CODE NAME: SPIKE PROLOGUE - the First POST WAR OSS MEMOIR

  Joe Kosky and Steve Bizic write their Memoir, 

March 1946  [above]

Prologue

[In CODE NAME: SPIKE]

In 1945, OSS Agents Steven “Steve” Bizic and Joseph S. Kosky came home from WWII and turned Steven’s secret 1944 Special Operations mission—SPIKE—into a Memoir; Joe typed it out while Steven dictated it. They then tried to publish the final product in 1946 but couldn’t for several reasons, primarily because they didn’t edit out the Secret content, but more than that, had the Memoir been released, it would have directly contradicted official U.S. Policy at a perilous time....

As a result, the Memoir was never released, and it faded away, taking its history with it. 

Nearly 80 years later, I walked through an arhcive and saw a thick leather-bound book on a shelf. It was held together by large brass buttons, and I put on a pair of cotton gloves before picking it up. In contrast to its heavy cover, the thin pages within were nearly translucent and crinkled when I turned them. The OSS, you see, had morphed into the CIA in 1947, and the CIA recruited many OSS Agents into their ranks—the first thing the Agency did was reclassify all OSS records as ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’ to protect their new agents, and the reports would stay classified until well into the 1980s. This is roughly the point and time when OSS memoirs became available to the public—because they were no longer classified. That meant that this Memoir was an anomaly for it had been created in the only space of time it could have been, right after the end of the War in 1945, yet just before the creation of the CIA, in 1947. 

...

I received a copy of the Memoir a few months later, and placed it where it belonged, among warriors and Unconventional Warfare experts in the Special Forces Warrant Course’s private library. But as I deployed around the world more times than I could count, "Pokret" whispered in the back of my mind, unsettled, as if I hadn’t gotten it quite right. 

Several years later, I ended up in Afghanistan in January 2021 as the second in command of one of the most isolated Special Forces teams in the country, and while waiting for the final word to ‘stay or go,’ I searched for a book to read—but the base had been evacuated, which meant books were in short supply. I then remembered my four-year-old digital copy of “Pokret,” and when I opened it on my dusty laptop, the story rushed out to meet me.

In Steven’s world, it was the summer of 1944. Hitler had set the world on fire, war casualties were in the millions, and the Nazis' efforts were starting to fail. Every government and political group were actioning their hidden agendas, and Steven, who could travel freely because he was an American OSS agent and spoke fluent Serbo-Croat, had a unique front-row seat to witness it all. More than 75 years later, in my time, America was approaching the 20th anniversary of its longest war, the Taliban were probing our base, and Iran, Pakistan, India, and China were exploring their post-war options while secret negotiations were being held in Doha, the outcomes of which would determine our collective fates… and then it hit me—Steven’s world and mine were reflections of each other, and “Pokret” was the mirror. 

Years later, after I had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the men of SPIKE Mission were real, I still had lingering doubts that the Memoir was a “true story” because it was written too much like an adventure. The characters within it were too real, too honest, and at times, too damning. 

...

Many archives later, found a trove of files, and soon read the header of a hand scrawled hard-to-read message that said “Priority, from Spike, to Force 339, Enemy troops…”—and I jumped out of my chair in sheer excitement. I grabbed my copy of Pokret, flipped to the very page the message was tied to, and with shaking hands, stared at it in amazement. 

The message describes a situation you will soon read in Chapter 11, but I will paraphrase it here: In the first week of September 1944, Steve is lying in a cornfield overlooking a strategic intersection north of the town Kumanovo. A column of German vehicles come up the road, stop in front of him, and camouflage themselves along the sides. Steve writes the column’s coordinates on a piece of paper, gives the message to a Partisans to relay back to OSS HQ, and early the next morning, multiple P-51 Mustangs strafe the column right in front of Steve, killing numerous Germans and destroying vehicles and equipment. 

Now, not only did I have the story of that event in the Memoir sitting on my desk, but I also had a copy of the very morse code message Steve described writing 80 years earlier, and it was accurate down to the place, time, and date. 

Several years and 15 rewrites later, this adaptation represents a combined effort from multiple generations of people connected in one way or another to the Memoir. What I discovered though, was that everyone’s primary goal revealed itself to be the same—to share this incredible story with others. This was, I concluded, for two reasons. The first is so we could explore and cherish our unique history in ways otherwise unknown to anyone but us, and the second appeared to be an innate desire to share “our story” with the greater public. You see, what we in the Intelligence and Special Operations communities do is often done knowing full good and well that no one will ever get to know the extent of our efforts, sacrifices, and intentions—much like how the men and women of the OSS were unable to share their experiences with their friends and families. In the OSS’s case, an unfortunate result of their continued secrecy was that their stunning exploits faded to the edges of WWII history, and their contribution is no longer fully understood by the average American. It is imperative, therefore, for the genesis of U.S. Intelligence and Special Operations to slide into obscurity no further, and instead, for us to turn and celebrate those who came before us—this adaptation, CODE NAME: SPIKE, is one such celebration. 

Now, with this multi-year ‘story-behind-the-story’ behind us, let’s move on to Steven and Joe’s incredible Memoir. They have waited nearly a century to share it with you, and I don’t think we should keep them waiting any longer.

Jacek “Jack” Waliszewski, 2024