Episode 91: The Spymaster Who Created Modern American Espionage, Part II

William Donovan's final battlefield action of World War I is to countermand an order he received to attack - an order the would needlessly cost more lives than the Irish Regiment had already lost during an ineffective battle plan draw up by their division commander. Not only does he live to defend his actions, but he is eventually awarded the Medal of Honor and the commander who issued to attack orders is relieved. After the war, he returns to Buffalo and his law practice but when he becomes US Attorney General in Western New York, he makes many enemies enforcing prohibition laws. He is all but run out of town, but lands on his feet when his legal mentor from Columbia Law School is appointed Attorney General in President Calvin Coolidge's cabinet and Donovan is asked to come to Washington to join the Justice Department... which is where he runs afoul of a young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover.  

Episode 90: The Spymaster Who Created Modern American Espionage, Part I

 

After a privileged upbringing in Buffalo, NY, an Ivy League education at Columbia Law School, and starting a successful law practice back in Buffalo, William Donovan got permission to start a National Guard Cavalry troop. Troop I started as a way for privileged young professionals to ride horses and sleep outside, most of whom had never done either (Donovan excluded). When Donovan was elected the troop's captain, he took his role seriously and though it took four years, turned them into a well-drilled military unit. The troop was deployed to the Mexican boarder with General Black Jack Pershing in 1916 to chase down Pancho Villa and his bandidos and Donovan was promoted to major.

After returning from the boarder in 1917, he was recruited to command a battalion in New York's 69th Infantry Regiment - the Irish Regiment - who was looking for Irish American officers to lead her Irish soldiers. The regimental chaplain, Father Francis Duffy personally recruited Donovan with a vision that he would one day command the entire regiment.

Donovan was promoted to lieutenant colonel, the unit was federalized and reflagged the 165th, and shipped out to Europe. Donovan soon gained a reputation for leading from the front and earned the nickname "Wild Bill." He publicly disavowed the moniker but his wife revealed that he secretly loved it. In the above image, General Pershing in pinning the Distinguished Service Cross on Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur (also a member of the 165th). Donovan (farthest right) awaits his DSC for valor in combat.  

Episode 89: A Marine in the European Theater of Operation, Part II

You may be cool, but you will never be wearing-your-service-uniform-AND-SUNGLASSES-in-German-occupied-France-while-the-Nazis-are-actively-hunting-you cool. Peter Ortiz was that cool. This week we finish the story of French Foreign Legionnaire turned OSS operative Peter Ortiz, after he jumps behind enemy lines, deep into Nazi-occupied France to stir up mayhem and cause as many problems for the Germans as he can.

What would you do if the Germans were hunting you and you happened to end up in the same bar as several German officers? I can almost guarantee that your answer to that question is completely different from Ortiz's answer -  know mine was! My answer also would not have earned me a Navy Cross.

After the war, Ortiz returned to Hollywood, and while he never made it big as an actor, he was friends with John Ford and counted a few John Wayne movies (Including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) among the 25 or so he got small parts in.

Marine Corps Colonel Pierre "Peter" Julien Ortiz died on May 16, 1988; he was 74 years old. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 59, Grave 1269.

Episode 88: A Marine in the European Theater of Operation, Part I

With his Clark Gable good looks and an appetite for adventure, Peter Ortiz left college after one year in 1932, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, and fought in the Moroccan Rif before returning to southern California and becoming a consultant in the motion picture industry. But when World War II broke out in Europe, he couldn't sit idly by so he hoped a ship back to France, reenlisted in the Foreign Legion, and was taken prisoner when France fell. To make a long story short, he escaped back to the states, joined the Marine Corps, and got back into the fight as quickly as he could.