CHAPTER 6
THAT JACK LEE WAS SMILING at the thought of roaring off behind German lines on what might well have been the last day of World War II in Europe gives a fair insight into the then twenty-seven-year-old tanker’s personality. The five-foot-ten, 190-pound former high school and college football star from New York was by all accounts a rough-talking, hard-drinking, and hard-charging bull of a man who’d found his niche in war. And, as with many men—in many wars—to whom that description has applied, Lee’s early life gave clear indications of the warrior he would eventually become.
JOHN CAREY LEE JR. WAS BORN in Nebraska on March 12, 1918, the first of four children of Dr. John C. Lee Sr. and Mary Agnes (Fleming) Lee. Both parents were natives of rural New York and had moved to Nebraska a year before Jack’s birth, apparently so the elder Lee could accept his first position after graduating from medical school. The young couple returned to New York sometime in the mid-1920s and settled in Norwich, a small town in the south-central part of the state, where Dr. Lee established what soon became a thriving private practice. Jack and his three younger siblings—brothers William and David and sister Mary—grew up in solidly upper-middle-class comfort. The family was Roman Catholic, though it seems Jack didn’t let the church’s precepts unduly cramp his style. He grew up adventurous and independent, with a quick grin and a devil-may-care attitude that made him increasingly popular with girls but occasionally got him in minor trouble both at home and at school.
Bright and inquisitive, Jack was a better-than-average student who also excelled in athletics. Football became his game of choice, and he was a star player during his four years at Norwich High School. He took those gridiron skills with him when he entered Vermont’s Norwich University in 1938, earning letters in the sport each of the four years he spent there. Far more important, however, was the new skill the brash young man from New York mastered at Norwich: he became a cavalryman.
Founded by Captain Alden Partridge1 in 1819 as the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, by the time of Lee’s arrival Norwich had evolved into one of the nation’s premier private military colleges, combining a traditional four-year civilian education in such fields as engineering and the social sciences with training in military subjects that prepared graduates for service as reserve officers.2 Among the martial skills to which the student-cadets were exposed were those of traditional cavalry: horsemanship, saber drill, and mounted tactics. As the soldiers-to-be wheeled and galloped and surged across the training fields, many of them discovered within themselves an innate affinity for the spirit of cavalry: a delight in the lightning advance, the rapid encirclement, and the chance to ruthlessly exploit any weakness in an enemy’s defenses. It comes as no great revelation that Jack Lee, who so obviously loved the team spirit, intricate maneuvering, and broken-field running of football, took to cavalry training with almost obsessive enthusiasm. Nor is it a surprise that his enthusiasm was more than matched by his mastery of every facet of the training—a mastery rooted in the same athleticism, intelligence, competitiveness, and self-confidence that stood him in such good stead on the football field. Indeed, the cavalry so well suited Lee’s temperament and capabilities—and, we can safely assume, ideally complemented what many who knew him called his “swashbuckling” personality—that during his last year at Norwich he listed “Cavalry” as the army branch to which he wanted to be assigned following his postgraduation commissioning.3 Lee understood, of course, that the cavalry in which he would actually serve would be mechanized rather than hoofed, but he obviously felt that a tank was a perfectly acceptable substitution for a horse.4
The United States’ December 1941 entry into World War II ensured that Jack Lee and his fellow Norwich graduates were called to active duty shortly after their May 11, 1942, graduation. To his immense delight, the newly commissioned Second Lieutenant Lee received orders directing him to report to the Armored Force School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to attend the basic armor officer course. He lingered in New York state only long enough to marry a woman named Virginia5 and then headed south by train. During the ninety-day program Lee soaked up the fundamentals of tank gunnery, armor tactics, communications, and vehicle maintenance, and during the concluding three-day field exercise he demonstrated what one of his instructors called “a natural talent” for armored warfare.
Upon completion of the Fort Knox course, Lee received orders assigning him to the 12th Armored Division, which was then forming at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, a newly established installation6 straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The 12th AD was initially constituted as a heavy armored division consisting of six tank battalions, three armored-infantry battalions, three armored-artillery battalions, and supporting engineer, reconnaissance, medical, and supply units. However, the initial combat experience of U.S. armored units in North Africa and Sicily showed the heavy armored division structure to be unwieldy and overly complex, and in November 1943 the 12th began reorganizing on the light armored division model then being adopted army-wide. This structure was built around three combat commands—A, B, and R (reserve), each of which had a tank battalion, an armored-infantry battalion, and an armored-artillery battalion, plus support units. The 12th AD undertook this metamorphosis even as it was moving to a new post: Camp Barkley, near Abilene, Texas.7 By the time the reorganization was completed, Lee—now a first lieutenant—was the executive officer (second in command) and leader of the five-tank 1st Platoon in Captain Donald Cowan’s Company B, 23rd Tank Battalion.
Lee’s company was equipped with early models of the M4 Sherman medium tank, a robust vehicle armed with a single turret-mounted 75mm cannon, two .30-caliber machine guns (one in the lower hull and the other mounted coaxially8 with the main gun), and one .50-caliber machine gun (on a swivel mount atop the turret for air defense). Each tank was crewed by five men—the driver and assistant driver/machine gunner in the lower hull, and the gunner, loader, and vehicle commander in the turret. Though the Sherman was inferior in both armor and armament to the German tanks it was meant to engage—a fact Lee and his comrades wouldn’t become aware of until they entered combat—it was mechanically reliable and surprisingly nimble for a vehicle with an average combat weight of some thirty-five tons.
Given Jack Lee’s temperament, it comes as no surprise that during the 12th AD’s training in both Kentucky and Texas he personally demonstrated the “mental alertness and aggressiveness, and ability to think, act and quickly take advantage of tactical opportunities”9 that the army considered to be the essential qualities of an armored corps officer. Lee worked doggedly to mold his platoon into an aggressive, determined, and cohesive group. Indeed, he and his twenty-five men soon developed a reputation as Company B’s rough-and-tumble, “Hell for Leather” platoon,10 always eager to push themselves to the limit during field maneuvers—and equally ready to raise a little hell in Abilene’s bars and clubs when they got the chance. Lee himself was no slouch when it came to having fun; he pushed himself and his men hard during the workday, but off duty he was known as a man who thoroughly enjoyed a drink and a laugh. His frequent companion on his forays into Abilene was First Lt. Harry Basse, Company B’s motor officer—the man responsible for managing the maintenance program for the company’s tracked and wheeled vehicles. Though the thirty-three-year-old from Pomona, California, was in many ways Lee’s exact opposite—tall, lanky, soft-spoken, and contemplative11—the two men formed a lifelong friendship that was initially based on mutual respect for each other’s military skills and on a shared desire to put those skills to work killing Germans.
In July 1944 Lee, Basse, and the roughly 10,750 other men of the 12th AD learned that they would soon have the chance to put all their training to good use: The division was alerted for overseas movement. Leaving their tanks and other vehicles behind in Texas, in August the troops boarded trains for the slow trip to Camp Shanks, New York, twenty miles north of Manhattan. Arriving in groups between September 8 and 13, the GIs underwent several days of predeployment processing—physical exams, inoculations, equipment issue, and the sobering act of updating wills and GI life-insurance forms—and on September 18 and 19 were back on the rails, this time for the short ride to the port of embarkation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The men of the division were allocated among several vessels, with the 23rd TB embarked on Empress of Australia, a twenty-five-year-old Canadian Pacific Steamships passenger liner converted for troopship duty.12 After eleven days at sea—largely spent sleeping, playing seemingly endless games of poker, and attempting to stave off seasickness—the men of the 23rd TB gratefully disembarked at the southern English port of Southampton. They and the rest of the division were then moved north by train and bus to Tidworth Barracks, a vast staging area on Salisbury Plain, where they spent the remainder of September and the first weeks of November gearing up for war.13
The major part of that task consisted of drawing new tanks, trucks, half-tracks, and “peeps”—the latter being the name by which tankers referred to the Willys-built four-wheel-drive vehicle everyone else in the U.S. Army called a “jeep.” Lee and his men were happy to see that the Shermans being issued to the 23rd TB were examples of the upgraded M4A3 variant powered by liquid-cooled Ford GAA V-8 engines, which were more powerful and reliable than the Continental-built radials that had propelled the tanks they’d trained on in Texas. Lee and his men named their new Sherman Besotten Jenny14 and over the following weeks ensured that both they and the vehicle were as prepared as possible for the battles to come.
Transported from England to France aboard U.S. Navy LSTs15 in November 1944, the 12th Armored Division—now commanded by Major General Roderick R. Allen and assigned to Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army—underwent its baptism of fire in early December in a series of sharp fights in France’s Alsace-Lorraine region. These initial battles in and around the German-occupied forts of the Maginot Line were sobering for the men of the 12th AD, and especially so for Lee and his colleagues in the 23rd TB. The battalion fared reasonably well in its first combat action, on December 9, when it supported the 17th Armored Infantry Battalion’s attack on a line of enemy-held buildings called the Bining Barracks, but that night Company B commander Captain Donald Cowen was killed when the peep in which he and Company C’s Captain James P. Fortenberry were riding hit a mine. Cowan’s death elevated Jack Lee to command of Company B, and on December 11 battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery C. Meigs tasked Lee and his men to spearhead the unit’s support for an infantry assault on several pillboxes blocking the line of advance. The Shermans were engaged by well-sited German antitank guns, and in the ensuing melee two of Lee’s platoon leaders were killed and the third seriously wounded.16 Battalion commander Meigs was also killed.17
The war didn’t get any easier for Jack Lee and Company B in the months following their combat debut. Hardly had the 23rd TB made good its initial losses in men and equipment when in mid-January 1945 it and the rest of the 12th AD were engulfed in a battle that came to be known as Bloody Herrlisheim: the attempt to route German forces that had crossed the Rhine into Alsace in an attempt to recapture Strasbourg. Fought in winter snows over poor terrain against determined enemy forces that included the crack 10th SS-Panzer-Grenadier Division, the battle resulted in the virtual destruction of the 12th AD’s 43rd Tank and 17th Armored Infantry battalions, and by the time the division was relieved on January 20, seventy-two men of the 23rd TB had been killed and Lee’s Company B had lost half its Shermans.18
The only positive outcomes of the 12th AD’s mauling at Herrlisheim were, first, that the 23rd TB’s destroyed tanks were replaced by the M4A3 (76)W variant—referred to as the “Easy 8”19—fitted with 76mm guns that were said to be more effective against German tanks than the 75mm. And though Lee didn’t think much about it at the time, the vehicles had another feature that would later prove extremely important: a “wet” ammunition-stowage system that was intended to prevent the Sherman’s 76mm rounds from detonating if the tank’s hull was breeched by enemy fire.20 And, second, the men who survived Herrlisheim came out of the battle as seasoned veterans. As the war rolled on, they—and the replacements with whom they shared their expertise—demonstrated their prowess as the Seventh Army swept across southern Germany and, eventually, into Austria.
Along the way, Jack Lee sharpened his skills as a combat leader and was awarded the Bronze Star for his “superior leadership ability . . . cool and aggressive handling of the platoon . . . and his courage and his ability to meet any situation that confronted him.”21 By the time the 23rd TB—which along with the 17th Armored Infantry and 495th Armored Field Artillery battalions constituted the 12th AD’s Combat Command R (CCR)—crossed the Austrian frontier late on the evening of May 3, 1945, the unit was arguably among the most experienced and successful tank battalions in the U.S. Army and Lee one of its ablest officers.
And it was because 23rd TB commander Lieutenant Colonel Kelso G. Clow considered Lee to be one of the best tank officers in the 12th AD that Lee spearheaded the division’s move into Austria. Weeks earlier Clow had tapped the aggressive young tanker to lead Task Force (TF) Lee, a mixed group of Company B Shermans and half-tracks bearing black GIs of the 17th AIB’s Company D.22 TF Lee was “on point” for both the battalion and CCR, punching ahead of the main force to clear enemy roadblocks, secure key bridges and road junctions, and reconnoiter the towns and villages on the line of advance.
While the task-force mission ideally suited Lee’s aggressive and piratical nature, we can safely assume that at least some of the men serving under him were not quite so enthusiastic about being “out front.” Hitler’s suicide on April 30 and the obvious disintegration of the German armed forces clearly indicated to most GIs that the end of the war in Europe was imminent, and no one wanted to be the last man killed in “Krautland.” The men of TF Lee were thus heartened by news their brash young captain—he’d been officially promoted on May 123—passed around soon after he halted the unit in Kufstein at 3:25 PM on May 4. Upon radioing battalion commander Clow that the task force was in the town and had encountered no opposition, Lee was told to “hold in place” because CCR was in the process of turning over responsibility for Kufstein and the surrounding region to the 36th Infantry Division. A theater-wide cease-fire was possible at any time within the next twenty-four hours, and Lee was ordered to establish defensive positions, engage German forces only if fired on, and await relief by elements of the 36th ID’s 142nd Infantry Regiment.
When Lee passed the news on to the men of his task force, they were jubilant. The war was apparently over for all intents and purposes, and they were still alive. Though Lee cautioned them not to let their guard down, more than a few of his men pulled “liberated” bottles of schnapps or wine from their packs or from hiding places within their vehicles and began toasting each other. There was much laughing and backslapping throughout the column as the “Joes” began setting up defensive positions, but up forward, around Lee’s tank, the sudden arrival of a Wehrmacht officer waving a white flag quickly stifled the levity. News of the German’s appearance rippled up and down the American column, and, when Jack Lee ducked into the turret of his tank to use the radio, those GIs in the immediate area who best knew the young American captain collectively held their breath.
When Lee reappeared with a wolfish smile on his face, they knew with sinking hearts that their war wasn’t over quite yet.
EVEN AS GANGL AND LEE were meeting in Kufstein, a Schloss Itter rescue operation of which neither was aware was already in motion—thanks to Zvonko Čučković.
After spending the night in the hotel-turned-barracks, promptly at seven o’clock on the morning of May 4—even as Reynaud and Clemenceau were setting out on their stroll through Itter village—the well-rested Croat handyman had returned to the Innsbruck town hall. The Yugoslav-American civilian he’d met the day before introduced him to Major John T. Kramers, a German-speaking former artilleryman now assigned to the 103rd’s military-government section.24 Having read Christiane Mabire’s letter, Kramers realized that a rescue mission to Schloss Itter was urgent. He called in one of the division’s French army liaison officers (who also happened to be a good friend), Lieutenant25 Eric Lutten, and together the two men poured over maps of the northern Tyrol and plotted out a route that would take them to the castle via the same roads Čučković had ridden. Kramers took the plan to his boss, who authorized the mission and arranged for three M4 Shermans of the 103rd’s attached 783rd Tank Battalion to provide the necessary firepower.
The would-be rescuers set out just after noon, with Kramers, Lutten, Čučković, and a sergeant named Gris leading in a jeep. They rolled through Hall, Schwaz, and Jenbach without difficulty, but just east of Rattenberg they were stopped by GIs of Lieutenant Colonel Hubert E. Strange’s 409th Infantry Regiment. The Joes told them that what appeared to be at least a hundred Waffen-SS troops were deployed in the town. The Germans were using panzerfausts, several MG-42s, and at least one antitank gun to cover the road, and they had already knocked out one U.S. Sherman and two M3 half-tracks. When the infantrymen estimated that it would be dark before they could root out the SS men and clear the road, Kramers reluctantly had to order his small force back to Innsbruck. Given the uncertainty of the tactical situation in Tyrol, division policy forbade small-unit, nontactical road movements at night.
As Jack Lee was informing his battalion commander of Gangl’s arrival in Kufstein, Kramers was busy in Innsbruck putting together a larger rescue column he felt confident would be able to deal effectively with almost anything the Germans might throw at them while still being small enough to move rapidly. His new task force would consist of four M10 tank destroyers from the 824th TD Battalion, three jeeps equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, a truck bearing a platoon of infantrymen from the 3rd Battalion of the 409th, and an empty truck intended to carry the French VIPs and their baggage. As Kramers was putting the finishing touches on his plan, two civilians—U.S. war correspondent Meyer Levin and French photographer Eric Schwab—asked his permission to accompany the rescue force. Kramers agreed and told them the column would set out for Schloss Itter at dawn.26
It would prove to be an eventful journey.
IN HIS RESPONSE TO JACK LEE’S radio message regarding Sepp Gangl’s appearance in Kufstein, 23rd TB commander Kelso Clow had directed Lee to deal with the situations in Wörgl and at Schloss Itter as he saw fit. Apparently not wanting to put the bulk of his task force in danger until it became absolutely necessary, Lee made what can only be described as a characteristically gutsy decision: He told Gangl that he wouldn’t move the column into Wörgl or mount a full-blown rescue mission to Schloss Itter until he’d undertaken a personal reconnaissance to both places. And Lee, in an obvious test of Gangl’s good faith and veracity, said they’d make the trip together in the major’s kübelwagen. We don’t know how Gangl felt about Lee’s ultimatum, but we can be fairly certain that the GI whom Lee tapped to join him on the jaunt behind enemy lines—his twenty-nine-year-old gunner Corporal Edward J. “Stinky” Szymczyk27—probably wasn’t too pleased to be “volunteered” for the mission.28
After passing temporary command of the task force to his executive officer, Lee wedged himself into the kübelwagen’s cramped rear seat, with Szymczyk beside him and Gangl in the front passenger seat. As Corporal Keblitsch put the vehicle in motion, the two Americans settled back, their helmets most probably on the floor so as not to attract undue attention and their M3 submachine guns almost certainly laying cocked and ready on their laps. The party didn’t encounter any hostile troops on the road to Wörgl, and the Wehrmacht soldiers they did meet were all loyal to Gangl. Lee checked several small bridges for demolition charges, and those he found Gangl ordered his men to remove. The kübelwagen rolled into Wörgl at approximately four thirty in the afternoon, and within minutes Lee had formally accepted Gangl’s surrender of the town and its remaining garrison. In what can only have been both an obvious gesture of trust and a pragmatic acknowledgment that Gangl and his men were the only force capable of fighting off Waffen-SS units that might assault the town, the American tanker allowed the Germans to keep their weapons.
Formalities over, Gangl introduced Lee to Rupert Hagleitner and other key Wörgl resisters. The American officer told the Austrians that they were responsible for the town’s administration until U.S. troops arrived and that Gangl’s now-surrendered Wehrmacht soldiers would provide security. Then, turning to the matter of Schloss Itter, Lee asked Hagleitner to map out what he thought would be the safest route to the castle. Hagleitner instead offered to show him the way, and just before five thirty Lee, Gangl, Hagleitner, and Szymczyk set out in the kübelwagen, followed by Blechschmidt and several men in a small truck.
Though the distance to the castle was little more than five road miles, the need to take narrow dirt tracks and make several detours to avoid Waffen-SS roadblocks meant it took the party nearly forty-five minutes to reach Itter village. When they entered the small square in front of St. Joseph’s Church, they encountered Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, who was on his way home after his drawn-out meeting with the French VIPs. Schrader told Lee he’d taken responsibility for the former prisoners’ safety, and Gangl, seeing Lee’s obvious skepticism, vouched for Schrader, whom he knew from Battle Group Giehl. Lee then told the Waffen-SS officer to return to the castle with his family and explained that a U.S. rescue force would arrive soon.29
This latter statement was a bit misleading, of course, in that Lee would have to return to Kufstein to assemble the relief column. And before he could do that, he had to ensure that the situation at the castle was in fact as Gangl had represented it to be. He thus directed Hagleitner, who was driving, to continue the 150 yards on to the castle. As the kübelwagen slowly approached the gatehouse—presumably with one of its occupants waving a white flag—two armed Frenchmen30 stepped forward and leveled their weapons. Their understandable chagrin at the arrival of a German military vehicle would quickly have dissipated when Lee slowly stood up in the rear seat and announced himself to be an American officer.
Quickly ushered before the gathered French VIPs, Lee introduced himself and declared that he would return very soon with a sizable rescue force. While the tanker’s exact words were not recorded, we can be certain that they were greeted with relief and enthusiasm. But we can also be fairly sure that Lee expressed himself in his typically brash, straightforward way, and, while he impressed Reynaud as having the “fine figure of a football player,”31 he didn’t make a particularly good impression on at least one of the other former prisoners. Though Édouard Daladier found Sepp Gangl to be “polite” and “dignified,” the American captain struck him as “crude in both looks and manners,” and the former French premier sniffed that “if Lee is a reflection of America’s policies, Europe is in for a hard time.”32
Daladier’s disdain was the least of Lee’s concerns, of course; he had a rescue to organize. Less than twenty minutes after arriving at Schloss Itter, and, after having directed Blechschmidt and his men to remain, Lee, Szymczyk, Gangl, and Hagleitner started back toward Wörgl in the kübelwagen, retracing their earlier route and again encountering no resistance. After dropping Hagleitner off, the other three continued on to Kufstein, where Lee sought out his battalion commander. Clow told him to proceed with the rescue effort but said that because CCR was already turning the area over to elements of the 36th Infantry Division, the only 23rd TB assets available to Lee were his own tank and one other—any additional men and vehicles would have to come from the 36th ID.
With Gangl in tow Lee rushed back to where he’d left his task force earlier in the day. He first informed his own crew—Szymcyk, driver Technician Fourth Grade William T. Rushford, loader Technician Fifth Grade Edward J. Seiner, and assistant driver/bow machine gunner Private First Class Herbert G. McHaley—of their new mission. He then asked his friend Harry Basse to take command of the second tank, Second Lieutenant Wallace S. Holbrook’s Boche Buster, whose crew included sergeants William E. Elliot and Glenn E. Sherman.33
Still needing additional firepower, Lee was able to dragoon five Shermans from the incoming 3rd Platoon, Company B, 753rd Tank Battalion. Lee then went in search of Colonel George E. Lynch, commander of the 142nd Infantry Regiment, which was moving in to assume control of the area. Fascinated by Lee’s tale of French VIPs in need of rescue, Lynch tasked three squads of infantrymen from 2nd Platoon, Company E, of Lieutenant Colonel Marvin J. Coyle’s 2nd Battalion to accompany the column. Lynch also pointed out that his regiment’s planned axis of advance would take it toward Itter and pledged that the bulk of his battalions would be “right behind” Lee and his column.
That column rolled out of Kufstein just before seven PM. Lee and Besotten Jenny took the lead, followed by Boche Buster and the five 753rd TB Shermans. The infantrymen from the 142nd were spread among the tanks and riding atop the rear engine decks, and taking up the rear of the column was Gangl in his kübelwagen, the white flag on its radio antenna now supplemented by large white stars crudely painted on either side. Despite the apparent ease with which Lee and the others had managed to drive to and from Schloss Itter earlier in the day, the young officer was under no illusions that his considerably larger column would go unnoticed or unchallenged. Die-hard Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units remained throughout northern Austria, and they could be expected to be well-equipped with the lethal panzerfaust antitank rockets that Allied tankers had learned to fear.
It quickly became obvious that panzerfausts were not the only thing the American tankers had to worry about. Almost immediately after leaving Kufstein, the relief column had to cross a small and obviously old bridge over an Inn River tributary known as the Brixentaler Ache. Lee’s two tanks and two of the 753rd TB Shermans made it over the span without difficulty, but the structure began to collapse when the fifth tank attempted to cross. Lee had no choice but to order the last three 753rd vehicles to return to Kufstein with their embarked infantrymen.34
Further complications awaited the rescue force when it reached Wörgl at about eight PM. The same roving bands of die-hard troops that worried Lee were also of great concern to Rupert Hagleitner and his fellow resistance leaders, and they pleaded with the young officer to bolster their defenses. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Lee agreed to leave the two remaining 753rd TB tanks and their accompanying infantrymen in Wörgl. However, Gangl offered to make up the deficit with more of his men, and when Lee agreed, the Wehrmacht officer called together two of his officers—Captain Dietrich and Lieutenant Höckel—and several additional enlisted men. When the relief column left Wörgl to continue the journey to Schloss Itter, Lee commanded two Sherman tanks, fourteen American soldiers, and a kübelwagen and small Mercedes truck carrying a total of ten Germans. It was certainly a first for an American officer in World War II.
The rescue force initially headed due east out of Wörgl but turned southeast when they hit the village of Söll-Leukental and then followed the two-lane Brixentalerstrasse south along the west bank of the Brixentaler Ache. At the small hamlet of Bruggberg they found a bridge that Lee determined would bear the weight of the tanks as they crossed to the other side of the small river, but it had already been wired with demolition charges. Realizing the span might be the only route back to U.S. lines with the evacuated French VIPs, Lee decided to leave Boche Buster and its crew—minus Basse—to disarm the explosives and protect the structure.
Continuing on with Besotten Jenny and its crew, with Basse and the four remaining 142nd infantrymen—Corporal William Sutton and Privates Alex Petrukovich, Arthur Pollock, and Alfred Worsham—riding on the back deck and Gangl and his men following in their vehicles, Lee continued along the east bank of the river. The road was hemmed in on the east side by a steep mountainside, forcing the column to continue almost due southward toward the market town of Hopfgarten until they came to a sharp left-hand curve onto the Ittererstrasse, the road leading uphill toward Itter village and the schloss. Lee could now see his objective, perched atop the hill barely a mile directly to his front, and he ordered his driver to move out carefully.
His caution was justified, for within minutes of turning onto the Ittererstrasse the column rounded an S-curve in the road and almost drove over a squad of Waffen-SS troops trying to set up a roadblock. The infantrymen riding on the tank’s rear deck quickly opened fire, as did bow gunner McHaley and Gangl’s troops in the truck, and the Waffen-SS men scurried into the surrounding woods without firing. Lee ordered Rushford to “open her up,” and the tank slewed around another corner and up the twisting Ittererstrasse with the Wehrmacht vehicles close behind.
The mini convoy roared through the narrow streets of Itter village and then turned west onto the schlossweg, the narrow lane leading toward the castle. The schlossweg ended at the bridge leading to the castle’s main gate, where Lee ordered Rushford to pull Besotten Jenny as far over to the side as possible and then motioned Gangl and the driver of the truck to move ahead and cross the bridge. As the Wehrmacht vehicles eased past the Sherman and on toward the gatehouse, Lee told the four infantryman atop the tank’s rear deck to jump down and take up defensive positions. Turning to Rushford—who’d driven the several hundred yards from Itter village with his head and shoulders out of his hatch—Lee said to back the tank up slightly until it was in the center of the road and then turn it 180 degrees so the front of the vehicle would face toward the village. The turn was a delicate operation on the narrow roadway, but, by moving the steering levers in opposite directions and applying power, Rushford was able to rotate the tank in place.
Lee’s rationale for the maneuver became clear moments later, when he told Rushford that they would be backing Besotten Jenny up the curving, sixty-foot-long access road toward the gatehouse. In response to quizzical looks from both Rushford and Basse, Lee quickly explained that during his brief earlier visit to the castle with Gangl, he’d realized that the access road was narrower than where the vehicle now sat and that the gatehouse’s arched entryway was too low to allow the tank to move all the way into the schloss’s lower courtyard. He wanted to get the tank as close as possible to the gatehouse, both to block the entry and to ensure that enemy troops couldn’t get between the vehicle and the gate. While backing Besotten Jenny up the access road to the gatehouse would be challenging, Lee said, it would also ensure that enemy gunners couldn’t get a shot at the tank’s most vulnerable spot: the less heavily armored lower rear hull. With the plan agreed on, Lee ordered everyone but Rushford out of the tank and then climbed atop the turret and dropped into the commander’s hatch.
Because the Sherman’s rearview mirrors had been damaged several days earlier, Rushford had to rely on Lee’s voice commands for guidance. As Besotten Jenny began creeping backward, so slowly that its movement was at first barely discernable to the anxious soldiers looking on, Lee relayed small course corrections via intercom. The initial half of the access road was relatively straight, but it also included the potentially most dangerous hurdle the tank had to surmount: the twenty-foot-long bridge spanning the ravine separating Schloss Itter from the rest of the ridgeline. The metal-reinforced concrete span was supported at either end by what appeared to be fairly robust, arched, dressed-stone piers, but the Sherman would undoubtedly be pushing the bridge well beyond its design limits. Should the span give way under the tank’s immense weight, Besotten Jenny would drop some twenty-five feet to the bottom of the ravine—a distance that would disable the vehicle, rob the rescue force of its biggest gun, and almost certainly kill or severely injure Lee and Rushford.
When the Sherman backed onto the bridge, the span literally started to groan as the interior metal girders supporting the length of the structure began to bend. Chunks of the stone façade popped out and dropped into the ravine, and hairline cracks opened in the macadam road surface. Art Pollock, crouched nearby with his BAR35 pointing back toward the village, turned at the sound, and was stunned to see that the bridge was actually swaying slightly from side to side.36 Despite the obvious signs of distress, the span held, and after nearly a minute of high anxiety for Rushford, Lee, and the watching soldiers, Besotten Jenny rolled safely across—only to face another challenge. At the castle end of the span the roadway turned left toward the gatehouse at about a 15-degree angle, narrowing from twelve feet to just under eleven. The turn would be a tight one, with the nine-foot-wide tank having less than a foot of clearance on either side. If Rushford misjudged the angle of his turn or inadvertently applied too much power, the Sherman would smash through the low, cinder-block and wooden-plank guard rails lining the roadway and might well go tumbling down the slope on the other side. But again, Lee’s precise instructions and Rushford’s steady hand averted a possible disaster: Besotten Jenny made the turn with inches to spare and covered the remaining distance to the gatehouse without incident.
When Rushford had backed the Sherman to within a few feet of the arched gateway—through which the German vehicles had already passed—Lee told him to shut the engine down. Both men then climbed out of their respective hatches, jumped to the ground, and lit up celebratory smokes as Basse, Szymcyk, Seiner, McHaley, and the four infantrymen left their defensive positions on the village side of the bridge and trotted to join them. The Americans then moved through the open gates and into the snow-dusted lower courtyard, where Schrader and Gangl were waiting. With daylight fading, Lee was eager to organize the castle’s defenses. But before he could begin issuing orders, the schlosshof’s small arched gate swung open, and he and his men were engulfed by a wave of Gallic congratulations.
LEE’S RETURN WITH THE eagerly anticipated American rescue column drew all of Schloss Itter’s French VIPs out of the safety of the Great Hall, across the walled terrace, and down the steps to the courtyard with smiles on their faces, cheers in their throats, and bottles of wine in their hands. That initial enthusiasm quickly dimmed, however, when they realized the limited extent of the relief force. Lee’s assurances hours earlier that he would return with “the cavalry” had conjured in their minds images of a column of armor supported by masses of heavily armed soldiers; what they got instead was a single, somewhat shopworn tank, seven Americans, and, to the former prisoners’ chagrin, more armed Germans. The French, to put it mildly, were decidedly unimpressed.
The former captives’ mood darkened even more when they heard Lee telling Schrader—who’d returned to the castle in full uniform—about the Waffen-SS roadblock the relief force had encountered on the Ittererstrasse just north of Hopfgarten. The French knew there were hostile units in the area, of course—Blechschmidt had told them just that when he and his men had arrived earlier—but the fact that there were German troops still willing to confront American armor was a chilling reminder that the war was most certainly not yet over. Their peace of mind would have been further undermined had the French heard what Schrader reported to Lee: pulling the tanker to one side, the Waffen-SS man told him quietly that as Blechschmidt was deploying his handful of men along the castle’s upper floors earlier in the afternoon, he’d seen hostile troops moving toward the schloss from the north, west, and south. Even more ominous, Schrader added, both he and the young Wehrmacht lieutenant had seen two Pak 40 antitank guns37 being moved into positions from which they could fire toward the castle: one just inside the tree line on a parallel ridge directly east of the schloss and the other in a small clearing on the west bank of the Brixentaler Ache, southwest of the schloss.
Aware that the tactical situation had worsened significantly in just the past few hours and that an attack could come at any minute, Lee quickly began issuing orders. His first was directed at the expectant French, whom he told to take Schrader’s wife and children and the female number prisoners and seek shelter in the basement storerooms. His order was greeted by an immediate outburst of Gallic outrage—Reynaud, Daladier, and the other men loudly protesting that they would rather die on the parapets than cower in the cellars. Lee cut off the dissent with a curt wave of his hand, reminding the Frenchmen that he was in sole command and adding that they wouldn’t be any good to postwar France if they got themselves killed.
As the French former prisoners moved off, the men still grumbling, Lee motioned Basse, Gangl, Schrader, Dietrich, Höckel, and Blechschmidt together and quickly outlined his strategy. Since there weren’t enough vehicles to move everyone in the castle back to Kufstein and given that the immediate area seemed to be crawling with enemy troops anyway, they would stay put, defend Schloss Itter, and wait to be relieved by the advancing 142nd Infantry. Lee would remain in overall command of the castle’s ad hoc garrison—which now included ten Americans, one Waffen-SS man, and fourteen Wehrmacht soldiers—with Basse, Schrader, and Gangl acting as his lieutenants.
Though the defenders were likely to be hugely outnumbered, Lee said, they had several factors working in their favor. First, they were relatively well armed: In addition to Kar-98 and M1 Garand rifles, they had MP-40 and M3 submachine guns, Pollock’s BAR, German and American pistols and hand grenades, and, most important, the .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns and 76mm cannon on Besotten Jenny. Second, Lee pointed out, attackers coming from the north, west, or south would have to surmount the encircling concertina-wire barriers and advance uphill while under intense fire from men atop the high walls on those sides. Third, enemy troops moving in from the east would be completely exposed as they negotiated the short schlossweg leading from the closest part of Itter village to the schloss, and in the final sixty feet of that distance the attackers would have to cross the narrow bridge over the ravine before even reaching the gatehouse. Fourth, Lee said, Schloss Itter’s thick stone walls would offer protection from small-arms fire and, to a lesser extent, reduce the effectiveness of enemy artillery. Fifth, and possibly most important, Lee pointed out that should attackers actually breach the outer ramparts, the defenders could resort to a positively medieval tactic: they’d shepherd the VIPs into the schloss’s tall central building—which Lee immediately dubbed the “keep”—and use the remaining ammunition, the grenades, and, if necessary, their fists to make the enemy fight for every stairwell, every hall, and every room.
Having laid out the battle plan, Lee set about deploying his troops. Gangl and Schrader would each be responsible for defending 180 degrees of the castle’s perimeter, Lee said, the former on the south and the latter on the north. Each man would have junior officers as “squad leaders”—Dietrich and Blechschmidt with Gangl, and Höckel with Schrader—and three of the Wehrmacht enlisted soldiers. The three remaining German troops would be posted as lookouts on the top floor of the keep. All of the friendly Germans would wear a strip of dark cloth tied around their left arms as a recognition symbol, Lee said. Until something happened, the troops could sleep and eat in shifts, but, when and if the shooting started, it would literally be every man to the battlements.
As the German officers moved off to take up their positions, Lee told Rushford, Szymczyk, Seiner, and McHaley to wait for him next to the tank, still parked a few feet in front of the gatehouse. Turning to Basse and the four GIs from the 142nd Infantry, Lee said they would be responsible for the area around the main gate, as well as for covering the approach road. Motioning them to follow, Lee trotted over to the gatehouse, where he and Basse did a quick recon as Pollock, Worsham, Petrukovich, and Sutton took up defensive positions just to the rear and on either side of Besotten Jenny.38
Exploring the thirty-foot-tall, forty-foot-wide gatehouse confirmed the two officers’ initial impression: while it certainly wasn’t impregnable, it would make a decent first line of defense against any direct enemy assault from the direction of the village or uphill from the south or east. Strongly built of stone, the structure had two sets of gates, one set at each end of the covered and arched central entryway. The outer gates had been installed as part of the schloss’s conversion into a prison; built of thick, rough timber and pierced on one side by a small inset door, they opened outward and could be secured from the inside by several large padlocks. Set about fifteen feet further back, the inner gates were made of massive, metal-banded timbers, opened inward, and could be both locked and barred. Moreover, the central entryway was flanked by two tall stone towers pierced at the top by firing loops39 that commanded the short access road. Two additional towers some forty feet to the rear of the gatehouse—on the west front corner of the schlosshof—overlooked the steep slopes leading up to the base of the castle’s massive southern and western foundation walls. The front guard towers and the gatehouse’s cramped upper floor were accessible via two small wooden doors, one to either side of the inner gates, while the schlosshof’s tower had its own gate and internal circular staircase.
There were two possible weak spots in the defenses in and around the gatehouse, Lee and Basse agreed. The first was the area directly beneath the arched supports of the small bridge on the access road. Enemy troops who were able to work their way through the ravine and reach the base of the stone pier closest to the main gate would be able to cut through the concertina-wire barriers where they butted up against the pier while remaining almost impossible to engage: none of the firing loops in the gatehouse offered a clear line of sight, and the sloping shoulders of the small promontory on which the castle stood would block fire from the main walls. The second weak spot was the small arched doorway—the sally port40—at the base of the south foundation wall, right below the schlosshof’s guard tower on the castle’s south side. The door opened directly onto the sloping hillside leading down into the ravine. Built of thick, metal-reinforced timber, it was heavily barred from within and was overlooked by firing loops in the guard towers, but the placement of the openings in the curving walls of the towers would make it difficult to actually bring a weapon to bear on the slightly recessed door. Worse, small trees and underbrush on the hillside leading to the sally port meant that enemy troops who cut through the concertina wire might be able to make it from the ravine to the door unseen and blow it open before they could be stopped.
Standing before the front gate, Lee realized that the position of Besotten Jenny also presented a tactical problem. While his foresight in backing the vehicle up the access road spanning the ravine and parking it immediately in front of the gatehouse both protected its more vulnerable rear end and made any enemy assault up the approach road virtually suicidal, it also severely restricted the field of fire of the turret-mounted 76mm cannon and coaxial and hull-mounted .30-caliber machine guns. In order to ensure that the tank could cover the sally port and engage targets to the west and south of the schloss in addition to those immediately to the east, Lee ordered Rushford to move Besotten Jenny further from the gatehouse and park it just on the castle side of the bridge. Its engine roaring and with greasy smoke belching from its exhausts, the Sherman moved slowly forward. When it came to a stop, Rushford and the other crewmen jumped down and trotted back to the gatehouse, each man carrying his personal gear, a .45-caliber M3 submachine gun, and as much ammunition as he could carry.
Lee knew that repositioning the tank was a calculated risk: while the move would significantly increase the field of fire for the Sherman’s main and secondary weapons, it would also make the vehicle more visible to antitank gunners and increase the likelihood of attack by infantrymen wielding the fearsome panzerfaust. To help prevent the latter, Lee told Basse to emplace one of the tank’s machine guns in the gatehouse’s small upper level. By kicking out some of the ceramic roof tiles, the defenders could create a firing position that would cover Besotten Jenny and also provide an elevated—if somewhat exposed—position from which to engage enemy troops attempting to move up the hillsides on either side of the bridge over the ravine. Though Lee would have preferred to use the tank’s Browning .50-caliber for the overwatch task, its size and weight would make it too unwieldy to use in the gatehouse’s cramped attic space. And of the tank’s two lighter and smaller .30-caliber machine guns, Lee and Basse agreed that it made more sense to remove and resite the assistant driver’s hull-mounted M1919A4 weapon: it had a more restricted arc of fire than the coaxial next to the main gun in the rotating turret and was easier to remove from its mount. Whistling to get McHaley’s attention, Basse told him to go back to the tank, dismount the bow .30-caliber, retrieve its stowed tripod, and take the weapon and several cans of ammunition to the top of the gatehouse. Turning toward Worsham, Basse told him to help McHaley emplace the weapon and then act as the young tanker’s assistant gunner.
Leaving Basse to deploy Pollock, Petrukovich, and Sutton as he saw fit, Lee moved over to where Rushford, Szymczyk, and Seiner were crouched just inside the first set of gates. Lee told them that while he realized that Besotten Jenny was in an exposed position, he wanted at least one of them in the buttoned-up vehicle at all times. Turning to Seiner, Lee said that, since there was virtually no chance they’d have to tangle with German armor, he wanted the Sherman’s 76mm gun loaded with a high-explosive shell, which would be far more effective against troops than an armor-piercing round.41 Finally, Lee said, at the first sign of a full-scale attack he wanted all three of them to get to Besotten Jenny as soon as possible; Basse would try to join them, but if the motor officer couldn’t make it out to the Sherman, the three enlisted men should keep it in action as long as they could.
With the defense of the gatehouse organized, Lee headed across the small courtyard toward the schlosshof, noting as he did that the wire-topped parapet walls on either side were not tall enough to offer complete protection from incoming fire. Making a mental note to remind everyone that in the event of a firefight they’d have to crouch when traversing the lower courtyard and the equally exposed terrace between the schlosshof and the main building, Lee hurried toward the Great Hall. It was just after nine thirty, the sun was starting to set, and he wanted to ensure that all the “tame Krauts” were in position and alert before nightfall.
As he crossed the terrace, Lee was pleased to see that Gangl had placed two of his men behind a low wall that allowed them to cover both the castle’s main entryway and the stairway leading up from the front courtyard. The soldiers saluted the American officer as he walked past them into the Great Hall, where Lee found Gangl and Schrader waiting for him. Together, the three men set off to inspect the defenses. Then it was down to the cellars to look in on the VIPs and Schrader’s family, followed by a drawn-out strategy session among Lee, Gangl, and Schrader that evolved into a remarkably open discussion of the war and the uncertainties of the coming peace. It must have been a truly odd sight: the brash tanker from upstate New York and two highly decorated German officers, sitting around a table in the candlelit great hall of a medieval castle, speaking quietly of their experiences in a conflict that each man fervently hoped would end within hours.
Finally, talked out, the enemies-turned-allies went in search of places to catch a few hours’ sleep. Lee ended up in what had until recently been the SS guards’ dormitory on the first floor of the keep. Setting his helmet and M3 submachine gun on a bedside table, he picked one of the narrow beds at random and lay down on the bare mattress still wearing his boots and pistol belt. His foresight would soon be validated, for it would be a very short night.
Sited atop a hill that commands the entrance to Austria’s Brixental Valley, Schloss Itter is first mentioned in the historical record in 1241. Damaged, rebuilt, and enlarged over the centuries, before its 1941 conversion into a VIP prison it had served successively as a military fortress, a private home, and a boutique hotel. (Author’s collection)
German police march into Tyrol following Germany’s March 12, 1938, annexation of Austria. The Anschluss led directly to Schloss Itter’s transformation from fairytale castle and hotel into something decidedly more sinister. (National Archives)
The network of “special prisons” maintained by the Nazis grew from Adolf Hitler’s belief that important prisoners might prove of value in negotiations with the Allies. Ehrenhäftlinge—honor prisoners—were housed in reasonably good conditions in castles, hotels, and similar facilities throughout the Reich, though their continued good health relied solely on the führer’s whim. (National Archives)
Though Hitler fully supported the work of the Schloss Itter–based “Alliance for Combating the Dangers of Tobacco,” Reichsführer der SS Heinrich Himmler believed the Austrian castle was ideal for more nefarious purposes. On November 23, 1942, he got Hitler to sign an order to begin the process of acquiring the castle outright for “special SS use,” and Schloss Itter was officially requisitioned by the SS in February 1943. (National Archives)
SS Major General Theodor Eicke, the director of the Nazis’ concentration camp system and originator of the “inflexible harshness” doctrine applied to KZ prisoners, directed that Sebastian Wimmer and the commanders of other honor prisoners’ facilities treat their prisoners well but stand ready to execute the VIPs at a moment’s notice, without compunction and without remorse. (National Archives)
Plans for Schloss Itter’s conversion from an antismoking administrative center into a high-security honor prisoner facility were apparently overseen by no less a personage than Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister of armaments and war production. (National Archives)
By the time he arrived at Schloss Itter, General Maurice Gamelin had spent more than fifty of his seventy-one years as an officer in his nation’s army. His career was marred, however, when his poor response to Germany’s May 1940 invasion of France led Prime Minster Paul Reynaud to replace him as supreme military commander with archrival General Maxime Weygand. (National Archives)
Stocky, barrel-chested, and pugnacious, sixty-one-year-old Édouard Daladier was the youngest of the three VIPs whose arrival at Schloss Itter on May 2, 1943, marked the castle’s official opening as a prison. (National Archives)
Seen here during a prewar visit to the United States, labor leader Léon Jouhaux and his colleague and longtime companion Augusta Bruchlen both ended up imprisoned in Schloss Itter; Bruchlen’s incarceration in the Tyrolean fortress was voluntary, Jouhaux’s was not. (National Archives)
Sent to Schloss Itter in May 1943, Paul Reynaud was horrified to discover that his arch political rival Édouard Daladier had preceded him but was relieved to find conditions at the castle far better than those he’d experienced at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. (National Archives)
Though Jean Borotra—the famed “Bounding Basque”—willingly joined Marshal Philippe Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy government following France’s capitulation, the tennis star’s less-than-discrete disdain for the Nazis led to his dismissal and ultimate arrest. Borotra encountered Paul Reynaud at Sachsenhausen, and the two remained friends at Schloss Itter despite their differing politics. (National Archives)
Upon his December 1943 arrival at Schloss Itter, General Maxime Weygand encountered immediate vituperation from Paul Reynaud and only less obvious hostility from Maurice Gamelin; the former considered Weygand a traitor to France, and the latter burned with professional embarrassment. (National Archives)
Though Michel Clemenceau had been a longtime admirer of Pétain, he became an outspoken critic of what he saw as the aged general’s willingness to collaborate with the Germans. Clemenceau’s views quickly drew the attention of the Gestapo, and he was arrested in May 1943. His calm self-possession upon arrival at Schloss Itter prompted Reynaud to note that the castle’s other VIP prisoners were reassured by Clemenceau’s “unshakable confidence.” (National Archives)
Until his arrest by the Gestapo in 1943, François de La Rocque had been a key member of the Vichy government, a confidant of Pétain, and a man widely viewed as one of France’s leading fascists. His arrival at Schloss Itter was thus a surprise to the other VIP prisoners, who would have been further astounded to learn that de La Rocque led a resistance movement that provided valuable information to British intelligence. (National Archives)
SS-Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Eduard Weiter, the last commandant of Dachau, arrived at Schloss Itter with his retinue on April 30, 1945. His suicide just 48 hours later prompted Sebastian Wimmer and his troops to abandon the castle and its VIP prisoners. (National Archives)
During his four years at Vermont’s Norwich University, John Carey Lee Jr. was known for both his football skills and his equestrian abilities and is seen here following his May 11, 1942, graduation and commissioning as a second lieutenant of cavalry. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Upon his graduation from Norwich, Lee received orders to attend the basic armor officer course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and lingered in New York only long enough to marry a woman named Virginia, the first of his eventual three wives. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Taken about two months before the battle at Schloss Itter, this image depicts Company B commander Jack Lee (at right) with, from left, 2nd Lieutenant John Powell, one of Lee’s platoon leaders, and 1st Lieutenant Harry Basse, Company B’s motor officer and Lee’s closest friend in the unit. Within weeks Powell was dead and Lee and Basse had both been lightly wounded. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Following the 23rd Tank Battalion’s mauling during the January 1945 Battle of Herrlisheim, Jack Lee’s Company B was reequipped with the improved M4A3(76)W version of the Sherman tank. Also referred to as the M4A3E8, the variant was widely known as the “Easy Eight.” By the time of the Schloss Itter mission, the second Besotten Jenny would have appeared virtually identical to the well-worn 10th Armored Division vehicle shown here. (U.S. Army photo, courtesy Steven Zaloga)
A tanker stows main-gun rounds in the “wet” ammunition-stowage racks in the floor of an “Easy Eight.” The system was intended to prevent the Sherman’s 76mm rounds from detonating if the tank’s hull was breeched by enemy fire. It was a feature that would prove extremely important for Besotten Jenny during the battle for Schloss Itter. (U.S. Army photo courtesy Steven Zaloga)
Black soldiers of Company D, 17th Armored Infantry Battalion, clear German civilians from a recently captured town. Though most secondhand accounts of the Schloss Itter action state that Jack Lee tapped several Company D troops to take part in the rescue mission, the author’s research has shown that the four U.S. infantrymen who rode aboard Lee’s tank and helped defend the castle were actually drawn from the all-white 2nd Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment. (U.S. Army photo courtesy Steven Zaloga)
Soldiers of the crack 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Götz von Berlichingen” take a break from the intense hedgerow fighting that followed the June 1944 Allied landing in Normandy. Less than a year later elements of the Waffen-SS unit would besiege Schloss Itter. (National Archives)
A career soldier three times decorated for bravery in combat against his nation’s enemies, Wehrmacht Major Josef “Sepp” Gangl willingly chose to put his life in even more direct peril in order to help Jack Lee save a querulous group of French VIPs locked away in a fairytale Austrian castle. (National Archives)
For most of his military career the personification of the dedicated Waffen-SS officer, Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader nonetheless threw in his lot with Lee, Gangl, and Schloss Itter’s French prisoners. (National Archives courtesy John Moore)
Maj. John T. Kramers (seen here in a postwar photo), a German-speaking former artilleryman assigned to the 103rd Infantry Division’s military-government section, was unaware of Jack Lee’s rescue force and launched his own effort to secure the French VIPs at Schloss Itter. (Photo courtesy John T. Kramers)
A Seventh Army military policeman chats with (from left), Léon Jouhaux, François de La Rocque, Jean Borotra, and Marcel Granger following their rescue. (National Archives)
Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe, commander of the 103rd Infantry Division, poses for a photo at his Innsbruck headquarters with former Schloss Itter honor prisoners (from left) Paul Reynaud, Marie-Renée-Joséphine Weygand, Maurice Gamelin, Édouard Daladier, and Maxime Weygand. (National Archives)
Though Jack Lee is smiling in this 1947 photo taken outside Hand’s Inn in Norwich, NY, where he found employment after his plans for a profootball career fell through, his life went into a slow but seemingly inexorable downward spiral after World War II. The hero of “The Last Battle” died on Jan. 15, 1973, at the age of 54. (Photo courtesy James I. Dunne)