My grandfather was an immigrant to the US from Germany. He used to tell us stories about going to Kenyon College in Ohio to undergo intensive French language training for 8 hours a day during WW2. The story was that this was some kind of training to be a US spy during the war- that a person born speaking German (and learning French) would be able to infiltrate and work undercover. As far as I know, my grandfather never actually went overseas as a spy, and I am unable to find any history related to Kenyon College or wartime spy recruitment like this.
My question is- how true is this account? if it's possible, what branch of the service was involved? The only information I have is what my grandfather (now deceased) told me, as well as his ability to speak+read French. Thanks!
This article from Kenyon's alumni magazine talks about the college playing host to two military training programmes during the Second World War: one, a meteorological training school for the Army Air Forces, and the other an 'Army Specialized Training' unit, which "concentrated on foreign languages and area studies; they were preparing for liaison work in France and Germany." The US military certainly had a need for linguists, particularly French and German; they could be useful in roles as interpreters, interrogators, public affairs specialists — and yes, in military intelligence.
US intelligence in WW2 had two main components: the military intelligence departments (the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps and Military Intelligence Service), and the Office of Strategic Services, created in June 1942 to carry out espionage and guerrilla warfare operations behind enemy lines. The OSS did actively seek out foreign language speakers, and their operations were primarily focused on the European theatre, but their training facilities were clustered around Washington, DC, though — I can't find any link between the OSS and the Army language school at Kenyon. The Military Intelligence Service Language School was based a few states over, at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, but their focus was primarily on training for the Pacific theatre and the war against Japan.
Army intelligence did apparently create a specialist counterintelligence/interrogation unit of German-speaking immigrants (predominantly Jewish), nicknamed 'the Ritchie Boys' after their training base at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. I'm afraid I can't tell you much about them — I only came across them for the first time while googling to write this comment, and they don't seem to be hugely well-documented and there's no obvious link to Kenyon College.
Sorry I can't be more help. If he was actually enlisted into the military, I'd try plugging your grandfather's name/date of birth into NARA's Army Enlistment Records search, and see if you can find out in which unit he served. That ought to give you a starting point for further research. You can often find interesting stuff on individual units' wartime records from veterans' associations. You could also try searching the OSS personnel records, on the off-chance that he was actually one of Bill Donovan's "glorious amateurs".
I'm a Kenyon alum who worked as an archivist in the college library and at the Greenslade Special Collections. Your grandfather may very well have a file in the archives and/or an archivist may have knowledge about this program. Check out this link to the Special Collections for details about how to request information on former students or college history: https://lbis.kenyon.edu/library-research/special-collections.