Arthur Stratton

He was a playwright, a novelist, an OSS agent, a teacher in Turkey, and an assistant college professor in the US, before working for the CIA for about ten years and becoming a travel writer and biographer.

While serving with the American Field Service as a World War II ambulance driver, he was twice awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery under fire, the first time on the Western Front, the second in North Africa.

[1] Stratton's father was said to be of a family "impeccably Church and Army", while his mother was described as "American as can be, which means English, Scottish, French and New York State Dutch".

[11][12] Free France magazine reported that "A. M. P. Stratton of Brunswick, Maine was wounded in the right leg and left arm while attempting to salvage a partially demolished ambulance.

"[13] The Columbia alumni news noted that "ARTHUR M. STRATTON, '42AM (Bowdoin)... was wounded at Bir Hacheim and was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palms by the Free French.

At that time, Stratton was a close friend of the publisher Arnold Gingrich, whose magazine Coronet reported The first ambulance ran into a storm of lead.

Stratton, wounded in 11 places by machine gun fragments, helplessly watched his loaded ambulance destroyed by flames...

[5] After his recovery, he was recruited as an agent of the Office of Strategic Services[16] and moved to Turkey, where he taught English at Robert College in Istanbul.

A New Englander who, as a volunteer with the Free French, first saw the name Madagascar on a can of singe doing duty for corned beef at Bir Hakeim in 1942... Mr Stratton has a baroque turn of style that offers in the first few pages words like 'struthious,' 'rhipidistian', and 'xerophytic'.

[28][29] In 1945, Stratton's sister Barbara had married Richard Walker Bolling, later a Democratic Congressman from Kansas City, Missouri, and chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules.