{"id":2115,"date":"2026-10-06T22:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/?p=2115"},"modified":"2026-10-06T22:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:11:15","slug":"the-untold-story-of-das-fantom-how-marine-legend-pete-ortiz-led-the-oss-behind-enemy-lines-in-occupied-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/?p=2115","title":{"rendered":"The Untold Story of Das Fantom: How Marine Legend Pete Ortiz Led the OSS Behind Enemy Lines in Occupied France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germans knew U.S. Marine Major Pete Ortiz simply as Das Fantom<\/em>. To the Nazi occupation forces in France, he was a ghost, a high-value target carrying a half-a-million-franc bounty on his head for his relentless work as a scout, spy, saboteur, and French Resistance leader. Now, bestselling military historians Bob Drury and Tom Clavin lift the veil on this legendary figure in their new book, The Phantom<\/em>, detailing the exploits of one of the most decorated Marine officers of World War II. <\/p>\n

PROLOGUE: August, 1944: Savoie Department, France<\/h3>\n

Fresh blood, even a mere smear, carries a sharp, metallic odor. It is clean and impersonal, evoking the smell of a sheared brass bullet casing. That scent filled Major Pete Ortiz\u2019s nostrils as he bent over the broken body of his fellow United States Marine, Sergeant Chuck Perry.<\/p>\n

Thin red rivulets, like scarlet worms, leaked from Perry\u2019s nose and ears, streaking his tawny hair. The twenty-two-year-old noncommissioned officer had bitten off the tip of his tongue, and a flap of the severed muscle remained impaled on a broken front tooth. Pete Ortiz had witnessed violent death before, inhaling its pungent musk from corpses across two continents\u2014Arab and Italian, French and German, and even fellow Americans. But this felt different, carrying the heavy psychological burden of personal responsibility.<\/p>\n

Earlier that morning, prior to climbing into the hold of the B-17 that would jounce across the English Channel, pass over the secured Normandy beachheads, and soar inland above occupied France, young Perry had confessed to Ortiz that he had a profound "bad feeling" about the mission.<\/p>\n

Ortiz had known the boy for only a few weeks, barely long enough to learn that Perry had just married his stateside sweetheart before volunteering to drop behind Nazi lines. Recalling his own first clandestine insertion into enemy territory, Ortiz understood the dread. To soothe Perry\u2019s nerves, the major had offered to switch parachutes, telling the sergeant he could jump with Ortiz\u2019s lucky silk rig, the one he had packed himself. The gesture, coming from an officer whose exploits were already the stuff of legend across the French Foreign Legion, the U.S. Marine Corps, and America\u2019s nascent spy agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), had the desired effect. Perry visibly calmed as the two exchanged rigs on the rutted tarmac.<\/p>\n

To minimize casualties against antiaircraft batteries and Luftwaffe sorties, Ortiz and his six-man team had boarded separate planes. None of Sergeant Perry\u2019s flight crew noticed that the steel static line connecting his deployment bag to the cable in the belly of the bomber had somehow kinked when he hooked it in place. The wire snapped when Perry leaped from the rear side door. His parachute\u2014Ortiz\u2019s parachute\u2014never opened. Perry plunged some four hundred feet before crumpling into an alpine meadow with a broken neck.<\/p>\n

It was not a good omen, particularly considering that even before any of the Americans had jumped, the entire operation appeared to be sliding sideways into what service slang termed "Tits Up."<\/p>\n

The Drop Over the Col des Saisies<\/h3>\n

The trouble began on the approach to the target area\u2014the pinpoint, in special operations jargon\u2014a thirty-mile break in the French Alps called the Col des Saisies. The rugged and isolated mountain pass, rising some fifty-five hundred feet in the shadow of the towering Mont Blanc, was the logical site to deposit a squad of Allied spy-saboteurs. Although a small detachment of Germans was known to occupy the nearby town of Albertville, the vast majority of enemy troops had been headquartered far enough away in Grenoble, about seventy miles to the south, to chance a daylight jump. The peaks to the east were dusted gold by the sun when three waves of Flying Fortresses approached the alpine saddle at staggered altitudes. Seventy-eight planes were tasked with delivering their human cargo, alongside nearly nine hundred canisters of weapons and provisions, to the disparate French Resistance cells collectively known as the Maquis.<\/p>\n

Though the Flying Fortresses had picked up a squadron of American P-51 fighter escorts somewhere over the Channel, the formation had improbably encountered no opposition since lifting off from England\u2019s Knettishall Air Station nearly seven hours earlier. Perhaps it was the fierce air battle currently being waged over Chartres, far to the north, that had attracted the attention of what was left of the Luftwaffe.<\/p>\n

As the aircraft neared the pass, however, the pilots of the first wave\u2014designated Group A, carrying Ortiz, his men, and a portion of the provisions\u2014failed to spot the smudge pots and bonfires delineating the drop zone. Following preflight instructions, the bombers overflew the Col before turning to make a second pass. This time, coming in hot and so low that Marine Sergeant John Bodnar could make out the cowbells hanging from the necks of small herds below, the airmen finally saw the drop zone smoke.<\/p>\n

Each man on Ortiz\u2019s team, all six in uniform, was freighted with a wire-reinforced canvas bag containing a Winchester semiautomatic M1 carbine with a folding metal stock\u2014about half the weight of the standard Marine-issue Garand rifle\u2014along with a Colt .45 sidearm and a double-edged Fairbairn-Sykes stiletto. Their mountain packs were stuffed with topography maps printed on silk and enclosed in cylindrical leather cases, a hip flask of "medicinal" cognac, cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and the equivalent of $1,000 in French francs concealed in secret flaps sewn into their boxer shorts. Ortiz, lumbering under the additional burden of a Thompson submachine gun and a second rucksack holding nearly a million francs intended for partisan fighters, had to be lifted and tossed from his bomber by the waist and tail gunners. <\/p>\n

He was barely out the jump door when the navigators of Group A belatedly realized they were vectoring on a direct collision course with the planes of Groups B and C, which were approaching from the west.<\/p>\n

Standing on the ground, Ortiz blanched as he peered up into the cornflower sky. A tangle of thirty-two-ton aircraft were headed toward each other at closing speeds close to three hundred miles per hour, pitching, rolling, and jinking out of each other\u2019s way. By pilot skill, instinct, or sheer luck, none of the planes collided while the crews from all three flight groups frantically jettisoned steel supply containers. Each crate, dangling from its parachute, weighed between 150 and 300 pounds and was packed with materiel ranging from Sten guns to hand grenades, explosive charges, medical supplies, spare bicycle tires, and boxes of chewing gum.<\/p>\n

Casualties and a Grim Assessment<\/h3>\n

Chuck Perry was not the afternoon\u2019s only casualty. As scores of guerrilla fighters poured from the enveloping conifers to pry open the bomb-shaped canisters, Major Ortiz\u2014collecting Perry\u2019s dog tags and personal effects\u2014spotted a small circle of men forming around the body of Marine Gunnery Sergeant Bob LaSalle. The somber group included the veteran Free French fighter Joseph "Jo-Jo" Arcelin, an experienced wireless radio operator. The sinewy twenty-one-year-old Arcelin had been tasked with acting as the American team\u2019s liaison with the various factions of local maquisards.<\/p>\n

Arcelin initially struck Ortiz\u2019s fellow Marines as an unusual presence in a war zone. As thin as a Giacometti bronze, he sported a dark beret worn at an angle just shy of jaunty above his corvine face and unassuming spectacles. His jerky gait resembled a praying mantis folding and unfolding its spindly legs. Yet despite his youth, Ortiz knew Arcelin to possess extraordinary courage, having proved himself as a fearless getaway driver during the major\u2019s previous covert operations in the country.<\/p>\n

Crouched over the inert LaSalle, Arcelin was conferring with a medic. A third Frenchman stood silent a few feet away. Unlike Chuck Perry\u2019s fatal plunge, the gunnery sergeant\u2019s parachute had opened, but his static line had coiled around his torso during the jump, tightening like a boa constrictor and causing him to black out during descent. When Ortiz reached LaSalle, he feared the Marine\u2019s spine was snapped. However, the accompanying French physician waved off the unspoken concern, explaining that the wire had merely broken several ribs and wrenched LaSalle\u2019s back. Furthermore, LaSalle had shattered his ankle upon impact and likely suffered a concussion, meaning he would have to be carried. The tiny American outfit had barely touched the ground and was already down two men.<\/p>\n

Ortiz opened his rucksack and tossed Arcelin the identification papers and spare Marine sergeant\u2019s uniform provided by his OSS handlers in London. Although the Frenchman was born and raised in the nearby Haute-Savoie region, he was now to pose as a French Canadian named George Andrew who had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. While the ruse would not stop the Gestapo from executing him if captured\u2014Adolf Hitler had personally ordered all Allied commandos taken behind enemy lines, even those in uniform, to be shot immediately\u2014the gambit might shield Arcelin\u2019s three sisters, who served as couriers for the Maquis.<\/p>\n

A Growing Nazi Threat in the Alps<\/h3>\n

Arcelin then introduced Ortiz to the third man: Jean-Marie Bulle, the legendary commander of the Free French Maquis battalion bearing his name. Bulle delivered staggering news, informing Ortiz that close to twelve thousand German troops were currently stationed in and around Grenoble. <\/p>\n

Months earlier, during Ortiz\u2019s first infiltration, he had surreptitiously entered the alpine city multiple times to gather intelligence. Though the Gestapo presence had loomed over the cobblestone streets, Grenoble had housed nowhere near that many Wehrmacht soldiers. The Germans had originally stationed a skeleton force of somewhat passive security battalions composed of elderly soldiers alongside companies of captured Czechs, Poles, and Russians.<\/p>\n

However, Bulle explained that since D-Day, replacement troops had arrived, including ruthless Ost Bataillones<\/em> transferred from the Eastern Front. These units had previously participated in atrocities across Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Belarus, executing tens of thousands of civilians. Furthermore, companies of Heinrich Himmler\u2019s black-uniformed Waffen-SS combat units\u2014the "Black Angels," who had sworn allegiance to Adolf Hitler alone\u2014had also infiltrated the region. These SS units answered to no one and were entirely outside the control of regular Wehrmacht military authorities.<\/p>\n

Bulle\u2019s grim report indicated that the war had taken a darker turn since Ortiz\u2019s last mission. The Nazi occupation had grown increasingly willing to burn towns and slaughter noncombatants, as evidenced by recent massacres at Oradour-sur-Glane and Vassieux-en-Vercors. Cornered on the Western Front, the German forces were operating with desperate viciousness.<\/p>\n

The Mission Ahead<\/h3>\n

As dusk\u2014l\u2019heure bleue<\/em>\u2014approached, Bulle and his guerrillas loaded tons of military gear onto a mule-drawn packtrain. Arcelin, Sergeant Bodnar, and Sergeant Jack Risler helped heft the bodies of the fallen Marines onto makeshift stretchers. Bodnar, a barrel-chested twenty-one-year-old with a stubbed, broken nose, and Risler, a fair-skinned, wary twenty-four-year-old, represented a stark contrast in demeanor. Ortiz informed the team that he would preside over a formal military interment for Sergeant Perry as soon as possible, regardless of closing German forces, after which the injured LaSalle would be moved to a safe house.<\/p>\n

Ortiz knew Albertville well, and the Germans there knew him. During his earlier operations, the Gestapo had dubbed him Das Fantom<\/em> and placed a half-a-million-franc bounty on his head for leading partisan units, blowing bridges, attacking munitions plants, and escorting downed Allied airmen to safety in Spain. <\/p>\n

For this assignment, however, Major Ortiz carried an even larger mandate. He had originally operated as a lone ghost tasked with disrupting German forces ahead of the Normandy landings and attempting to unite feuding partisan groups. Now, returning two months later, his mission was to ensure that a unified resistance army acted as a hammer to strike the enemy between Allied forces advancing from the Mediterranean in the upcoming Operation ANVIL.<\/p>\n

As the Americans and the Maquis battalion trudged further into the mountains that August evening, the words of American spymaster General William Donovan echoed in Ortiz\u2019s mind. Donovan was fond of telling his operatives that their job was to "let fly an arrow of penetration behind enemy lines"\u2014and Major Pete Ortiz and his team were the sharpened tip of that weapon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germans knew U.S. Marine Major Pete Ortiz simply as Das Fantom. To the Nazi occupation forces in France, he was a ghost, a high-value target carrying a half-a-million-franc bounty on his head for his relentless work as a scout, spy, saboteur, and French Resistance leader. Now, bestselling military historians Bob Drury and Tom Clavin lift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[230,661,231,1396,3358,1402,126,229,2009,1397,1398,1401,2589,2588,1137,1497],"class_list":["post-2115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eastern-heritage-and-history","tag-archaeology","tag-behind","tag-eastern-culture","tag-enemy","tag-fantom","tag-france","tag-heritage","tag-history","tag-legend","tag-lines","tag-marine","tag-occupied","tag-ortiz","tag-pete","tag-story","tag-untold"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}