{"id":2205,"date":"2026-10-07T22:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2026-10-07T22:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:48:15","slug":"unearthing-the-legend-of-das-fantom-inside-the-high-stakes-world-of-wwii-marine-hero-major-pete-ortiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/?p=2205","title":{"rendered":"Unearthing the Legend of ‘Das Fantom’: Inside the High-Stakes World of WWII Marine Hero Major Pete Ortiz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe knew him simply as Das Fantom<\/em>\u2014The Phantom. They had placed a staggering bounty of half a million French francs on his head, a testament to the havoc he wreaked as a scout, spy, saboteur, and French Resistance leader. In their explosive new book, The Phantom<\/em>, authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin pull back the curtain on the untold story of Major Peter Julien Ortiz, who would go on to become one of the most highly decorated United States Marine Corps officers of the Second World War. <\/p>\n

PROLOGUE: August, 1944 \u2014 Savoie Department, France<\/h3>\n

Fresh blood carries a distinct, unmistakable metallic odor. Clean and impersonal, it shares the sharp, metallic scent of a sheared brass bullet casing. It was this pungent tang that filled Major Pete Ortiz\u2019s nostrils as he bent over the broken body of a fellow United States Marine, Sergeant Chuck Perry, in the rugged terrain of the French Alps.<\/p>\n

Thin red rivulets, resembling 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 in the fatal fall, and a flap of the severed muscle remained impaled on a broken front tooth. <\/p>\n

Pete Ortiz was no stranger to violent death. Over the course of the global conflict, he had inhaled its heavy musk across two continents, encountering it in corpses of Arab and Italian, French and German, and even his fellow Americans. Yet, looking down at Perry, this felt fundamentally different. It carried the heavy psychological weight of personal responsibility.<\/p>\n

Earlier that morning, prior to boarding the hold of the B-17 Flying Fortress 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 harbored a profound "bad feeling" about the mission ahead. <\/p>\n

Ortiz had known the young man for only a few weeks\u2014barely long enough to learn that Perry had just recently married his stateside sweetheart before eagerly volunteering to drop behind enemy lines. Recalling his own first clandestine insertion into hostile territory, Ortiz intimately understood the creeping dread that accompanies such operations. To soothe Perry\u2019s frayed nerves, Ortiz had offered to switch parachutes, telling the sergeant he could jump with Ortiz\u2019s own lucky silk rig, which he had packed himself. <\/p>\n

The gesture carried immense weight, coming from an officer whose daring exploits were already legendary across the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the United States\u2019 nascent espionage organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The psychological gambit had the desired effect. Perry visibly calmed as the two men exchanged their gear on the rutted tarmac of the airfield in England.<\/p>\n

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

It was a grim and inauspicious start to an operation that seemed to be sliding sideways before the men had even touched European soil. In military service parlance, the mission was rapidly going Tits Up<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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

The cascade of operational troubles began in earnest upon approach to the target area\u2014referred to in special operations jargon as the pinpoint\u2014located within a thirty-mile break in the French Alps known as the Col des Saisies. The rugged and isolated mountain pass, rising roughly fifty-five hundred feet in the imposing shadow of Mont Blanc, was chosen as the logical drop zone to deposit a squad of Allied spies and saboteurs. <\/p>\n

Although a small detachment of German troops was known to occupy the nearby town of Albertville, the vast majority of enemy forces were headquartered far to the south in Grenoble, roughly seventy miles away, making a daylight jump a calculated risk. The towering peaks to the east were dusted gold by the early morning sun when three distinct waves of Flying Fortresses approached the alpine saddle at staggered altitudes. Seventy-eight planes were tasked with delivering their human cargo, along with nearly nine hundred supply canisters containing weapons and provisions, to the disparate French Resistance cells collectively known as the Maquis.<\/p>\n

Although the bomber formations had picked up a squadron of American P-51 fighter escorts somewhere over the English Channel, the armada had encountered zero opposition since lifting off from England\u2019s Knettishall Air Station nearly seven hours earlier. Perhaps it was a fierce air battle raging over Chartres, far to the north, that successfully diverted the attention of whatever remained of the Luftwaffe.<\/p>\n

However, as the aircraft neared the alpine pass, the pilots of the first wave\u2014designated Group A, which carried Ortiz, his men, and a portion of the supplies\u2014failed to spot the smudge pots and bonfires meticulously laid out to delineate the drop zone. Following strict preflight instructions, the bombers overflew the Col before banking to make a second pass. This time, coming in low and fast enough that Marine Sergeant John Bodnar could clearly make out the heavy cowbells hanging from the necks of local herds grazing below, the airmen finally spotted the smoke signals.<\/p>\n

Every man on Ortiz\u2019s team, all clad in uniform, was heavily freighted for combat. Each carried a wire-reinforced canvas bag containing a Winchester semiautomatic M1 carbine with a folding metal stock\u2014weighing roughly half as much as the standard Marine-issue Garand rifle\u2014alongside a Colt .45 sidearm and a double-edged Fairbairn-Sykes stiletto. Their mountain packs were meticulously stuffed with topography maps printed on silk and enclosed in cylindrical leather cases, hip flasks of "medicinal" cognac, cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and the equivalent of $1,000 in French francs cleverly concealed within secret flaps sewn into their boxer shorts. <\/p>\n

Ortiz himself was burdened with a Thompson submachine gun and a second rucksack holding nearly a million francs intended for partisan fighters. He had to be physically lifted and shoved from the jump door by the bomber’s waist and tail gunners. Barely had he cleared the aircraft when the navigators of Group A belatedly realized they were on a direct collision course with the aircraft of Groups B and C, which were rapidly approaching from the west.<\/p>\n

On the ground below, Ortiz blanched as he looked up into the cornflower-blue sky. A terrifying tangle of thirty-two-ton aircraft headed toward one another at closing speeds approaching three hundred miles per hour, pitching, rolling, and jinking violently to avoid disaster. Through sheer pilot skill, instinct, and a heavy dose of luck, none of the planes collided. Meanwhile, aircrews across all three flight groups frantically jettisoned the heavy steel supply containers. Each crate, dangling from its own parachute, weighed between 150 and 300 pounds and was packed with everything from Sten guns and hand grenades to high explosives, medical supplies, spare bicycle tires, and boxes of chewing gum.<\/p>\n

Casualties and Encounters in the Mountains<\/h3>\n

Tragically, Chuck Perry was not the afternoon\u2019s only casualty. As scores of guerrilla fighters poured out of the enveloping pine forests like choreographed dancers to pry open the heavy bomb-shaped canisters, Major Ortiz collected Perry\u2019s dog tags and personal effects. It was then that he spotted a small, somber circle of men forming around the body of Marine Gunnery Sergeant Bob LaSalle. <\/p>\n

Among the group was the veteran Free French fighter Joseph "Jo-Jo" Arcelin, an experienced wireless radio operator. Sinewy and twenty-one years old, Arcelin was an eccentric presence in a war zone. Sporting a dark beret worn at a jaunty angle above a sharp, avian face and wire-rimmed spectacles, he moved with a jerky, disjointed gait that resembled a praying mantis. Yet, despite his youth, Ortiz knew Arcelin possessed nerves of steel, having proven his fearlessness as a getaway driver during previous covert operations in the region.<\/p>\n

Arcelin, crouching over the inert form of LaSalle, was conferring with a French physician who had accompanied the Maquis fighters. Unlike Perry, LaSalle\u2019s parachute had successfully deployed, but during the turbulent jump, his static line had somehow coiled tightly around his torso like a boa constrictor, causing him to black out during the descent. Ortiz initially feared his spine was broken, but the French doctor waved off the concern, explaining that the wire had merely snapped several ribs and severely wrenched the gunnery sergeant’s back. <\/p>\n

Compounding the injuries, LaSalle had also shattered his ankle upon hitting the ground and likely suffered a concussion, meaning he would have to be carried out of the area. The tiny American reconnaissance outfit had barely touched French soil, and already two of its members were incapacitated.<\/p>\n

Ortiz opened his rucksack and tossed Arcelin a set of forged identification papers and a spare Marine sergeant\u2019s uniform provided by OSS handlers in London. Although the young Frenchman was born and raised in the nearby Haute-Savoie region, he was now instructed to pose as a French Canadian named George Andrew who had enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. While the ruse would offer little protection from summary execution by the Gestapo if he were captured\u2014Adolf Hitler had recently issued a personal directive ordering all captured Allied commandos, even those in uniform, to be shot immediately\u2014it offered a slim chance of shielding Arcelin\u2019s three sisters, who served as couriers for the resistance.<\/p>\n

The Looming Threat of Nazi Retaliation<\/h3>\n

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

The report came as a shock to Ortiz. Months earlier, during his initial infiltration, he had surreptitiously entered the Alpine city on multiple occasions to gather intelligence. While the threat of the Gestapo had been palpable, Grenoble had housed nothing close to that massive concentration of Wehrmacht soldiers. Initially, the Germans had maintained only a skeleton force of older Sicherungs-Bataillone<\/em>\u2014security battalions composed of elderly troops deemed unfit for frontline combat\u2014alongside units of pressed foreign conscripts.<\/p>\n

However, Bulle warned that since the Normandy landings, the occupying forces had been heavily reinforced by ruthless Ost Bataillones<\/em> and frontline veterans transferred from the Eastern Front. These units had a history of brutal counterinsurgency tactics, including the systematic execution of civilians across Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. Furthermore, Heinrich Himmler\u2019s black-uniformed Waffen-SS<\/em> combat units had infiltrated the region. Sworn in absolute loyalty to Hitler alone, these fanatical troops operated independently of regular Wehrmacht military authorities, engaging in a scorched-earth version of total war that made no distinction between armed resistance fighters and unlucky civilians.<\/p>\n

Both Bulle and Ortiz understood that Vichy loyalists and local informants had undoubtedly reported the broad daylight parachute drop to Wehrmacht command in Grenoble. However, with several hundred maquisards rapidly establishing ambush sites along the narrow dirt paths leading up to the Col des Saisies, any immediate pursuit would be delayed by hours. Nevertheless, speed was paramount.<\/p>\n

As dusk settled\u2014l\u2019heure bleu<\/em>\u2014Bulle and his guerrillas loaded the tons of recovered military equipment onto pack mules. Arcelin joined Ortiz, Sergeant Bodnar, and Sergeant Jack Risler in placing the bodies of their fallen comrades onto makeshift stretchers. Ortiz informed the team that he would preside over a formal military interment for Sergeant Perry at the earliest safe opportunity, regardless of closing enemy patrols. Afterward, the injured Bob LaSalle would be whisked away to a secure safe house to await eventual rescue.<\/p>\n

Ortiz knew the surrounding territory of Albertville intimately, and the enemy knew him just as well. The Gestapo had dubbed him Das Fantom<\/em>, slapping a half-million-franc bounty on the head of the daring American Marine who continually raised hell at the head of local partisan units. Over four months of deep-cover sabotage, he had blown bridges, crippled munitions plants, ambushed enemy convoys, and spirited downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to safety in Spain. <\/p>\n

For this new assignment, however, his mission carried broader strategic implications. Initially deployed as a ghost-like tactician to disrupt and distract German forces ahead of the Normandy landings, Ortiz had now returned to unify feuding partisan factions into a cohesive fighting force. In two weeks, a massive secondary Allied invasion force would storm the shores of southern France from the Mediterranean under the code name Operation ANVIL. It was up to Ortiz and his squad to ensure that a unified French Resistance army acted as a relentless hammer, crushing the retreating enemy forces between the advancing fronts.<\/p>\n

As the Americans and the Maquis battalion trudged deeper into the darkening mountains of southeastern France that August evening, the guiding words of American spymaster General William Donovan echoed in Ortiz\u2019s mind. Donovan had often told his operatives that their primary objective was to "let fly an arrow of penetration behind enemy lines." Standing among the rugged peaks, Major Pete Ortiz and his men were undeniably that sharpened tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe knew him simply as Das Fantom\u2014The Phantom. They had placed a staggering bounty of half a million French francs on his head, a testament to the havoc he wreaked as a scout, spy, saboteur, and French Resistance leader. In their explosive new book, The Phantom, authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[230,231,3358,126,2725,2026,229,223,2009,1207,1398,2589,2588,3445,1038,412,3390],"class_list":["post-2205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eastern-heritage-and-history","tag-archaeology","tag-eastern-culture","tag-fantom","tag-heritage","tag-hero","tag-high","tag-history","tag-inside","tag-legend","tag-major","tag-marine","tag-ortiz","tag-pete","tag-stakes","tag-unearthing","tag-world","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205","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=2205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orientalplaces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}