Latest / Brian Thomas / Book - THE PHANTOM: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazi Could Not Kill

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Book - THE PHANTOM: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazi Could Not Kill · Brian Thomas

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  Speaker 1: 806, the 55KRC Detox Station, a very happy Wednesday to you.
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  Speaker 1: Made extra special, I am pleased to welcome to the
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  Speaker 1: 55KRC Morning Show, co-author of the book, which is amazing,
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  Speaker 1: The Phantom, The American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill.
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  Speaker 1: If that isn't intriguing enough to buy a copy, which
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  Speaker 1: you can easily do going to 55KRC. iheart. com, where a book
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  Speaker 1: will be there for you to click on. My veteran
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  Speaker 1: friends on the heels of my conversation with Claremont County
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  Speaker 1: Veterans Services, Steve Belzo, Tom... Claven is your co-author, Bob Drury.
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  Speaker 1: Before we talk about the book, I guess I'm wondering,
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  Speaker 1: you've been working, co-authoring with Tom Claven for, what, two
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  Speaker 1: decades now?
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  Speaker 2: It's been too long. Too long, Brian. Too long. Good
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  Speaker 2: morning to you, by the way.
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  Speaker 1: Good morning to you, and congratulations. You're an award-winning author,
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  Speaker 1: multiple books. I know a lot of my listeners in
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  Speaker 1: the audience have already read Blood and Treasure, Valley Forge,
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  Speaker 1: Lucky 666, for example, and it's a great team you've
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  Speaker 1: got there, but let's talk about Your investigative journalism sort
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  Speaker 1: of impetus behind this, you scour through old records and things.
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  Speaker 1: How is it that I have never heard of the
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  Speaker 1: subject matter of this book, The Phantom, Major Pierre Pete Ortiz?
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  Speaker 1: This sounds like something that Hollywood would be clamoring for,
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  Speaker 1: this story that you've written here about this man and
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  Speaker 1: his amazing adventures in World War II.
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  Speaker 2: Well, Brian, your mouth to God's ears. We'll see about that. But,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I've got to say something. I know I'm
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  Speaker 2: supposed to be flogging my book. But your previous guest,
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  Speaker 2: I was so heartened to listen to what he said
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  Speaker 2: to your interview with him. It was a wonderful interview.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you. I don't know if you know or not.
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  Speaker 2: You probably don't. I was not in the service, but
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  Speaker 2: I did spend 20 years overseas. Such wonderful hellholes as
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  Speaker 2: Afghanistan and Iraq and Sarajevo and Darfur. And when I
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  Speaker 2: hear about veteran services like that, it just, I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: I'm stunned. I'm being... It makes my heart sore.
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  Speaker 1: It does.
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  Speaker 2: It makes my heart sore. And I just... There's one
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  Speaker 2: thing that I always say whenever I'm giving a speech
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  Speaker 2: at the VFW or the American Legion. You know, I
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  Speaker 2: write about, oftentimes, World War II. This is our fourth
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  Speaker 2: World War II book between Tom and I. And the
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  Speaker 2: kids I see, or the kids I saw... I'm too
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  Speaker 2: old to be running around getting shot at now. But
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  Speaker 2: the kids I saw overseas... Brian, the sand they have,
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  Speaker 2: it's the same sand that these World War II heroes had. And,
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  Speaker 2: of course, they're all kids to me. And when I
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  Speaker 2: hear about a Veterans Services outfit like the one that
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  Speaker 2: Steve runs, I just, I don't know. I drove up
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  Speaker 2: to the beach at dawn this morning and watched the
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  Speaker 2: sun come up over the ocean. And it reminded me
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  Speaker 2: of those kids, whether they were sitting in troop transports
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  Speaker 2: off North Africa for Operation Torch or off Normandy Beach
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  Speaker 2: for Operation Overlord, it just makes the hair on the
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  Speaker 2: back of my neck stand up. So anyway, that's my
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  Speaker 2: advertisement for your show, and I was just really heartened
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  Speaker 2: to listen to that. Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot thank you enough for doubling down on that.
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  Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I have regularly in my
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  Speaker 1: 20 years coming up in December on radio focused on veterans' issues.
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  Speaker 1: You know, and Steve Belzo and the folks at Clement
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  Speaker 1: County Veterans Services, of course, renew my faith in humanity.
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  Speaker 1: The idea that someone would sign on the dotted line
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  Speaker 1: and defend our country against these evil forces is just,
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  Speaker 1: at that end of itself, is a miracle worth repaying
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  Speaker 1: over and over again. So God bless you for that one.
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  Speaker 1: Pivoting over to a man who, that and so much more,
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  Speaker 1: Major Pete Ortiz.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: This guy, I mean.
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  Speaker 1: How Hollywood looks, badassery, cannot be understated. Talk about this.
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  Speaker 1: You've got to explain William Wild Bill Donovan, because the
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  Speaker 1: precursor to the CIA was the Office of Strategic Services,
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  Speaker 1: the OSS. How did he stumble upon Pierre Ortiz, a.k.a.
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  Speaker 1: Pete Ortiz?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Pete was, first of all, I had no idea.
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  Speaker 2: When I first heard a Marine, wait a minute, a
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  Speaker 2: Marine in the European Theater of Operations, No, Marines were Guadalcanal,
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  Speaker 2: Iwo Jima, Tarawa. They were in the Pacific. But then
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  Speaker 2: we started digging into it a little more. We found out,
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  Speaker 2: quite serendipity, that the OSS was kind of poaching these Marines,
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  Speaker 2: who most of them were multilingual, as Pete was. Pete
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  Speaker 2: spoke six languages, and dropping them behind Nazi lines. And
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  Speaker 2: this book actually started out, General Eisenhower wanted to put,
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  Speaker 2: he wasn't a big partisan guy. He He didn't trust
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  Speaker 2: the partisans, and he didn't like De Gaulle at all.
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  Speaker 2: But he realized that he probably needed the French resistance
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  Speaker 2: for the evasion of Normandy. So he started sending these
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  Speaker 2: teams in to drop behind Nazi lines. It was a Brit,
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  Speaker 2: a Frenchman, and an American. But whenever they got there,
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  Speaker 2: Peter Ortiz had beat them to the punch.
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  Speaker 1: Kilroy was here.
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  Speaker 2: While Bill had found out about this guy, who's this
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  Speaker 2: Marine there? was behind because he was working for Naval
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  Speaker 2: Intelligence in North Africa. He got shot, and he wrote
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  Speaker 2: a memo to Wild Bill saying, Naval Intelligence is a
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  Speaker 2: diplomatic post. I'm not supposed to be taking part in
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  Speaker 2: any fighting. I want to fight. And Wild Bill, who was,
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  Speaker 2: of course, had Roosevelt's ear, and that's how the OSS
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  Speaker 2: got started, said, I want this guy. And then Wild
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  Speaker 2: Bill started dropping Pete behind enemy lines in France. and
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  Speaker 2: it was just the further we dug into Pete's life,
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  Speaker 2: the more we were like, how have we never heard
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  Speaker 2: of this guy before?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. That's the amazing thing. You said it was serendipity.
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  Speaker 1: One guy in a war that involved millions of people,
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  Speaker 1: quite literally, with his antics, I mean, he was one
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  Speaker 1: of the most decorated Marine officers of the war, and
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  Speaker 1: considering the behind-the-enemy lines sabotage he was engaged in, like
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  Speaker 1: I said, this is a made-for-Hollywood thing. Talk about some
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  Speaker 1: of the missions that Pete Ortiz went on.
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  Speaker 2: Well, when he went in, first of all, we got
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  Speaker 2: the name for our book, The Nazis, because when Pete
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  Speaker 2: would drop in, he had two uniforms. One, whenever he
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  Speaker 2: was on a mission, blowing up a troop train, training
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  Speaker 2: the French resistance to hit munitions dump, perhaps escorting shot
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  Speaker 2: down Allied pilots to neutral Spain. He would always wear
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  Speaker 2: his Marine uniform. And the Gestapo was well aware. There's
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  Speaker 2: this Marine running behind, running about behind our lines. Who
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  Speaker 2: is this guy? And they started calling him Das Phantom.
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  Speaker 2: And they put a 500,000, well, 500,000, 500,000-franc bounty on
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  Speaker 2: his head. And they could not catch this guy. So,
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  Speaker 2: of course, I wanted to call the book Das Phantom.
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  Speaker 2: And my editor said, yeah, let's make it for an
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  Speaker 2: American audience and call it The Phantom. So that's how
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  Speaker 2: we came up with the... That's how he came up
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  Speaker 2: with the title. But when Pete would go in and
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  Speaker 2: he would drop in, his first mission, he went in
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  Speaker 2: with a Frenchman, with a Brit, a Royal Army major,
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  Speaker 2: and they started organizing the French resistance for the invasion
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  Speaker 2: of Normandy. And there were so many different groups. There
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  Speaker 2: were communists. There were royalists. There were Gaullists. And he
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  Speaker 2: came in and they would drop weapons. He had to
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  Speaker 2: train these people how to use Vickers machine guns. American bazookas.
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  Speaker 2: And when he finally had them trained up enough, he
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  Speaker 2: would don disguises. He would put on a Gestapo major's uniform,
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  Speaker 2: storm into a police station, and demand that the Allied
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  Speaker 2: pilot they were holding be turned over to the Gestapo.
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  Speaker 2: And he spoke fluent German. He spoke fluent French. They'd
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  Speaker 2: give him the pilot, and he would escort the pilot
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  Speaker 2: on trains across country to Spain. And his other disguise
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  Speaker 2: was his father had been a museum director in New
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  Speaker 2: York City. His father was of French and Spanish heritage,
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  Speaker 2: and that's how he was trilingual growing up. And he
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  Speaker 2: would don this cape and this dark suit and this ascot,
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  Speaker 2: and he would go into cafes and bistros where all
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  Speaker 2: these big-wig Nazis were hanging out, and he would swan about,
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  Speaker 2: buy them champagne, and pretend that he was a dissolute,
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  Speaker 2: out-of-work Parisian fashion designer, and he would find out all
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  Speaker 2: this information, where hidden airfields were. The next day, he
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  Speaker 2: and the French Resistance would be out bombing the airfield,
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  Speaker 2: or attacking the airfield. And it was a pleasure to
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  Speaker 2: research and write this book, because it was just something
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  Speaker 2: that was so beyond the can. If I told you
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  Speaker 2: this story, you would say, oh, it's a novel, right?
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  Speaker 2: And I'd say, no, it's true. It's true. This all happened.
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  Speaker 2: Who knew? So that's a long-winded answer to your question.
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  Speaker 1: Great answer. And you know what? I mean, what strength
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  Speaker 1: of character that you have enough confidence in yourself and enough,
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  Speaker 1: I'll just call it badassery, that you can literally walk
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  Speaker 1: in right in the heart of your enemy and get
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  Speaker 1: away with it. I mean.
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  Speaker 2: And when he... Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, no.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just amazed because, you know, what kind of confidence
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  Speaker 1: would it take to do that? And how much confidence
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  Speaker 1: do you have in your ability to speak German? fluently,
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  Speaker 1: but without any accent, which might give it away that
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  Speaker 1: you are not really German. I mean, it's just amazing.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And he was kind of a wild child. And
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  Speaker 2: his father thought, well, I better give him an education
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  Speaker 2: on the continent. This is before World War II. And
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  Speaker 2: he kept running away. And finally, when he turned 18,
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  Speaker 2: he ran away to Marseille and he joined the French
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  Speaker 2: Foreign Legion. And he fought for six years in North
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  Speaker 2: Africa with the French Foreign Legion. While he was in
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  Speaker 2: North Africa... he learned Arabic. And so when... war broke
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  Speaker 2: out and we needed someone behind Nazi lines in North Africa,
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  Speaker 2: he and a British radio operator and five Spaniards who
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  Speaker 2: had all been in the Legion with him, they donned
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  Speaker 2: what T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, called Arab kit, the
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  Speaker 2: flowing rose, the headpieces. And he would take, and they
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  Speaker 2: would ride camels behind the Nazi lines, blowing up munitions, dumps,
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  Speaker 2: attacking tanks. And, I mean, this kid, 19 years old,
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  Speaker 2: he's doing this. So, of course, when Donovan finds out, A,
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  Speaker 2: what this guy's experience is, B, he's now joined the
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  Speaker 2: United States Marines, and C, he speaks all these languages,
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  Speaker 2: Donovan just said, I need this guy. And that was
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  Speaker 2: one of the more interesting things. I did not know.
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  Speaker 2: Pete was one of 300 Marines who served in Europe
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  Speaker 2: working for the OSS. And some of the people, Brian,
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  Speaker 2: Julia Child, you remember her? Oh, of course. She started
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  Speaker 2: as a typist in the OSS typing pool, but she
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  Speaker 2: was a wonderful swimmer, and she worked her way up
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  Speaker 2: to the head of the Sea Rescue Division of the OSS.
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  Speaker 2: Remember the godfather, Sergeant McCluskey, who... Al Pacino shoots in
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  Speaker 2: the head in the Italian restaurant.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Sterling Hayden played that. He played General Jack D. Ripper
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  Speaker 2: in the Stanley Kubrick movie. And then he played that
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  Speaker 2: dirty police officer. Sterling Hayden, who had dropped out of
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  Speaker 2: high school and became a merchant seaman, when Donovan found
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  Speaker 2: out about him, he poached him from the Marines. And
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  Speaker 2: Sterling Hayden started running guns to Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. Oh,
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  Speaker 2: my God. The more we delved into this, the more
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  Speaker 2: kind of a metaphorical jaw drop at, wow, what these
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  Speaker 2: guys were doing and what they became and who they were.
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  Speaker 2: And here's the kicker. When President Roosevelt decided, when we
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  Speaker 2: got right before the war, he said, we need an
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  Speaker 2: international spy agency. The United States did not have one.
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  Speaker 2: General Washington had one during the Revolution. He disbanded it.
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  Speaker 2: There were some Pinkertons during the Civil War. But in general,
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  Speaker 2: we did not have a central clearinghouse for intelligence. So
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  Speaker 2: President Roosevelt says, we need one. And he taps his
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  Speaker 2: old law school buddy, Bill Donovan, General William Donovan. Wild Bill,
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  Speaker 2: they called him because he won the Medal of Honor
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  Speaker 2: in World War I, fighting for the Irish, the Fighting 69.
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  Speaker 2: So Donovan is standing up this intelligence movement. And everybody
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  Speaker 2: in Washington hates it. The State Department hates it. The
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  Speaker 2: Army G2, Army Intelligence hates it. Naval Intelligence hates it.
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  Speaker 2: But who hates it the most is J. Edgar Hoover.
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  Speaker 2: He says, no, no, no. That's my turf. That's my turf.
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  Speaker 2: But anyway, so Donovan pushes through, and he finds Ortiz,
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  Speaker 2: and he tells President Roosevelt, listen, here's what we're doing.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to drop these people in. whether it's Sterling
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  Speaker 2: Hayden in Yugoslavia, whether it's Pete Ortiz in North Africa
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  Speaker 2: and France. We're going to drop these people in, and
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  Speaker 2: they're going to organize the local partisans. So Roosevelt is
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  Speaker 2: all for this. As you well know, Roosevelt was in
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  Speaker 2: a wheelchair, and he called Wild Bill Donovan. He said,
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  Speaker 2: he's my legs. This guy's my legs. And Donovan was not.
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  Speaker 2: He had all these. He wanted to put frogmen into
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  Speaker 2: the Rhine. He came up with an idea to somehow
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  Speaker 2: inundate Hitler with pornography and drive him mad. One of
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  Speaker 2: his OSS operatives came to him with the idea, why
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  Speaker 2: don't we get a million bats and we'll transport them
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  Speaker 2: off the Japanese coast and we'll tie little incendiary devices
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  Speaker 2: to them. Then we'll let them free and they'll fly
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  Speaker 2: into Tokyo. It's a wooden city. And when the incendiary
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  Speaker 2: devices explode, Tokyo will burn. Donovan was all for this
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  Speaker 2: crazy stuff.
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  Speaker 1: That's great.
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  Speaker 2: He had to be talked off a ledge for a
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  Speaker 2: lot of them. Like somebody had to say, yes, okay,
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  Speaker 2: General Donovan, exactly where are we going to store a
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  Speaker 2: million bats on a submarine? Can you tell me that?
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  Speaker 1: Good morning to my submariner friend, Mike, who's listening right now.
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  Speaker 1: I could go on all day with you, man. You've
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  Speaker 1: got to get a copy of the book, my listening audience,
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  Speaker 1: The Phantom, The Untold Story of the American Marine, The
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  Speaker 1: Nazis Could Not Kill. By my guest this morning, Bob Drury,
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  Speaker 1: and his co-author, Tom Clavin, a dynamic duo, been together
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  Speaker 1: for about 20 years, churning out wonderful books. I'm glad
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  Speaker 1: you stumbled upon this story. I'm glad you put pen
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  Speaker 1: to paper. It sounds like it's really inspiring. We need
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  Speaker 1: men like Major Pierre Pete Ortiz, and they're out there.
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  Speaker 1: God bless you, Bob. It's been a real pleasure talking
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  Speaker 1: with you, man.
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  Speaker 2: Brian, you're a good man, and I thank you very
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  Speaker 2: much for having me on.
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  Speaker 1: It has been my pleasure. Get a copy of the book, 55KRC. iHeart. com.
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  Speaker 1: And stick around. Judge Ann Napolitano is coming up next.