the experience must have been like for the victims.

The scene is Kiev in late September 1941 and the Germans have driven the Red Army out of the city. The SS has ordered all Jewish citizens of Kiev to assemble for transportation to "resettlement" facilities.

Sabrina had been ten years old. When her mother told her they were taking a train to be resettled and to pack those things she would need when they moved into a new house, she was upset and fearful about their future. Her mother had tried to feign optimism, smiling and laughing nervously as she delivered the news of the move to her daughters, but Sabrina could see through the facade. She knew her mother was deeply worried. Her sister Tamara flitted about the house with the same disingenuous smile on her face picking out those things she would take on the train. Tamara was fifteen and was beginning to think of herself as a woman, but Sabrina could see that she too was just a scared young girl.

Tears came to Sabrina’s eyes when her mother began removing items Sabrina wanted to take on the journey. “We will have a long walk to the train,” she told Sabrina gently, “and God knows how far we will have to walk when we arrive at wherever they are taking us. We can only take what we can carry and what they will allow us to take on the train.” Sabrina’s mother was trying to calm her, but the fact that her mother did not even know their destination deepened the sense of dread that was building in Sabrina’s mind.

Some in the Jewish community of Kiev thought it a positive sign that they had been ordered to assemble for relocation on the day before Yom Kippur, that no harm would come to them over the sacred holiday. Sabrina saw it as a sign of disrespect to their religion and took no solace from it.

They arose early that morning. Their mother had insisted they arrive at the designated intersection of Melnikova and Doktorivska streets early so they could get a good seat on the train. They walked in darkness to the intersection where they were to assemble and found there was already a large crowd of Jews waiting for instructions. Sabrina shivered as they waited. Her coat and sweater were insufficient to keep her warm in the pre-dawn chill. She found some comfort in snuggling between her mother and her sister but was miserable and frightened.

After the sun came up, they were ordered by the Germans to form a line and begin walking to the gate of Kiev’s Jewish cemetery. It was no longer quite so cold, but the mood in the line seemed to darken as they moved toward the cemetery. As they came close enough to see the gate, Sabrina could see that the Germans had set up a checkpoint, and that the carefully packed bags and bundles were being taken from the Jews and piled up behind Wehrmacht guards. “Maybe they are going to load them into baggage cars for us,” Tamara said hopefully.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” their mother reassured them, but none of them really believed it. Sabrina knew her mother had brought their documents and valuables, as they had been told to do, and that she had jewelry and the family money concealed in her coat.

As they approached the checkpoint, Sabrina asked in a quavering voice, “Why aren’t they taking the luggage to the train, mama? They are just stacking it and there is no way to tell whose luggage is whose anyway.”

“I don’t know, Sabrina. I’m sure they have a plan,”

What a shame that our differences with the Islamic world, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran, have made some of the great cities of antiquity unavailable to us. In researching for my new book, A Strange Murder in the Persian Corridor, I was looking for exotic cities for my characters to visit and reviewed the ancient cities of Iran - that at present we Americans cannot visit - with which I was familiar: Susa, Qom, Ecbatana, Persepolis, Ishfahan and Shiraz. In my research I learned of the ancient city of Gor, which is not too far from Shiraz, and have set much of my story in these two cities.

Gor was a vibrant city well before the time of Christ. It was flooded and destroyed by Alexander the Great and was rebuilt by King Ardashir I, who had it laid out in a circle. The circular outline of the ruins of this ancient city can still be seen on Google Earth, just north of the modern city of Firuzabad. Shiraz too was a city of culture, religion and the arts before the birth of Christ and is famous for its wines and sherries. The city has been home to diverse cultures and reportedly still has a sizable Jewish population with a few Christians living there as well.

I would love to visit these famous cities of Iran, but sadly politics and religion - and the insidious confluence of the two in today's Iran - have made that impossible. I have gotten to visit many of the historical cities of west Asia - Jerusalem, Jericho, Amman (the original Philadelphia), Jarash, Petra, Baghdad, Kabul, Herat - and am grateful I had the opportunity to do so. I flew about a hundred and fifty feet over the ruins of Babylon, but alas, that city too was out of bounds at the time. I have flown over the Iranian Plateau several times, but too high to see the Iranian cities mentioned above. Not too long ago it would have been possible to visit Damascus and Aleppo in Syria and I thought about it, but that too is no longer possible for most Americans.

These cities all played a part in our larger Western history. It's just too damned bad they are so inaccessible. I hope I am able to give readers an entertaining glimpse of Shiraz and Gor even though I cannot visit them.