From Military History: Aaron Bank~ Father of the Green Berets: by John M. Glenn
military.com
Aaron Bank: Father of the Green Berets
As a member of the Office of Strategic Services, Aaron Bank worked with guerrilla forces--and learned about political struggles behind enemy lines.
By John M. Glenn
Early in July 1944, Aaron Bank and two Frenchmen, each suspended in a parachute harness, drifted silently through the pre-dawn darkness toward a clearing on a forested mountaintop near the town of Alès in southern France. The months that followed would be a defining period for Bank--and, eventually, for the U.S. Army.
Revered today throughout the Special Forces community as "The Father of the Green Berets," now-retired Colonel Bank recently recalled his first steps into guerrilla warfare and covert operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in an interview with John M. Glenn. In the comfortable home that he shares with his wife, Catherine, in San Clemente, Calif., the honorary colonel of the 1st Special Forces Regiment is a continent away from New York City, where he was born on November 23, 1902. It was there that his mother and grandfather, both Russian immigrants, taught him the languages that would shape his destiny--French and German.
Military History: You led an interesting life in the Depression years before you joined the U.S. Army. Please tell us about it.
Bank: I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor during the summers at Biarritz, in France, where speaking French and German, as well as Spanish, was a necessity. In the winter I moved on to Nassau, in the Bahamas. You could say I spent those years entirely in the sunshine.
MH: Why did you join the Army?
Bank: In my travels around Europe, it became clear to me that war was coming. In Germany, men were marching around with shovels carried like rifles on their shoulders. You couldn't get any sleep at night because of the torchlight parades. Warmongering songs filled the smoky air in the Bierstüben.
MH: So you enlisted?
Bank: Yes, in 1939. I was commissioned from Officer Candidate School.
MH: How did you come to join the OSS?
Bank: Officers who could speak a foreign language were invited to volunteer. Actually, that was a godsend. In early 1943, I was a tactical training officer for a railroad battalion at Camp Polk, La.--a real hellhole. I was considered too old for combat in the infantry, my original branch. The OSS was my chance to get into the war, and I jumped at it.
MH: What was your first impression of the Office of Strategic Services?
Bank: We trained at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., which was very plush. Everything was supposed to be top-secret, but when I paid for the taxi ride there, the driver said, "Oh, you're one of those guerrillas." Every cabdriver in town knew what was going on! We trained on the golf course and along the Potomac River. It was mostly commando training. None of the instructors had experienced guerrilla warfare. I was disappointed.
MH: But that changed?
Bank: Most certainly. We got the real McCoy in England. The instructors had all fought with guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Greece and France. The training was outstanding; the living arrangements were excellent.
MH: What aspects of your training in Britain stood out compared with the previous instruction you had received?
Bank: The training--in communications, demolitions, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, subversion, sabotage and guerrilla warfare--was conducted at different manor houses in Scotland and England. There was always a break as we traveled between schools, so we never got stale. And we were kept on our toes. British Major W.E. Fairbairn, the co-developer of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, took us out one moonless night on a sentry-elimination exercise. Easy, I thought, we've done this before. I crept up to the dummy, jerked the head back and plunged the knife--into a knapsack! It was a lesson about observation that I was glad to learn in England and not in France.
MH: How was the parachute training?
Bank: The most harrowing part was jumping from a balloon, which was required. Because there was no prop blast, you fell about 200 feet before the parachute opened. The balloon was only 800 feet in the air. And the British jumped without reserve parachutes. We didn't exit the aircraft through a door but through a hatch in the floor. I was still nervous about not having a reserve and asked an instructor what I should do if the parachute didn't open. "Do a proper PLF [parachute landing fall]," he said, "roll up your 'chute, take it back to the lass who packed it and see if you can get a date."
MH: Why were the Special Operations teams called "Jedburghs"?
Bank: Jedburghs consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. The name "Jedburgh" was derived from a town in Scotland where Scots, during their wars with England, waged guerrilla warfare. We thought it appropriate.
MH: How were your Special Operations teams selected?
Bank: We actually selected ourselves. It was thought--correctly so--that compatible individuals would form their own natural groups. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were represented among the Jedburghs. However, by order of General Charles de Gaulle, each team going into France had to have a French officer in it. So the Frenchmen were courted like debutantes at a ball. They were in demand, and they knew it.
MH: Your team consisted of yourself and two Frenchmen?
Bank: Yes. We had an American radio operator initially, but the French officer, Henri, was concerned that if something happened to me he would not be able to communicate effectively with an American. So Jean [the French never revealed their surnames for security reasons] became our radio operator. I'm still in touch with the American radio operator, Bill Thompson, who went on to earn a Croix de Guerre with another team.
MH: With all the different nationalities involved, was there any friction?
Bank: Only once. When our troopship sailed into Oran, it passed markers in the harbor showing where French ships had been sunk by the British fleet after the French capitulation. There was a distinct coolness between the French and British operatives for a while.
MH: Where did you go from Oran?
Bank: To Algiers, where we camped with French colonial troops. Their latrine was anywhere the urge struck, and the ground was littered with soiled toilet paper. Soon many Americans, including myself, were down with fever. I was in the hospital when Henri told me to get well in a hurry, as we were leaving for France that night.
MH: What did you do?
Bank: Still in my pajamas, I sneaked past the military policeman guarding the hospital gate. I had to go AWOL [absent without leave] to go to war.
MH: What did you bring with you when you parachuted into France in July 1944?
Bank: Money, of course. The plane also dropped canisters filled with medical supplies, explosives, ammunition and arms--mostly Sten guns that the British manufactured for about $1 apiece. And a lot of boots. The guerrillas were short on footwear.
MH: Were the guerrillas waiting for you on the ground?
Bank: Yes. They had a truck that ran off of a boiler fired by charcoal--the Germans had all the gasoline--but it ran pretty well, and it carried all the supplies.
MH: How was security?
Bank: As we drove through small towns on our way to the command post, the villagers lined the streets and shouted, "Vive les Américains!" It was hard for the French to keep a secret. That night we stayed in a farmhouse that was supposed to be safe. I told the team to sleep with their boots on. During the night, the alarm was raised, and I jumped out of a window wearing only my underwear, boots and cartridge belt and carrying my rifle. The guerrillas kidded me about that, saying, "Captain, you're out of uniform." But we all escaped. Security was always on the edge. Sometimes it was pretty good and sometimes it was lousy.
MH: What was your primary mission in southern France?
Bank: Initially, we were to lay low, get organized, conduct training and wait for the invasion. The guerrilla chief, Raymond, commandeered a car from a collaborator--that is, he just took it. We drove through the mountains and woods, going from camp to camp. I began to train the guerrilla leaders, and they trained their men. Most of them had been in the French army, so training was not too difficult, but they did have some bad habits.
MH: What sort of bad habits?
Bank: They had a tendency to stay in one place too long, and their camps were too close together. Food was rationed in France, and if a shortage developed anywhere, the Germans could figure out that the populace might be feeding guerrillas. If the Germans swept the area and found a camp, other nearby camps would also end up in the bag. So we kept the guerrillas moving and more dispersed, but close enough so that they could be rapidly assembled for action.
MH: Were there other problems?
Bank: One problem was medical support. It is hard to recruit a guerrilla if he thinks he might suffer a minor wound and then be left behind--perhaps to be tortured, certainly to be killed, by the Germans. We enlisted a French doctor to operate an aid station in a barn and set up a system to move serious cases to hospitals in smaller towns that were relatively safe. Another problem was ammunition. We had all sorts of weapons--American, British, French, German. Many of them used bullets that were similar but not exactly the same.
MH: Was there a problem separating the different types of ammunition?
Bank: Absolutely. In one of our early ambushes we had a truck convoy pinned down when the machine gun stopped firing. We had to withdraw, and we found out later that the machine-gunner had bullets of two different calibers in the belt. When the wrong caliber was fed into the chamber, the gun jammed. In another ambush, we placed mortar fire on a convoy, but instead of high explosives going off, smoke covered the target, and we couldn't see what the Germans were doing. We had to withdraw again. I had told the guerrillas earlier to get rid of the smoke rounds, but the French never throw anything away.
MH: It seems as if the guerrillas didn't always do as they were told. What was the command relationship?
Bank: The guerrillas had their own leaders. If we had tried to take over their operation, we would have been lucky to get out alive. Our job was to help them plan and keep them supplied. But they knew we were there to help them, so they usually did as we advised. And make no mistake about it, they were very courageous. You didn't have to kick them in the ass to make them fight.
MH: What was the German reaction to guerrilla ambushes?
Bank: If an ambush occurred near a town, the Germans would round up men and boys from the town and shoot them. We tried staging ambushes between towns so that the Germans would not know which one to retaliate against, but they just took hostages from both towns.
MH: Did that cause a problem?
Bank: The mayors of some of the towns began to plead with the guerrillas to move elsewhere, but Henri and the guerrilla chiefs were very tough. They told the mayors that the price of liberation was high, and the people must make the sacrifice.
MH: Was there conflict between guerrilla groups?
Bank: Yes. Our guerrillas were the Forces Françaises de l'Interieur [FFI], the nationalists. Also in our sector were the Franc-Tireurs Partisans [FTP], who were Communists. The FTP actually hijacked one of our resupply drops. While our guerrillas were collecting the canisters on the ground, the FTP caught them unawares and made off with all the equipment. The FTP also became a political problem after liberation, but the people in our sector preferred the FFI.
MH: Did you get involved in any of the political infighting among the guerrilla groups?
Bank: No. That was a job for Henri, our French officer. |
