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Part Four
And so I began my first
mission, which was assigned by one of General Donovan’s adjutants. I
parachuted into Germany at night, landing in an open field not far from a
wooded area. I was fortunate enough to recognize almost immediately, from
pictures that had previously been shown to me, specific points that helped
me to orient myself. After first concealing my parachute, I walked a
relatively short distance and met my first contact who, I knew from my
briefing, was a German nun, though she was not wearing the customary nun’s
habit. What stands out most in my mind about that meeting was that, despite
all the German lessons I had received, I could not, at first, understand
anything she said. But after she slowed down a bit and enunciated the words,
I got used to her dialect and we got along just fine.
It took me about ten days to
complete this first mission, which was the elimination of a Gestapo agent
who was in charge of that area. I was pretending to be a recuperating German
soldier who had suffered a combat leg injury and needed a crutch to get
around. I had, of course, been given all the necessary identification
papers. In accordance with my training, I followed the agent at a safe
distance in an effort to determine what time he left his home, where he ate
his meals, who he met with and what time he arrived at and left his office.
I did this to in order to see whether or not he followed a regular routine.
He was normally picked up each morning by a subordinate, who would knock and
then go inside. After a few minutes, both men would leave the house, enter
their car and drive off. I decided it would be best to eliminate him at that
time, and to make it look like the subordinate was the assassin.
On the morning I planned to
carry out my assignment, however, the subordinate arrived with two soldiers
and, of course, I did not proceed with my plan. I later found out that the
two soldiers were part of a German troop convoy that would soon be passing
through the area.
The convoy, which was
motorized, entered the town about twenty minutes later. Of course, the
people came out of their homes, stood on either side of the road and waved
at the soldiers, giving the “Heil Hitler” salute. It looked to me as if the
Gestapo agent, who had arrived earlier with his aide and the two soldiers,
was checking the crowd to make certain that every citizen who should be
there was, indeed, present. As he started to take a step in the direction of
someone, I stuck my crutch between his legs, making sure that it looked like
he tripped over his own feet. He fell to the ground backwards, right in
front of a truck whose rear wheels were fitted with tractor treads. It was a
pretty gruesome mess and caused a lot of commotion, during which I exited
the area. And so, my first assignment did not go exactly as planned, but
helped very much to alert me to the fact that I should always come up with
an alternate plan—just in case.
The German nun and I became
very close friends during the relatively short time we spent together. I
only saw her in her nun’s habit on the two Sundays that I spent in the area
while trying to accomplish my assignment. She said she would very much like
to come back to the States with me after the war. I thought I might be able
to see her on future missions, but I never saw her again. I attempted to
find her once the war had ended, but was told she had been killed. I was
never able to find out exactly how she was killed, but I am certain it was
while helping some downed pilot escape capture—this being the primary thing
that she, and others she worked with, did.
I made my way back to a
“pickup point” between Calais and Dunkerque, where I was picked up by a
couple of middle-aged Brits in a fair sized launch. After a somewhat rough
but uneventful trip across the channel, we landed somewhere near Dover. The
Brits must have radioed ahead, since we were met by a U.S. Army captain and
a sergeant, who escorted me back to London.
In London, my debriefing
officer was a U.S. Army G2 captain—the same officer who would debrief me on
all subsequent missions. He said, “We weren’t certain we would see you
again.” In fact, it seemed they were always amazed that I returned, even
when my point of return was to various cities in France and Germany.
In a way, I would have
preferred my missions to come through the OSS, because then my headquarters
would have probably been in London, which would have been to my liking. But
many things were never explained to me and this was one of them. At a much
later date I found out that almost all of my assignments originated with
General Bedell Smith who, of course, was army and not OSS. It didn’t take me
long to learn not to unnecessarily question orders. In all cases, my
briefings were very thorough and I asked only those questions that would
help me to be successful in completing my mission.
Various modes of
transportation were used to get me to—or at least close to—my assigned
targets. I parachuted out of B25 and British twin-engine planes, or went by
boat or submarine across the channel to France or Belgium. I got back with
the help of the underground and by finding my way to pickup points on the
French or Belgian coast.
Once the Allies were on the
continent, I would make my way back past the German lines and through our
lines. I was shot at several times by our own troops until they heard the
password, which I had been given in advance. I was always given six
different passwords, and I did not write these down, but memorized them in
case I was captured. The passwords were given to me by the officer who
issued my orders. The reason I was issued six each time was that it didn’t
always work out that I could get back on the estimated day of return. Even
after the frontline soldiers on guard duty heard the password, most remained
cautious and escorted me back through our lines at gunpoint.
I was assigned a total of
fourteen missions. I was sometimes given as many as three separate missions
at once, and came back only after completing the last one. In each mission I
had a primary and a secondary, or alternate, target and in ten of the
missions I eliminated my primary target as well as the secondary one. I had
two complete failures, and in two missions, I eliminated the secondary
target only.
My missions lasted from ten
days to three-and-a-half weeks. The primary reason missions took so long was
because, once I arrived at my destination, it took a minimum of ten days
before I knew everything about the area and the habits of my target or
targets. This, of course, was very necessary if I was to be at all
successful not only in the elimination of the target(s), but also in leaving
the area as fast as possible without attracting too much attention and
getting caught.
I met with French, German
and Polish underground people in my effort to complete the fourteen assigned
missions. I was thoroughly debriefed after each mission, though the officer
who always handled my debriefings said it was like pulling teeth, and he
usually had to go over what took place several times to get the full story.
I sometimes had a few days
off between my assignments while I was headquartered in London. For the most
part, I would try to spend the time experiencing some of the fine
restaurants in London and other cities that, in spite of the war, were still
able to operate. I was also very fortunate to run into my Uncle Morris, who
was in London on leave, and while the two of us dined at a great restaurant
that he had heard about, we talked about where we had been and what we were
doing. I told him I was a medic with the 42nd Field Artillery, 4th Division.
He was with some transport unit that delivered ammunition and replacements
to the front lines.
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Uncle Morris and I Met in London |
Some of the not-so-nice
things, more so than some of the nice things, that happen to you in life are
the ones that tend to stick in your memory. One of these, which was both
nice and not so nice, was the time I was forty kilometers outside of Paris
and making my way across a field, when an Allied shell exploded, knocking me
unconscious. I vaguely remember a French female farmhand picking me up as if
I were a sack of potatoes and taking me back to her farmhouse. I suffered
from a slight concussion, but had surprisingly few flesh wounds. These she
bandaged and, over a period of four days, she nursed me back to a condition
where I could again navigate.
Our meals, while I stayed
there, consisted mainly of vegetables that she grew on her farm and, as I
remember, there was no meat and very little poultry. Her husband, like a
number of French men not captured by the Germans, was away fighting with the
Free French Army, and she really did not know whether he was alive or dead.
At the end of the fourth day (I could have probably left at the end of the
third), and under the protection of darkness, I was back on my way, with no
questions asked as to what I was doing or where I was going.
Another not-so-nice event
occurred several hours after completing one of my assignments. I ran into
several Poles who had escaped from a German forced labor camp. One of them
was a young girl in her late teens, who had just lost her left arm at the
shoulder. I never found out how she lost it, mainly because of the language
barrier, but I was able to supply some bandages from a German first aid kit
I’d managed to pick up. Every now and than a picture of this brave girl
flashes in my mind, who, in spite of her loss, seemed to be in complete
control—or maybe it was really that she was numb and in shock.
There was also the time when
six of us, including several OSS men, had by chance come back from various
assignments at the same time. After being debriefed, we were ordered to
report to a hospital in London for a complete physical examination. There
was a Commando by the name of Duffy who looked as if he had been through it
all. When the doctor came in, he took a look at the six of us and said,
“Duffy, you stand over there, and anyone who looks worse than you will be
discharged.” No one was discharged—not even Duffy.
Part Five
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