He recalls a time of war and adventure HIS MISSION WAS BEHIND ENEMY LINES

By CATHY DYSON

Jim Hudson says he was just an ordinary guy from Philadelphia until World War II dawned and average people like him were thrust into incredible situations.

But Hudson's missions, which varied from photographing world leaders to spying behind enemy lines, aren't the only amazing feats for the man who lives in the Post Oak area of Spotsylvania County.

Hudson is 90, but his memory is as sharp as the dagger he carried into war.

In 1944, after three years as a paratrooper, postal clerk and photographer, Hudson became an undercover intelligence officer in Albania with the Office of Strategic Services.

He'd heard about a group of American nurses whose plane crashed behind enemy lines. He volunteered for the mission, envisioning himself as a knight who would come to the rescue. (See accompanying story.)

But Hudson needed a crash course in combat training, so a British officer showed him how to hold the stiletto's handle as daintily as a demitasse cup.

That way, the weapon would become an extension of his hand, if he ever had to grope in the darkness for an enemy he couldn't see.

The knowledge saved Hudson, when he had to defend himself against a German soldier in an Albanian cave.

Hudson still has the knife, along with many other pieces of the past.

Even though he has spent much of his later years writing about the war--five books so far, with more planned--"Captain Jim" hardly seems like a throwback to another era.

He is active and healthy, up-to-date on current events and savvy about computers.

He has no aches and pains and says he has never had a headache in his life.

"I used to walk like a soldier until last year," said Hudson, who's the same size (6 feet tall and 130 pounds) as when the war ended. "But now I walk like a lousy old man."

He's married to a woman 30 years younger. He became a father for the fifth time at 61.

He still works full time, gathering teams of engineers who recommend cost-saving measures on big public projects.

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Jim Hudson has good genes. His mother lived to be 95, and his father 100. His older sister Grace died last year at 96.

Grace was fiercely protective of Jim after he almost died from spinal meningitis at 3.

When Jim became a photographer during World War II, he regularly sent home film, pictures and detail-filled captions.

Grace became his personal librarian, faithfully preserving the information.

"Grace treated me like a hero," he said.

Jim Hudson believes he's healthy at 90 because of positive thinking and a diet that includes:

no white bread

fresh fruits, vegetables

a little meat

lots of eggs

chocolate daily

During the war, he carried an Army-issued bar as hard as baking chocolate. He would scrape it against his tongue, instead of biting off pieces, so it would last. In the mountains of Albania, one bar got him through three months.

When the North African campaign ended in World War II, so did Jim Hudson's duties as a military photographer.

He was looking for a new assignment when he heard about a mission to rescue 13 American nurses whose plane crashed in Albania.

Hudson volunteered and became a spy with the Office of Strategic Services.

It took him eight months to make contact with the women, who had hidden among the mountain peasants. Ten of them already had been escorted to Italy, and Hudson helped the others get to safety.

The Germans probably wouldn't have harmed the nurses, but they would have publicized the fact that the Americans couldn't keep their women safe, Hudson said.

He became the senior intelligence officer in the country and performed 33 missions behind enemy lines. He ate wild goats in the mountains, frogs in the swamps and cornbread among the natives.

The peasants shared their meager belongings with Hudson--and paid dearly for it.

"They'd give us anything they had and they were all killed" after the war by Albanian communists. "I still dream about that sometimes," he said.

Date published: 1/13/2008

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