Pleasants, Henry III (0914107)

Henry Pleasants, III
Personal details
Born	12 May 1910
Died	2000
Nativity	United States
Religion	Protestant
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
Arm / service	Air Corps
ASN	0914107
Rank	First Lieutenant
Camp Ritchie	Class 9 (21 June – 18 August 1943)
Section	5E

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.

Henry III Pleasants (12 May 1910 – 2000) was a Ritchie Boy (from United States; Protestant) who trained at Camp Ritchie in class 9.

Biography

Henry Pleasants was a Ritchie Boy. He was an American music critic and intelligence officer. Henry was born May 12, 1910. Pleasants studied voice, piano and composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, from which he received an honorary doctorate in 1977. In 1930, at age 19, he became a music critic for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and was the paper's music editor from 1934 to 1942, when he enlisted in the U.S. In 1948–49, he re-entered the military as an army liaison officer with the Austrian government. He left the army to enter the Foreign Service in 1950, serving as an intelligence officer in Munich. From 1950 to 1956, he was the CIA station chief in Bern, and subsequently from 1956 until his retirement from the CIA in 1964, CIA station chief in Bonn. He was involved in espionage during the Cold War, living with Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi general and a top intelligence official for West Germany, to evaluate his "suitability." The Gehlen Organization, which the former general led, became the forerunner of the postwar West German Federal Intelligence Service. On January 4, 2000, Pleasants died aged 89 in a London hospital after suffering a ruptured aorta. You can read more about Henry at the Wikipedia page linked here: You can read a three page article entitled "War and Remembrance" dated July 1995 from Opera News.

Research notes

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Pleasants_%28music_critic%29

Gallery

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Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	90
Class_ASN	914107
Class_Name	PLEASANTS, Henry
match_method	asn_exact_name_exact
row_source	both

Sources

• Camp Ritchie class roster (classes 1–31), merged research file
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2022-12-29 (1 post)
• Wikipedia