First SEALs (13 page)

The gargantuan task included a laundry list of activities: establishing the supply line, finding and mapping minefields in the Adriatic, assembling a fleet and crews for forty vessels, arranging for maintenance and fuel of the ships, acquiring weapons and other supplies for Tito's forces, finding food and housing for all the personnel required for the supply operation, establishing security and armed guards, organizing recordkeeping for the supply mission, and attending to innumerable other small details. Obtaining the necessary supplies for maintenance activities proved especially difficult. The OSS requested materials from the British and other U.S. military sources of supply; if that failed, they turned to the black market. One report noted, “
It has simply been a beg, borrow and steal policy to keep these vessels running.”

Despite the challenges, the new base was quickly up and running. The OSS recruited partisan laborers, who did much of the work, toiling “
virtually without a rest.” “
[In] the next few days, coal, repairs, and ship stores for the battered little partisan boats arrived.” According to official records, “
Within three weeks, the OSS officers made a complete reconnaissance, gathered considerable intelligence, established bases and trans-shipping facilities, and procured a fleet of small ships. In another six weeks, they had set up a supply service more than able to handle all that the Allies were at the moment prepared to send or Tito to receive.” This small group of men, placed in the right area with the superb ability to innovate and improvise, would have a distinctive impact on the war in the Adriatic.

By the end of the year, the OSS had twenty-five boats in the port of Bari, with as many as twenty making runs at any one time,
all carrying crucial supplies ultimately bound for Yugoslavia. Under Major Tofte's direction the decrepit fleet of “
battered, leaking fishing schooners” made more than sixty voyages through enemy waters without losing their cargoes even once. Operation Audrey would later be called “
quite remarkable since the unseaworthy fleet sailed in seas which the Royal Navy would not risk.”

ITALY AND YUGOSLAVIA AREA OF OPERATIONS

Hayden and Taylor piloted many of the craft in the OSS fleet on a countless number of covert missions across the Adriatic. Taylor, MU's only operative in the Mediterranean Theater, would work closely with the Special Operations branch of OSS. Eventually he was named OSS's operations officer in the Mediterranean. As operations officer, he was “
responsible for the activities of SO, MU, Schools and Training, Operational Supply, and Field Photographic (before its transfer to Intelligence). His responsibilities included planning and coordinating SO and MU operations, and establishing and maintaining adequate training sections for all types of instruction except communications.” With Taylor's appointment, the lines between the Maritime Unit and Special Operations continued to grow blurry—and they would remain that way for some time, largely because there simply weren't enough bodies for all the duties.

Unfortunately, because most of the craft depended on wind power, the vessels averaged only seven knots, or around eight miles per hour. With the partisan main supply base on Vis about eighty miles away from Bari, it was a hazardous, approximately ten-hour journey through hostile waters. Hayden described the perils of making a daily run: “
By plunging through the Allied minefield late of an afternoon a schooner always had a fighting chance of reaching Vis at dawn—barely in time to be backed into a precipitous cove where she could be hastily camouflaged with pine boughs festooned in her rigging, unloaded the following night, the camouflage repeated, and then driven toward Italy as soon as the weather served.” The fighters on Vis would then pack the supplies
into small fishing boats, which would take on the dangerous task of getting the materiel to the mainland.

Most of the boats used to deliver cargo from Bari to the partisans were similar to the caïque craft used in Greece—in fact, many of the boats actually came from British contacts in Greece. Though useful, the slow, aging craft weren't suitable for all OSS missions. Taylor thought that relying solely on the British to supply boats for various OSS missions was unwise and “
repeatedly asked the Maritime Unit in Washington to supply him with fast surface craft.” OSS headquarters agreed, but it took considerable time for the bureaucrats to locate suitable vessels.

The first to arrive were two eighty-five-foot Army Rescue craft, and with the boats came additional MU men. After long delays, the two boats finally made it to Naples, Italy. There one of the boats, P-568, needed additional repairs and was delayed in dry dock. Lieutenant Ward Ellen, Taylor's fellow instructor from Area D, successfully sailed the other vessel, P-584, all the way from Cairo to Bari, where it joined the fleet used for ferrying cargo to Yugoslavia. Ellen would later help establish and oversee a maintenance base in Monopoli, Italy, just up the coast from Bari. This base would soon become unexpectedly important to Allied operations in the region.

*
The official announcement came on September 8, 1943.

11

“THE LITTLE PEARL HARBOR”

DECEMBER 2, 1943, THE PORT AT BARI, ITALY

OSS officers and partisans alike ran for cover as the roar of more than one hundred German bombers filled the overcast skies above Bari. Water splashed as boat crews hastily jumped into the sea, knowing that their ships would be prime targets of the attack. “
A mob of Italian stevedores ran madly” away from the boats at the dock, trying to avoid being hit. An air siren wailed, and soon the sound of exploding bombs thundered as the Luftwaffe crews dropped their payloads in the crowded harbor. Gun crews from three of the ships at port “
pumped tracers over each other's heads with no effect whatever.” Screams joined the din as the explosives fell on the twenty-five Allied ships in the area. Seventeen sunk almost immediately, while seven others burned. Shrapnel soared through the air, tearing into people and objects indiscriminately, and one of the nearby buildings caught fire. The attack was over in minutes, but the horrors were just beginning.

Unbeknownst to the civilians and military in the port, one of the ships carried liquid death in its belly. The American freighter
John Harvey
was secretly carrying mustard agent, in violation of international agreements. The devastating impact of mustard gas in World War I had convinced the world's powers to ban its use.
However, President Franklin Roosevelt had covertly ordered the shipment of one hundred tons of mustard agent in hundred-pound bombs to Italy.

When the German bombs fell on the
John Harvey
, the ship's hold immediately exploded with devastating violence, killing all those who knew of the existence of the banned chemical ordinance. Deadly mustard liquid and gas flew high into the air and then slowly settled back down into the harbor, coating everything and everyone in the vicinity. When the injured began to arrive at Bari's hospitals, doctors and nurses treated them for conventional burns, not realizing they had been exposed to mustard. They failed to remove the chemical-soaked clothing, so the chemicals continued to penetrate and burn the patients' skin. Soon victims began complaining that their eyes burned. Then their skin began to blister. Shocked, the physicians searched for the cause. Eventually one of the American doctors interviewed some longshoremen, and one mentioned the possibility that he might have unloaded mustard. The military began treating its patients for exposure to the chemical, but they failed to share their knowledge with the civilian hospital. More than a thousand civilians perished in what became known as “The Little Pearl Harbor.”

For
Hayden and everyone else except Taylor, the air raid was an unexpected baptism by fire. Still Hayden noted that the attack was over so quickly that “there was hardly time to be scared.” He attempted to take his cues on how to respond from the Yugoslav partisans, who were used to these types of raids. He recalled, “We were trapped on the end of a dock, and eighty partisans from Yugoslavia went right on with what they were doing in spite of the commotion, loading ammunition, blankets, and high-octane gas into a pair of wooden schooners. The leader of the Yugoslavs, a man named Stipanovitch, fired at the low-flying German planes with a machine pistol. ‘Bloody fucking buggers!' he yelled over and over again in a deep voice that boomed through a broad mustache.”

Hayden started to run for cover behind a nearby latrine. He thought better of it and recovered enough dignity to light a cigarette. The watching partisans noticed. “Hamil-tone!” hollered Stipanovitch, using Hayden's recently changed name. “Give to me please one nice cigarette if you will.”

The movie star handed over a cigarette and noticed Stipanovitch's hands remained perfectly steady as he lit it. “Some fucking welcome for you, eh Hamiltone?” the Yugoslav continued in his booming voice. Then he turned to a young, one-legged boy standing nearby and threw his pistol at him. “Here boy!” he growled, “Cool this bugger off.” Hayden was tremendously impressed by the partisans, “whose spirit made anything he'd seen before sophomoric.” He would have the chance to interact with them again frequently over the coming months.

Taylor and Ellen arrived on the grisly scene shortly after the attack. They assisted with the massive cleanup, and later, with the relocation of the base to Monopoli. Somehow the
Yankee
survived the carnage unscathed and would be put to use on an important mission.

12

THE ULTIMATE RESCUE

NOVEMBER 8, 1943, THE SKIES NEAR BARI, ITALY

Twenty-six American nurses and medics sat tensely in the back of the C-53D Skytrooper plane, which was a variant of the famous C-47 transport.
*
They were en route from Sicily to Bari, carrying out their duties to evacuate the critically wounded from the front lines. Injured soldiers had been piling up in Bari, and they needed to be moved to more secure locations. Since their arrival in the Mediterranean region a few months earlier, the men and women of the 807th had saved many lives, transporting hundreds of wounded soldiers from combat hotspots to safer venues for medical treatment.

Peering out the rectangular windows of the bird, the anxious pilots and passengers nervously watched the sinister-looking clouds in the distance and the massive tornado-like waterspouts racing across the Adriatic directly toward the plane. The pilot frantically radioed the tower at Bari for instructions and an updated weather
report. However, in a shocking oversight, he lacked the proper codes to identify his incoming flight as “friendly,” placing its passengers in serious danger of being shot down by area defenders who could mistake his approach for that of an incoming enemy aircraft.