186 AFTER THE BATTLE.pdf

(9428 KB) Pobierz

AFTER THE

BATTLE

BEHIND THE LINES

WITH THE OSS IN GREECE

No. 186

770306 154103

86>

£5

NUMBER 186

After the Battle

2019

Editor: Karel Margry

Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey

Published by

Battle of Britain International Ltd.,

The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,

Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,

Essex CM17 0NN, England

Telephone: 01279 41 8833

Fax: 01279 41 9386

E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.com

Website:

www.afterthebattle.com

Printed in Great Britain by

Warners Group Publications PLC,

Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.

After the Battle

is published on the 15th of

February, May, August and

November.

LONDON STOCKIST for the

After the Battle

range:

Foyles Limited, 107 Charing Cross Road,

London WC2H 0DT. Telephone: 020 7437 5660.

Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: orders@foyles.co.uk.

Website: www.foyles.co.uk

United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:

Warners Group Publications PLC,

Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH

Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues:

Renniks Publications Pty Limited

Unit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019

Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355

E-mail: info@renniks.com. Website:

www.renniks.com

New Zealand Distribution:

Battle Books NZ Limited, P.O. Box 5549 Lambton,

Wellington 6145, New Zealand

Telephone: 021 434 303. Fax: 04 298 9958

E-mail: sales@battlebooks.co.nz - Web: battlebooks.co.nz

United States/Canada Distribution and Subscriptions:

RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901

Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106

E-mail: info@rzm.com Website:

www.rzm.com

Italian Distribution:

Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto,

1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), Italy

Telephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204

E-mail: info@milistoria.it — Web: http://milistoria.it/

Dutch Language Edition:

SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,

6860 AD Oosterbeek

Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl

CONTENTS

OSS BEHIND THE LINES IN GREECE

UNITED KINGDOM

Donington Military Vehicle Depot 26

FROM THE EDITOR

IT HAPPENED HERE

Executions at Hameln Prison

Front Cover:

Bronze statue of an

American soldier honouring the Greek-

American Operational Groups. The work

of California sculptor Andrew G. Saffas, it

stands in the Hellenic Armed Forces Park

in the grounds of the Greek Ministry of

Defence at Goudi, Athens, where it was

unveiled by the Greek Minister of

Defence on May 26, 2005. A plaque on

the base lists the names of all 224

members of the Operational Groups who

served in Greece. (Robert E. Perdue, Jr.)

Back Cover:

A memorial plaque on the

banks of the Weser river beside the Stadt

Hameln Hotel at Hameln in Germany

reminds passers-by that this was once a

prison and commemorates its victims

during the Nazi era. Local historian

Bernhard Gelderblom, seen here reading

the inscription, was the driving force

behind the memorial, which was unveiled

in 2006. (Gisela Gelderblom.)

Acknowledgements:

For their help with

the OSS Behind the Lines in Greece

story the Editor would like to thank

Georgia Evans, Donald J. Evans, Lori

Waters and Douglas M. Rule of the Fort

Carson Public Affairs Office, George

Saffas and Kostas Alexopoulos.

Photo Credit Abbreviations:

USNA — US

National Archives. Unless specified other-

wise, all illustrations are from the

After the

Battle

archive or The Society for the Stud-

ies of the ETO.

USNA

The origin of the Greek Operational Groups lay in the 122th Infantry Battalion (Sepa-

rate) — the ‘Greek Battalion’ — formed at the request of the Greek Government-in-

Exile in January 1943. It was raised and trained at Camp Carson, an army facility near

Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here the unit marches in review behind flags of the

United States and Greece in August 1943. This event is reputed to be the only time

an American unit marched under a foreign flag on US soil.

THE GREEK BATTALION

In January 1943, US President Franklin D.

Roosevelt signed an Executive Order form-

ing the 122nd Infantry Battalion (Separate).

Also known as the ‘Greek Battalion’, it was

made up primarily of Greek-speaking

Americans and recent Greek immigrants. Its

creation came about as a result of a request

by the Greek Government-in-Exile submit-

ted to the US State Department in February

1942. The reason for this request is not

evident but the Greek Government probably

hoped this unit would participate in an inva-

sion of Greece. Discussing the matter at his

office on February 18, US Assistant Secre-

tary of State Adolph Berle said he did not

believe such a unit would serve any valuable

military purpose but it might have political

value, and so the State Department complied

with the request and advised to organise a

Greek battalion as an act of goodwill toward

the Greek Government.

The 122nd Infantry Battalion was raised

and trained at Camp Carson, Colorado,

located just outside Colorado Springs. It was

commanded by Major Peter D. Clainos, the

first Greek-born West Point graduate. Prac-

tically all of the 30 officers were Greek-

Americans, and the eight non-Greek ones

had in common that they had all studied clas-

sical Greek. The rank and file were all of

Greek descent, divided evenly over Greek-

Americans, new Greek immigrants and

Greek sailors shipwrecked by German

U-Boats. Many of the recruits were recent

arrivals in the United States and could not

speak English, so Major Clainos arranged to

have teachers come to the camp two days a

week to instruct them.

The rugged mountains outside Camp Car-

son were an ideal site for training soldiers

destined to serve in the mountains of Greece.

The troops hiked up 9,565-foot Cheyenne

Mountain, up one side and down the other, a

35-mile round trip. While physical fitness was

emphasised, the troops received the regular

infantry weapon training.

In May 1943, President Roosevelt, accom-

panied by Army Chief-of-Staff General

George C. Marshall, visited Camp Carson

and the Greek Battalion passed in review, led

by two flag-bearers, one with the Stars and

Stripes, the second with the Greek flag. By

August, the battalion had completed its train-

ing and was ready for deployment. However,

two months later, the unit was disbanded.

The reason for this lay in the creation of a

new, very special Greek-language unit.

In the summer of 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)

sent eight so-called Operational Groups into Axis-occupied

Greece. Operational Groups (OGs) were teams of uniformed

American soldiers sent behind enemy lines to carry out sabo-

tage actions in co-operation with the armed resistance of the

country in which they were deployed. The eight operational

groups sent to Greece were made up of Greek-speaking Ameri-

cans. One of them was Operational Group II (OG II). Comprising

23 men under 1st Lieutenant John Giannaris, they were secretly

landed in Greece in mid-June 1944 tasked with carrying out

ambush attacks on German troop trains and road convoys in the

Roumeli region of central Greece. From their base in the moun-

tain village of Papas they carried out a total of 14 operations,

successfully destroying three locomotives, 31 boxcars, 7,400

yards of rail, a large culvert, 40 telegraph poles and six trucks,

and killing or wounding an estimated 675 Germans against a

loss of one enlisted man killed and one officer wounded. This

group photo of OG II was taken in Papas in late September.

There are only 18 men in the shot as five members of the group

were by this time in sick bay suffering from malaria.

OSS BEHIND THE LINES IN GREECE

FORMATION OF OSS OPERATIONAL

GROUPS

In July 1941, President Roosevelt had

appointed Colonel William J. Donovan as

the Coordinator of Information (COI),

charged with setting up an intelligence ser-

vice based on the British Secret Intelligence

Service (SIS) and the Special Operations

Executive (SOE). The task of the new

agency was to organise and carry out espi-

onage and sabotage activities behind enemy

lines for all branches of the armed services,

conduct counter-espionage and organise

‘black’ propaganda. Out of this grew the

Office of Strategic Services (OSS), officially

established by Presidential decree on June

13, 1942. Working in close co-operation with

its British counterparts, from late 1942 the

OSS sent out spies and saboteurs into Axis-

held territories in North Africa and Western

Europe or to Japanese-controlled areas in

the Pacific.

By the late Robert E. Perdue, Jr.

On December 23, 1942, the US Joint

Chiefs-of Staff authorised the OSS to set up

so-called Operational Groups (OGs). These

were teams of highly-trained, foreign-lan-

guage soldiers, skilled in methods of sabo-

tage and small arms, to be used in enemy-

occupied territory, both as saboteurs and as

organisers/arms instructors for partisans. The

teams were to operate in US Army uniform

(as opposed to OSS spies and saboteur

agents who operated behind the lines in civil-

ian disguise) and be trained to infiltrate

behind enemy lines both by parachute and

by sea. The basic unit was a platoon-size

group composed of one or two officers and

20 to 30 enlisted men but in practice units

could vary from a small liaison team of a few

men to units slightly larger than the standard

group.

The OG Branch of the OSS was officially

established on May 13, 1943 and a recruiting

programme was immediately undertaken,

recruiting parties touring Army camps for

volunteers. The men selected for the Opera-

tional Groups were assembled under a

newly-created OSS unit, the 2677th Head-

quarters Company (Provisional) — with

those for Italian operations being grouped in

its First Contingent, those for France in Sec-

ond Contingent and those for the Balkans in

Third Contingent, with the latter sub-divided

into a Unit A for Yugoslavia and Unit B for

Greece.

In August 1943, an OSS recruiting board

came to Camp Carson to solicit members of

the Greek Battalion for the new unit. They

forewarned the potential volunteers that,

based on commando experience, half of the

KATHERINE BLANAS

‘Greeks of the 122nd Battalion vow to avenge the invasion of their native land’, reads

the wartime caption of this photo released by the Office of War Information.

volunteers would be killed. Nonetheless, so

many men volunteered that the battalion

commander, Major Clainos, decided to offer

the entire unit. In the end, a total of 17 officers

and 205 men were chosen and Army Ground

Forces thereupon re-designated the 122nd

Battalion as Unit B, Third Contingent, Oper-

ational Group. Excess personnel were trans-

ferred to other units and the newly designated

unit was transferred to the OSS. Appointed

commander of Unit B was Captain Robert F.

Houlihan, who had been one of the eight non-

Greek officers with the 122nd.

The 122nd Battalion was formally dis-

banded in October. The Greek Government-

in-Exile had no objection so long as its

successor retained the original idea of a

Greek unit.

Right:

In all, the US Army during the war

created five infantry battalions (separate)

made up of US citizens from specific eth-

nic groups: the 1st Filipino Battalion, the

99th Battalion (Norwegian), the 100th

Battalion (Japanese) and the 101st Bat-

talion (Austrian) in 1942 and the 122nd

Battalion (Greek) in 1943. The 122nd Bat-

talion was so designated in recognition

of Greece’s 122 years of independence

from the Ottoman Empire, 1943 marking

that many years since the start of the

Greek War of Independence in 1821.

OSS TRAINING AT AREA F AND AREA B

After a 30-day leave, the new OSS recruits

were ordered to report to Building Q in

Washington, DC, from which on October 8

they were trucked to Area F, the OSS special

training school for Operational Groups.

Area F was the Congressional Country Club

in suburban Maryland, near Washington.

Leased to the Government in March 1943,

the property included a luxurious clubhouse,

swimming pool and 18-hole golf course. The

clubhouse was used as quarters, the ballroom

became a large classroom, the main dining

room served as mess hall, and the golf

course’s sand traps made excellent areas for

demolition training. More than 100 Quonset

huts were erected in the grounds. There was

an obstacle course where machine guns fired

live ammunition over the heads of crawling

students, and across the road were sub-

machine gun and pistol ranges.

Courses at Area F were designed to make

all OGs proficient in demolitions, small arms

(both American and foreign), scouting,

patrolling and reconnaissance, first aid, unit

security measures, living off the land, knife

and hand-to-hand fighting, camouflage, map

reading and compass, and methods of opera-

tion in airborne and seaborne raids. Many

nights were spent on field manoeuvres in

dense woods near the Club. Among the

instructors were several that were on loan

USNA

from the SOE, among them Lieutenant-

Colonel Dan Fairbairn and his assistant

Hans Tofte, both experts in lethal self-

defence, knife-fighting and ‘silent killing’.

It was at Area F that the men were formed

into the teams, the Operational Groups, with

which they would train and go into action. In

all, the Greek officers and men formed eight

OGs, numbered I to VIII. One of them was

Operational Group II. Comprising one officer

and 22 men, its composition was a perfect

reflection of the kind of background the men

came from. Some were American citizens,

Left:

Camp Carson is still an American

Army establishment today but most of

the wartime buildings have been pulled

down. The only original structures still

standing are in the old hospital area at

the northern end of the complex, now in

use as offices. This comparison was

arranged for us by Lori Waters and taken

by Douglas M. Rule, both of the Fort

Carson Public Affairs Office.

DOUGLAS M. RULE

USNA

Right:

All the OSS Operational Groups,

not just the Greek ones, were trained at

Area F, which was one of the eight spe-

cial OSS training schools. Area F was in

fact the Congressional Country Club near

Bethesda, Maryland, a few miles outside

Washington, DC. The first to be based

there were the Italian OGs, followed by

the French, with the Greeks coming after

that.

born of Greek immigrants. Most did not have

US citizenship; some were illegal immigrants,

who would earn citizenship by their serving

with the OSS. Except for one, of Irish descent,

all were fluent in Greek. Many could barely

speak, much less write English. At least two

had earlier served in the Greek army. Only

one was a regular soldier in the US.

The group’s leader, 1st Lieutenant John

Giannaris, born 1922, originated from

Chicago. A product of the pre-war Depres-

sion, he had joined the Army in November

1942 and graduated from Officer’s Candi-

date School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in July

1943, being assigned to the 122nd Battalion.

A natural athlete and hard worker, fluent in

English and Greek, he had already been

interviewed twice by OSS representatives

before he was commissioned. Although the

OG’s commander, at age 21, he was the

youngest man in his group.

Of the group’s seven sergeants, James

Apostolopoulos was an American-born citi-

zen, 32 years old, son of a naturalised father

and a Greek mother. He had grade-school

education and experience as a truck driver

and maintenance man before he was drafted.

Michael Kountouris was born on the Greek

island of Patmos in 1914, had emigrated to the

US in 1930, and was already a US citizen

when he entered the Army from Jackson,

Mississippi. Stephanos Philippides, born 1915,

from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was unique in

that he had attended not only three years of

college in the US, but also the University of

Peru and was fluent in Spanish. Peter

Moshopoulos, born in 1919, originated from

the island of Cephalonia. A seaman aboard a

merchant vessel, he had jumped ship when in

a US port and found work as a waiter in a

New York restaurant. He had volunteered for

military service in the hope of gaining US citi-

zenship and, although he could not speak

English, had been accepted by the Army.

John Tsouderos was the son of Emmanuel

Tsouderos, Prime Minister of Greece-in-

Exile, then resident in Cairo. When Greece

was invaded in 1941, young Tsouderos had

Here, the Greek OG men celebrate a party in what had been the club’s dining

room.

been studying sociology and economics at a

US university. When he was drafted in 1943,

he joined the Greek Battalion, assuming the

alias of John Giannakopoulos as protection in

case of capture. Bernard Brady from Pater-

son, New Jersey, was the only non-Greek in

the group, being of Irish descent. Having been

assigned to the Greek Battalion as training

cadre, he stayed with them when they volun-

teered for the OGs.

The other enlisted men had an equally

varied background. Michalis Tsirmulas, a

29-year-old Greek citizen, had worked as a

waiter and dishwasher since he arrived in the

Left:

When the Greek Battalion became

the nucleus of the Greek-language Opera-

tional Groups, Captain Robert F. Houlihan,

who had been one of the non-Greek offi-

cers in the battalion, was made comman-

der of Greek OGs. These initially formed

Unit B of the Third Contingent, Opera-

tional Group, later renamed Third Contin-

gent of the 2677th HQ Company, then

Contingent C of the 2677th Regiment

OSS, and finally Company C of the 2671st

Special Reconnaissance Battalion, Sepa-

rate. Throughout all these name changes,

Captain (later Major) Houlihan remained

in command of the Greek sub-unit.

US. George Tiniakos, born 1914 into a poor

family on Andros Island, had joined the

Greek merchant marine at age 15, and

travelled the world until he was called up for

service in the Greek Army from October

1938 to January 1940. Returning to the

merchant marine, he had left ship in Boston,

when a US Army recruiter encouraged

volunteers with the promise of US citizen-

ship. He finally entered US military service

in January 1943. Another who had earlier

served in the Greek Army was Hercules

Sembrakis. Theodore Markidis was the only

regular soldier, all the others were draftees.

Of the group’s two medics, Spiros Taflam-

bas, born 1920, had left the Greek island of

Ithaca in 1936 aboard a merchant vessel and

jumped ship in Baltimore, joining two uncles

in the East Bronx. He had worked first as a

grocery delivery boy and later as a waiter

until he was drafted in 1942, joining the

Greek Battalion. The other medic, Angelo

Kaleyias, was unique in that he was born in

Albania. Born in 1919, he had entered the

US at New York in 1933 on an Albanian

passport with his father. He too had worked

as a busboy or waiter until he was drafted.

Having qualified as a medic in July 1942, he

had served with the Field Artillery before he

came to the OSS.

ANDREW S. MOUSALIMAS

STELLA TINIAKOS

CARL LINDBERG

Plik z chomika:

DARUCH41

186 AFTER THE BATTLE.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: