Combat· World War II
Marlag und Milag Nord
The road east from Centron ran through hotels, barracks, prisons, and camps, and ended on the north German plain.
Bourg-Saint-Maurice, garrison and guardhouse. Moûtiers, the field headquarters of Major Johann A. Kolb, whose perfunctory search took 50,000 francs and receipted them in writing while the larger stash stayed hidden. On the drive to Moûtiers, Ortiz worked his lighter out of his pocket and tried to set the staff car's back seat alight. A requisitioned hotel in Albertville for the first night. The Hôtel Mirabeau at Aix-les-Bains. Barracks at Chambéry. Grenoble. Modane, where Kolb left for the front. Then Italy. Bardonecchia, days in a comfortable hotel with friendly guards. A civilian prison in Turin. The transit camp at Mantua. An Italian barracks at Bussolengo, where a thorough search finally found the concealed 65,000 francs, a map, and a stolen compass. Three days in boxcars stenciled "forty men or eight horses" over the Brenner Pass. Stalag 7A at Moosburg in Bavaria. By the end of September the three Marines and Arcelin were behind the wire at Marlag und Milag Nord at Westertimke, outside Bremen: the navy's camp, Marlag O for officers, about four hundred men, three Americans among them counting Ortiz. Arcelin held the Andrews cover through separate interrogation, serial number memorized, speaking almost no English. Ortiz's own "Chronological Report of the Capture and Subsequent Captivity of Members of the Mission Union" covers August 16, 1944 to May 4, 1945. The war came back to them. On April 27, 1945 the battle reached Westertimke, and shrapnel over the wire wounded Arcelin, the mission's last casualty. Two days later the British liberated the camp.
Podcast episodes on World War II
Record no. 895