Thomason, John W. "The Sergeant and the Ship"

An interesting short story published but a few short months before the United States entered World War 2. Master Gunnery Sergeant John Houston, attached to the U.S. office of naval shipping in Tapaca, Chile, serves as an undercover agent (ostensibly as “an agent for an American exporting company, interested in minerals”). His task is to keep any eye on German and Italian shipping, in particular the German freighter KURTSCHEID which may be ferrying supplies to a German raider operating in the South Pacific. Houston soon discovers that this is indeed the case, and does his part to hamper the German war effort soon after deciding for himself that “to all practical purposes the United States was [already] in the war.” That thought reflected the growing public opinion of Americans in mid-1941 as well as one held by the editors of The Saturday Evening Post itself.