OSS Red Group 2
A Fisherman Goes to War
by
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"...On the 12th of September, the mission was to interdict a curving road and delay the departure of a German contingent attempting to flee the city of Chatillon and return to the Fatherland before overwhelming Allied forces pressing in from the west and south could envelop them. At least, I think that's what we were supposed to be doing. A beautiful row of stately poplars had been felled and lay across the road. The Germans had taken high ground above it and were firing down on us. German machine-gun fire was shredding the foliage above our heads. Kavalchik, as spare and lean as Lubbers was large: "Man, them's real bullets they're shooting at us." A Maquis rolled toward us: "Avez-vous peur?" Are you afraid? "Naturellement!" "Alors. Avez du vin..." and he handed us a full bottle of rich red wine. Lubbers shook his head, but Al and I pulled deeply. I got into a spirited conversation with an old man -- I mean, he must have been almost 30. He allowed as how we were supposed to be bottling up the Krauts, but it seemed to him it was the other way around..."
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About the Book
"Originally intended as a few wartime sketches of the author’s wartime experiences, to be read only by family and friends, the story was driven by its own momentum to become a detailed record of how this one unusual student-citizen-soldier journeyed through a strange, unexpected world. The story follows him from his beloved fishing holes in pre-war New Jersey to the interior of China as the War approached its end. Along the way he trains as a ski-trooper, a small-arms expert, becomes an accomplished paratrooper and special weapons instructor and operator. He is deployed to North Africa, England, France, India, Burma and China, enduring long sea voyages, parachute drops in the dark, pitched battles, and even driving a balky truck loaded with ammunition over the Ledo road into China. There, the War’s final days brought Red Group 2 to an end, fittingly enough punctuated by one last fire-fight in concert with their Chinese irregulars, designed to confuse retreating Japanese troops."
About the Author
The author left undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina in WWII to enlist in the US Army’s 10th Mountain Div. as an infantry soldier. Recruited from there into the OSS as a member of its tactical forces, he saw combat action in North Africa, France, and China. The remarkable actions of his service in its Red Group2 are described in detail in this book. At war’s end he returned to UNC to complete his undergraduate studies, and on graduating was recruited into the Department of Defense where he began a career in cryptology . While the details of his work remain classified, he was recognized in assignments at home and overseas as an expert, developing and writing key studies of technologies involved in this arcane field. In the latter years of his government service he was involved in important posting related to this field and in the broader fields of education and training. Much of his post-retirement years (until his death in 2006) was devoted to leaving another record, that of the important contribution which the OSS special forces made to our battlefield successes in WWII. This book is a memoire of his own part in that story. His retirement also gave him time to pursue his love of fishing and writing, and writing about fishing ( which he had done as the "angling editor" of a major Washington D.C. newspaper). How he combined the much gentler art of fishing with his skills as a machine gunner is a surprising component of "OSS: Red Group 2"