The 301st Radio Broadcasting
and Leaflet Group

SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

Most of the stories that we write are about PSYOP units in the heat of battle. We illustrate the leaflets and posters they printed, translate their loudspeaker messages, and discuss the general philosophy of their war. This story is a bit different. We used to say, “Many are called but few are chosen.” The same is true in the military. Many units are put together in a great rush, hurriedly trained and deployed overseas. However, they are not always sent into battle. Often, they are deployed to replace another unit that has gone to the front. That was true to a great extent recently in Operation Desert Storm where most Reserve medical units replaced hospitals overseas so that active duty troops could deploy to the war zone. In the case of the 301st RB&L Group they were the first to bring a PSYOP unit to Germany during the Korean War. With the North Koreans on the attack, troops were training frantically at Ft. Riley. About half of the new Psywarriors in training were sent to Korea or Japan, the rest to Germany.

It 1950, the United States Army had little interest in psychological operations. Their field manual sums it up thusly:

The outbreak of the Korean conflict, in June 1950, was to be the first major postwar test of countering the emerging threat of communism. In 1950, there was only one psychological warfare unit; the Army had no PSYOP plans, no PSYOP doctrine, and virtually no trained PSYOP personnel despite the success during WWII.

Staff Sergeant Bob Rudick stands by the sign of the
301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group at Fort Riley, Kansas, in the summer of 1951.

When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, the Tactical Information Detachment at Fort Riley, Kansas, was the only operational psychological warfare troop unit in the Army. After its deployment to Korea, the detachment became the 1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company and it served as the 8th Army’s tactical propaganda unit throughout the conflict. By April 1951, Major General Robert McClure requested the activation of the 1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group to assist the Far East Command (FECOM), in conducting strategic propaganda; the 2nd Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company at Fort Riley, Kansas, a prototype unit; the 5th Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company at Fort Riley, scheduled to be sent to FECOM but actually deployed to Boeblingen Military Sub-Post, Germany; and the 301st (Reserve) Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group, to be trained at Fort Riley, and then shipped to Europe. No sooner had the two groups been deployed than a third, the 6th Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group was formed at Ft. Riley. They were not deployed and eventually ended up at Ft. Bragg, N.C. General McClure moved quickly to assist FECOM in its organization and conduct of both psychological warfare and unconventional warfare, while he concurrently helped the European Command prepare for the employment of both capabilities in the event of war with the Soviet Union.

Some of this story is told by retired Colonel Alfred H. Paddock in U.S. Army Special Warfare, University Press of Kansas, 2002:

Spurred by the war in Korea and persistent pressure of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, the Army created the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare (OCPW) in early 1951 under the leadership of Brigadier General Robert. A. McClure…

McClure was embarrassed at the lack of trained officers ready for psychological operations positions. He had warned after WWII the United States needed to keep a cadre of trained PSYOP officers. He had the 301st RB&L Group called up and shipped to Germany. However, as some members later learned to their dismay, they came very close to being deployed to Korea. Paddock adds:

The decision to ship the 301st RB&L Group to Europe was itself fraught with controversy …General Willoughby, G-2 (Intelligence) Far East Command, felt that the assignment of the 301st to his command would be the most practical solution to its urgent needs, and McClure initially agreed. A decision, however, by the Army Staff G-3 (Operations) to honor the corresponding and prior need expressed by the European theater forced McClure to backtrack. Instead, he shipped to the Far East Command the 1st RB&L Group, a prototype unit stationed at Ft. Riley.

The National Broadcasting Corporation Building

In the late 1940s, the 301st (Reserve) Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group met one weekend a month in the studios on the National Broadcasting Corporation in New York City. The unit was made up of about 35 reservists. Bob Rudick worked for NBC as a studio engineer and had been invited to join the unit on numerous occasions. He had previously served as a corporal in the 258th Field Artillery Battalion of the New York State National Guard on 155 mm howitzers. The Reserve unit wanted him because of his radio experience and contacted the Adjutant General the State National Guard to arrange for the transfer.

With the onset of the Korean War, Bob decided it was time to look again at the Reserve unit. They offered him a staff sergeant position and he accepted. In a very short time he was surprised to receive orders stating that the entire unit was being called up and sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas for training. In those days, all of the PSYOP units were trained at Ft. Riley. On 1 May 1951, SSG Rudick found himself in Kansas as a member of the 301st RB&L Group. He was probably spared going to Korea with the 1st Group because he spoke German. At this time it was certainly just the luck of the draw where you were assigned.

301st Commander Colonel Elsworth Gruber (sixth from left)

Mike Paschkes’ story is similar with just a few minor differences. He joined the 301st in the fall of 1950. He says that the reservists were primarily advertising people, and he was brought in by a co-worker at an advertising agency. He then brought in some high school and college friends. The commanding officer was Colonel Gruber, a linotype setter by day for the NY Daily News.

Mike had already taken his draft physical, so the Army drafted him right out of the 301st and sent him to the 540th Field Artillery Battalion at Ft. Bragg. He says: 

I kept in touch with Colonel Gruber, and after a few weeks was transferred to Ft. Riley into the 5th Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company. One day, the Company Commander called me in and told me the 301st was being activated and was coming to Ft. Riley. He offered to let me re-join them. When I asked what they would be doing, I was told 16 weeks of infantry basic. I said thanks but no thanks.

In August 1951 the 5th Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company was shipped to a beautiful panzerkaserne in Boeblingen, Germany. I stayed with them for about six months as a writer and was then transferred to 7th Army Headquarters as an editor of the 7th Army Sentinel. I was sent to Non-Commissioned Officers school in Munich and was the honor graduate, but promotions were frozen so I came home in January 1953 still a Private First Class.

About a dozen years after I first wrote this story, Dr. Jared M. Tracy of the U.S. Army Special Operations Magazine Veritas wrote about the 301st in an article entitled “Psyche - the 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group,” in volume 10, issue 1 of 2014. Let me quote a short passage from that article quoting the unit history:

…the 301st travelled by train to Sullivan Barracks, a former Nazi Wehrmacht compound…The first sight of Sullivan Kaserne with its solidly constructed buildings, modern plumbing, and semi-private room design, did much to raise troop morale…

The 301st Prepares to Deploy

The picture above was on the cover of the May-June 1951 NBC Chimes. It depicts the farewell party for the NBC military unit. From left to right we see: Colonel Ellsworth Gruber, Commanding Officer of the Psychological Warfare Group; NBC President Joseph H. McConnell; Bob Barron; and Captain Bill Buschgon, Commander of the NBC Detachment.

Veritas mentions several PSYOP projects started in August 1951:

The 301st produced original Psywar materials for training purposes. These included a leaflet “to incite work sabotage among Communist-held prisoners of war,” and “to encourage their hopes for eventual liberation and freedom.”

A half hour documentary dealing with the Communist Youth Rally in East Berlin…printed leaflets and safe conduct passes; and posters on subject ranging from demands for the release of William Otis (An American publicist held by the Czech government) to a series designed to sell America to Yugoslavia.

PSYCHE

It is interesting that the Veritas article was entitled Psyche. I note that the 301st RB&L Group used that name for its monthly journal. Here is the February 1953 issue.

The Psyche Volume 1, number 4, gives a history of the 301 RB&L Group (Edited for brevity):

In the summer of 1947, the seed which eventually flowered into a highly specialized unit was sown in an organized, Reserve Military Intelligence Group in New York City. Subsequently, this 301st in the budding, merged with a Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company, also in New York. Thus, with one stroke of the pen, it gained new blood as well as the formal unit designation: 30lst Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group.

Training of the group progressed until that fateful day in March when the unit received news of impending activation. On the 1st of May, an advance contingent of officers and enlisted left for Fort Riley, Kansas, followed several days later by the remainder of the unit. Thus the 301st was born.

Despite the involuntary activation into Federal service, the men were exceptionally buoyant and moral was high. These men came imbued with confidence in themselves, their officers, their ability to carry out successfully any given mission in Psychological Warfare. This presaged a productive and constructive future for the unit and for the Army.

The non-veteran element of the enlisted personnel commenced their formal military training - six weeks of hell and fire. Emerging as full-fledged soldiers, the group concentrated their activities on Psywar training and by mid-August was sufficiently advanced to warrant a first propaganda effort. By this time, rumors were rife as to the probable destination of the unit. In August, official notification was received from Washington to prepare for shipment to Germany.

A series of inspections began early in September, lasting well into October with the unit successfully passing each one. Climaxing this preparation for shipment overseas was a visit and address by General McClure, then the Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division. He praised the unit for its achievements and indicated what might be expected of the Group overseas.

After a short but thoroughly enjoyed freedom in New York, the unit boarded the USNS General R.E. Callan. On the 7th of November, the ship’s screws began to churn and she headed slowly out to sea. After an uneventful journey, marked only by exceptionally heavy seas, the Gen. Callan docked in the wee hours of a cold November morning. The troops moved directly from the ship to a waiting train which took them to Waldhof, Kafertal, Mannheim, their new home. Arriving, the group immediately tackled the seemingly insuperable problem of setting up "house" once again.

By zest and enthusiasm, these problems were met successfully and solved. By late November, elementary instructions in German were instituted for the benefit of those not familiar with the language. Classes continued till March when they were discontinued. An examination revealed that most of the students had advanced beyond the "Wo ist der Bahnhof" (Where is the train station), stage to the infinitely more practical "Wie heissen Sie" (What's your name?), and "Bitte, commst Du mit Mich" (Please, come with me level). At the same time, a training period, heavily flavored with essential military subjects, was begun and completed.

In the meantime, other outfits encountering the 301st came to regard it with reverential awe. "Where else in this best equipped, best fed, best informed, most intelligent Army in the world, could one find an outfit whose mean AGCT test level is over 120, and where there are more truck drivers with bachelor’s degrees than most outfits have in their entire Group?" Such factors spread the name and fame of the 301st throughout Germany.

Colonel Gruber, who had commanded the 301st from its inception, left for home amid fond farewells on 16 August 1952, and Colonel F. A. McCulloch, present Commanding Officer, arrived to assume command. This transition of command took place smoothly and work on the various projects continued as usual.

In November, the first wave of Reservists left for home and separation from service. Despite the departure of these "charter members" and the arrival of their replacements, the character of the unit remains unchanged and its reputation continues to grow. It was particularly enhanced when the unit adopted an orphanage in Pforzheim; feted the children with a gala Christmas party, and in many other ways looked after their needs.

The record which the 301st has achieved from its inception to the present time is, indeed, an enviable one. The men are proud of their unit and justly so. The unit that was born under the towers of New York, forged in the hot Kansas sun, and sharpened in the fog of a cold German winter remains, as it always shall, the 301st.

The 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group was mentioned in Veritas, the Journal of Army Special Operations History in volume 11, number 1, 2015. Dr. Jared M. Tracy continued the story with “PSYCHE: The 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group, Part II.” He says in part:

The 301st was functionally organized and chartered to conduct strategic Psywar…The Group had three missions…Conducting strategic Psywar with leaflets and radio broadcasts, assisting U.S. 7th Army’s 5th Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company, and supporting the U.S. global propaganda campaign. However, in accordance with U.S. national policy, the 301st RB&L did not engage in Psywar because Germany as not a combat zone.

The 301st Mobile Radio Company

The best part was that most of the people were NBC employees and as a result already knew their business. Often new units are put together with people of various backgrounds and it takes a long time for them to bond and be trained to an acceptable level. In this case, the majority of members were radio people already so they were able to hit the ground running. The unit soon started to receive draftees, but most were either college graduates, instructors, professionals or writers. Since it was the height of the Cold War, all the unit members were required to get a clearance. Allegedly, some of the New York City members had their entire apartment building interrogated, in one case 65 families.

SSG Bob Rudick plays tanker as his riggers lift the antenna.
PFC Art Martin believes he is the soldier on the antenna in the background

The unit was made up of three companies; Headquarters, Mobile Radio Company, and the Leaflet Company. Some of the staff were sent on temporary duty assignment to Quincy, Illinois to be trained by the Gates Radio Company. They were assigned professional riggers and taught how to install a 180-foot radio tower in a chicken farm outside of town.

Speaking of the tower, Art Martin was also a member of the 301st Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company. He worked on erecting the 180-Foot tower and its maintenance, as well as the PE-95 generators, the emergency Hydrogen barrage balloon and a long-wire antenna. The model PE-95 generator was made by D.W. Onan & Sons for the US Army Signal Corps starting in 1944. The unit weighs approximately 1550 pounds and is powered by a 4-cylinder Willy’s Jeep engine.

He remembers driving the two and one-half ton truck full of hydrogen cylinders used to fill the barrage balloon from Sullivan Barracks cross country to maneuvers in a forest.

He spent much of his workday in a portable equipment shelter in the bed of another REO 2-1/2 ton truck. The M35 truck is in the 2 1/2 ton weight class and was one of many vehicles in US military service to have been referred to as the “deuce and a half.” The basic M35 cargo truck carried 5000 pounds across country or 10,000 pounds over roads. The M35 series formed the basis for a wide range of specialized vehicles. The M35 started out in 1949 as a design by the REO Motor Car Company.

His task was radio intercept: voice-to-tape and teletype hard copy. He had a BC-610 multi-band short-wave transmitter inside the shelter. The BC-610 radio transmitter is a medium power r-f transmitter which will transmit AM or CW signals over a range of more than 100 miles. The BC-610 radio transmitter assembly is made up of three chassis.  The top chassis includes all of the r-f components. The center section contains most of the audio and modulator equipment.  The bottom chassis includes the h-v power supply and overload relay.  The three chassis are assembled in a sheet steel cabinet with a front panel upon which the external controls and metering instruments are mounted.  The cabinet is bolted to a shock-mounted base.  The weight is approximately 400 pounds.  

The Troop Ship S.S. American Scout

Private First Class Martin told me about his trip to Germany and his duties there in more detail in November, 2010:

I didn't sail with the main units of the 301st nor did Edward Mangold or 1st Lt. Mosher. From Fort Riley we were off to the Brooklyn Army Base to await arrival and loading of the electronic equipment from Gates Radio Corporation onto the S.S. American Scout. She left Brooklyn between February and April, 1952. I don't have any paperwork to verify the dates. We were housed at the Brooklyn Army Base while there.

We were the only three unit members aboard the American Scout. Ed and I had the daily tasks of inspecting the hold-downs on the two trailers and mobile shelters on deck during the gray, rainy days and rolling seas that followed. Much of the equipment was still in their original shipping containers. After a couple of days, Ed and I were able to visit the bridge at night when things were less busy for the crew. Going up the English Channel one night we were able to take some readings using the radio direction finding equipment on the bridge. We actually spotted some minor errors in the ship’s navigation.

We arrived in Bremerhaven and were soon on a passenger train to Mannheim. Once there, a jeep driver drove Ed and me up to Sullivan Barracks. Soon afterwards our equipment arrived. The boxes of antenna parts were up in the second floor of one of the motor pool garages. There they sat until the decision was made to put it together and erect it out in the field where the transmitter trailer was located.

We painted every other mast section with red lead paint to provide enhanced visibility when it was erected. I don't know if the concrete base was pre-cast or poured by the engineers. The bottom insulator was bolted to the concrete base. The three ground anchors were positioned and screwed into the semi-sandy soil to use as temporary anchor points to assist in the assembly using the heavy duty insulator to support the first (and later all the antenna sections) until about 1/3 of the sections were in place. The first section was balanced on the insulator and temporarily guyed. Then the remaining pre-assembled sections, alternating silver (galvanized) and red, were bolted together, using temporary guy wires to keep all the sections as near vertical as possible.

Once the lower third was in place, more sections were assembled until the next guy wire location was reached. The guys were attached and adjusted to maintain the section's vertically alignment. This process was repeated up to the next guy attachment point and then repeated until the top section was bolted on. The aircraft warning lamps were attached and wired. Final adjustments to guy wire tensions and final adjustment to assure a vertical alignment just about finished the erection.

Colonel Gruber could be justifiably proud. No one got injured on the job. Finally, the aircraft warning lights wiring to the tower was connected to an electrical supply and the transmitter trailer was tied in to the lowest antenna section. That was the hard job. The tower erection took about a week after the concrete base was in place, since the sections were pre-assembled and painted while still at the motor pool. The top-most aircraft warning lamps were wired-up one late afternoon just as a good-sized thunderstorm was advancing from the direction of Mannheim. I finished that job as quickly as possible before the storm reached us.

After the tower was complete, I spent most of my duty hours monitoring various radio frequencies to be tape recorded and teletype print outs for interpretation by the intelligence section utilizing the equipment in the radio intercept shelter: a BC-610 multi-band tube-type transmitter, an antenna multiplexer (used to minimize signal fade were tuned to the same frequency using two widely-separated antennas) which was connected to a multi-band shortwave receiver. We could also record voice broadcasts on magnetic tape as well as teletype messages printed directly by the teletype printer. It was a very versatile setup for its time. I miss that equipment and would have had great fun with it after I received my amateur radio license! It was a great time and I don't regret one second of it.

Corporal Herb Herman was a member of the Headquarters Company of the 301st from 1951 to 1953. He talked about the many members of the unit that were college students, especially those like himself from New York University and 1st Lieutenant (professor) Albert Somit. He recalls that the unit met in the NBC studios next to the Tonight Show that starred Jerry Lester, Morey Amsterdam and the voluptuous Dagmar. I may be showing my age now, but I remember all of them.

Order of the Dodo Bird

The printers of any PSYOP unit are called upon to make many “gag” items. Here the 301st makes fun of itself and presents its members with the order of the Dodo Bird.

He recalls that after 90 days in Germany every member of the unit was awarded the “Army of Occupation” medal. He adds that a good number of the unit personnel had language skills and were used to translate radio transmission and printed material. The analysts within the unit compiled and catalogued intelligence.

Several of the men were then put through an infiltration course three times because they were expected to be sent into Germany on a “secret” training mission to set up a radio. After each round of training the mission was cancelled.

Not all of the men in the 301st RB&L Group deployed to Germany. Former Sergeant Adrian Ettlinger told me that he was drafted into the U.S. Army in January, 1949. His term of enlistment was initially 21 months, but late that year, army policy changed and draftees were released to the reserve after 12 months of service, so he was discharged in January, 1950. He could choose between five years in the inactive reserve or three years in an active reserve unit. He said:

In civilian life I had been a facilities design engineer at the Columbia Broadcasting System, with an electrical engineering degree specializing in electronics. I was first assigned to the 317th Signal Heavy Construction Battalion, an active unit sponsored by New York Telephone Company, which met in a building in lower Manhattan on the waterfront which was a major Telephone Company base. When I reported to my first meeting, I found various troops in a large hall practicing climbing telephone poles and training in pole line construction.

I told the First Sergeant that my I knew nothing of pole climbing. He sent me to a Master Sergeant in charge of reserve assignments for the New York City area who told me that he had received a letter from a Captain who commanded the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company of the 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group sponsored by the National Broadcasting Company. I met the captain, Bob Barnaby, an NBC engineer, in the RCA building, close to where I worked at CBS. He encouraged me to join the unit. They met once a month in an NBC studio, which very convenient for me, and I decided that a quick three years in an active unit would be preferable to a long five years in an inactive unit, so I joined.

<>I found the monthly meetings quite interesting. We had a Major who had been active in the French Underground and really understood Psychological Warfare. Then, we got the “bombshell” news that the unit had been activated. I was a Private First Class at the time, but, I was immediately promoted to Corporal, and after spending two weeks in that rank, became a Sergeant immediately after going on active duty. I believe just about every enlisted man in the unit went up two grades in the process of going to active duty.

At Ft. Riley, I found a friend in the Group’s Sergeant Major, Roland Rose. I spent much of my time working for him. The unit, which was, in size, really the equivalent of only a company, was classified as a Group and commanded by a full Colonel who I believe was a Press Foreman at the N.Y. Daily News. It was required to maintain files of Army Regulations down to the level which was required of a Regiment. To compile such a set of regulations was a substantial clerical task, a responsibility that I took on. This involved much paper work, preparing many pages of requisitions listing just about every regulation in existence. The office which distributed the regulations was unable to send all the required documents, and they came in by dribs and drabs for months afterwards.

I believe I was the only enlisted man in the unit with an engineering degree. In fact, the only officer I knew who had a degree was Lieutenant Bob Barnaby who was promoted to Caption on active duty. Consequently, I was the most qualified electronic “expert” in the unit.

During our Ft. Riley training, a small group of us were sent to the Gates factory at Quincy, IL, for orientation on the radio transmitting equipment with which we were going to be supplied. I believe it was a 5KW AM transmitter. I think we spent about the week there.

The original 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group consisted of a collection of personalities thrown together in such a way that rank and position in civilian life had no particular correlation. For instance, in theory there could be officers who had been pageboys at NBC and enlisted men who had been executives. One standing gag was that the official name of the Leaflet Company was the “Reproduction Company.” That was always good for a laugh. [Author’s note: In this article I have used the terms interchangeably].

Spread through the ranks at all levels was a substantial mixture of people with show business experience or aspirations. Hence there was a fair amount of performing, or entertainment production skills. Consequently, a major side activity was the putting on of shows. We put on one show at Ft. Riley where I assisted with the lighting. I talked to some unit members after they returned from Germany. They told me that they had put on a number of entertainment shows for the troops stationed over there. They implied that this was a major activity and sometimes it felt like they were a traveling USO company.

So, why did Adrian not deploy to Germany with his unit? He explains:

One day, a new regulation appeared which established a series of new “MOSs’ (Military Occupational Specialties). These MOS’s were specifically for the purpose of classifying graduate engineers, and of course there was one for electrical engineers. I asked that my MOS be changed. My MOS at the time was “Radio Repairman.” Soon afterwards we received a telegram from the Secretary of the Army, that said, “Transfer Sergeant Adrian B. Ettlinger, to the Development Detachment, Ft. Monmouth. N.J.” The Development Detachment was a small laboratory charged with developing military uses of television. I had been told earlier that it was virtually impossible to get transferred out of any outfit that was on alert for shipment overseas, but my electrical engineering degree apparently worked magic at the Pentagon.

Meanwhile the unit continued to train. In July 1951 the MRB detachment operated a radio station at Fort Riley and published a daily bulletin. By 14 August they were producing propaganda as part of their advanced training.

The USS General Maurice Rose

The unit eventually ended up on the USS General Maurice Rose. They departed in November of 1951 and immediately ran into a storm. For 3 days and nights everyone was confined to below decks as the ship rocked and the screws lifted up out of the stormy waters. The entire unit could be found circling barrels placed in the open areas for vomiting. The trip took nine long miserable days.

Staff Sergeant Larry Berman inspects a photograph negative with his loupe

Staff Sergeant Lawrence Berman of the Reproduction Company recalls the trip to Germany. He said: 

We went over on the General Maurice Rose and I vomited for 8 days. 

I like comments like this because they tell a truth about the military that civilians seldom hear. The Military will put thousands of landlubbers on a ship and send them off to the other side of the world without regard to what toll the sea will take of them. I once spent 21 days on a ship going to Taiwan and then on to Okinawa. There were 4,000 men on that ship from the Midwest that had never seen the ocean. They started vomiting on day one and did so until day 21. The decks were awash with vomit for 21 days. As the ship rocked, there would be waves of it up to your ankles. I am happy to say that because I had been deep-sea fishing in my youth I knew about sea-sickness, and never threw up. But, I was swallowing hard to keep it down the entire three weeks.

The Group’s Men Train on the Radio Equipment

The broadcast crew train on the radio equipment. This mock program was programmed at an Army base in Germany to demonstrate what a propaganda broadcast would sound like. Standing at the left is Corporal John O'Keefe. Corporal Len Geriputto and Private First Class Michael Stoppleman sit at their microphones and Staff Sergeant Bob Rudick at the control panel.

The Group's Barracks in Germany

Staff Sergeant Bob Rudick stands by the sign of the
301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group near Mannheim

By Thanksgiving Day, 1951, the unit was deployed to Germany, stationed in Sullivan Barracks, Mannheim. SSG Rudick was the chief rigger and he finally got permission to put up his 180-foot radio antenna. But, Washington DC decided that any broadcasting from the new radio might be seen as an overt act of aggression by the Russians so the unit, although ready to broadcast was kept silent. They broadcast some very low power music and news to their own people, but otherwise it was a case of train and wait for the call.

At the end of November 1951, the unit exhibited PSYWAR products in Frankfurt. By January the reproduction personnel were training in the Seventh Army Printing Plant in Leiman.

European Command Patch

Nobody knew quite what to do with them in Germany. They were issued the European Command patch to wear on their left sleeve (General Eisenhower’s old SHAEF insignia) and their collar brass was first Signal Corps, then Military Intelligence, and finally a plain American Eagle since they were unassigned to any major military organization.

PFC Michael Stoppleman, CPL John O’Keefe, CPL Len Geriputto and
SSG Bob Rudick of the 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group study
the “Bible of PSYOP,” Paul Linebarger’s Psychological Warfare

My Personal 1947 First Edition of Psychological Warfare

Most people in the field of Psychological Warfare consider this the best book about WWII PSYWAR ever written. It contains 70 illustrations, 10 charts, and 259 pages. At the end of the Korean War in 1954, Linebarger published a second edition with additional information about the Cold War, various "Small Wars" around the world, and of course, the Korean War. This issue had 79 illustrations, 10 charts, and 318 pages. I would have scanned the cover of this book but it was just plain white with the title on the spine.

To keep the men busy, several were sent around Germany to visit the American GIs and explain the value of psychological warfare and what it could do to benefit American forces. Bob Rudick said:

We were looking for something to do and travel and lecture was the answer. We would go from one base to another all over Germany. It was a great tour if you wanted to sightsee, but the training kept on and on. The leaflet company got some beautiful 6-color presses and they did a great job of turning out beautiful menus for the mess hall but they were never used to win the hearts and minds of an enemy. They constantly trained at psychological warfare but I never a part of it. I spent my year and half training and traveling and then it was home.

Staff Sergeant Berman of the Reproduction Company remembers being ordered to try and keep the peacetime unit busy:

We did not print any propaganda leaflets. In fact, we did not do a whole lot of any constructive work. What did we do? We ate well, frequented the Harmony Club, played ball, trained constantly and polished the multi-million dollar printing equipment. Our Company Commander Captain Peck ordered me to get the men busy on some kind of a printing project. As a training exercise I had the men print one side of a dollar greenback and they circulated them all over the Post Exchange as gag. Needless to say, the Inspector General in Washington found out about it and had no sense of humor. I was “reamed” by our company commander till I was raw, but he didn't take away my stripes. Hell, he ordered the printing exercise!

An Eisenhower Leaflet

Tracy gives an example of the type of work the Reproduction Company did to keep busy:

According to SSG Principato, the Reproduction Company printed leaflets with satirical cartoons drawn by S-3 artists. The topics were based on Radio Moscow broadcasts that the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company’s Monitoring Section had recorded. For example, one artist "drew a picture of [Dwight D.] Eisenhower with a rough beard, hand grenades hanging from his lapels, two guns beside him, and walking down Broadway." Principato paraphrased the caption: "Eisenhower Starts His Presidential Campaign." That cartoon depicted Soviet fears of an Eisenhower presidency. The Reproduction Company printed 150 copies to give a laugh to soldiers on the Kaserne.

A Thanksgiving Card

Tracy also shows some other products produced for other units. Hat is a natural thing for a PSYOP unit to do. They have the artists and the printing presses so they will print stationery, calendars, certificates, special menues, and of course holiday cards.

Marlene Dietrich Sings

This was among the papers from the 301st so I assume they printed it to go with a commemorative record. Inside this booklet are all the wartime OSS songs that Marlene Dietrich recorded for use against the Germans. I see Lili Marlene, Wiedersehen and many other songs with the lyrics in both German and English. There is a long PSYOP explanation on the back that says in part:

The Psychological impact of these songs recorded by Marlene Dietrich on the morale of the Afrika Korps was tremendous. Because these songs were especially written and performed for a target audience, they were never distributed commercially. For this reason the present set which was privately produced for personnel of the U.S. Army Psychological warfare unit, represents a collector’s item as well as an interesting example of applied psychological warfare.

Note: After the end of the war the wartime songs of Marlene Dietrich were made commercially available.

When I had a printing unit as part of my command I found that they were very valuable when it came to trading for things that we needed. Many NCOs from other units wanted scratch pads with “From the desk of” and their name and perhaps a big image of a master sergeant’s stripes. I used this ability when I needed something. If the men were going to the field and needed an extra GP medium tent, a couple of those scratch pads often made the tent miraculously appear. There were also requests for invitations, menus, certificates, cards and other items. Tracy mentions how the 301st did much the same thing in Psyche, Part II:

Despite the prohibition on putting out actual propaganda, Reproduction Company did plenty of printing. It printed training aides, menus, and other items for various units. On 19 May 1952, the company began printing 10,000 four-page three-color presentations for a Seventh Army event. Three months later it printed 25,000 tactical leaflets for training for the 5th L&L which was low on paper at the time.

Readers who would like to see some of the 5th L&L leaflets should check my article on their activities in Germany.

The unit must have been doing some PSYOP work. In a unit publications entitled Who’s Who and where they hang their hats the Reproduction company apologizes for the delay by saying:

The incessant cried for publication of a long-awaited unit directory made the task of placing it at the bottom of the pile difficult; but the reproduction of PSYWAR material, deemed more important, necessitated it.

Reproduction Company, already working two shifts and lacking sufficient personnel to initiate a “lobster shift,” was floundering amid the ever-increasing material to be printed.

For instance, on 1 May 1952, the unit’s first anniversary on active duty, they staged a leaflet drop in front of group headquarters. On 20 May the 7878 Augmentation Detachment (Balloon) was attached to the 301st. On 23 May, they broadcast their first radio program from Sullivan Barracks.

By this time the unit had grown to about 125 enlisted men and 37 officers. The unit commander was Colonel Gruber. In his civilian life he was a printer for the New York Daily News. The newspaper was owned by the Patterson family, and by some coincidence his son Robert Patterson was assigned to the Headquarters Company as were Colonel Gruber’s two sons.

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The Announcer's Booth

The Control Room in the Studio Trailer

Just about all of the equipment in the radio station was supplied by Gates Radio. The studio had one control room and one announcer booth. It also had Gates turntables and tape recorders. The transmitter could push out 50,000 watts.

The Portable Mixer

A portable mixer is a panel for multiple Microphones. The photograph above depicts a three-position mixer that can accept three microphones and balance the output of each microphone and a master overall output control. If more than three microphones are in use you can wire more of the mixers together. 

The Group’s 33-foot Studio Trailer

In addition, there were two 33-foot trailers, one for the studio and the other for the transmitter. Both were run by diesel generators.

SSG Rudick left the 301st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group in December 1952 after serving his two-year tour of duty.

Sergeant Robert W. Beller wrote a poem about the unit. I quote a small part of it here:

Our Army has something it has not had before,
Its tactics have turned pedagological;
This new kind of fighting is labeled PSWAR,
But it’s somewhat more psycho than logical.
In the past our men knew the meaning of strife,
Each man was well-armed and a killer
But he fought with a Mauser a Luger or knife
Not a page out of Goethe or Shiller.

Peck’s Bad Boys

I have been unable to find any of the leaflets or posters created by the 301st during their deployment to Germany. I did find a small souvenir booklet created by the unit to commemorate their tour, and with the title honoring the Reproduction Company Commander Captain Roy Peck.

Captain Roy Peck

The booklet says in regard to Captain Peck:

He was a newspaperman - a publisher from Riverton, Wyoming – when he was recalled to active duty [He was in the 84th Infantry Division during WWII] and assigned to the 301st RB&L Group at Ft. Riley Kansas. He knew the printing business first-hand from leads and slugs to four-color pictorials…He was a captain who knew his army from buck private to combat-experienced commanding officer, decorated several times, an old hand at leading men.

His men were a mix of specialties:

Then we started arriving – Peck’s Bad Boys – some from the infantry, some from the engineers, from ordnance, the artillery, the signal corps, quartermaster and armor too…Most of us were fresh out of basic training. We had been sent to join Captain Peck in forming one of the first reproduction companies of its type in Army history. 

Cynical, thankless, apathetic when we walked in – new men with a company spirit de corps and sincere gratitude when we walked out.

Propaganda Review

In 1953 the unit began publishing a Propaganda Review which offered a daily summary of broadcasts by Radios Moscow, Warsaw (Poland), Prague (Czechoslovakia, (East) Berlin, Brasav (Romania), and Bucharest (Romania). Monitors tuned in 24 hours a day to broadcasts from behind the Iron Curtain. The issue above (10 March 1953) quotes broadcasts on Stalin’s death from Russia, Romania, Poland, East Berlin and Hungary.

Josef Stalin

I thought it would be interesting to show the readers one of the major articles from the Propaganda Review. Perhaps the biggest story I found was the death of Russian dictator Josef Stalin, the monster who killed about 1.6 million of his own people during the period from 1929 to 1953. The tentative historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died because of their incarceration, Of course, the Communists write about him as if he was the second coming: a wonderful, kind, and generous person loved by all mankind.

Malenkov’s speech. The highlights are as follows:

Dear comrades: Our party and our country have suffered a great loss. The greatest teacher of mankind, our greatest friend J.V. Stalin. In these hard days, the sorrow of the Soviet people is shared by the world. The work of Stalin will live on forever. The life of Stalin was dedicated to the liberation of man from the yoke of the exploiters to the cause of the fight for a free and happy life for working people on earth... Together with the names of Marx and Lenin and Engels, Stalin’s name will go down as the greatest in all history... He ended capitalism in our country, showed us a new road - the road to socialism.... Lenin and Stalin founded the first country of the working man - the USSR.... Our sacred duty is to further his ideals... Our country fears no enemy, neither from within nor from without... Commanded by the great Stalin, the Soviet armies won the great victory of World War II and saved the peoples of Europe and Asia... (in Stalinism) the USSR, China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungaria, Albania, Bulgaria, the Peoples’ Republic of Germany, Mongolia have made tremendous advances... Supported the heroic fight of the Korean people and of Viet Nam... The Soviet cause is that of permanent peace in the whole world... advocate international collaboration by means of commercial alliances with all countries of the world... there is the possibility of peaceful co-existence of those two ways of life- socialism and capitalism... The Communist Government considers the only just policy is that of peace in all lands... There is no force in the world that can stop the forward march of communism.

This ends our brief look at one of the early PSYOP Groups that was not sent into battle. At present we have little information on the 301st but we hope that our readers will remedy that situation. They must have been doing something important in Germany because the Army Field Manual on Psychological Warfare says:

Both the 1st [in Korea] and 301st [in Germany] RB&L Groups concurrently engaged in psychological warfare and support to unconventional warfare (UW).

Colonel Frank A. McCulloch

The 301st was a federalized United States Army Reserve unit that reached its 2-year federalization period in May 1953. United States Army Reserve Europe now had the men but no unit so it activated a temporary unit on 20 May (the 7721st RB&L) until everyone could re-deploy or be re-assigned. The 7721 was a short-lived holding detachment. The former Commander of the 301st Colonel Frank A. McCulloch was now the Commander of the 7721st and unsuccessfully tried to convince USAR Europe to maintain a strategic PSYWAR capability in Europe.

Propaganda Review

In the meantime, the 7721 RB&L continued to print the Propaganda Review, now with a more proper cover, just as the 301st had done. Looking through some of the issues it seems that all the unit did was monitor the Communist Bloc radios. The inside pages were typed on a thin paper we used to call “onion skin.” The old-timers among us remember the days when you placed a dozen sheets of this thin paper among with sheets of carbon paper and typed a story once and ended up with one clean typed copy and about 11 carbon copies that were not quite so easy to read. I find it difficult to read these old pages gathered by the monitoring section. When looking through some of the issues I see stories from Radio Warsaw, Radio Moscow, Radio Belgrade, Radio Bucharest, Radio Berlin 1 (DDR), Radio Prague, and Radio Brasov (Romanian). In the issues of late July 1953, almost all those stations followed the Communist Party line and offered congratulations to China and the Chinese People’s Volunteers for stemming the tide of western aggression in Korea. They point out that the North Koreans and Chinese Volunteers ceased fire on the evening of 27 July 1953 and both forces ceased all operations against the enemy.

 

The 7721 RB&L also printed their own version of Psyche

In June, 1953, the unit assembled a PSYWAR exhibit in Paris, France. In July, members attended a Russian language class. On 15 September 1953, the unit was deactivated.

We started this article with a picture of an American soldier standing by the 301st RB&L Group sign. We end with an American soldier standing by the 7721 RB&L Group sign.

The author would like to hear from other members of the group and members of other units that are seldom mentioned in psychological warfare articles. Kindly contact the author at sgmbert@hotmail.com.