Combat· World War II
Union II jumps into the Savoie
Six Marines, an Army Air Forces captain, and an eighth man carrying false papers lifted off from Knettishall in England on the morning of August 1, 1944.
A pathfinder B-17 led. Seventy-six Flying Fortresses followed with P-51 Mustangs overhead. The mission was Union II, an OSS Operational Group bound for the Col des Saisies in the French Alps. Major Peter Ortiz led the team. He had already served one mission behind the lines in this region. The Germans knew him by name and had a price on his head. With him jumped Captain Francis L. Coolidge, USAAF, Gunnery Sergeant Robert E. LaSalle, and Sergeants Charles R. Perry, John P. Bodnar, Frederick J. Brunner, and Jack R. Risler. The eighth man was Joseph Arcelin, a Free French officer from a resistance family, jumping under the identity of Sergeant George Andrews, USMCR, serial number 632712. The drop came in daylight, around two thirty in the afternoon, at roughly five hundred feet. Nearly nine hundred colored parachutes filled the sky over the pasture. The supplies armed the Bulle Battalion: Lee-Enfield rifles, Sten guns, Bren guns, and over two million rounds. The mission began with a death.
Podcast episodes on World War II
Record no. 892