As Lieutenant Jack Hendrick Taylor parachuted from
the skies into enemy territory south of Vienna on October 13,
1944, he inadvertently became the first reported US soldier to operate in air, land, and sea.
Taylor was injured during the precipitous fall,
but he still went on with the dangerous mission involving secretly reaching
out to anti-Nazi individuals in the area and forming an allied network.
It was one of several high-stakes operations
in which the orthodontist from California was involved during his extraordinary career.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, Taylor could have joined the Navy Medical Corps,
but decided to enroll in the Navy and fight against the Nazis instead, eventually becoming one
of the first elements of the Office of Strategic Offices and mentoring hundreds of soldiers.
But as fate would have it, his help was urgently needed in the European Theater,
where he organized the Maritime Unit in the Mediterranean and unknowingly became the
first unofficial Navy SEAL two decades before the special operations force was even formed!
Raw Talent
Jack Hendrick Taylor was a 33-year-old orthodontist with
a well-established practice in Hollywood, California, when World War 2 broke out.
Besides being a devoted doctor, Taylor always had a passion for the sea,
and stories from his pre-war adventures point to his participation in five yacht races
from California to Honolulu and two others in Bermuda.
Taylor was also a licensed pilot, and during an expedition to the Yukon in Canada,
he was even trapped for two days in a gold mine after an earthquake.
His life was certainly filled with adventure.
Like so many Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack, Taylor immediately responded to his
nation’s calling. He cast aside what would have been an assured and safe commission in
the Navy Medical Corps and chose to become a line naval officer to serve in combat.
He was then assigned to a submarine chaser.
Taylor’s reputation as an avid yachtsman and swimmer preceded him.
Having met General William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan before the war, he was recruited into the Office
of Strategic Services or OSS. The organization had been recently founded as the United States’
intelligence agency during World War 2 and later became the Central Intelligence Agency.
When America joined the war effort in Europe and the Pacific, the OSS needed
men who could handle small boats well enough to navigate unexplored coastlines at night
and even slip ashore into enemy territory.
As early as 1942, Taylor was among the first three officers assigned to the OSS component,
which soon evolved into the Maritime Unit. Despite
initially being enlisted by the Navy as a boat instructor specialized in handling,
navigation, seamanship, and water demolition, duty eventually took him elsewhere.
A secret school was set up at an OSS base in the Potomac River, known then as “Area D” in
rural Maryland, near Washington, DC. Taylor then began his service at the Smith Point training
camp as a chief instructor, devoting himself to the early development of the maritime school.
However, the course of the war suddenly required experts in clandestine maritime infiltration,
supply, and sabotage.
As one of the first men to join the Maritime Unit, Taylor helped form the organization’s policies
and unknowingly set the basis for what would become the Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land commandos.
Change of Plans
In addition to their training program,
the team at Area D created new equipment that would allow them to execute perilous missions
involving underwater sabotage. A precursor to modern SCUBA diving gear, the Lambertsen
Amphibious Respiratory Unit became a key advantage for specialized elements in the Maritime Unit.
In late 1942, Taylor was able to swim for over a mile while underwater,
an extraordinary accomplishment that took him 48 minutes. Even Dr. Chris
Lambertsen, who developed the Navy frogmen's rebreathers in the early 1940s, was stunned.
Then, on February 18, 1943, General Donovan approved the formation of the first underwater
swimming group. The so-called L-Unit comprised two teams commanded by Lieutenant Taylor
and Lieutenant R.J.H. Duncan, and they were soon sent to England for further
training around the attacks of German submarine pins off Southern France.
However, the Maritime Unit attained branch status, so instead of joining the L-Unit,
Taylor was deployed to the Middle Eastern Theater of Operations to
help organize the unit against Italy’s eastern approach to the Mediterranean.
Taylor arrived in Turkey in July, and although he was one of the
most senior and experienced officers in the unit, he faced several obstacles in
setting up operations due to military dominance and lack of recognition.
Regardless, by August he had assembled a partisan troop of mostly Greek crews equipped with
indigenous Caiques, or fuel-engined wooden vessels with auxiliary sails not exceeding 40 tons.
For the next 18 months, the Lieutenant conducted over 14 sorties.
The missions included penetrating hostile shores in Yugoslavia and Albania,
and delivering supplies and undercover elements to friendly forces.
Moreover, Taylor commanded a ground team in Central Albania. For three months,
they reported relevant information about enemy movements and positions. Rival search parties
nearly caught them on three occasions, but the team and their leader escaped every time.
General Donovan himself nominated Taylor for an Army Distinguished Service Cross,
but he was bestowed with the Navy Cross instead.
In addition, he is said to have been stranded on an enemy island for a month and a half
and survived on his own. But his most remarkable exploit was yet to come.
Relieved of his charge in December, most likely due to personal initiative,
Taylor joined the OSS Special Operations desk in Bari, Italy,
where he was assigned to the behind-the-lines operation now known as the Dupont Mission.
This task would change his life forever.
Air, Land and Sea
The industrial city of Wiener Neustadt in Austria was to become an intelligence harvest
if the OSS could reach the many anti-Nazi Austrians believed to live in the area.
Furthermore, a major nexus between the German supply chain and the Italian
front was based in the city, as was the Rax Werke, a key German aviation plant.
Also, the Germans were thought to be erecting the so-called Southeast Wall in the area.
The plan was to support the Allies, marshaling a resistance movement in an area where the
American forces had no intelligence sources. A mission to infiltrate the region was hatched
in the fall of 1944, and it involved one American and three Austrian men.
On October 13, Lieutenant Taylor and the three Austrians parachuted behind enemy lines,
but the pilots were unable to drop the radios and other necessary equipment.
Moreover, Taylor was injured in the jump, and one of his men became severely ill.
Despite the obstacles, the party continued with the mission to gather intelligence and reach
out to friendly Austrians. They also managed to collect photographs of German defenses and earn
the trust of several local groups on behalf of the Allies. However, they had no means to
send the information to the American forces and were then forced to cross German lines.
On December 1, a night before the team tried to escape to Italy,
they were captured and sent to a prison in Vienna. The jailers tried to get the
uniform-clad officer to confess that he was a civilian, but Taylor would not yield,
as he would lose his rights and the protection of the Geneva Convention.
After four months, Taylor was transferred to the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp.
The American arrived on April 1, 1945, and was immediately stripped of his uniform and
handed civil clothing. In utter violation of his rights, he was treated as a political prisoner,
continually suffering the beatings and abuses of the guards.
He also became an eyewitness to plenty of gruesome war crimes.
Taylor was scheduled for execution not long after,
but a friendly worker found his sentencing papers in a stack and burned them. As the days went by,
the guards realized that Taylor was still alive and ordered his execution once again.
However, the 11th Armored Division soon came to the rescue, and the hero survived.
In his own words: (QUOTE) “We never dreamed that Americans would ever be near, but we heard rumors
that they were in Regensburg and coming fast. The SS departed about the first of May [...] No more
executions or brutalities took place after the SS departed. On Saturday 5 May the guns
were much louder but still some distance away, and I had no hope that they would arrive before
Sunday. [...] I could only say "God Bless America" and hold out my dog tags with a quavering hand."
Testimony and Legacy
Within hours of being liberated, a film crew documenting the camps recorded Taylor’s
testimony of the brutality he and others had to withstand. His words would prove invaluable
during the subsequent Nuremberg Trials and other court proceedings against Nazi perpetrators.
Moreover, the evidence he helped gather led to the conviction of
all 61 defendants at the Mauthausen trial.
As US prosecutor William Denson expressed, the victims of Mauthausen had: (QUOTE)
“Constituted in the main the intelligentsia of continental Europe,
persons who had the intestinal fortitude to stand up against the Nazi yoke of oppression.”
Taylor eventually returned to civilian life, and like so many others,
suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder during his last years. Then, on May 10,
1959, he was involved in a plane crash not far from his home in California and passed away.
When Taylor’s OSS files were declassified after his passing,
the world recognized his legacy as the first unofficial Navy SEAL, one who stood
up to the Nazis two decades before the Navy’s primary special operations force came to be.
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