First SEALs (36 page)

Taylor also faced intense questioning about the number and manner of executions. He described one group:

They were three hundred and sixty-seven (367) new Czech prisoners, including forty (40) women, arrived straight from Czechoslovakia. They had been marched overland, and were marched straight through the gate to the gas chamber without any preliminary which the usual transports received, that is, the bathing, stripping, and new clothes. They were taken right down and disposed of. . . . They were taken in to the crematorium, as all executed prisoners were, but this particular group—we knew from witnesses and the fact that they weren't old prisoners and the fat—there was so much fat on them, or more fat than there would be on an ordinary prisoner that the flames from the crematorium were going out straight—were going out the top of the smoke stack—which was different from the average prisoner.

In great detail, he also described the lethal gas chambers to which unsuspecting inmates were often subjected: “
It was rigged up like a shower room, regular shower nozzles in the roof. In fact, new prisoners, like the group of Czechs who came in, thought that they were going in to have their bath. They were stripped, they were put in this room naked, and then supposedly got a shower, and then the gas came out the nozzle, shower nozzles in the roof.”

The men against whom Taylor testified were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging or, in some cases, given life sentences.

After the trial, Taylor returned home to California and was awarded the Navy Cross. Racked with PTSD and haunted by life changing experiences seared in his mind, he was determined to integrate into postwar American normalcy. He married and started a family. Taylor's love for the sea compelled him to try his hand at “Taylor Products,” a “marine specialists” firm. Sadly, the business did not succeed, and he was forced to return to his dental practice. But the war never left Jack Taylor.

O
N A SHELF IN A DUSTY
N
AVY
warehouse in Honolulu, workmen carefully stowed heavy wooden crates containing the last of the LARUs. The Sleeping Beauties and other gear went to similar storage facilities. The war was over, and the Navy saw no further need to employ the pioneering underwater equipment. With the OSS disbanded, the U.S. underwater combat training program came to a standstill and, along with MU men like Taylor and Lambertsen, was effectively put into mothballs.

But in 1947, Lieutenant Commander Douglas “Red Dog” Fane (so known for his titian hair), who had command of an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) unit, sought out LARU inventor Dr. Christian Lambertsen, by then a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Recognizing the value of Lambertsen's breakthrough technology, Fane pulled the rebreathers out of retirement
and located two Sleeping Beauty submersibles in a California warehouse. He wanted to test out new ways to deploy the underwater craft from submerged submarines. Improvements in radar meant that swimmer teams could no longer be launched from surfaced subs. As one naval commander explained, “
For the safety of your men, if for no other reason, you will have to go underwater. Operations from the submarines are the only possible way of conducting secret UDT missions.”

Fane began extensive testing of the submersibles with swimmers using the LARUs. Because of Lambertsen's experience with both devices, he asked him to pilot the Sleeping Beauty in a test that attempted to launch and recover the submersible from the deck of a moving submarine. Fane, Lambertsen, and another frogman observed and photographed the mission. Wearing LARUs, the men exited the submerged sub and stood on the deck while the sub was moving. Fane's cohort recalled, “
It had been proven that a speed of two knots would not tear off our face masks if we kept facing the current, but no one knew whether they would tear off or flood if we turned.” Fortunately the LARUs functioned well. “
There was a sensation of tremendous speed,” he noted. “I gingerly experimented with turning my head a little to one side. The downstream edge of the mask began to vibrate, but no water leaked in, so I was able to see Fane. His red hair was streamed back, his ears were flapping in the submarine breeze, his trunks and lung were bellied out behind and whipping about. I could think of no better simile than Ben Hur driving his chariot in his race around the Roman Coliseum.”

The tests were successful, leading to the conclusion that, “
The day when diver fights diver undersea, and raiding parties march out of the sea to attack beaches, and divers in submersible craft will reconnoiter coasts and harbors, is not far off.” The UDTs successfully performed exercises the OSS had spent most of World War II perfecting.

Based on this compelling evidence and firsthand experience, Fane oversaw the creation of a “Submersible Operations” platoon, the first unit of its kind in the U.S. Navy. The UDTs undertook numerous combat missions in the Korean War. During these operations, many of the men were trained by former MU combat swimmer John Booth, now working with the Central Intelligence Agency. Throughout the Korean War, the UDTs would maintain a close working relationship with the agency. In the early 1960s, the American military once again became very interested in the use of special operations units. The earlier experiences of the OSS MU and the UDTs led some to contemplate the creation of a special operations unit comprised of underwater swimming specialists. The Green Berets or U.S. Army Special Forces, founded on the principles of the OSS Operational Groups and Jedburghs and led by OSS veteran Colonel Aaron Bank, also followed suit and created a combat swimmer program.

On March 10, 1961, in a memo submitted to Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, a naval group examining special operations and amphibious landings advocated the creation of a new unit that would provide “
additional unconventional warfare capabilities within, or as an extension of our amphibious forces.” The memo added, “An appropriate name for such units could be ‘SEAL' units, SEAL being a contraction of SEA, AIR, LAND, and thereby, indicating an all-around, universal capability.” Burke approved the proposal, and soon two new units would be activated.

A few months later, in his speech before a special joint session of Congress in which he outlined the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending Americans safely to the moon, President John F. Kennedy also supported the expansion of special operations units, saying, “
I am directing the Secretary of Defense to expand rapidly and substantially, in cooperation with our Allies, the orientation of existing forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, paramilitary operations and sub-limited or unconventional wars. In addition, our
special forces and unconventional warfare units will be increased and reoriented.”

In January 1962, SEAL Teams One and Two officially became operational.

D
R
. J
ACK
H
ENDRICK
T
AYLOR
,
Hollywood dentist, global adventurer, world-class sailor, and First SEAL, would not live long enough to witness the modern SEAL Teams. He and other members of the Maritime Unit risked their lives—with some of them making the ultimate sacrifice. Their pioneering efforts helped forge the U.S. Navy SEALs—their legacy would culminate in operations such as the daring raid that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden. Tragically, in May 1959 at the age of fifty, Taylor was killed in a fiery crash while piloting a plane near his home in El Centro, California. Jack took his story to the grave, as did most of the men of the Maritime Unit. Dutiful to the end, the men of the Maritime Unit maintained their vows of silence, but their spirits and accomplishments live on today.

THE FIRST SEALS AFTER THE WAR

J
ACK
T
AYLOR
—
For his actions during the war Taylor received the Navy Cross. His citation reads as follows:

For extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United States; as chief of the Maritime Unit, Office of Strategic Services Detachment, United States Armed Forces, in the Middle East, from September 1943 to March 1944, Lieutenant
Jack Taylor, USNR, personally commanded fourteen separate sorties to the Greek and Balkan enemy-occupied coasts. This activity was carried out despite intense enemy efforts to prevent any kind of coastal traffic whatsoever. Lieutenant Taylor, through clandestine operations, deserving of the highest commendation and careful planning and skillful navigation effected numerous evacuations of intelligence agents, doctors, nurses, and downed airmen. Tons of arms, ammunition, explosives, and other military supplies were delivered to Marshal Tito and other resistance forces through the efforts of Lieutenant Taylor. For three months, at all times surrounded by enemy forces, and on three occasions forced to flee from enemy searching parties, Lieutenant Taylor and his intelligence team operated in Central Albania and transmitted by clandestine radio important information regarding enemy troop movements, supply dumps, coastal fortifications, anti-aircraft installations and other military intelligence of great value to the Allied
forces. Parachuting into enemy territory on the night of 13 October 1944, with a team of three Austrian deserter-volunteers, he had personally trained and briefed, he began a secret intelligence mission to Austria. Handicapped from the very start by failure of their plane to drop radio equipment, living in constant danger of capture, and the physical and mental strain on his men, the courage and energy of Lieutenant Taylor prevailed and throughout the remainder of October and November, the mission collected target intelligence of the highest value to the Allies. On 30 November, the eve of their departure for Italy, the party was captured by the Gestapo. Through four months of imprisonment in Vienna and one month in Mauthausen prison camp, he was subjected to the customary interrogation methods of the Gestapo. During his capture, Lieutenant Taylor injured his left arm seriously. With this handicap and also being forced to exist on starvation rations and work at hard labor, he resisted all attempts to force him to divulge security . . . the brilliant results of his operations have been an essential aid to the victory of Allied Arms.

Following his testimony at the war trials, Taylor returned to civilian life. He started a company that sold maritime specialty items, but when that venture failed, he returned to his dental practice full time.

Reports indicate that Taylor, like many who have served in wartime, found it difficult to return home and exhibited some symptoms of PTSD. Fourteen years after his return home, he died in a plane crash in California. He left behind a wife and a daughter.

S
TERLING
H
AYDEN
—
The tall, handsome leading man returned to his movie career although he always maintained that he disliked acting and only did it because it paid for his boats and voyages. He appeared in dozens of movies, including many westerns released in the 1950s. In
Dr. Strangelove
he was General Jack Ripper, renowned for the infamous lines, “
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist
subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify [
sic
] all of our precious bodily fluids.” He also appeared in
The Godfather, The Long Goodbye, 1900, Nine to Five,
and many other films. He wrote two books: an autobiography titled
Wanderer
and
Voyage: A Novel of 1896
.

His marriage to Madeleine Carroll, his wife at the time he joined the OSS, barely survived the war. They divorced in 1946, and the next year Hayden married Betty Ann de Noon. Over the course of an eleven-year marriage they had four children together, and Hayden was awarded custody when their marriage ended in 1958. He married for the last time in 1960. He and his third wife, Catherine Devine McConnell, had two children together, and they remained married until Hayden's death from prostate cancer in 1986. Throughout his life he remained a wanderer, skipping around from city to city and spending as much time as possible at sea.