Key People & Wars: SPYCRAFT, #4

By Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes

With the voice of forty-five years in the Intelligence Community, Bayard & Holmes explore crucial conflicts and the lives of astonishing individuals.

• The former slave who graduated from West Point
• The American who would be King of Mexico and Nicaragua
• The wild and crazy founder of modern special operations
• The man who taught the FBI to shoot
• The brave pilots of the Battle of Britain
• The rise and fall of Japanese militarism
• The Ottomans vs. Vienna . . . twice
• The Mexican/American War
• The Scream Heard Round the World and the Battle of Manila
• British drug pushers in China -- The Opium Wars
• The Boer Wars and the British Concentration Camps
• The battle of Verdun
• An intelligence perspective on Benghazi
• The Battle of Fallujah and the lessons we have yet to learn

People who excite the imagination and battles that shaped the modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shoe Phone Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798985048247

Book preview

Key People & Wars

About the Authors

Piper Bayard is an author and a recovering attorney. She is also a belly dancer, a mom, and a former hospice volunteer. She currently pens spy thrillers with Jay Holmes, as well as her own post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Jay Holmes is a forty-five year veteran of field intelligence operations spanning from the Cold War fight against the Soviets, the East Germans, and the terrorist organizations they sponsored to the present Global War on Terror. Piper is the public face of their partnership.

Together, Bayard & Holmes author nonfiction articles and books on espionage and foreign affairs, as well as fictional spy thrillers. They are the bestselling authors of The Spy Bride from the Risky Brides Bestsellers Collection and Spycraft: Essentials.

When they aren’t writing or, in Jay’s case, busy with other work, Piper and Jay are enjoying their families, hiking, exploring, talking foreign affairs, laughing at their own rude jokes, and questing for the perfect chocolate cake recipe. If you think you have that recipe, please share it with them at their email below.

To receive notices of upcoming Bayard & Holmes releases, subscribe to the Bayard & Holmes Covert Briefing. Contact Bayard & Holmes at their website BayardandHolmes.com, at their email, [e-mail], or at @piperbayard on Twitter.

Also by Bayard & Holmes

NONFICTION

Spycraft: Essentials

Key Figures in Espionage

Key Moments in Espionage

Timeline Iran: Stone Age to Nuclear Age

APEX PREDATOR SERIES—APRIL 2022

The Leopard of Cairo

The Panther of Baracoa

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APEX PREDATOR SERIES COMING SOON

The Caiman of Iquitos

The Cobra of Nainital

FICTION BY BAYARD & HOLMES

The Spy Bride

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FICTION BY PIPER BAYARD

Firelands

Key People & Wars

Bayard & Holmes

Shoe Phone Press

2770 Arapahoe Road #132-229

Lafayette, CO 80026

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Copyright © 2020 by Bayard & Holmes

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All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, with the exception of reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a book review.

To the warriors of tomorrow—

Each generation must fight for its freedom;

Our hearts and our histories are with you.

Contents

Introduction

KEY PEOPLE

1. James Armistead Lafayette

2. Henry Ossian Flipper

3. William Walker

4. Jacob Jelly Bryce

5. Desmond Doss

6. Major General Orde Charles Wingate

7. Eduardo Peniche

8. Ralph Bunche

CONFLICTS & WARS

9. Kim Jong Un and the Man Who Didn’t Clap

10. The Bravest of the Battle of Britain

11. The Triumph and Defeat of Japanese Militarism

12. Attacks on the Nation’s Capitol

Ottomans vs. Vienna

13. Muslim Radicals Attack Vienna

14. Ottomans vs. Vienna, Round Two

The Mexican/American War

15. Illegal Immigrants Raise Havoc on the Border

16. Don’t Cry for Me, California

17. Two Lines in the Sand

The Battle of Manila

18. The Scream Heard ‘Round the World

19. The Battle That Wasn’t

20. A Nation Becoming and the Battle for Manila

21. Triumph Over Devastation

22. My Last Farewell

The Opium Wars

23. British Drug Pushers in China

24. The Second Opium War

The Boer Wars

25. Three-Way in South Africa

26. The First Boer War

27. Boer Wars, Round Two

28. The Fracturing of an Empire

The American Revolution

29. Tea Parties and Occupations

30. The Other American Independence Day

31. European Intervention in the American Revolution

32. Farmers and Shopkeepers Raise Hell in a Cow Pen

World War I

33. With or Without Archduke Ferdinand

34. The Battle of Verdun

35. Of Sext and Empires

36. The Four Freedoms

A Tale of Two Cities

37. Benghazi—An Intelligence Perspective

38. Fallujah

In Conclusion

Photo Gallery

Acknowledgments

Key Moments in Espionage

Design

Introduction

In our first Spycraft series book, Spycraft: Essentials, we explored the jurisdictions and duties of the main civilian intelligence organizations, terminology, recruitment, basic tradecraft, espionage myths, firearms, and the personalities and personal challenges of those brave souls who populate the US Intelligence Community. That book is also a how-to for writers with tips to help them get the fiction out of fiction. Our second book in the Spycraft series, Key Figures in Espionage: The Good, the Bad, & the Booty, studies a variety of figures in espionage who inform us on the heights and depths of the human spirit. In our third book, Key Moments in Espionage: Spy Ships, Failures, & the Cold War Era, we glean what we might from that fickle illusionist called history by looking at a diverse collection of historical moments in espionage.

In this book, however, we broaden our scope. The art of espionage does not exist in a vacuum. It is only one element of global and societal dynamics, and we have known many people over the decades who prove that a vast knowledge of espionage and espionage history does not translate to a vast knowledge of history in general, the world at large, or how governments and regimes function at their core. Espionage is only one thread woven through the tapestry of all that is and has been.

It is a thread, however, that outlines the pattern, as the information gleaned from espionage often determines the course of nations. It does this most decidedly in the realm of war. Espionage is the fulcrum of conflict. World leaders look to the information gathered by spies to decide where to place armies and where to cede territory, when to strike and when to stand down. Information and knowledge of events in the shadows are often the harbingers of peace or the catalysts of war.

Because of the inextricable link between espionage and war, we have chosen to add selections on military history to the Spycraft series. Key People & Wars is a collection of biographies of military and intelligence figures, as well as chapters on crucial conflicts that have influenced the course of world history.

The style of this book, as with the entire Spycraft series, is narrative nonfiction, and most of the chapters included first appeared in our Bayard & Holmes articles published on our Bayard & Holmes website and on Social In, which was a network that reached approximately 6,000,000 followers daily from 2011-2018. We collected these articles into the Spycraft series of four volumes, Spycraft: Essentials, Key Figures in Espionage, Key Moments in Espionage, and Key People & Wars.

The information contained in these books has been obtained from open sources and foreign government documents that we deem to be reliable. However, we openly admit that we are subject to the same obfuscation that plagues all historians and espionage professionals who must daily make decisions without full knowledge, so where the facts are impossible to determine, we present the alternate theories that we find either credible or interesting. At times, we let you know which ones we favor due to our own agenda, which is simply to discover and discern actual facts. If we state something as a fact, it is because we have verified it through multiple sources that we consider to be reliable. Unlike mainstream media, if we state opinions, we make it clear that we are stating opinions and not facts.

And who are we to write this book? Piper Bayard is an author and a recovering attorney who has worked daily with Holmes for over a decade, learning about foreign affairs, espionage history, and field techniques for the purpose of writing both fiction and nonfiction. Jay Holmes is a forty-something-year Intelligence Community veteran of espionage operations. Because Holmes is covert, Piper is the public face of their partnership.

Together, we are dedicated to bringing you the best we can glean from the mists of history, that we may all better understand our present and anticipate our future.

KEY PEOPLE

James Armistead Lafayette

Slave to Spy to Freeman

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Henry Ossian Flipper

A Man of Many Firsts

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William Walker

The Man Who Would Be King . . . of Mexico

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Jelly Bryce

The Man Who Taught the FBI to Shoot

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Desmond Doss

The Medal of Honor Recipient Who Wouldn’t Fight

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Major General Orde Charles Wingate

Founder of Modern Special Operations

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Eduardo Peniche

The Smallest Eagle

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Ralph Bunche

& the Nobel Peace Prize

1

James Armistead Lafayette

Slave to Spy to Freeman

In many cases, intelligence agencies in the West do their best to attract well-educated, well-travelled recruits. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes consequently, they tend to attract members of their nation’s upper-classes into their ranks. For the majority of positions in our CIA, most normal young people cannot afford to feed and house themselves in the expensive Northern Virginia area long enough to complete the recruitment process and begin to receive the modest wages of a new CIA employee.

We will perhaps annoy a few senior CIA administrators by pointing this out, and they would argue that we are wrong. They would say that the agency has changed and has long been making efforts to reach out to non-Ivy Leaguers. However, an honest census of young employees at the CIA would indicate that the journey from the agency’s Ivy League patrician roots to egalitarian diversity is still in progress. To her credit, former CIA Director Gina Haspel was more inclined to support change during her administration, but that change still has a long road ahead, and we in the United States would do well to remember that some of our finest intelligence personnel have come from the ranks of the most humble citizens, and in some cases non-citizens. James Armistead Lafayette was one of those outstanding individuals.

On a day unknown to us in a year that might or might not have been 1748, a slave was born on a Virginia plantation owned by William Armistead of the well-established Virginia and North Carolina Armisteads. That child was named James.

James was fortunate enough to survive his birth and childhood, and at some point, he learned to read and write. The Armistead family were pro-revolution. As a slave, James was not allowed to join the Continental Army or the Virginia Militia unless granted conditional freedom by his owner to do so. James asked for and received Armistead’s permission to join the Continental Army.

Some slaves escaped from plantations and went to work for the British Army on the promise that they would receive their freedom when the rebellion was put down. The British Army used some of those escaped slaves as scouts and spies against the Continental Army. To a degree, this made a number of the Continental Army members leery of escaped slaves. Compounding the problem for James was the fact that under the status quo, slaves were not allowed to carry firearms, and it seems likely that some members of the Continental Army were frightened by the presence of slaves with firearms in their camps. Given the difficulties, prejudices, and dangers for any slave joining the Continental Army, it seems that James must have been highly motivated in his patriotism.

Life in the Continental Army was difficult for any volunteer. For a slave, it would have been even more difficult. At first, James was only allowed to conduct menial tasks in camp without being allowed to enlist. After some months as a camp servant, he was trusted with obtaining and transporting supplies for the Continental Army. James was then assigned to General Lafayette as a servant.

Lafayette took a liking to James. In Lafayette’s view, James was capable of more important work. James suggested to Lafayette that he could approach the British as a runaway slave volunteering for service with the British Army. For many members of the Continental Army, the suggestion would have presented a red flag concerning James’s loyalties and intentions. Lafayette, however, had the sense to see James for what he really was—a daring patriot. Lafayette dispatched James on his difficult and dangerous mission.

In the best of circumstances, approaching any enemy army and volunteering to help while intending to spy is a dangerous proposition. In the circumstances facing James, the proposition was insane. Nevertheless, James approached General Cornwallis’s British Army. Cornwallis and many of his staff were known to hold Colonials in general, and Blacks in particular, in very low esteem. The British were certain that anyone of any color born in the New World was fundamentally inferior to any Englishman and lower in social status than an Irish shepherd. (For those less familiar with the fashionable bigotries of the time in England, the English considered the Irish to be vastly inferior to themselves.)

In approaching the British, James took the considerable risk of being recognized as a spy right off the bat. His sympathies might have been known by other slaves who had since escaped the Armistead plantation and gone to the British. Cornwallis and his officers had a reputation for being martinets with their soldiers, and they were known to take special care in severely punishing any Black volunteers that caused the slightest problem. If James had been recognized by any Tories or escaped slaves in Cornwallis’s camp, he would have been tortured and hanged. However, James succeeded in convincing the Brits that he was, indeed, anti-Colonial, and Cornwallis’s army took him in as a servant in camp.

After a while, James gained the confidence of the Brits, and he once again found himself employed as a procurer and transporter of supplies, this time for Cornwallis’s Army. This allowed James to re-establish contact with General Lafayette, and he began supplying general information about Cornwallis’s army to the Continentals.

James must have had that ability that is so valuable to spies—he must have been what we today call a people person. In spite of the prejudices that were so prevalent in the British Army, James somehow managed to befriend and gain the trust of senior officers on Cornwallis’s staff. When we consider that the average British officer considered white English recruits to be serfs, James must have had quite a high intellect and remarkable people skills for the British officers to take him into their confidence.

James then took the next big step. Rather than merely volunteering as a spy for the Continental Army within the British Army, he suggested to the British Army that he be sent to the Continental Army to pretend to volunteer for the Continentals as a spy against the British. The suggestion was brilliant because it gave James perfect cover in case he was discovered to be on friendly terms too quickly with the Continental Army.

The English officers were famously bigoted, but they were not stupid. In particular, they were adept at handling native spies in Colonial and foreign lands. Like all the major world powers of the time, the British Army and Royal Navy had centuries of experience in running spies.

Fortunately for James and for the American rebellion, Cornwallis and his staff were sufficiently charmed by James that they were delighted by his suggestion, and they happily dispatched him to act as a double agent. The British equipped James with suitable false information and sent him to make contact with the Continental Army. James, of course, was quickly taken to Lafayette.

Lafayette was delighted by the ruse, and he received both the false and real information that James had to offer. In knowing what Cornwallis wanted the Continental Army to believe, Lafayette was better able to understand Cornwallis’s thoughts.

James then returned to Cornwallis’s camp and filled Cornwallis and his staff with precisely whatever false information Lafayette wanted them to have. And so the happy arrangement continued. The Brits grew more certain of their false assumptions concerning the Continental Army, and Lafayette and Washington developed a better intelligence picture with each visit from James.

The British had multiple spies watching the Continental Army, so Lafayette and James had to be careful what they fed to the Brits. James had to convince the British that any inconsistencies in his information, as compared to the information received from other spies, were due to his own superior abilities and his choice position as a double agent. Lafayette and Washington had multiple spies working against the British military in America who would have provided the Continental Army with plenty of accurate information about the location and strength of the British Armies. What James was uniquely able to provide was solid insight as to Cornwallis’s individual perspectives and intentions.

Eventually, James and Lafayette were able to use James’s access to Cornwallis’s staff to help manipulate the British into moving their army to Yorktown, Virginia. At the same time, James and other Continental spies convinced the British that Washington was planning a siege against British forces in New York City. This deception made it important for the British to keep adequate naval and land forces in and near New York City—which also kept them away from Yorktown.

Cornwallis’s position at Yorktown was a defensible one for the British Army, with direct access to the mouth of the York River. However, it was also an isolated position if the Continentals could delay the British Navy from resupplying and reinforcing Cornwallis. That, in itself, was only important if Lafayette, Washington, and the French Navy were aware of the situation in time to make use of it and act on it quickly. Thanks to James, they had information on Cornwallis’s position and condition in time to use the information effectively.

The history of intelligence work is filled with examples of good intelligence being ignored until it is too late to be useful. Fortunately, James’s remarkable successes did not go to waste. Due to the combined wisdom of Washington, Lafayette, French General Comte de Rochambeau, Prussian Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, and French Admiral Comte de Grasse, the Continentals accepted the information and used it in time.

Washington and Lafayette concentrated their combined forces and marched toward Yorktown. As the two predicted, Cornwallis was unconcerned with their maneuvers and in no rush