P.A.H.H. logo

Greek / American Operational Group Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
Memoirs of World War 2

North Africa and Italy

Italian-American Group

During our stay in Torre Mare we met up with a group of Italian/American USOG. They were primarily from the New York-New Jersey-Boston corridor and had swarthy, handsome good looks, style, and great personalities. Our two groups bonded and we spent a few days socializing together in Bari. The Italian Americans would use a switch from a branch to trip up any Italian on a bike or hit them while they were walking. We asked them why were they so tough on the natives and they answered, They have no business fighting America. They might have had a premonition. When we left for Vis, they went on to the island of Corsica.

Years later we learned 30 of these young men left from Corsica on a PT boat and headed toward the northwest Italian shore, where the PT boat transferred the 30 men onto two yellow rubber rafts, such as used by downed aircraft. The 15 Italian/USOG in one of the boats, fully outfitted in American army uniforms, landed behind enemy lines near the town of Amaglaia. One half hour after they landed, the Operational Group, betrayed by Italian fascists, was captured and turned over to the Germans. Thirty-six hours later the Americans were executed by the Germans in northern Italy. (Refer to the Appendix for Adolph Hitler's edict, dated 18 October 1942.) German General Anto Dostler, who ordered the executions, was convicted of the crime at Nuremberg and hanged.

The skipper of the second boat, not an OG, heard firing and believing it to be from German E-Boats, he turned the second boat around and returned to Corsica.

In 1994, Italian/USOG veterans attended a ceremony in Amaglaia. The citizens of the town planted 15 trees in honor of the executed Americans.

We stayed two weeks in Manfredonia and visited Bari at every opportunity. It was a good size city on the southeastern shore of Italy. Bari had a US Service hall where good food and drinks and Italian maidens would join the Allied troops. I noticed many blonde Italian girls, from northern Italy, unlike the Italian girls I knew in West Oakland whose families had come to America from Calabria and Sicily. Not unlike the United States armed forces, many fistfights broke out between British and American servicemen in the dance hall and in the streets.

The Diabolical Plot

Many of the original draftees of the armed services who were in their late thirties and forties could ask for limited duty (non-combat) because of their age; in our unit a few men in that age group refused limited duty and volunteered for the OSS. One of them was the aforementioned head cook of our unit, Angelo, a Brooklyn-born Greek American who was the caricature of a Greek cook we often see in the movies. His buddies, including the kitchen crew, were older and primarily New Yorkers and Athenians. We did not appreciate Angelo's attitude and his arrogance toward the "jitterbugs" (as we were known) and he treated us as little boys.

One night after chow at Torre Mare, having had enough of Angelo and his mess crew's nonsense, Perry, Alex, Pete Lewis, Byron Economou and I thought up a diabolic plot to teach Angelo and his crew a little humility. We had hand grenades available and twisted the top off of one of them, emptied the powder, and twisted the top back on. The cap that ignites the grenade was still active but it would only spark and do no harm if it exploded. We went into Angelo's tent under the pretense of discussing the food he was serving; there were three or four cooks in the tent. Because of Perry's hyper personality we decided that he should handle the grenade. While the rest of us were talking to Angelo and his crew, Perry was tossing the grenade from hand to hand. Angelo and his boys were apprehensive at the way Perry was handling the grenade and they shouted at him to knock it off. As prearranged, Perry pulled the clip from the grenade and dropped it on the floor (a grenade explodes 5 seconds after activation). As soon as the kitchen crew saw the grenade was activated, all hell broke loose.

To make the scenario realistic we rolled under the tent feigning an explosion. Angelo and his crew panicked and ran out of the tent; this was probably the most exercise the cooks had since their basic training. The cap ignited and because there was no powder, of course, there was no blast. We were on the outside of the tent laughing like hell. The cooks were furious, but they did not report the incident. Angelo and his cooks treated us decently from then on. A few of the older guys tried to intimidate the younger soldiers, not realizing that we were not only in great physical condition but savvy big city boys. If pushed too far the "jitterbugs" would retaliate.

In Bari there was a large US hospital (26th general) that would play a part in our journey. Before we arrived in Bari, the Luftwaffe bombed the harbor of Bari, hitting an ammunition ship and clogging up the harbor. The Nazis surprised the convoy that was anchored in the port of Bari and did a lot of damage. The damaged ships could be seen from the harbor. We missed the bombing by a couple of days. How long will our luck hold out? ~ we wondered.



Helpful Links

[Skip the navigation links: Jump to the Citation Guidelines.]

Navigation Links


[Skip the citation guidelines: Jump to the Bottom of the Page.]

Citation Guidelines


(This is the bottom of the page.)