First SEALs (19 page)

Hearn had joined the Marines right out of college and had served for eight months before being recruited into the OSS. He enjoyed being part of the action and thrived on assignments behind enemy lines.

In his training, Chrislow had received particularly high marks and was singled out for his leadership potential. His teachers wrote, “
Handling other trainees, performance of field duties, physical stamina, initiative, intelligence, demolitions, pistol and field craft are all very satisfactory. Attention to duty in operation and code speed are all excellent. Map reading-excellent. Rifle and close combat satisfactory.” They also noted he was in “good physical condition” and thoroughly capable to be an instructor: “Quiet, sincere, cooperative, and a good mind. A good field man.”

With the help of these new officers, Kelly devised plans for a new mission dubbed “Ossining 3.” Acting on intelligence supplied by Allied intelligence sources, MU hoped “
to destroy two road bridges over a small stream, approximately five kilometers south of Pesaro.” The bridges formed a key part of a German supply route, and their destruction would make it difficult to move tanks, artillery, and troops.

On the night of the raid, two Italian
MAS
boats transported Chrislow, who led the mission, and eleven other men from the OSS/San Marco group to the vicinity of the bridges. The twelve operatives then boarded two seven-man rubber boats and one of the electric
surfboards for the final leg of the journey. Avoiding detection by “
four Nazi armored cars, two tanks, several heavy vehicles and three German soldiers on foot,” the MU operators managed to plant six hundred pounds of plastic explosives on the pair of bridges, which were about ten kilometers behind enemy lines. The explosion wiped out the bridges “blocking all traffic for several days,” and all of the Americans and Italians safely made it back to their base.

Joining the new MU officers, Ward Ellen continued to command an Army rescue boat, P-583. The boat participated in numerous infiltrations and exfiltrations and helped save countless lives of downed airmen. On one mission, Ellen crossed the Adriatic with cargo for Tito's partisans. High storms and heavy seas forced the boat to stay at port at the partisan island of Vis, which put him in the right place to take part in another vital mission. According to mission reports, “
A seven hundred plane sortie [of Allied bombers] to Vienna produced seven Liberator crash landings on Vis. Four landings were on the rocks, and three were in the sea. There were 71 parachute jumps [crews bailing out].” Lieutenant Ellen rescued “some thirty downed airmen.” He then returned the downed crews to Bari.
*

Reports later noted, “
Although the Maritime Unit was severely handicapped due to the lateness of its arrival in the Italian and North African Theater, its work, even in a few months, was considered highly commendable by the Allied High Command. Without casualties or loss of equipment to date, it has contributed greatly to the campaign in Italy.”

I
N THE EARLY MORNING HOURS
of August 23–24, 1944, the long shadowy silhouette of the Castel Di Mezzo lighthouse loomed in the distance as one of the San Marco operatives guided his raft along the coast looking for a landfall for the Packard Mission. Twenty minutes later the recon squad of San Marco commandos returned to the
MAS
boat, informing the mission commander, Lieutenant Mini Enzo, that he saw a boat sailing north but found an “
excellent point to land.” Enzo, a grizzled vet with years of combat experience and countless missions under his belt, ordered his team to switch positions with the recon squad. Enzo and a couple of his operatives clambered aboard the silent craft and made their way to the pinpoint.

Reaching shore, Enzo hastily disembarked, constantly on the watch for German patrols or roving Axis boats. Moving silently to avoid patrols or German observation posts on the bluffs above and in the lighthouse, the Packard team crept one hundred yards inland, where they buried equipment they couldn't carry, including a rubber boat.

Enzo decided to hide the team until the morning before entering high-risk inhabited areas. “
The region was very unfavorable for us due to the complete lack of any natural hiding-place,” he noted. The team had to traverse Highway 16, the German-controlled supply line that cut across Packard's area of operation. Enzo explained, “
[Crossing the highway] was most dangerous . . . capture would have meant death in case the Nazis or fascists stopped us.”

Fortunately, the team found a helpful farmer working the fields. After feeding the local a story about who they were, the Packard team received food and a crucial safe house away from roving German patrols. From their new base camp the team contacted the Garibaldi and Pesaro partisan units.

Enzo's mission involved gathering information on the formidable Gothic Line, a belt of German pillboxes, minefields, and artillery emplacements that stretched across the neck of Italy. The Germans remained masters of defensive warfare, and since the
Allies had landed in 1943 they had been decimated by one German fortification after another.

The intrepid San Marco operatives gathered tactical information on the entire line. Most importantly they secured a crown jewel of strategic and tactical intelligence: an Italian engineer who worked on the line along with his blueprints marking all the gun positions, minefields, and entrenchments. Knowing the information “
was of the greatest importance and urgency,” Enzo decided to escort the engineer back to Allied lines, leaving half the mission behind to gather additional intel.

Uncovering the buried rubber boat, Enzo and the engineer paddled back to Allied lines, where Polish MPs picked them up. The engineer and plans went back to the British Eighth Army intel section. As planned, two
MAS
boats picked up the rest of the Packard Mission on August 28.

When the Eighth Army attacked, they used the priceless information to save Allied lives as they broke through the Gothic Line. The British noted that the partisans contacted through the Packard Mission “
were of tremendous help to the Eighth Army in their breakthrough.”

By all accounts, the Kelly Plan was succeeding.

*
Not all the group's operations were successful. On a mission known as “Ossining 4,” the boats failed to find the insertion location. And on “Ossining 5” Germans bombed the MU craft from the air while ground troops fired from shore. Still, the mission was at least partially successful because “
all personnel escaped without injury,” and they succeeded in at least temporarily tying up German troops and diverting them away from the front lines.

17

SWIMMER COMMANDOS

S
ILENTLY THE FOUR SWIMMERS GLIDED
through the darkness, intent on reaching the submarine pens they knew were close at hand. They lay on two OSS-developed teardrop-shaped rubber rafts, known as “Water Lilies” or “Flying Mattresses,” to keep a low profile and avoid German radar—as well as any curious locals who might be nearby. Silent electric motors powered by twelve-volt batteries took them within striking distance of the pens. Then the four men slid into the water, making as little noise as humanly possible.

Their assignment was to “
reduce the striking power” of the German U-boats docked in Lorient-Kéroman, France, by taking them out four days before the planned Allied invasion of Normandy.
Gordon Soltau, an MU swimmer who would become an all-pro receiver and kicker for the San Francisco 49ers after the war, was assigned to plant explosives on the locks, the underwater gates that guarded the sub pens. The others planted limpet mines on the subs inside. Then they began swimming for their rendezvous point on shore, leaving as silently as they arrived.

Fifteen minutes later, the explosives detonated. The subs sank into their cradles in the pen; the gates were completely destroyed. Mission accomplished. Now Soltau and the others had only to make their way to their safe house, where they could meet up with friendly forces on D-Day.

But this was just a dress rehearsal. Soltau and the three others from L-Unit, who sailed to England after training exclusively on Treasure Island, were practicing in the chilly waters of the Thames near Oxford, preparing for the actual invasion. The local eyes they were trying to avoid were British villagers and students. “
Right before D-Day, we got word that Operation Betty was scrubbed,” recalled Soltau. Getting ready for a mission only to have it canceled would soon be a familiar experience for the group of seventeen MU agents assigned to England.

While Taylor and Kelly conducted operations in the Adriatic, Operational Swimmer Groups I and II conducted operations in other parts of the world. Soltau and sixteen other men of L-Unit went to London. One OSS report notes, “
The most conspicuous role played by the Maritime Unit in the European Theater was the work of its individual officers in planning and conducting ferrying operations across the English Channel to France.” Frequently they worked closely with the British to conduct reconnaissance and plan for missions to insert OSS agents along the French coast: “MU officers acted as official observers in charge of transferring landing parties from ship to shore.” In addition to delivering agents to enemy territory, the ferry service also exfiltrated local resistance fighters from German-occupied areas to London: “Their purpose was to bring back natives of these countries who had thus far escaped Nazi suspicion, give them a brief period of training in London, and then ship them back to their respective home areas to perform definite missions.”

Heading up the L-Unit was Lieutenant Fred Wadley, the national champion swimmer whom Taylor first met in Santa Monica testing “Browne's lung” and with whom he later trained at Area D. Former Navy diver John P. Spence joined Wadley along with Lieutenant F. Michael Carroll, and Captain James J. Kamp, an Australian who established and ran a training camp at Helford in southwest England. Although they intended to establish a swimmer unit in the area, the cold temperatures made it impractical, as the L-Unit History records:

It was obvious before long that swimming operations were impractical in this Theater. The temperature of the water at Helford stayed in the vicinity of fifty degrees. The weather was so cold that on many days it was impossible to do any swimming at all, or at best a very limited amount. Even when attired in rubber suits, the longest time they could stay in the water under favorable conditions without getting chilled was about 45 minutes. Furthermore, the practical range at which they could proceed entirely underwater and locate targets was found to average between 150 and 200 yards. Frequently, it was much less than this.

But the water temperature wasn't the only obstacle facing the MU in England. Much of their equipment proved unusable. The motors on the surfboards hadn't been waterproofed and would break down after less than four miles of travel. In addition, their waterproof suits sprung leaks. The LARU also developed problems from being exposed to cold water, only some of which they were able to correct. On one tragic occasion, one of their swimmers, James E. Clark of the U.S. Navy Reserve, accidentally drowned “
when he became panicky due to failure of his Lambertsen unit.” The swimmers' health also suffered from the climate: “
Dampness and cool air common to the British Isles caused head ailments such as colds and frequently rendered the swimmer liable to ear difficulties in rapid variations of depth.”

Nevertheless, Wadley and his crew planned several daring missions, including a one-way suicide mission using an old freighter to block traffic in Denmark's Kiel Canal. Several of the men went as observers into France to deliver supplies and men to the resistance, but the frigid temperature of the water iced all combat swimming operations. Faced with this reality, the OSS reluctantly accepted that there likely would be no underwater combat missions launched from England. The British had already shut down their swimming operations, and the Americans followed suit.