The SchutzStaffel (protective squadron) had its origins in the SturmAbteilung (SA), a paramilitary organization formed to protect Nazi leaders.

The SA (“storm troopers” or “brownshirts”) was disempowered in 1934 when Hitler felt that they were too independent and not totally loyal to him. The SA’s leadership was killed or arrested by SS troops in a coup known as “The Night of The Long Knives.”

At the time, the SS was a small branch of the SA and tasked with protection of Hitler personally. They reported to Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, the #2 Nazi in the Reich. With the demise of the SA, the SS was transformed and greatly expanded by Himmler.

Himmler reorganized the SS into three divisions: The Allgemeine SS, concerned with politics, racial policies and administration; The Totenkopf SS (“Death’s Head”), which administered the death camps; and the Waffen (armed) SS, an elite combat formation that would eventually fight alongside the Wehrmacht-Heer (German Army).

The SS had its own rank structure, insignia and uniforms. It stressed loyalty and obedience to the Reich and Hitler. Its members took an oath to that effect. From its inception, the distinctive black uniformed SS was considered an elite unit.

Its officers must be German, of pure Aryan blood traceable back to 1750. Other ranks had to prove pure Aryan ancestry to 1800. There could be no evidence of Jews in the family tree. As the war wore on and casualties mounted, these requirements were relaxed. Whole divisions of non-Germans were raised from other European countries.

With war looming, the division that was expanded the fastest was the Waffen SS to the consternation of the Wehrmacht-Heer (regular army). They considered the Waffen SS too political and unprofessional.

By wars’ end, the Waffen SS had fielded 28 divisions. Over 600000 men wore or had worn the its uniform. Shortly after the war began, the black uniforms were turned in and replaced with a grey-blue one.

It was considered a high honor to be accepted into their ranks. They were elite soldiers in the early stages of the war. But as the war progressed, manpower shortages required sometimes recruiting less than first-rate soldiers. Many of the atrocities attributed to the Waffen SS came from these ranks.

After the war, the SS was considered a criminal organization by the victorious Allies. Thousands of former SS members were rounded up and tried for war crimes by the Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Most were found not guilty or there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. Some were found guilty and paid for their crimes by death or imprisonment.

Many young men who had joined the SS committed no atrocities and simply wanted to defend their country in one of the most elite combat units in the Wehrmacht-Heer.

Regrettably, these young men were led by one of the worst leadership regimes in the most cataclysmic armed conflict in human history.

The Sullivan brothers were five siblings from Waterloo, Iowa who were all KIA (killed in action) during the sinking of the USS Juneau, a light cruiser on which they served in WWII.

They were all in their early to mid twenties. George 27, the oldest, a gunner’s mate 2^nd class, had pulled a stint earlier in the Navy. Frank, 26, was a coxswain also had a hitch in the Navy under his belt. Joe, 24, was a seaman 2^nd class as was Matt, 23 and Al, 20.

They had all joined the Navy with the stipulation that they serve together. The Navy’s policy was to separate siblings, but reluctantly agreed to the Sullivan’s demand. They needed sailors. The boys had enlisted in December 1941 to avenge the death of their close friend Bill Ball, who had died at Pearl Harbor.

The Juneau was part of a U.S. Navy task force consisting of transports and warships, which was sent to bring reinforcements and supplies to the beleaguered Marines on Guadalcanal in November 1942.

Simultaneously, the Japanese sent a task force of their own to resupply their troops, which held the other side of the island.

On the evening of 11/12, U.S. air recon discovered the Japanese force bearing down on Guadalcanal. It was considerably larger than the U.S. Navy’s. The transports fled and the warships prepared to engage.

They met head-on at about 2am on the 13th. Despite having radar, the American ships almost collided with the enemy. There was no moon, and chaos ensued with both fleets’ searchlights trying desperately trying to find the other. When they did, both sides opened up with everything they had at point blank range.

Within thirty minutes, it was over. Both sides took heavy casualties. The Japanese lost a battleship and two destroyers; the U.S.’s fleet of thirteen ships suffered five losses. Many sailors were lost on both sides.

The Juneau barely made it, having received a torpedo hit which left a gaping hole on the port side and a damaged keel. At daybreak, the U.S. force collected itself and limped back to base. Later that morning, a Japanese submarine, shadowing the fleet, fired a torpedo and hit the Juneau near its ammo supply. The Juneau exploded; raining down debris and human body parts on the other ships and sank in a matter of minutes.

A few survivors managed to toss life rafts overboard just before the Juneau went to its watery grave.

The task force commander decided there couldn’t be any survivors from such a terrible explosion and additionally, did not want to risk the balance of his force looking for survivors and sailed on. He radioed a message to all U.S. aircraft in the area for look for anyone who had somehow survived. In true bureaucratic fashion, the pilot’s report got lost in the shuffle.

About 100 made it, including Al and George. Frank, Joe, and Matt had died instantly in the explosion. The men floated in the ocean for eight days, some seriously wounded, all suffering intense heat and hungry sharks, praying someone would find them. Al drowned on the second day. George went insane with grief at the loss of his brothers and went over the side four days later. He was never heard from again.

A PBY Catalina search aircraft finally located the only ten men left. Their parents weren’t notified until January 1943 since it was navy protocol not to announce the loss of ships so as not to provide information tot the enemy.

The news hit the community of Waterloo, Iowa like a thunderbolt. Pope Pius XII sent a rosary and message of regret. The President sent personal condolences. Messages of sympathy flooded in from all over the globe. Later, FDR banned the policy of relatives serving together in the same unit of the Armed Forces.

News of the deaths became a rallying point for the war effort, with posters and speeches honoring their sacrifice. Extensive newspaper and radio coverage of the incident made the brothers national heroes.

In 1943, the Navy commissioned two destroyers to honor the brothers: The Sullivans (DDG-68) and The Sullivans (DD-537). The brother’s story was brought to the silver screen in 1944 with the movie, The Fighting Sullivans.

Chino Sugihara

Better known as “Sempo”, Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who came into prominence in WWII. He was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of European Jews by providing them with the necessary papers that allowed them to emigrate to Japan.

Born into an upper middle-class family, Sempo was encouraged by his father to become a physician. But he had other ideas. He purposely flunked the medical school entrance exam and decided a career in diplomacy was a better fit for him. He studied English in Tokyo, then applied for the foreign ministry in 1919 and was accepted.

His first posting was in Harbin, China where he was involved in negotiations with the USSR, the Chinese and Japanese in a dispute over the Northern Manchurian Railroad.

While there, he learned German and Russian and became an expert on Russian affairs. His star was rising, but his concern over the treatment the Chinese were enduring under Japanese rule got him marked as a “disobedient servant of the Empire.”

But his talent and skill as a diplomat was in great demand by Japan. He was posted to Lithuania and given the title of vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in 1939.

His primary responsibility was to keep an eye on Soviet-German relations and report their activities to his superiors in Berlin and Tokyo. This brought him in touch with Polish intelligence. When Hitler decided to start WWII in September 1939 by invading Poland, Jews, knowing of his anti-Semitism, fled to Lithuania. The following year, Stalin, no friend of the Jews, invaded the Baltic States, including Lithuania.

Local Jews and those fleeing German and Soviet armies applied for exit visas. But no sovereign country, except The Netherlands, would accept anyone without a valid visa. The Dutch approved access to its colonies in the Caribbean and Suriname in South America, but limited the number of people allowed in.

Thousands of people queued at foreign consulates, desperately seeking permits.

Many people tried to get a visa at the Japanese Consulate, but the strict immigration criteria meant that very few were successful.

Sugihara requested instructions from his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but they instructed him to issue visas only as a transit option to a third country.

The vice-consul decided to follow his own counsel. He could see that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939, (a non-aggression pact between the Soviets and Germany), was a fig leaf designed to buy time for those countries to beef up their military forces. It was just a matter of time before Lithuania would be caught in the middle of two massive armies in a life-or-death struggle.

During the summer of 1940, Sugihara ignored Ministry orders and began to issue visas to as many people as he could. He secretly met with Soviet officials and negotiated with them so that people could travel on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Soviets saw a sellers market and quintupled the price of a ticket.

Sempo, as the Jews popularly knew him, became a beacon of hope. He wrote almost around the clock, issuing a month’s worth of visas in a single day.

When war broke out, the consulate was ordered closed and he was ordered to evacuate, but he continued to issue visas even as he was taken to the railway station. When the train began to pull out, he stamped and signed blank sheets of paper and handed them out so they could be forged into legitimate exit visas.

As the train picked up speed and began to leave the station, he threw more documents out of the window, shouting, “Forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best.”

A man in the crowd shouted back, “Sugihara! We will never forget you!”

As the train left the station, Sempo sat down, put his head into his hands and wondered about his fate. He hadn’t had much time for that. His superiors would surely punish him severely.

But sometimes Lady Luck smiles. In the confusion of the hasty closure of the consulate, Sugihara avoided detection as many of the higher ranking officials attended to securing their own survival. They never learned how many exit visas Sempo issued.

As it turns out, a lot. Research estimates about 6000. Some of them were group permits that enable whole families to get away. Some estimates suggest a total of 10000 people. Sadly, not all managed to escape. Hitler tore up the non-aggression pact he had with Stalin and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Many Jews were trapped and killed.

Sugihara spent the rest of the war serving in consulates in Prague and Bucharest before he was captured by Soviet troops in 1944. After spending two years as a POW, he and his family returned to Japan in 1946.

Forty years later, his heroic action was recognized by Israel and he was given the title Righteous Among the Nations, reserved for Jews who resisted the Holocaust and Gentiles who helped them in time of need.

When asked why did he help all those people, Sempo quietly replied, “I do it because I have pity on the people. They want to get out, so I let them have the visas.”

His heroism went largely ignored during his lifetime. After his death, he was awarded some minor honors and a few streets were named after him, but he remains an Unsung Hero.

1940 was one of the worst years in the history of La Belle France. After only six weeks of fighting, the Wehrmacht-Heer (The German Army) led by Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, rolled up the Anglo-French armies and trapped them with their backs to the sea at the port of Dunkirk on the northwest coast. The Battle of France was over and with it, the French Republic.

Betrayed by a collaborationist government and incompetent military leadership that insisted on fighting the German invaders with WWI tactics, France capitulated on June 14^th.

Rubbing the French nose in their defeat, the conquerors celebrated by strutting arrogantly in parade formation down the Champs Elysees and through the Arc de Triomphe, one of the most famous monuments in France.

The Arc honors fallen French soldiers from past wars and contains the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Crowds of sullen, weeping Parisians, sadly looked on helplessly.

The frail, toothless “Lion of Verdun,” the malleable hero of WWI, General Henri-Philippe Petain, with a chest full of medals and billowing clouds of former glory, was trotted out as the new President of France. He hastily sued for peace as if he had any diplomatic leverage.

The Germans, barely suppressing smiles of victory, agreed. The terms were onerous.

The victors annexed the northern 3/5ths of the country, including the Atlantic coast and limited the French Army to 100,000 men. 60% of the nation’s income would go to the Reich and all French POWs would remain in German hands as slave labor. The southern two-thirds of the country would be “free” and become Vichy France.

A once proud country was carved up like a Christmas turkey.

Der Fuhrer dictated the formal French capitulation take place in Compiegne, a park north of Paris. In its center, a small railroad car is parked. The railroad car was the same spot where, twenty-two years earlier, Germany signed the Armistice ending WWI and was revered by the French as a memorial to their victory.

The irony is as rich as mother’s brownies.

Hitler intends to rub the face of France further into the excrement of defeat. He decrees that the signing ceremony be held in the same railroad car.

He and his entourage arrive ahead of the French delegation. Waffen SS soldiers form an honor guard as he approaches. His personal flag is run up on a standard in the middle of park. He strides over to the armistice car, pauses and looks around with a fierce glare of contempt, anger, hate and triumph.

He steps up into the car, followed by the others and sits in the chair occupied by Marshall Foch in 1918. The others, led by Hermann Goering, spread themselves around him. A few minutes later, the French arrive and take their place in the chairs across from the Germans. The enemies salute each other. The French are solemn and stoic. They stare straight ahead, a picture of tragic dignity.

Hitler speaks to no one.

He nods to Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, his chief of staff, sitting on his right. Keitel shuffles a batch of papers and begins to read the terms of the armistice. Der Fuhrer has no intention showing respect to the vanquished by lingering. After fifteen minutes, he stands, offers the Nazi salute and walks out to his awaiting car.

The honor guard band strikes up the German national anthem, “Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles,” as he is whisked away.

Adolf Hitler has avenged 1918 in less than a quarter of an hour.

Mathilde Carre

Major Roman Gerby-Czerniawski cut a dashing figure. He had been an Olympic skier for Poland. As a Polish Air Force officer with crypto-analytical training, he escaped to Paris when Poland fell to the Nazis. When France fell seven months later, he went undercover, contacted the Special Operations Executive (SOE, British cloak-and-dagger) to organize a Paris based espionage ring.

Gerby-Czerniawski recruited an alluring Sorbonne educated lawyer in her mid-thirties as his radio operator. Mathilde Carre didn’t know it at the time, but she was to become the war’s only triple agent.

Carre picked up important intel at social functions from German officers who were trying to seduce her. She later said she received a sexual thrill from danger.

She would radio her tidbits to SOE almost daily. She introduced her reports with “the Cat reports,” so she was given the code name La Chatte (the Cat).

Meanwhile, the Abwehr (German Intelligence) sent a “human ferret” to locate the broadcast source. Hugo Bleicher, a middle aged man who adopted the alias “Colonel Henri” (he was only a sergeant) relentlessly pursued the source of the transmissions.

She was sleeping (possibly with Gerby-Czerniawski) when Bleicher and a squad of SS men broke into her apartment and arrested her. She evaded torture and execution by agreeing to become a double agent.

She began feeding London false information. Predesigned phrases were embedded in the Cat’s messages to show she hadn’t been turned as Bleicher looked over her shoulder.

Another SOE agent (code-named “Lucas”) suspected the Cat had been turned. He confronted her and accused her of being in bed with the Germans (no pun intended). She broke down in tears and confessed. Lucas thought of shooting her on the spot, but then had an idea. Why not turn her into a triple agent?

The Cat persuaded Bleicher to let her go to London where, she said, she would get details of SOE agents operating in Paris.

She and Lucas were picked up by a British torpedo boat on the Brittany coast and ferried to London. SOE treated her like a queen, putting her up in a luxury hotel where she enjoyed three happy months totally unaware her room was bugged by SOE.

When SOE had gotten all they wanted out of her, they threw her in prison, clawing and scratching.

Turned over to the French authorities after the war, she was condemned to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. She served twelve years and was released. She moved to a provincial French town and lived quietly until her death in 1970.

The “jumpers” were U.S. Navy special operations units organized during the war by Hollywood actor Lieutenant Douglas Fairbanks Jr. They specialized in deception and psychological warfare.

Lt. Fairbanks was assigned liaison officer to British Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations. Combined ops included the British Commando units. Fairbanks observed the training and execution of the Commando raiding parties. He participated in several cross channel raids and developed a deep appreciation for the military arts of deception.

When he returned to the U.S., he presented his idea for a unit of men trained to conduct tactical cover, diversionary and deception missions to Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). King bought the idea. The call went out for “volunteers for prolonged, hazardous and distant duty for a secret project.” The Beach Jumpers was born. Their Commanding Officer was Lt. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

The Jumpers identities and activities were kept highly classified. Their initial mission was “To assist and support the operating forces in the conduct of Tactical Cover and Deception in Naval Warfare.” They learned to simulate very large amphibious landings with very limited forces. Using specialized equipment, a few dozen men could make the enemy believe they were a 70,000-man amphibious landing force, when in fact that force would be a great distance away.

The Jumpers were assigned 63-foot double-hulled plywood Air-Sea Rescue (ASR) boats manned by an officer and a six-man crew. The boats were equipped with twin 50 cal. machine guns, 3.5 in. rockets, smoke pots and generators and floating time-delay explosive packs and sported a top speed of 35-40 knots.

The boat’s specialized deception equipment was a multi-purpose component “heater,” consisting of a wire recorder, a 5-phase amplifier and a 1000 watt 12 horn speaker. Also on board were Naval balloons to which strips of radar reflective window had been attached.

The Jumpers earned their nickname honestly. They would hit the beach and confuse the enemy with harassment and deception ops, then disappear.

Their first operation was in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. A Beach Jumper boat was ordered to conduct a diversion on the coast, 100 miles away from the Husky landing area. They began at 2200 hours. 3000 yards offshore, an ASR boat cranked up its heaters and began to lay smoke. Two ASR sound boats ran parallel to the beach emitted sounds of a large invasion force. They roared into the beach, firing their guns and rockets. Then all boats high-tailed back to their homeport at Pantelleria, Sicily.

To keep the Germans on their toes, two nights later all available craft repeated their light and sound show. The Germans were fully alerted and fully expected a landing was taking place. They opened up with everything they had at the boats. The boats roared in, making a lot of smoke and noise and then sailed back to homeport at full speed. There were no casualties on the ASRs.

The Jumpers earned their money at Husky. An entire German division was held in position away from the actual landing area. The German brass was unsure where the actual landing would take place.

Shortly after the end of the war, the Jumpers were deactivated. They remained so until the Vietnam War, when they revived their tactical deception operations.

Captain Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the Father of the Beach Jumpers, was awarded the Silver Star, the DSC, the Croix de Guerre and the Italian War Cross among other honors for his service during the war. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 90.

Victory Despite the Screw-ups

Tarawa Atoll is a flyspeck in the Pacific Ocean and is made up of fifteen small islands, about 2400 miles SW of Pearl Harbor.

On November 20-23, 1943 it became the bowels of hell.

Approximately two miles long and 800 yards wide at its widest point, it is a skinny triangle of coral topped with enough soil to be home to a few palm trees and scrubby brush. The islands almost encircle a large lagoon.

The Japanese had been its landlord since 1941 and had spent almost a year fortifying the island. Over 500 pillboxes dotted the island. A series of eight-inch coastal defense guns guarded open water approaches.

Forty artillery pieces were scattered around the island. Due to the small size and flat topography, every beach on the island could be hit. At the top of those beaches, were walls of palm logs five feet high, hiding rifle pits, machine gun nests and anti-tank guns.

The Japanese had changed their anti-assault battle plans from one of allowing the enemy to come ashore and just when he thought the attack was going to be a cakewalk, rain fire on him from all directions. The High Command took a page from Rommel’s book and decided a stop-them-in-the-water tactic would be best.

The Japanese Commanding General, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibazaki was so pleased with his preparations, he chortled, “It would take one million men one hundred years “ to take Tarawa.

Major General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, Fifth Amphibious Corps, USMC didn’t think so. Nor did Major General Julian Smith, 2^nd Marine Division, USMC.

The Americans had prepared extensively for the fight as well, but did so from a position of ignorance.

Tarawa was not on anyone’s travel brochure. Even maps of the island, originally owned by the British but now in Japanese hands, were over 100 years old. There were no records of tides and currents in the surrounding waters. Reefs sheltered many parts of the atoll.

Both sides focused on Betio, a flat little island in the SW corner of the atoll. It is the largest island and guards the only entrance to the lagoon. Having built their main airfield there, the Japanese concentrated their forces there and is where the Marines focused their effort.

As the invasion force closed in, it received fire from the coastal guns. Counter-fire from the battleships Colorado and Maryland silenced most of the fire and hit one of the coastal guns ammunition storage. The door to the lagoon was open.

The Americans used AMTRACs – armored amphibious tractors — to make the landings.

The 2^nd Marines would lead the assault. They thought it was going to be a piece of cake. Wrong.

Things started going downhill fast. Strong currents made loading Marines on landing craft chaotic. Vibration from the Maryland’s firing took out the communications, disrupting coordination between naval and air attacks. The covering bombardment from the Navy’s ships stopped too early. Many of the Marines were still in the landing craft approaching the beaches.

The reefs surrounded the beaches 800-1000 yards out. The water was too shallow for the AMTRACs and most of them got stuck on the reefs. The troops had to disembark and wade to shore holding their weapons above their head. The Japanese recovered from the ships shelling and began shooting at the sitting ducks wading towards them. Enemy artillery threw round after round at the men in the lagoon. Marines were being killed in droves.

Navy air strikes began to make a dent in the Japanese artillery and some Marines were making it to shore and poured fire on the defenders, allowing more attackers to make it to shore. A round from a battleship hit the main Japanese ammo dump on the nearby island of Bairiki and cut off the enemy’s escape route.

At a great cost, the Marines, slowly and painfully, were making progress. Tanks landed and began taking out enemy machine guns. Flame-throwers took out rifle positions and cleared bunkers. Americans were breaking out of the beachheads and making progress all across the island.

Finally, most of the Japanese were jammed in the eastern part of the island and fight to the last man. Marines began to hit them from all sides. They had scores to settle. By late November the island was secured.

The price of victory is never cheap and Tarawa was not just an expensive win for the Marines, it was extravagant. Over 1000 KIA and 2100 wounded. The enemy lost almost 5000 KIA.

Marine valor and heroism wasn’t just commonplace, it was the order of the day. Semper Fi!

Hugh O’Flaherty

At six feet two inches tall, with a shock of hair that seemed to add two inches to his height and tipping the scales at 225 pounds, Hugh O’Flaherty looked more like a rugby flanker or a football linebacker than a priest entitled to be addressed with the honorific “Monsignor.”

But with a twinkle in his eye behind horn-rimmed glasses and a ready smile on a cherubic face, he put anyone at ease that may harbor apprehensions about his commanding presence.

Behind those twinkling eyes rested a razor sharp mind, intense spirituality, immense charity and strong moral courage.

A son of County Cork, in Southern Ireland, he always knew he wanted to become a priest. He attended Mungret College, a Jesuit college dedicated to preparing young men for missionary priesthood. He was active in sports and it was here he developed a life long passion for golf. He later told a friend that there was “nothing like golf for knocking all the troubles of this poor world out of your mind.” Upon graduation, he was posted to Rome for further study and ordination.

He became a Vatican diplomat, seeing service in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Czechoslovakia. In 1934 he was appointed Monsignor and recalled to the Vatican’s Holy Office as a Scrittore, or Writer. His job was to examine the Church’s teachings and important doctrinal matters. He thoroughly enjoyed his new post. He developed a wide range of contacts among Roman society. Many of these were when he was a member of the Rome Golf Club. “[He] seems to know everyone in Rome,” a friend said sometime later.

SS-Oberstrumbannfuhrer (Lt. Colonel) Herbert Kappler was born into a middle-class family in Stuttgart in 1907. Upon graduation from high school, he attended a technical college studying electrical engineering. He found work in Stuttgart as an electrician.

He joined the Nazi Party in 1931. At the same time he became a stormtrooper in the Sturmabteilung (SA). A para-military wing of the Nazi Party, they were intensely anti-Semitic and popularly called “the brownshirts,” from the color of their uniforms. They provided security for Nazi Party gatherings and in their spare time, persecuted Jews and other “undesirables.”

The next year he left the SA and was accepted into the Schutzstaffel (SS), a para-military unit that had once been a part of the SA. With the demise of the SA in a purge led by Hitler, the SS took over many of their duties. Under the direction of Reichfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, it became Hitler’s “Praetorian Guard,” and was greatly expanded in scope and size.

Intensely ambitious, with a talent for secret police work, Kappler rose rapidly in the ranks of the SS. Fluent in Italian; he was promoted to SS Strumbannfuhrer (Major) and assigned as a liaison officer to the government of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

When the German military occupied The Eternal City, he was made Chief of Police and head of The Gestapo in Rome. He controlled the city from the former German Embassy. It was his office, a prison and an interrogation center. Number 20 Via Tasso was synonymous with torture and brutality. It was a final destination for many Jews, partisans, communists, gypsies and anyone harboring escaped Allied POWs.

A narrow, Teutonic face, piercing eyes, a three-inch dueling scar on his cheek and a suave half-scowl masked a relentless, ruthless servant of National Socialism.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler ripped into Poland and began the bloodiest conflict in human history, WWII. By 1941, war was raging across Europe. There were tens of thousands of Allied servicemen held in POW camps all across Italy.

Pope Pius XII, concerned about the welfare of these men, wanted routine checks made on the camps to insure they were being held in accordance with international conventions. He wanted two of his officials to make regular visits to the camps. He appointed Monsignor Borgoncini Duca as his Papal Nuncio (diplomatic representative). He needed an English speaker to assist Monsignor Duca as translator and act as secretary. He asked Monsignor O’Flaherty to perform the task.

It changed Hugh O’Flaherty’s life.

He had always thought of himself as a neutral observer. He had always felt the Allies and the Germans were equal opportunity propagandists. A son of Erin, he had seen the brutality brought to Ireland by the “Black and Tans” (Royal Irish Constabulary) after WWI and had grown up despising the British. He once said, “I don’t think there is anything to choose between Britain and Germany.”

But stunned by what he saw in the camps, he became increasingly aware that British or not, more needed to be done to alleviate the suffering of the war’s victims. He was not content to merely report on their condition. Through a friend at Vatican radio he began to pass on messages from prisoners so that their relatives would learn that they were alive and safe. The friend, a Fr. Owen Sneddon, added tidbits of information to the government-prepared scripts that were of vital importance to the POWs next of kin.

Over time, the Monsignor became the prisoners “champion.” He regularly lodged complaints about how the men were treated. He distributed thousands of books around the camps. He cut red tape to speed up distribution of Red Cross parcels and clothing.

To the Italian military, which had responsibility for the administration of the camps, he became an annoying gadfly. Political pressure was applied to the Vatican to remove him, claiming his “neutrality had been compromised.”

The true reason: the military wanted him out of the way because he was exposing the mistreatment of prisoners. In 1942, he was “relieved” and returned to his duties in the Vatican.

Under the Lateran Treaty of 1929, the Vatican was guaranteed independence from the Italian State. This agreement defined the 108-acre Vatican City as well as some 50 acres outside the City’s walls. The Holy See (ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church) pledged to remain neutral in international conflicts and not interfere in Italian politics.

In late 1942, a British seaman, reaching the highest rung on the ladder of chutzpah, walked out of a POW camp, scrounged some workers clothing, stole a bicycle, calmly pedaled his way into St. Peter’s Square and slipped into the Vatican gardens. A sympathetic Vatican policeman delivered him to Sir D’Arcy Osborne, Britain’s Minister to the Vatican. Osborne lobbied the Vatican authorities to allow the seaman to stay. They agreed. He lived at Osborne’s apartment for a time, eventually being exchanged for an Italian prisoner.

The episode struck a chord with Osborne and his neighbor, O’Flaherty. This was to be first of a long line of escaped prisoners they would deal with. Unknown to the men at the time, the seaman would be the forerunner of hundreds of escapees who made their way directly to the Vatican.

Osborne and O’Flaherty, despite their differing backgrounds and outlook (Osborne was Protestant, upper class and related to British royalty), were friends and neighbors who had small apartments in the Santa Maria Hospice. They shared a passion for golf and dismay over what the war was doing to Europe. That friendship would be critical in what would become the Allied Escape Line.

O’Flaherty’s reputation as someone who could be of assistance to people in trouble with the fascist authorities spread. Initially, he saw his role as to simply make suggestions and offer advice. He referred inquiries to safe locations, usually convents and monasteries. He quickly began to be a rallying point for those in danger, particularly Jews and Anti-Fascists. As oppression grew, so did his activity. He began to hide people in his own residence. Three escaped New Zealand soldiers, remembering his kindness in the POW camps, showed up seeking sanctuary. He hid them in an empty room in the Vatican.

The Allies had landed in the south of Italy and were making a slow, painful slog north. As they did, Italian guards at more and more POW camps deserted. There were about 80000 Allied servicemen and civilians imprisoned in 72 camps throughout Italy. The desertion freed about 50000 of them. Most were recaptured, but some 18000 were not. The trickle of escapees became a river. The river flowed north to Rome and the Vatican. Three South African POWs hiked to Rome and remembering the Monsignor from a visit, showed up seeking help. He had them placed in a private accommodation. At the same time, he arraigned safe housing for two downed American pilots. He hid escapees in flats all over Rome, in farms, convents and monasteries. One of the hideouts was in a building next to Kappler’s headquarters.

The monsignor began to be overwhelmed. Clearly a more organized and secure approach was necessary. O’Flaherty approached his friend and golf partner, Sir D’Arcy, for help. After all, weren’t many of the escapees British? The British minister demurred. He said he was being closely watched and needed to be very careful not to compromise his position. He did, however, offer financial aid from his own pocket and the services of his butler, John May.

May was the epitome of the British manservant: Discreet, low-key, capable, a “fixer” with fluency in Italian with extensive contacts throughout the city. Described by O’Flaherty as “a genius, the most magnificent scrounger I have come across.”

May convinced the Monsignor that he needed more help managing the flood of people seeking help. “Oh, I know you have every ‘neutral’ Irish priest in Rome helping you…but excuse me, they’re only priests…they don’t know their way around like I do, and some of my, ahhh, ‘friends.”

As a result, the Council of Three was established, consisting of O’Flaherty, May and a Count Sarsfield Salazar of the Swiss legation. As a diplomat from a neutral country, the Count was an ideal ally since many of those arriving in Rome sought out the Swiss Legation. His role was to see to it that money, food and clothing reached escapees hiding out in the countryside.

It was during this period the Vatican came under intense scrutiny by Kappler and the Gestapo. He was convinced that a nest of foreign diplomats in the officially neutral Vatican were spying for their representative countries and he wanted them expelled.

Squads of Gestapo agents and Italian fascist police placed many of the diplomats under constant surveillance. Osborne and Harold Tittmann, the U.S. Charge d’Affaires, were of particular interest to Kappler. Their movements, phone conversations and mail were closely monitored. Due to his activities in the POW camps, his friendship with Osborne and his activities in aiding escapees, O’Flaherty was similarly in Kappler’s crosshairs.

Dossiers on the men began to fill. Who they met on the streets, their lunch partners, their visitors; the minutia of their daily life all found a home in their file at Gestapo headquarters.

The reason the men’s file became so large is that Kappler had a “mole.” Alexander Kurtna was a 28-year-old Estonian seminary dropout. He had secured work as a translator in a Vatican department that looked after priests based in Eastern Europe. Kurtna began to feed Kappler with confidential information about Vatican activities. He joined Kappler’s ever-expanding network of informants in The Vatican and The Eternal City.

One of Kappler’s contacts in the police advised him that there was an illegal radio transmitting within the city. It was traced to the home of Princess Nina Pallavicini, a member of one of Rome’s ancient families, a social acquaintance of O’Flaherty and an ardent anti-Fascist. A raiding party was sent out to investigate. The Princess narrowly escaped the intruders by jumping out of a rear window and running for her life to the Vatican. She asked to see the Monsignor. He took her in and gave her long-term sanctuary. She repaid his kindness by spending the remainder of the war making false documents for Allied escapees.

The war had now entered a dark, frightening stage. At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, a systematic plan, “The Final Solution,” was instituted. Anti-Semitism was and had been rampant in Germany and Austria, but this was different. The plan’s goal was the complete emptying of Europe of Jews by genocide. Death camps were established in remote areas. Deportations of Jews, gypsies, gays and other “undesirables” to those camps became a daily routine all over Europe.

Kappler was entrusted with assembling Roman Jews for transport to death camps. Additionally, he was involved in suppression of resistance groups, rounding up “enemies of the state” for deportations to extermination camps.

Kappler privately opposed the plan, believing it tied up too much needed manpower and concerned it would make Rome more difficult to rule. When he voiced his reservations to his superiors in Berlin, he was brusquely told to follow orders. Not wanting to appear less than loyal to the Reich, he began purging Rome of its Jews.

In the early morning hours, SS men and Italian Fascist police were banging on Jewish doors with rifle butts. In most cases the houses were ransacked. The occupants were drug out on the streets, some still in their nightclothes. Children screamed and cried. Adults openly prayed. They were thrown into trucks, taken to a railway station and shoehorned into railway cars. Final destination: Auschwitz death camp.

The Jewish deportations infuriated O’Flaherty. “These gentle people are being treated like beasts!” Any vestiges of his neutrality evaporated by the sight of human beings jammed into railroad cars like so much cattle. He remarked to a colleague, “the sooner the Germans are defeated, the better.”

Ironically, the brutal treatment of the Jews helped O’Flaherty’s budding escape organization grow. Now ordinary Romans who had previously been indifferent to the Germans offered the Monsignor their help. The Augustine Maltese Fathers, the Brothers of Christian Schools and many of Rome’s society stepped forward.

The raids also bought him some leeway with Vatican hierarchy. They allowed him to operate unhindered even though his work technically violated the Church’s neutrality. Pius XII temporarily turned a blind eye.

As Allied forces clawed their way north invaded Italy and began the long march up the “boot” of the country, Kappler became increasingly involved in hunting down suspected Allied agents and Allied POWs that had escaped from their camps after the surrender of the Italian Army.

The Gestapo Chief’s informants and contacts in the neo-Fascist Italian police advised him of a certain Irish priest who was finding ways to facilitate the escape from Rome of Allied POWs, Jews and others.

All of Kappler’s intelligence pointed to a Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty as the head of a shadowy network of priests, nuns and lay people who hid refugees and aided in their escape. He ordered a white line be painted around the international border of neutral Vatican and Italy.

He disseminated the information that if O’Flaherty crossed that line, he would be killed. Anyone aiding the Monsignor would be arrested. Unable to cross the line himself, lest he violate Vatican neutrality, he formulated plans of assassination and/or kidnapping O’Flaherty. The brutal Ludwig Koch, head of the Fascist Italian police in Rome, promised torture of O’Flaherty would precede any execution.

Kappler was notified that O’Flaherty was visiting the home of Prince Doria Pamphili, an anti-Fascist nobleman who had been a source of funds for The Escape Line. The Prince’s home was outside Kappler’s white line. The Gestapo Chief immediately assembled a raiding party and surrounded the residence. The Prince was alerted, handed over a 300000 lire contribution and told O’Flaherty that the house was surrounded by Germans. O’Flaherty gratefully accepted the Prince’s donation and ran down the stairs to the coal cellar. A coal truck was unloading the Prince’s winter fuel.

He pulled off his robes, stuck them a nearby coal sack, smeared his face with coal dust, slung the coal sack over his shoulder and in his shirt and trousers, climbed through the trap door to the courtyard. He calmly walked across the courtyard pass the cordon of SS men and around the corner of a nearby building. Dropping the bag, he retrieved his robes, put them on and made his way back to his Vatican apartment.

Kappler was furious he had missed his man.

O’Flaherty said a prayer and reconsidered his safety. He decided to positioned himself on the steps of St. Peter’s in his ceremonial robes and read his breviary. He was in full view of a Gestapo surveillance squad across the white line in front of the church. Nuns and priests who worked for the Escape Line would meet him there to receive and deliver messages and cash. Facing the Monsignor with their back to the surveillance team, the exchange was undetectable.

Kappler tried a new tactic. One of his prisoners was a delivery man who had been caught bringing in supplies to a market in Rome and ferrying Escape Line money back to country families who were hiding escaped prisoners. Kappler offered him a deal: help trap the Monsignor or be shot. The man agreed to help.

He made contact with O’Flaherty and told him he had some information about an escapee. The priest asked the man to meet him at his usual spot in the morning. May didn’t think the man’s story rang true. He positioned himself with three Swiss guards so he could watch the meeting.

A dark Gestapo car pulled up to the white line with its engine running. The man approached the Monsignor, lost his nerve and ran down an alley. May caught the man and offered sanctuary. It wasn’t a hard sell.

Kappler slammed his fist on his desk. He growled, “Ach, du Hurensohn (the son of a bitch)!”

On March 23, 1944, the 25^th anniversary of the founding of Mussolini’s Fascist movement, a group of anti-fascist resisters, the Patriotic Action Group, Gruppi d’Azione Patriotica, detonated a 40 lb. dynamite bomb near a group of SS policemen, killing 33.

When the news reached Hitler he roared that the entire neighborhood where the attack took place should be blown up, including everyone who lived there. If any German police or soldiers were killed they should shoot between 30 and 50 Italians.

That order was ignored but Kappler did recommend a reprisal action. Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief South agreed and authorized retaliation. Ten Italian civilians would be executed for each policeman killed.

The following day, March 24, 1944, two subordinates of Kappler, SS Hauptstrumfuhrer (Captain) Erich Priebke and Karl Haas, rounded up 335 Italian males. Ranging in age from 15 to 75, many were political prisoners; some were Jews and a few innocent people who happened to be in the vicinity of the attack.

Not a single one had anything to do with the attack on the policemen.

They were marched to a series of man-made caves on the outskirts of Rome. The Ardeatine Caves were the remnants of ancient Christian catacombs. The perfect place to carry out the reprisals in secrecy and to conceal the bodies. The victim’s hands were tied behind their back; they were ordered to kneel and were shot at the base of the skull at close range. Explosives were detonated at the mouth of the cave, entombing the dead.

As the news of the executions spread, the escape organization found more and more people who would help even though they knew capture meant immediate death.

An additional 2000 police and troops were brought into Rome to control the situation. Movement within the city became difficult.

Kappler initiated random investigations throughout the city. The Germans would suddenly cordon off a street and examine the identity cards of everyone caught in the net. If an escapee was caught, he/she would be unceremoniously hauled off to prison. If an Italian of military age were caught, they would be sent to work in labor camps.

Rome fell to the Allies on June 4, 1944. Gestapo Chief Herbert Kappler tried to seek refuge in the Vatican, but he was arrested by the British and turned over to the new Italian government in 1947. He was tried by an Italian military tribunal on charges of war crimes arising out of the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves. He was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

During his imprisonment he and his first wife had divorced. He remarried a nurse, Anneliese Wenger Walther, a daughter of a German officer, with whom he had carried on a frequent correspondence. They had a prison wedding in 1972. Throughout his time incarcerated, he had only one visitor other than his wife: his one-time opponent, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty. They discussed literature and religion. Kappler eventually converted to Catholicism.

In 1975, at the age of 68, Kappler was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. He was moved to a military hospital. Because of his deteriorating and his wife’s nursing skills, Anneliese Kappler had unlimited access to her husband.

There are several versions of how he managed to escape. One is that on a visit, she bundled Kappler into a large suitcase (he weighed only about 100 pounds at the time) and with the help of some of the unknowing staff, lugged him out, deposited him in her rented Fiat and escaped to freedom to West Germany.

Another is that on a visit, she brought some clothes and had Herbert dress in a suit. She left the room, went down to the ground floor and re-parked their rental car close to the building entrance. There was no guard on duty. She returned to the upper floor, made up his bed to appear as if someone was sleeping in it, placed a note on the door, “do not disturb before 10am” and holding him tightly, they made their way down the stairs to the car and freedom.

A diplomatic firestorm ensued. The Italians demanded that Kappler be returned. The West German authorities responded that Kappler, as a POW, was entitled to escape and refused.

Six months later, the SS Oberstrumbannfuhrer and Gestapo Chief died at home on February 9, 1978.

Monsignor O’Flaherty was awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. Subsequently, the President of Italy awarded him a silver medal.

In 1953, Pius XII made the monsignor a Domestic Prelate. It was an honor conferred on priests who have undertaken outstanding work. Six years later, he was appointed Head Notary of The Holy Office. All subsequent documents and decrees published by this office carried his name.

On October 30, 1963, Hugh O’Flaherty went to his final reward. His funeral Mass was celebrated.

He was awarded The Commander of The British Empire (CBE) by Great Britain. The CBE is a third level award made to civilians. The U. S. awarded the Monsignor a Medal of Freedom with a Silver Palm, a second level civilian award.

30-10-2013:The Hugh O’Flaherty statue on Mission Road, Killarney on Wednesday.
Picture by Don MacMonagle

There is a small monument to him in the town of Killarney and a small grove of trees in the Killarney National Park dedicated to him. Despite this, he’s practically an unknown in his native country.

Two medium level awards and a grove of trees named after a man that saved an estimated 6500 lives.

Joseph Rochefort

In a conservative service hide-bound by tradition, U.S. Navy Commander Joseph Rochefort was an anomaly. He did not attend the U.S. Naval Academy, was a high school dropout, was blunt and independent, didn’t give a damn about politics and worked at one of those oddball offices doing oddball work that most of the brass thought was useless, namely code-breaking.

It would be many years before the public knew him and his team’s success in breaking the Japanese Naval Code. Breaking that code made the victory at Midway possible, the victory that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

Joe Rochefort dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy in 1918. His goal was to be a naval aviator, but he was unable to get a transfer into the Navy’s Flying Corps. Instead, he attended the Navy’s Steam Engineering Training School. He focused on military training only and didn’t attend any academic courses. He was commissioned a Navy Ensign. This made him a “mustang,” a nickname for officers who came up through the ranks and didn’t attend the U.S. Naval Academy.

He served aboard a variety of ships until officers noticed his skill with puzzles and recommended him for intelligence work, leading him to a transfer to Washington, D.C. and a post in the cryptanalysis section of the office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). The next year he was put in charge of the unit. Soon he was posted to sea duty, serving as navigator on several vessels. All the while, he yearned for his first love, communications and intelligence.

His break came in 1941 when he was placed in command of a cryptanalysis section in Pearl Harbor, code named HYPO. He and his team intercepted and decrypted Japanese Navy communications.

At HYPO the dress code was casual and he didn’t require his subordinates to address him as “sir” or “commander.” Working in the cold basement of the U.S. Navy building, he often wore a smoking jacket to keep warm. He regularly wore bedroom slippers to soothe his feet after 20 some hours of standing and walking around. This added to the sense of eccentricity fellow officers felt about “the oddballs.”

By 1941, reports of Japanese aggression were making the Navy brass nervous. Rochefort’s team uncovered strong hints in late ’41, such as the changing of encryption and warship call signs.

He didn’t, like most of the Navy brass, think Pearl Harbor would be a target and the devastating raid on December 7^th became a sore spot for him for years to come. “… an intelligence officer has one task, one job, one mission. That is to tell his commander what the enemy is going to do tomorrow. This is his job. If he doesn’t do this, then he has failed,” he said ruefully after the attack.

After Pearl Harbor, Rochefort redoubled his efforts, driving himself and his team relentlessly. Twenty-hour days were common and eventually the effort to crack the Japanese Naval codes began to bear fruit. His team uncovered the Japanese Navy’s next move, south towards Australia. They discovered there would be an enemy attack in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese force was a powerful one, containing heavy cruisers, destroyers and three aircraft carriers. This intel helped Admiral Chester Nimitz to put together a makeshift force to intercept the enemy. This led to The Battle of The Coral Sea. The two fleets were 200 miles apart and neither saw nor fired a shot at each other. The battle was fought entirely by carrier borne aircraft.

The battle was essentially a draw. The Navy lost the carrier USS Lexington (the “Lady Lex”), a tanker and a destroyer. The carrier USS Yorktown was damaged. The Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho and a destroyer. Militarily, not a jewel in the crown of the U.S. Navy, but strategically and psychologically, it was a win since it snapped the string of victories enjoyed by Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet. The Japanese honeymoon in the Pacific was over.

Rochefort took about five minutes to enjoy his work, but knew it wasn’t finished. Decoding subsequent Japanese Naval radio traffic, he believed the enemy’s next stop would be in the Central Pacific. His decoders saw the letters “AF” in several messages and discovered that AF stood for Midway Island. They further determined that the attack on the island would be on June 4, 1942, preceded by a diversionary attack in or around Alaska on the 3^rd.

Few of the Navy brass bought the idea. Nimitz did, as well as Fleet Admiral Earnest King, CinC of the U.S. Fleet. But there were many naysayers in Naval Intelligence in Washington. They believed the enemy’s next move would be south towards Australia. To prove their conviction about Midway, Lt. Commander Jasper Holmes, a senior member of Rochefort’s team, proposed they “go fishing.” An unencrypted text message would be sent out from Midway complaining that the island’s water distiller system had broken down (it hadn’t) and that the island was low on fresh water. Japanese Intelligence took the bait. They ordered the invasion fleet to take on extra water, thus confirming the target was Midway.

Japan sent a strong fleet. Four of its nine carriers, sixteen submarines, 240 aircraft, twelve cargo ships ferrying 5,000 Japanese Marines and two battleships. Nimitz pulled together the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and recently repaired Yorktown carrying 233 planes and a collection of cruisers and destroyers. The island itself could put 115 planes in the air.

Although outnumbered, the U.S. Navy was waiting for the Japanese. The battle raged for three days. More than 350 Americans were KIA. The USS Yorktown and the destroyer USS Hammann were lost. The Japanese lost all of its carriers, 291 planes, one cruiser, and 4,800 sailors and airmen. It was the turning point in the Pacific war. The U.S. victory was decisive. The Japanese Navy was unable to mount a major offensive operation in the Pacific for the rest of the war. The hunter became the hunted.

Although the U.S. enjoyed a major victory, Joe Rochefort did not. Nimitz recommended him for the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), but bureaucratic in fighting in Washington blocked the award. The feeling was Joe had been right and they had been wrong and they wouldn’t forgive and forget.

He bounced around the Navy intel world for a while. Tiring of the politics, he finally retired. He dabbled in real estate for a while. His health declining, he served as a consultant for the Hollywood film, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” Later he consulted on the film “Midway” and coached actor Hal Holbrook who played an exaggerated eccentric Rochefort in the movie.

He passed away in 1976 after a heart attack. He was buried at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California next to his wife.

In the 50s and 60s and 80s, several subordinates tried to get their old boss a DSM, but it languished in U.S. Navy bureaucracy for years. Finally, in 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded Joe the medal posthumously. Later that year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2000, he was inducted into the Central Security Service Hall of Fame of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Undoubtedly the most colorful and well known Marine Corps’ ace aviator was Colonel Gregory“ Pappy” Boyington.

Credited with the destruction of twenty-eight Japanese aircraft during WWII, he was the CO of the “Black Sheep” squadron flying Vought F4U Corsair fighters out of the Solomon Islands.

Enlisting in the Marines in 1935, he completed fight training at NAS Pensacola where he acquired the reputation of a hard-drinking, brawling and well-liked womanizer, but a top-notch pilot who could out-dogfight anyone.

His excessive drinking, borrowing money (and not repaying it), fighting and poor professional performance got him consistently in trouble with the brass. He once decked a superior officer in a fight over a girl (not his wife). He was haunted repeatedly by creditors.

He was about to be kicked out of Marine Corps aviation, when in late 1941, a call came out for pilots to join a group slated to fly for the Chinese in their war with Japan. They would not be military fliers officially, but would become employees of the “American Volunteer Group,” technically a private military contractor.

Boyington liked the money, which was double or triple the current his military salary. Plus, there was a bonus for each Japanese plane destroyed. Plus, it was a chance to fly the Curtiss P40s. Boyington jumped at the opportunity and the Corps was glad to be rid of him. It was a win-win.

The stateside press followed the exploits of the new “civilian air force” avidly and dreamed up the moniker “Flying Tigers” which stayed with the unit until they were disbanded in July 1942.

Boyington’s talent in the air didn’t extend to life on terra firma. The hard drinking, boisterous flyer clashed repeatedly with the leader of the Tigers, the strong-willed Maj. General Claire Chennault. It wasn’t long before Chennault had all he could stand and booted him out with a dishonorable discharge.

The Marines, who a few years before couldn’t wait to get rid of him, took him back. There was plenty of work for a good fighter pilot after Pearl Harbor. He was ordered to pull together a group of inexperienced, marginal pilots and whip them into an effective fighting squadron. Because he was about ten years older than his men, they called him “Gramps.”

His colorful reputation followed him, and the press laid the nickname “Black Sheep” on the new outfit. The “Sheep” delivered the goods, racking up 197 kills in eighty-four days. Boyington himself racked up three kills in a single day. War correspondents became interested in the hard-drinking, party-down fighter pilot and dreamed up another nickname that stuck, “Pappy.”

In January 1944 he was shot down and spent twenty grueling months as a POW. Beatings, interrogations and near starvation were the order of the day and when he was repatriated, he had lost eighty pounds.

Back in the U.S. after the war, he was awarded the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He got in trouble almost immediately when, speaking on a War Bond tour after a few hours in a bar, he managed to embarrass himself, the Corps and the audience. The Corps had had it and cut him loose.

Spiraling downward like one of his Japanese victims into alcoholism, he bounced from job to job. He caught a break in the mid-seventies, when the TV show “Baa Baa Black Sheep” appeared. It was VERY loosely based on Pappy’s memoirs. Hired as a consultant to the show, it made him a celebrity for a time and life was good again.

Cancer ultimately grounded him, and Pappy died in 1988.