1945 US Special passport

OSS & CIA operative during and after the war.

 

Here is a rare example of a special travel document that was issued to an individual with a rich background in WW2 and postwar activity.

 

US Special passport No. 2985 was issued to Staff Sergeant Arthur F. Rall aged 30 for travelling to South America who was assigned to duty in the office of the US Military Attache in both Bolivia & Ecuador. Later he would be assigned to the US consulate in Cuba as well.

 

The passport has various South American visas inside.

 

His travel orders were issued same date as his passport and were used to accompany Brigadier General George F. Schulgen on his important mission to Europe and Asia to the following locations: Paris, Frankfurt, Caserta, Cairo, New Delhi, Chongqing, Tokyo and back to Washington. It was only AFTER this important mission that he then proceeded to his original posting to South America, but to Ecuador and not Bolivia, at the beginning of February 1946.

 

Online research has shed some light to this interesting individual who was on active service during the war in Panama Canal and later on as aid to the assistant of US Secretary of Defense John J. McCloy, and he attended the Potsdam Conference of July 1945 held at Berlin, later on missions in the Pacific.

 

Interestingly enough, his elder brother was also issued a US passport after the war, not an official example, but a regular passport No. 12807 (NY issue) from 1950, full of travel to both South America and Europe as well…I let you be the judge on the reasons for the trips.

 

 

I have added images of the two travel documents.

 

 

Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.