These 4 Marines killed so many Germans, the Nazis thought they were an entire allied battalion
America’s Glory
9,060 views
“Where is the rest of the company?” Major Johann Kolb asked after searching Centron for half an hour. There was no company—only a handful of exhausted men whose resistance had convinced a German force that an entire Allied battalion was operating in the French Alps.
On August 1, 1944, Major Peter Julien Ortiz parachuted near the Col des Saisies with Union II, an Office of Strategic Services Operational Group sent to arm, train, and fight beside the French Maquis. Ortiz was no ordinary Marine: a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, an escaped prisoner of war, a ten-language speaker, and already a recipient of the Navy Cross and the Order of the British Empire. Alongside Gunnery Sergeant Robert La Salle, Sergeants Charles L. Perry, John Bodnar, Fred Brunner, and Jack Risler, Army Air Corps Captain Francis Coolidge, and Free French officer Joseph Arcelin, he entered a valley filled with retreating German troops.
For sixteen days, the team trained resistance fighters, coordinated supply drops, disrupted German movement, and built a reputation far larger than its actual strength. Then, on August 16, near Centron and the Isère River, a German convoy caught them in the open. Coolidge was wounded. Brunner escaped across the river under fire. Arcelin was captured. Ortiz, Bodnar, and Risler were surrounded among civilians who knew exactly what German reprisals could mean.
After witnessing the murder of wounded Maquis fighters and the burning of Montgirod’s church two days earlier, Ortiz faced an impossible decision: continue fighting or surrender to save Centron. Carrying a white sheet, he walked into the road and offered himself in German, English, and French. Kolb accepted his terms. The village survived.
If this overlooked chapter of World War II deserves to be remembered, like the video and subscribe for more carefully reconstructed military history.
📚 Further context / historical background:
Official United States Marine Corps mission and decoration records; OSS operational reports on Union and Union II; Allied records concerning the Maquis, Operation Dragoon, and German withdrawal through the French Alps.
#WorldWarII #MarineCorps #FrenchResistance
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---- Gunny Sgt Hartman (probably..)
These 4 Marines killed so many Germans, the Nazis thought they were an entire allied battalion
America’s Glory
9,060 views
“Where is the rest of the company?” Major Johann Kolb asked after searching Centron for half an hour. There was no company—only a handful of exhausted men whose resistance had convinced a German force that an entire Allied battalion was operating in the French Alps.
On August 1, 1944, Major Peter Julien Ortiz parachuted near the Col des Saisies with Union II, an Office of Strategic Services Operational Group sent to arm, train, and fight beside the French Maquis. Ortiz was no ordinary Marine: a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, an escaped prisoner of war, a ten-language speaker, and already a recipient of the Navy Cross and the Order of the British Empire. Alongside Gunnery Sergeant Robert La Salle, Sergeants Charles L. Perry, John Bodnar, Fred Brunner, and Jack Risler, Army Air Corps Captain Francis Coolidge, and Free French officer Joseph Arcelin, he entered a valley filled with retreating German troops.
For sixteen days, the team trained resistance fighters, coordinated supply drops, disrupted German movement, and built a reputation far larger than its actual strength. Then, on August 16, near Centron and the Isère River, a German convoy caught them in the open. Coolidge was wounded. Brunner escaped across the river under fire. Arcelin was captured. Ortiz, Bodnar, and Risler were surrounded among civilians who knew exactly what German reprisals could mean.
After witnessing the murder of wounded Maquis fighters and the burning of Montgirod’s church two days earlier, Ortiz faced an impossible decision: continue fighting or surrender to save Centron. Carrying a white sheet, he walked into the road and offered himself in German, English, and French. Kolb accepted his terms. The village survived.
If this overlooked chapter of World War II deserves to be remembered, like the video and subscribe for more carefully reconstructed military history.
📚 Further context / historical background:
Official United States Marine Corps mission and decoration records; OSS operational reports on Union and Union II; Allied records concerning the Maquis, Operation Dragoon, and German withdrawal through the French Alps.
#WorldWarII #MarineCorps #FrenchResistance