- Where does the United States find its heroes?

It's not a rhetorical question, and today's guests offer an answer from the Second World War and a combat veteran of the French Foreign Legion who ultimately serves in the US Marine Corps in Europe with tremendous distinction.

They are Nicholas Reynolds and Katie S. Sanders, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

And my guests this week are a writing team whose new book tells a remarkable true story from World War II.

They are Nicholas Reynolds and Katie S. Sanders.

And the book is "Ortiz's War: The Remarkable True Story of OSS Saboteur Peter J.

Ortiz."

Nick and Katie, welcome to the show and congratulations on a remarkable book.

- Thank you.

- [Katie] Thanks for having us.

- You know, we're gonna get into the details of the book in just a minute, but, Nick, let's start at the most macro of levels.

Who was Pete Ortiz?

- So Peter J. Ortiz was actually originally Pierre Ortiz, and he was born in New York City of parents who were not exactly mixed nationality, but perhaps mixed culture is the way to put it.

Dad was born in Paris, and really Paris was his hometown for most of his life.

Mom was a first-generation American who lived most of her life here in the United States.

- And so you pick up his sort of struggles in schools and his decision initially to join the French Foreign Legion.

How unusual was that for someone of American, with American roots but also French identity to actually wind up in the Foreign Legion?

- So he was able to join the Foreign Legion because he was foreign.

The idea of the Foreign Legion was that the soldiers would not be French.

The officers would be French, but the soldiers would be foreign.

And so that was his opportunity.

He was not the only American to take this route.

And there's a small core of Americans, most of whom come from fairly privileged backgrounds, or at least those are the ones who have left their stories for us, who are looking for this, I don't know, I think challenge is the right word.

They're looking for sort of the ultimate physical and military challenge, and that's why they go to the Foreign Legion.

- And we should note that this is in the era before the Second World War that he's in the Foreign Legion.

Katie, how did you come to find this story?

You have a very personal connection to it.

- Yeah, I always like to say that it blows my mind that I would have no idea of who Peter Ortiz was had he not been in, well, I guess my grandfather was in the right place at the right time despite being in Nazi-occupied France.

Upon being shot down, my grandfather was a 23-year-old American Air Force pilot flying a low-level supply mission over France, and when he was left in the hands of the resistance to escape, they introduced him to Peter Ortiz, and that was the first time I read his name, and in my grandfather's escape and evasion report after making it home safely, he's the last out of his burning plane and the first of his crew to return home safely.

- So, Nick, how did the two of you, how did you and Katie come to work together on this project?

- It's a long story, but it's a good story.

I had done a little bit of work on Ortiz when I was an official historian for the Marine Corps.

And the chief historian there had written an article on Ortiz, and I was editing a little journal called "The Journal of America's Military Past."

And he asked me to put the story in the journal, which I was happy to do.

I liked the story so much I made it the cover story, and I liked the cover story so much I had it mounted and framed and have had it nearby ever since.

So that was in the 1990s.

Fast-forward, Katie and I were basically pen pals as we researched similar topics.

I think Toni Hiley initially told us that we should talk to each other on email.

We only met once for coffee before the pandemic.

We had mutual interests.

And I believe Katie is the one who surfaced the idea first of exploring whether we should write a book together.

- And I'll add that Toni Hiley was at the CIA, so really the CIA, where Nick had worked and I had approached as a journalist looking to learn more about Peter Ortiz, they said, "Well, there's this retired Marine colonel and CIA officer who used to work at the museum who you might enjoy talking about Peter Ortiz with, too."

- So Nick, when you look at this young man who distinguishes himself in service in the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, that he leaves the Foreign Legion, goes back to visit his mother who's now living in California, and then war breaks out in Europe, and he determines that he's going to get back to Europe to help fight for France, and his ship has sunk in the Atlantic, in the North Atlantic as he's trying to get back.

He's rescued.

This is all in the first couple of chapters of the book.

I read this sort of breathless.

When he ultimately gets out of a German POW camp and makes his way back to the United States and then joins the United States Marine Corps, what did the Marines inherit?

What did they get in Peter J. Ortiz?

- Well, they didn't know exactly what they were getting.

Ortiz had tried initially to get a commission in the US Armed Forces and telling them about his background and all the things he could do.

And there was some resistance there, probably because Ortiz just didn't fit.

Ortiz was not what they expected.

He was either too much or too little in some ways.

And so Ortiz eventually shrugs his shoulders and walks into the recruiter, the recruiting station in Baltimore, Maryland, and doesn't say anything about his background and just says, "Hey, I'm here to join the Marine Corps," and at that point in 1942, it was you know, as long as you can, as long as you're reasonably healthy, and you're upright, and you can read and write, come on down.

So he goes down to Parris Island, and the Marine Corps pretty soon figures out this is not your average 17 to 25-year-old recruit.

So they essentially pull him out of the lineup and talk to him.

They get him an interview with a couple of senior officers.

And when he graduates from bootcamp, instead of becoming a private first class like the average honor graduate, he becomes a second lieutenant.

So he gets his commission in a roundabout way.

- Well, you know, Nick, I wanna stay with you for a second on this because I find it remarkable that the Marine Corps, in the midst of a new war where they're growing the corps, I think from about 17,000 to almost 400,000.

- [Nick] Correct.

- They spot one guy with a unique set of skills and almost create a whole new pathway for Ortiz.

How does that happen?

How does the Marine Corps demonstrate that kind of nimbleness in the middle of a world that's literally burning down around them?

- Well, that's a great question.

And I've heard a version of that question asked by some Marine historians.

And I think the answer is something like this.

The Marine Corps was basically a regiment.

No matter how many people were in the Marine Corps, they thought of it in the way they had been brought up, as a, you know, not tiny unit but medium-sized unit where the personal touch still mattered.

And it was just something about Ortiz that caught their eye.

You know, the general officers stopped what they were doing to see what Ortiz was up to.

And it was kind of a challenge, so it seems to me it became a challenge.

"Let's get this guy in the right place."

So they liked what they saw.

I think one of the officers wrote that, "If all of our Marines were like Ortiz, we would win the war tomorrow."

So they were determined.

You know, you got to hand it to the Marine Corps, which can be rigid and conservative to the nth degree.

In this case, they're nimble, forward-looking, imaginative, so, you know, you got to give 'em credit for doing the right thing here.

- You know, we're gonna skip over some of his first experience as a military observer in North Africa as a United States Marine, just in the interest of time.

But, Katie, one of the things that stands out about Ortiz is that he always seems to be heading towards the sound of gunfire.

Where do you think that kind of personal courage originates in his case?

- Yeah, I think a lot stands out about Ortiz and, you know, he's both physically, and he's sort of this born adventure seeker.

You see this a lot.

Again, Nick mentioned joining the French Foreign Legion.

He was unconventional.

He was not, as a Marine report would later say, not a good candidate for a desk job ever.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - He was someone who was really gravitationally pulled.

We talk about it in the context of the war, but even post-war and in hurricanes or crises, and in Mexico, he was doing relief work, just wherever he felt he could be needed.

And something that Pete Jr., Peter Ortiz's son, who is a retired Marine aviator and history teacher himself, has spoken about is just this idea of his dad really feeling a sense of nobility obligates being the phrase that he brings up, this idea that he had a lot of privilege that he saw as a responsibility, you know?

And then he saw what, in this case, the Germans were capable of.

He docks in New York, you know, the day after Pearl Harbor and even far before that had known, "There's something going on here.

I need to do what I can."

And so I think he really represents an example of someone who just has a lot of inherent courage and a lot of inherent tolerance for risk and actually, you know, is quite risk seeking.

He was comfortable in situations that I think most of us, or at least I, would be highly uncomfortable in, and that was really where he thrived.

- So, Nick, the Marine Corps seconds him to the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS.

For folks who maybe don't know that history so well, what was the OSS doing?

And what was Peter Ortiz's job, his mission in the OSS?

- So brief history lesson for OSS, it was established in 1942, and it's basically America's entry into the world of central intelligence with a lowercase letter there, lowercase C and I. And the idea was to have an organization that would have spies, saboteurs, and analysts, and produce intelligence at the end of the day.

Ortiz winds up in the saboteur part, special operations, and they send him to Europe where he joins up with their British counterparts, who are the Special Operations Executive.

And poor Ortiz, he gets trained over and over again.

He gets trained by the Foreign Legion.

He gets trained by the Marine Corps.

(laughs) He gets trained by the OSS.

And then when he thinks he's going over to the UK and join up with the Brits, the Brits say, "No, first, you gotta go through our training course."

So he's been through really four heavy-duty training cycles in addition to having, we don't know exactly how many parachute jumps he had, but, you know, he is well up there for any jumper.

I think the final figure is something like 150.

- [Jim] Wow.

- So this is one very well-trained man.

And, you know, this is the OSS's entry into special operations in Europe.

He's not alone, but he is, you know, a distinguished member of that cadre.

- So, Katie, can you tell us a little bit about that first assignment inside Europe?

Where was he?

- Yeah.

- What was he doing?

And we'll get to your grandfather's story in just a minute.

- Of course, yeah, so we're talking about what was called Operation Union.

It was code named, again, this was all coming out of OSS headquarters in London.

These were inter-Allied missions.

This was before what's known as the Jedburgh program.

This is early, you know, you're talking early 1944, January.

You have these inter-Allied teams of agents like Ortiz, who's with the OSS.

He was the OSS representative of the Union team jumping out of, you know, planes into occupied France behind enemy lines to be inserted with, usually, and in this case a French radio operator who had these really harrowing jobs, who was with the French intelligence, the BCRA.

And then you have also a British counterpart.

And then in their case, this was actually a four-person team, but one of the members had hurt himself in training and was inserted in an alternative way, not jumping out of a plane.

So you have, again, these guerrilla groups of maquis who, you know, Nick can speak to their role in this particular region in France.

A lot of Ortiz's story is sort of Southeast France.

But you're looking at regions that aren't necessarily, you know, the big cities outside of Paris, and you're really looking at places where people, French civilians, are turning into fighters and they're doing what they can to play their part in, you know, defending against a horrible multi-year German occupation.

At this point, you're in 1944.

There's a lot of, you know, hope that there will be Allies coming, and Ortiz sort of represents the early signs of an Allied agent, in many cases, the first American that, you know, anyone in this region of France have seen behind enemy lines ever.

- And an American Marine, you know, so when I first got the writeup about the book and I read this, I thought, "Well, there were no Marines in Europe."

Nick, how unusual was it to have a US Marine in combat in Europe in 1944?

- It was very unusual but not unheard of.

So there's a handful of Marines who do wind up in combat in Europe, but mostly it's Army guys, and the rest of the Marines are in the Pacific.

So that's kind of an interesting point.

So he wears this uniform, but it's a uniform nobody recognizes initially.

And if anything, it looks more like a German uniform than an American uniform.

So, you know, Ortiz is taking a risk with layers by wearing this particular uniform.

- Well, say a little bit more too about the risk because, so Katie mentioned the maquis, so these are sort of the resistance fighters in the countryside fighting the German occupation, conducting sabotage, theoretically preparing the way for the coming invasion.

What is the risk to Ortiz if he is captured?

- So there's level-one risk and level-two risk.

So if you're out in the countryside working with the maquis, your risk in wearing the uniform is not great.

If you go into the city and you mix it up with the Germans, or you work with French people and you're wearing the uniform, you make the risk even greater.

So it's remarkable that Ortiz does not get captured.

The British member of the team said that the local French police, who were sort of co-opted, kind of working for Vichy, that they kept an eye out and tried to protect Ortiz a little bit.

But the pressure mounts as time goes on.

And so we see, in late spring 1944, we see him being pulled out.

- And, Katie, that's about the same time that your grandfather is shot down in France.

What's their escape look like?

- Yeah, absolutely, and just to be clear on the stakes, if Ortiz is caught, he's, will be tortured and killed is the understanding as an agent who's inserted himself.

And, you know, here is my grandfather, who's a Jewish American pilot from Queens who, unlike Ortiz, does not have a lot of jump experience, but his B-24 Liberator, which is on a solo, low-level night mission to drop supplies to the resistance as part of what's known as Operation Carpetbagger, also an OSS mission, goes wrong, and they are hit, and they're hit pretty badly, and he jumps out, and he is separated from his crew.

These eight American airmen suddenly need the help of the people they've been coming to help.

And so a doctor in the French resistance, an incredibly brave and bold man named Dr.

Jacques Majar and his wife sheltered my grandfather, helped funnel him out of town.

And you see this series of something that's really common with the resistance, these networks, you know, that are at great risk to themselves and their families, you know, sheltering Allied pilots.

And so my grandfather is moved through town.

He ends up in Valence.

And again, they're moving through time and space here.

You're talking May of 1944, month before D-Day.

Stakes are high.

Everyone's, you know, on high alert.

And so my grandfather is told there's a man, Chamberlain, code name Chamberlain, or Jean-Pierre, some people call him.

He's an American Marine.

He's just went to go help this other pilot, Fred Glover.

They literally show him a picture of this other American pilot who has been shot down, a fighter pilot.

And Ortiz is indeed helping Glover.

And when he returns from helping Glover, after a series of misconnections, they get him to my grandfather.

And my grandfather, again, 23-year-old Jewish guy who speaks better Yiddish than, you know, French.

And here's this Hollywood handsome American Marine secret agent who says that it'll be risky, "But if you stay here, you know, it's even riskier.

This is blown.

I happen to be recalled.

Do you wanna go with me?"

So they go on sort of an epic journey that we talk about in the book to get back to England safely through stolen Gestapo staff cars that Ortiz stole himself and rode in, and trains with Nazis, and this arduous trek through the Pyrenees that Nick and I wouldn't wish upon an enemy.

At this point, again, you're talking '44.

So they make it out.

And my grandfather telegrams his poor mother and says "All good, write to my old address, well and safe," you know, after she's had a rough few weeks.

- I mean, it's a remarkable story.

That in and of itself could be the movie, just the escape with your grandfather.

Nick, he's sent back.

So people know that there's a bounty on his head, right?

The Germans are looking for him, but still he is sent back in months later back into France to essentially do the same mission, not that far from where he was operating the first time.

Talk to us a little bit about that second, that second mission, because it ends in an act of incredible courage and selflessness that I wanna make sure the audience understands.

- The second mission is similar to the first.

The basic idea is the same.

Prepare the maquis.

Train them, let them do a little bit against the Germans, but really save all your energy for the big day when you'll be supporting the invasion of Southern France.

So the one difference is Ortiz is in charge of the second mission.

He was not in charge of the first mission.

And in the second mission, he more or less picks his men, right?

He picks Marines that he happened to have trained with and found in London, and he picks a gentleman named Coolidge who he had served in the Foreign Legion with, who also happened to be in England.

So it's kind of the A team of American commandos, if you will, who are going in on the second mission.

And it's not a really long, it doesn't turn out to be that long because they jump in on the beginning of August.

And by the middle of August, actually, just after the middle of August, the 16th, Ortiz is surrounded and takes this action.

Basically, the choice is between fighting in a village after which the Germans would burn the village and kill the civilians, which was the pattern they had established, or taking this enormous risk in surrendering.

And as we mentioned a couple minutes ago, there's Hitler's commando order.

It's a 1942 order, and it says if you capture any commandos, whether they're in uniform, whether they're fighting or trying to surrender, they must be shot.

So Ortiz is aware of this and taking a tremendous risk.

- And why isn't he shot on the spot?

- Well, that's a good question, one that we, you know, it's chance.

I think he charms, so he meets two German majors.

The first one, we don't know his name, but they establish a little bit of rapport.

And then he meets a second German major.

We do know his name, Johann Kolb, and those two almost become friends.

They're sort of battle buddies.

They happen to be on opposite sides.

And Kolb decides to protect Ortiz from the bad guys, from the Gestapo and the SS.

He says, "This is my prisoner, not yours, and he's going in the prisoner-of-war chain."

You know, he's gonna be in that system and not in the punishment system that the bad guys ran.

- Yeah, one of the things, Katie, that struck me really about that episode was that it says something really profound about the humanity of Peter Ortiz.

Have you thought about that in doing this research?

- Think about it every day.

I think, to set the scene for people, you know, you're in, again, this region of Southeast France where help hasn't really been present.

And all of a sudden, you have Ortiz coming in on a mission, Union II, that he planned and really, like Nick said, hand-selected this small team.

And they come, and they show up in uniform.

They're there to help.

There's a lot of sacrifice on the way down.

One of the Union II recruits, Charles Perry, an OSS Marine Ortiz has recruited dies.

But at the same time, supplies are with them.

They bring, you know, tons and tons of supplies to the resistance that come parachuting down, not just these men but equipment.

And it's, you know, again, Ortiz saying, "I have the platform here.

I have the power to bring things that could help people and then to help them use them and support them in what I believe in."

And then you see that repeated, that courage in this moment where, you know, he could have escaped.

He, you know, straight out admits he could have gotten away through the town of Centron.

He has two OSS Marines with him at that point, team and truck down, and a French officer named Joseph Arcelin, and he turns to them and says, "You guys, you know, you have your whole lives ahead of you."

He's in his 30s.

They're in their 20s.

He gives them the chance to say, "Here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna surrender.

I'm gonna try to surrender so as to spare the people of Centron."

By the way, this is while the people of Centron are all looking on with their, you know, cows, and their laundry, and trying to not get shot in the gunfire and the machine gunfire that's coming towards them.

And he says to his Marines, you know, "Here's what I'm gonna do.

I can cover for you."

And they say, you know, "Major, more Marines, what you do we will do," and so again, it's contagious, the courage that he exudes when he's walking towards this German commander.

He's yelling in French, English, and German.

And again, I think his language skills are, you know, only part of the story of what makes him special.

And they're still shooting at him, you know, kinda kicking up dirt at his feet.

Finally, he gets there.

And, you know, everyone's watching this happen, the people of Centron that you feel that courage.

You know, they realize that he's doing the unthinkable on their behalf, and I think they're as floored as I was.

- You know, we have really just scratched the surface on this remarkable life, but Nicholas Reynolds, Katie S. Sanders, the book is "Ortiz's War."

Thank you for spending some time with us this week.

But that is all the time we have.

If you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

And I wanna thank you for spending some of your week with me.

I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join me again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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