On Hamburg Station

This is a work of historical fiction based on real intelligence operations that actually took place and were conducted by the real Army's 513th INTC Group from 1956 to 1966. The 513th was headquartered at Camp King, Oberursel, West Germany, with three operating stations featured in this work, Berlin, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg. The Hamburg Station was a sub-station reporting to Bremerhaven, and contained a group of agent handlers targeted against the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. This is a story of how military human-source intelligence during the eleven or so years was collected, what the sources, agent handlers, and command personnel were like and how they functioned up against their highly professional, well-funded, and ruthless adversaries. It is also important to fully understand the environment in which the agent handlers plied their trade--specifically the cultural and economic environment of West Germany and the target countries. Sergeants and junior officers were given a short course in the Intelligence School at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, Maryland, and shipped off to Monterey, California, for six months or a year of language training to operate in a non-English speaking foreign country. In some cases individuals were assigned to the 513th immediately thereafter, thrust into the role of agent handler, and sent out to find potential intelligence sources and build operations.