by Dick Camp
The next morning, Ortiz left Captain Coolidge in charge and went alone into the village. “I contacted the mayor and requested food,” Ortiz said. “He was very nervous”—the mayor had learned that the Germans had killed the two maquis that had been left in the church, then burned the building to the ground and killed several hostages for harboring “terrorists.” “They burned the place down,” Sergeant Bodnar bemoaned, “… and killed them all.” The longer Ortiz talked to the mayor, the more “his confidence returned he and others became very hospitable.” Risler said fondly, “The mayor’s daughter—a very attractive young woman—brought us bread, cheese, sausage, and wine.” Ortiz was excited to learn that the Allies had landed in Southern France (Operation Anvil). However, the mayor cautioned him that German forces were on the move. One convoy had passed through the village earlier that morning headed northeast. “I spent the rest of the afternoon observing enemy movement in the valley,” Ortiz said. “After dark we went into the village and spent the night in the mayor’s house.”
The team decided to return to their headquarters on the plateau so they could better coordinate their activities with the invasion force. “At first light we crossed the Isere River at Centron,” Risler said, “We were overconfident and got careless.” Just as they reached the main highway, a heavily armed convoy—two hundred German soldiers in ten to twelve trucks with machine guns mounted on rings over the cabs and a half-track—from the German 157th Alpine Mountain Division came around a blind curve and put the Americans under fire. “Ortiz was in the lead, followed by Bodnar, myself, Arcelin, Brunner, and Coolidge,” Risler said. “The Germans caught us flat footed. There was no place to go, except back to the village in an attempt to cross the river again and seek cover on the other side. The village was the only cover available. … [T] here was a steep drop on one side and a mountain on the other.” Sergeant Brunner recalled, “Major Ortiz, Sergeant Bodnar, and Sergeant Risler withdrew into the southwest section of the town. Captain Coolidge, Jo-Jo, and I took the southeast. We retaliated as best we could while working our way under fire toward the east.” Risler said that, “The three of us reached a stone wall, under covering fire from Brunner and Coolidge. We returned fire with our carbines and retreated through the village.”
About this time, Captain Coolidge was hit in the right leg but he kept going. Brunner said, “I called out to Jo-Jo and told him to follow us but he stayed in the village. Captain Coolidge and I reached the river. I dove in, and swam across under fire. The current was very swift and I had some difficulty reaching the opposite shore. The captain and I got separated and did not meet up again until two days later.” As the other three retreated from house to house, Risler came upon a young mother and two small children. “I told them to get down but they didn’t understand English,” he said emotionally. “The toddlers were crying. … I felt sorry for them. … I remembered what the Germans had done to the last village.” Ortiz told the two men to get out while he held the enemy off. Both refused. Several terrified townspeople implored the Marines to give up to save the village. Finally the Germans had the village surrounded, cutting off any hope of escape. They were trapped, and it was only a matter of time until they brought up heavy weapons to destroy the town.
“Since our activities were well known to the Gestapo, there was no reason to hope that we would be treated as ordinary prisoners of war,” Ortiz explained. “For me personally the decision to surrender was not too difficult. I had been involved in dangerous activities for many years and was mentally prepared for my number to turn up. Sergeant Bodnar was next to me and I explained the situation to him and what I intended to do.” Bodnar recalled, “Major Ortiz said that he was going to talk with the Germans and that we should try and sneak out while he did. I told him, ‘Major we’re Marines. We work together, we stay together!’ ”
Surrender and Captivity
The decision was made. Ortiz would surrender to save the village and his men. During a lull in the firing, he shouted a surrender proposal in German … and stepped into the street. The Germans continued to fire but fortunately Ortiz was not hit and kept walking toward the enemy. Finally the firing stopped and he met with the German commander, who agreed to spare the village inhabitants. Ortiz motioned for his men to come out, and when more did not appear the German officer demanded to know “where the rest of the company was.”
Risler said that, “The Germans got mad because only three Marines surrendered. They thought there was more.” During a subsequent search of the village and the surrounding fields the Germans captured Arcelin, who was wearing Perry’s uniform and was considered to be a Marine despite a very limited English vocabulary—the team taught him some English, mostly profanity, according to Risler. Arcelin was able to continue the ruse during the entire period of his captivity.
After being disarmed and searched, Ortiz called his men to attention. “We are Marines,” he said, and ordered them to adhere to the Geneva Convention by giving their captors name, rank, and serial number. This show of discipline so impressed the Germans that they started treating them with marked respect. The men were placed under heavy guard and taken to the German headquarters at Bourg St. Maurice for interrogation. Upon arrival they were searched again. Ortiz lost his identification card and 35,000 francs but managed to conceal 65,000 francs. “We were taken before Major Kolb, the German officer responsible for our imprisonment,” Risler explained. “He was a short, heavyset retread from World War I, who had fought against the Marines in 1918.” Ortiz was surprised by the amount of information Kolb knew. “In great accurate detail he described our air operation, the burial ceremony of Sergeant Perry, various engagements, and the manner and position of our movements. He said the information was obtained by a shepherd who was one of his field agents.”
Kolb ordered the prisoners to be taken to Albertville. “Ortiz rode in a staff car, while we rode in the back of a truck,” Risler recalled. “I thought that we were going to be executed because there were three shovels in the bed of the vehicle.” He was aware that Hitler had issued orders to execute all OSS agents who were caught and before leaving a junior officer had stalked by and pointed a pistol at them. “Kaput!” he exclaimed. Looking back, Risler thought that Kolb disliked the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the SS unit which ran the concentration camps, and that’s why they weren’t turned over to them. As a ploy, Ortiz told the team to claim they were paratroops from the Normandy landings but Kolb quickly saw through the ruse. The convoy stopped every few minutes. “The Germans were afraid of maquis ambushes,” Risler said. “They sent out security patrols to investigate suspicious terrain and often traveled in circles, backtracking, and only traveled with larger convoys. They were so concerned about the maquis that they abandoned broken down vehicles rather than take time to repair them.” During one of the frequent stops, the irrepressible Ortiz used his lighter to try to set fire to the car, hoping in the confusion that he could escape. “However,” he said, “I succeeded only in making the rear seat smolder. The Germans ranted and threatened in the usual Teutonic manner, but did not use physical force.”
On 21 August the small convoy reached Chambery, the headquarters of the 157th Alpine Division where Ortiz brazenly requested to see the commanding general. His request was granted and upon entering the general’s office he boldly proposed that the division surrender to his team. The amazed general responded, “It’s lucky I don’t have you shot!” and threw Ortiz out of his office. For several weeks they were transported to various locations. “At one point we were taken through a tunnel to northern Italian town of Susa, where we were strip searched in the town square … much to the amusement of the town’s women. Our captors found the money we had hidden in our boots.” From Susa they were taken to Bardonecchia, a rest and recuperation center for German troops. “Bodnar tried to convince one of the older guards to let us go and desert but he didn’t want to go because of his family. We then decided to overpower him but before we could carry out our plan, we were moved to ano
ther camp where the conditions were poor.”
In late September or early October, the team was taken to Stalag VII A, a prison camp near Munich. “We were crammed into a heavily loaded railroad boxcar where it was almost impossible to sit down,” Risler explained, “with only a small opening for air. Many prisoners passed out on the three-day trip.” Within days they were transferred to Dulag, a transit camp and thrown into solitary confinement, where they were interrogated three or four times a day by an officer of the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. Risler thought he looked like Hermann Goering. At first the interrogator was friendly, but soon showed his true colors when the Marines refused to “cut a record for the folks back home,” an obvious propaganda ploy. In November they were transferred to Marlag/Milag Nord, a permanent camp for naval POWs located about twenty miles from the German city of Bremen. There were only thirteen Americans in the camp; most of the other five to six thousand men were British, with some French, and quite a few Royal Marines that had been captured at Dieppe and other commando raids. Ortiz was kept in Marlag “O”, the officers’ section of the camp, and the others in Marlag “M,” for NCOs.
Each camp contained a number of single-story wooden huts; twenty-nine in Marlag and thirty-six in Milag. Most of them were barracks, while the others contained kitchens, dining rooms, washrooms, guard barracks, storehouses, a post office, and other administrative buildings. The barracks were divided into rooms each accommodating fourteen to eighteen men who slept in two and three-tiered bunks. The POWs occupied themselves in various ways. There was a camp theater in Marlag and the POWs performed concerts and plays. Each camp had its own sports field, and there was also a library with around three thousand books. Prisoners ran courses in languages and mathematics, as well as commercial, vocational, economic, and scientific subjects. Sports equipment and textbooks were obtained from the Red Cross and YMCA. POWs were allowed to send two letters and four postcards each month. There were no restrictions on the number of letters a POW could receive. Naturally all incoming and outgoing mail was censored. A popular diversion was provided by the “Milag Jockey Club” which held race meetings every Saturday evening. The “horses” were wooden models that raced on a thirty-six-foot track, controlled by dice. The POWs bet on the races, and money was raised and donated to the Red Cross.
The prisoners’ relationships were excellent—bound by their common dislike of the German guards. The prisoners outdid themselves in devising dirty tricks to play on their captors. Risler remembered one particularly nasty ruse that had the prisoners chuckling for months. “Several men bargained two hundred cigarettes from the Red Cross packages for a bottle of cognac that had already been opened. They told the guard they would have to make certain it had not been watered. The German fell for it and gave them the bottle, which they took into the barracks and emptied it into a container. Then [they] peed in the bottle, sealed it and gave it back, saying the price was too high. The guard got real upset but couldn’t take any action.” The camp had a homemade radio they kept hidden in a plywood Red Cross box. “The radio was hidden in a hole under the floor. Every day a man would record the 2100 BBC broadcast and send the news around the camp. The Germans scoured the camp but never found the radio.”
In early February, the Marine prisoner detachment grew by another member. Marine 2nd Lieutenant Walter Taylor, the operations officer of an OSS intelligence team attached to the U.S. Army’s 36th Infantry Division, was captured while on a mission behind German lines.
Taylor was a veteran of OSS operations in Corsica and was attached to the U.S. 7th Army, 36th Division, for Operation Anvil. The 36th was the right flank of Gen. Alexander Patch’s northward attack. Taylor, Capt. Justine L. Greene, USA (a well-known New York psychiatrist), and Cpl. James S. Sweeney, USMC, were tasked with reconnoitering German defenses near Grasse in southern France.
The reconnaissance team drove behind enemy lines to Mons, an observation post about twenty miles from Grasse. The following day, Taylor drove a local macquis agent to Saint Cezaire, about nine miles from Grasse, in a Citroen. The plan was for Taylor to wait in Saint Cezaire, which was reported to be under Resistance control , while the macquis agent advanced into Grasse and then returned with information. As they neared the town, they had to stop for a roadblock of land mines. The agent got out of the car to approach the mines, thinking they were laid by the Resistance. He was shot through the head within ten feet of the car.
At first, Taylor thought it was maquis friendly fire, but then he glimpsed a German forage cap. He threw the Citroen into reverse and started backing up as the car was riddled with rifle fire. Taylor crashed into the curbstone and then tried to open his door, but a German soldier jumped up from a ditch and lobbed a grenade. The explosion threw Taylor into the road unconscious, his left leg and hand seriously wounded. He regained consciousness as a prisoner; a German army company had moved into the town overnight. The Germans took him to Grasse, surviving a strafing run from American planes along the way. Even under these conditions, Taylor was able to destroy an incriminating document he carried and hid it behind the car seat.
After arriving in Grasse, Taylor was interrogated harshly until he vomited on the interrogator’s uniform. While Ortiz and other Union II troops were being shunted about, Taylor was shuffled through six hospitals, a medical prison near Munich. After a month, Taylor was sent to a stalag in Moosberg. Finally, in January 1945, his wounds were declared sufficiently healed, and he found himself at Marlag.
By late March 1945, the inmates could hear artillery fire from the Allied advance. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time until the camp was liberated. Lieutenant Don Naughton USAAF, recalled, “… [T]he Germans announced that our camp was to be evacuated. Peter [Ortiz] immediately called a meeting of his small group of officers … we had been discussing escape possibilities for some time and it was obvious that the time was now.” On 10 April, before they could carry out their plan, the camp was suddenly evacuated. A company of SS-Feldgendarmie (military police) suddenly appeared and that afternoon forced the prisoners to leave the camp. During the confusion, many of them were left behind. “We—Bodnar, Arcelin, Risler, and Charles Mulchy, a Navy gunner’s mate—tried to hide under the kitchen floor,” Risler said. “There was only a foot of clearance … barely enough room to crawl and we had to remain in the same position for hours while the Germans searched the camp for holdouts. They even brought in dogs, but we had sprinkled pepper around to hide our scent.”
The other prisoners prepared to leave. Lieutenant Naughton recalled, “The day was hectic. We were issued tinned food and a half loaf of black bread and ordered to take a bare minimum of personal items. In a last attempt to postpone the march, [Ortiz] went to the senior Allied officer, a British Naval captain, to request that he refuse to have his prisoners march. Ortiz was turned down. After stalling as long as possible we were finally on the road.” About three hours after starting out, the column was attacked by American P-51 fighter aircraft. “We were in the open with nothing but open fields on either side so we all scattered off the road and into the fields. The P-51s roared down the road, machine guns yammering. They killed and wounded a number of prisoners and continued on their way. The dead and wounded were left behind and the march continued.” The American aircraft did not realize that the Germans were emptying prisoner of war camps ahead of the Allied advance and thought the column was escaping enemy soldiers. “We were targets of opportunity,” Naughton lamented.
Another alert swept the column. “We were passing through an area with woods on our left,” Naughton said. Taylor and two British officers, Maj. Fred Meade and Capt. John Greenwood, joined him and Ortiz. “We ran until we fell down exhausted and then just waited to see if we were missed.” It was a daring escape; the Germans would have shot them on sight. “We spent ten days hiding, roving at night, blundering into enemy positions hoping to find our way into British lines,” Ortiz recalled. “Luck was with us. Once we were discovered but managed to get away, and several other
times we narrowly escaped detection.…” Lieutenant Naughton described one of the close calls. “We were hidden in some heavy underbrush in a small and sparsely wooded area when we heard children playing. We kept quiet as possible but in the late afternoon we were concerned we may have been seen. Lieutenant Taylor could move like an Indian and he decided, with Peter’s approval, to check our surroundings. He came back shortly and reported two Hitler youth were watching our hideout as though waiting for someone. We decided to make a run for it. We held each other’s hands so as to stay together and broke out of the underbrush and ran as fast as we could into the darkening open field. We were about a hundred yards away when a couple of German soldiers opened fire with their machine pistols but the darkness saved us and we got away.”
Ortiz recalled, “By the seventh night, we had returned near our camp. I made a reconnaissance of [the camp]. … There seemed to be only a token guard and prisoners of war appeared to have assumed virtual control of the compounds.” Marine historian Major Robert Mattingly wrote, “The little band was now in bad physical shape. A combination of little food and drinking swamp water had made them all sick—Taylor was covered with boils, and Ortiz was very weak. … [T]he men decided it might be better to live in their old huts than starve to death outside.” By this time, there were few German guards and the prisoners basically ran the camp. “We decided it was time to ‘revisit’ the compound,” Naughton said. “We were walking down the road when two German officers passed us and said ‘Good Morning.’” They merely walked through the gate and returned to their barracks to await the arrival of the British advance.
Several days later, the Allied prisoners heard the unforgettable skirling of bagpipes. A piper, sitting on the turret of a Sherman tank, grandly announced the arrival of the 1st Scots Armored Group. True to form, Ortiz volunteered the team to join them and “bag a few more Germans.” His request was respectfully declined. Instead, they were flown to Brussels and then to Paris for V-E Day. Risler commented that their uniform would have “made a DI sob. Marine overseas caps, Navy black shirts, khaki tie, Army O.D. pants, and paratroop boots.” The team was given thirty days leave upon returning to the United States and told to report to the West Coast afterward. When the war ended they were in training for a mission to jump into Indo China.