So began a lengthy and perilous saga of trying to find a safe house. According to Taylor, “Buchleitner and family were devout anti-Nazis, as were eighty percent of the people in this vicinity, but in spite of a token of a few gold pieces and several hundred marks, he wished us to be on our way. This was the first demonstration of fear growing into terror, which we were to see several times later.” The group traveled from village to village by night, desperately seeking a place where they could set up a permanent base. Along the way they bluffed their way through kontrols (checkpoints) by pretending to be soldiers and saluting “Heil Hitler.” The old villagers manning the stations allowed them to “slip by, although it was ticklish.” They begged several contacts for a place to stay, “but all were unwilling to keep us permanently although they were entirely friendly and willing to be hospitable for one night,” said Taylor. Many of those they met expressed support. In particular, one “middle-aged woman wept and almost became hysterical when I was introduced to her as an American officer,” noted Taylor. “She was unusually intelligent and vehemently denounced the Nazis. She begged me to send for American or British paratroops, stating that 90% of all Austrians would assist. This plea was repeated many times later by others.”
As they traveled from place to place the team gathered intelligence, despite the loss of their radio. They discovered an ammunition factory that employed forty thousand workers, as well as many other targets, such as “a locomotive factory in [W]iener Heustadt, turning out one a day, a powder factory in Winzendorf employing 2000, a Wehrmacht lager in Vienna containing all materiel of war, an artillery school, flak school, numerous airfields and woods where the German fighters were hidden when the American bombers came over, government food storage houses in Vienna, etc.” They also amassed data on the Southeast Wall, a belt of fortifications protecting southern Austria. The team took down “the exact location of the fortified hills, anti-tank ditches, barbed wire and mine fields, pillboxes, artillery sites, etc. At this time (1 Nov.) there were 50,000 foreign workers and several hundred Hitler Youth preparing this defense line under the direction of Todt and R.A.D. It was expected to be finished by the middle of January [1945].”
In addition, Taylor and the others witnessed the conditions in which the Reich was warehousing slave laborers and implementing the “Final Solution,” the Holocaust. One former theater “housed several hundred foreign (slave) workers, mostly Ukrainians, but including Poles, Czechs, French, Italians, Etc., approximately 25% were women. They had practically nothing to eat and were the worst specimens of humanity I had ever seen,” recalled Taylor. On another occasion “two trains of 28 cars each with approximately 6,000 Hungarian Jews passed through on their way to lagers in Austria. They had had no food or water for three days and when [a Red Cross nurse] took them a pail of drinking water, the guards (SS or SA) objected and told her that Jews didn’t deserve to be treated as human beings.”
However, they found that some prisoners received much better treatment. At one point they made contact with British POWs who were working on a railroad line. A small stream ran behind the home where they were staying, and it “was being widened into an anti-tank ditch by many hundreds of foreign workers and their Nazi overseers. We observed and photographed them at close range through a crack in the roof made by sliding a tile up. Early one morning I thought I heard swearing in English and, on sliding the tile up, we saw about eleven British POWs working on the railroad with no guard except the railroad inspector.” The OSS men waited for their chance to make contact, and a few days later they caught the Brits’ attention when the overseer left for a moment. “They were so surprised that it was difficult for them to conceal their excitement,” remembered Taylor. “We told them we were U.S. Air Corps men who had bailed out and were on our way to Yugoslavia. They offered a map and good advice. They said they were not treated badly, extra food was issued for railroad work, their Red Cross packages were coming through regularly, and from what we saw they didn’t strain themselves working.” In his report Taylor noted,
Political information showed that approximately 2% to 5% of the farmers and villagers were devout Nazis, 10% to 15% were on the fence and 80% anti-Nazi, with 50% rabid anti-Nazi. In Vienna, estimates were difficult because of extreme Gestapo control, but it is safe to say that not more than 20% were strong Nazis and certainly 50% were rabid anti-Nazi. Later American bombing of non-military targets, particularly pure residential districts and the beautiful art gallery and opera house, reduced the Anglo Americanophiles to nil. It was very bad psychology and positively stiffened morale. The feeling among the Austrians, particularly the Viennese, was that the Allies were making no differentiation between the Austrians and the Germans, which did more to squelch budding resistance movements than the Gestapo. In the later months, coupled with the Russian atrocity stories, it actually united Austrians and Germans as never before and made possible a real Volksturm (people’s army).
Although the Dupont team had collected troves of valuable information, without a radio, they had no way to transmit it to the Allies. Eventually they regrouped at the butcher’s house, where they met up with Underwood and his mother, who assisted them with trying to make connections to the Vienna underground and get their intelligence out of the country. They set up a temporary base of operations in the hayloft of a friend and developed a daring plan to get out of the country. Perkins and Grant “would go to the front in Italy via Udine and attempt to infiltrate through the American lines.” Meanwhile Taylor and Underwood would attempt to make their way to Yugoslavia, contact the partisans there, and somehow find a way back to the base at Bari. Through their contacts they made arrangements to travel from Vienna on a freight train carrying machinery for a ball-bearing factory. “Underwood would go as a civilian employee, and [Taylor] would be encased in a box as machinery.” Grant and Perkins set out from the farm for the Italian front.
Before long, one of the men made a critical mistake that would place the entire team in jeopardy. Living up to his reputation as a womanizer, Grant had seduced one of the locals and used his mission funds to purchase a diamond ring for his girlfriend. Suspicious of this outlay of cash, the Gestapo swooped in and picked up the two men. Under interrogation, they confessed their actions and gave up the location of their two fellow operatives.
Unsuspecting, Taylor and Underwood remained at the farm that had been their most recent hideout, making the final preparations for their own dash to the border. As the two agents were steeling themselves for one last freezing cold night in the hayloft, they heard visitors approach the main house. They turned off their light, expecting no trouble, as the family with whom they were staying frequently entertained guests. There was nothing friendly about the visitors that night. Taylor recalled, “Suddenly, the door was thrown open and eight plainclothesmen rushed in.” He grappled with the Germans for a few seconds, but eventually they forced him into a corner, where they beat him over the head with a blackjack until he was groggy. Four men jumped on him and twisted his left arm “backwards until the elbow joint was torn loose, much as you would the joint of a chicken leg.” Taylor realized further struggle would be futile. “Blackjack taps on my head continued while my wrists were chained together behind my back, painfully tight, and locked with a padlock.”
Taylor looked over at Underwood, who had suffered much the same treatment. His friend was “bleeding profusely from several cuts on his head.” The plainclothes Gestapo agents hauled the two men to their feet and dragged them out into the night.
LAND
20
VIENNA CAPTIVITY
THE GERMANS HAULED AWAY TAYLOR and Underwood for “questioning,” a process that involved as much intimidation and torture as actual interrogation. Taylor noted, “We were led to the Burgermeister’s office in Schutzen, and with our arms still chained behind us we were slapped and kicked while being questioned. Although in opposite corners of a large room with our backs turned to each other, we could each hear what was happening to the o
ther.”
The officer pointed to Taylor’s collar and asked what the insignia there meant. “Hauptmann (Captain),” responded the operative.
“Falsch (false)!” announced the German slapping him across the face.
The same interchange repeated several times, and each time Taylor kept his answer the same. He later learned “they were trying to make me admit that I was a civilian in uniform.”
Taylor and Underwood weren’t the only ones brought in. He also saw the family that had sheltered them hauled off by the authorities, all of them weeping except the housewife. The Germans executed the head of the family, while the others remained in German custody.
The Germans took away Taylor’s uniform and offered him civilian clothes, which he refused, believing they would take photographs of him in the clothing and use it as evidence that he had broken the rules of the Geneva Convention. After more interrogation they transported Taylor to Gestapo headquarters in Vienna. In better days the building near the center of the city had served as the Hotel Metropole. The Gestapo had converted it into a prison. “In underwear only . . . and with clumsy wooden shoes, I was taken to Morzinplatz IV Gestapo [Headquarters] in Vienna and placed in cell No. 5 on the mezzanine at 0500 on the first of December,” recalled Taylor, “even my shoe strings being removed so that I could not hang myself. I was not allowed to lie down nor to sleep nor was any food or water allowed.” More grilling and intimidation followed. “At this time, I never expected to live another day and consequently slept very little,” noted Taylor. He was held in an eight-by-seven-foot cell with no view of the outside, and the lights were left on continuously. He finally received meager food and water and realized he fared better than some other prisoners, who were “chained backwards to the bars in the cell with their toes barely touching the floor, [while] others were permitted no ‘food’ for several days while others had their wrists chained together at night.”
On a typical day, the prisoners were awakened at 5:00 a.m. “After washing and making one’s ‘bed,’ [they] waited until [8:00 a.m.] for breakfast, which consisted of hot water (very diluted unsweetened ersatz coffee) and a thin slice of black bread. One must then sit on a stool but not sleep and must jump to attention whenever the ‘Kontrole’ made the rounds, usually about four times daily. Lunch consisted of a very weak erpsin (beet) soup (no meat-broth, bone, or other vegetable), about four tablespoons of vegetable stew such as erpsin, carrots, or potatoes, and one thin slice of bread. For supper, one had the same stew and a similar slice of bread. For Saturday supper, a small cube of cheese was substituted for the stew and for Sunday a small slice of wurst the size of a silver dollar was substituted. One was permitted to go to the toilet only at three specified times daily when there were two guards on duty, and no prisoner ever saw any of the others.”
Periodic questioning continued over the course of several days. Disturbingly, the Germans “showed a remarkable knowledge of OSS including names and had a diagramatic relationship of OSS Theater Hq to Washington. They were particularly interested in northern Italy and told me several things about the organization which I didn’t know, such as the establishment of a detachment at Cannes,” he added. Making matters worse, Taylor caught a glimpse of Perkins and Grant, who were also in custody, which meant that no one from the team had made it back to the Allied lines with their intelligence.
After some time passed, they placed Taylor in a cell with Hungarian General Tabornok Wattay Anton, Hungary’s former war minister. In addition, he met several other prisoners, including a Bavarian count. Frequent Allied air raids resulted in the prisoners being taken to shelters in the lower levels of the prison, but no opportunity for escape presented itself.
Taylor’s injured arm continued to be very painful. “In spite of the fact that my arm was green and blue and terribly swollen, no doctor nor X-ray ever came although promised innumerable times,” he said. “It was five weeks before I could use it to button my pants or tie my tie. I finally became resigned to my death and with the aid of Wattay, who was very religious, I prayed twice a day for myself and my comrades.”
Soon the holiday season approached. The Bavarian count Taylor had befriended “was released the day before Christmas and left a small wreath with candles for us. On Christmas Eve we lit it and tried to be happy, but Wattay was so worried and nervous about his family in Budapest during the siege that he couldn’t control himself. In trying to comfort him, I broke down myself, which was the only time during all my captivity,” recalled the OSS officer.
In mid-January, Wattay was taken away, and Taylor received a new roommate, one who brought with him a very welcome radio. Although Allied stations were blocked on local frequencies, Taylor jerry-rigged the set to get shortwave bands. Soon they were happily listening to news from the BBC and America. In fact, the very first time they got it to work they heard “Vice President Wallace giving the oath of office to Truman and a moment later the President was heard being sworn in by a chief justice. It was a real thrill.” Many of the prison guards were former members of the Vienna police who opposed the Nazis, and one stopped by the cell door on several occasions in order to listen to the news from the Allies. This guard told Taylor that “only three out of the twenty police guards were Nazis, and their treatment bore out his claim. They were regular Vienna police, most having 20 to 30 years’ service and not SS or Wehrmacht,” Taylor noted. “With the exception of the above mentioned three, they were all kind and sympathetic with us; however, very strict Gestapo control was exercised over them.”
Through his cellmate, Taylor also learned about the “top-floor” prisoners. The Germans had captured nine agents (five women and four men) sent into Austria by the Russians and British. The Germans forced them to remain in contact with their handlers and “to save their lives, they operated their radios in daily contact with Moscow, also ciphering and deciphering all messages. A radio room on the top floor was in charge of a Gestapo operator who supervised and monitored each transmission.” In addition to feeding false information to the Russians, the Wehrmacht attempted to lure other agents into traps where they could also be captured.
Eventually the harsh conditions began to take a toll on Taylor. He spent two months in “absolute solitary confinement, only seeing and speaking to other people during the air raids.” He also grew ill. “I had severe dysent[e]ry and much loss of blood the last two weeks of January, and although medical attention or medicine was promised daily, neither were ever forthcoming,” Taylor later wrote. “By the middle of February, I had lost much weight and had long ago stopped exercising because it made me too hungry. About this time I succumbed to pneumonia with very high fever.” Again Taylor made repeated requests for medical attention, but the only help he received came from fellow prisoners. With the help of one of the Viennese guards, a prisoner passed him a package of sulphanilamide, which Taylor believed helped save his life. A female prisoner named Louisa Scuchek, who was one of the top-floor radio operators, “was allowed to come into my room at intervals and change the cold towels on my head,” Taylor remembered. “She was a wonderful nurse and made me feel much better. We became very good friends.”
At one point, Scuchek confided to Taylor that she believed the Germans would execute her and the other Russian operatives at the last minute before Russia invaded Austria. But she was not afraid. “I have no fear, I am a Communist,” she explained.
Later, due to damage to the prison, Taylor and radio operator prisoners were moved to a villa formerly owned by the head of an Austrian-American rubber company. The villa sat on a park, and the prisoners were herded through the picturesque area during the daily air raids. “It was the first time I’d seen the sun in five months, and the ‘special’ prisoner food was far superior to anything previous, although meager.” Taylor was even taken out to saw firewood and prune trees in the park when he was well enough to work.
But his stay in the relatively posh surroundings didn’t last. After only a week in the villa, a guard awakened Taylor
in the night and told him to get ready to leave. This is the end, Taylor thought to himself.
21
DECIMA MAS STRIKES BACK
THE NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 18–19, 1944, LIVORNO, ITALY
The sound of a cough that emanated from somewhere in the darkness suddenly broke the silence of the calm, starless night, immediately attracting the attention of Able Seaman P. R. Thompson. It was just after one in the morning, and Thompson was throwing out an anti-limpeteer charge in the harbor at Livorno,* Italy, where dozens of Allied ships were moored. Steel nets and other obstructions had failed to stop enemy frogmen, so the Allies had resorted to the use of miniature depth charges that created shock waves powerful enough to shred human tissue, muscle, and bones. Thompson and the other three men on duty at the lighthouse at Diga Di Marzocco took turns trudging out along the stone breakwater and dropping the explosives every five to twenty-five minutes, at random intervals, to make underwater swimming perilous for the enemy.
Thompson’s head turned in the direction of the cough, and he noticed a dark shape beneath the surface of the water. He threw his charge. The shadow moved. The seaman charged back to the lighthouse and quickly informed the other two guards that he thought there were limpeteers in the bay. Rushing back along the rocky breakwater with their loaded rifles, the three men opened fire on the amorphous shape now clinging to the rocks. Almost immediately a trio of Italian frogmen climbed up onto the breakwater.
“Put your hands up!” ordered the Americans.
The Italians obeyed, but they began walking along the rocks.
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