Among the Firsts: Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard L. Bolland's Unconventional War

D-Day 82nd Airborne Paratrooper, OSS Special Forces Commander of Operation Rype

Matthew T Bolland

• Editorial: Casemate
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781636241227
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Biografías militares

In his own words, the war of the doubly pioneering Lt Col Gerhard L. Bolland—82nd Airborne paratrooper on D-Day and senior OSS field operative on Operation Rype. Unconventional warfare tactics can have a considerable effect on the outcome of any war. During World War II, the United States government developed and employed two new methods of fighting. The first was the development of "paratroop" units, as they were first called. The second was the formation of a covert and sabotage operations branch called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Lt. Colonel Bolland was involved in both of these "firsts." During the D-Day invasion he parachuted behind enemy lines, jumping out of the 82nd Airborne lead aircraft with General James Gavin. After fighting with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment for thirty-three days straight, he returned to England and became involved with the OSS Scandinavian Section. He served as Field Commander for their Operation, code named Rype. This was the only American military undertaking, albeit covert, in Norway during the entire course of the war. As a young boy growing up in rural western Minnesota, Bolland got his military start with the Minnesota National Guard, before being accepted to West Point, solely on merit. His military career lasted seventeen years. Lt. Colonel Bolland ended up with numerous decorations including the Norwegian Liberation Medal and Citation, the Bronze Star for valor, the French Fouragerre of Croix de Guerre with Palms and posthumously the Congressional Gold medal awarded to the OSS Society on behalf of all former OSS members that served during the war. His story reveals the struggles, successes, failures and ultimate victories, detailing what went right and what went wrong with these new unconventional methods of fighting.

CHAPTER 1

A Changing Scene

Even before the war began, and after Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, there were events on the world stage warning Germany was heading towards a major conflict. On May 20 of the same year, Sir William Stephenson witnessed the Nazi burning of books. In August, Winston Churchill was jeered when he warned of Germany’s rearming. April 1, 1934, saw Hitler’s organized persecution of the Jews begin. Benito Mussolini’s Italian fascist forces then invaded Abyssinia on October 2, 1935. On March 7, 1936, Germany began its occupation of the Rhineland and on October 25 the Rome–Berlin Axis was established. In November 1937, Stephenson was able to obtain a copy of German High Command secret briefings revealing plans for the conquest of Europe and control of the British Empire. Then, of course, on March 11, 1938, Germany marched into Austria.

World War II was the biggest and deadliest war in history; a global military conflict fought between the Allied powers of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, along with other countries, against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. More than 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, lost their lives.

It officially began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. On September 3, Britain, France, and the members of the Commonwealth declared war on Germany. They could not help Poland much and only sent a small French army to attack Germany from the west. Soon afterwards, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and, by September 17, Poland was divided.

Germany then signed an agreement to work with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union forced the Baltic countries to keep Soviet soldiers in their territories. Finland did not accept the Soviet call for its land, so it was attacked in November 1939. France and Britain had thought the Soviet Union might enter the war on the side of Germany. As a result, they were successful in driving the Soviet Union out of the League of Nations. After Poland was defeated, British soldiers were sent to the Continent. Initially, there were no big battles between the two sides. Then, in April 1940, Germany decided to attack Norway and Denmark in order make it safer to transport iron ore from Sweden. The British and French sent forces to counter the German occupation but had to leave when Germany invaded France. On May 10, Germany invaded France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg and quickly defeated them by using blitzkrieg tactics. The British were forced to retreat from mainland Europe at Dunkirk. On June 10, Italy invaded France, declaring war on France and the United Kingdom. Soon after, France was divided into occupation zones. One was directly controlled by Germany and Italy, and the other was unoccupied and known as Vichy France. This was the government set up by the Germans in southern France in 1940. It was led by Philippe Pétain, notable for helping to win World War I. The Vichy Government, a satellite state of Germany, controlled the southern half of France until 1942. The Germans ran the northern half.

Thus, by mid-1940, it became apparent Hitler’s scheme of world domination would be carried out by terror, deceit and conquest. It was undeniably underway. Roosevelt recognized that, if Hitler could conquer embattled Britain, this would eventually lead to an attack upon the United States. The British Security Coordination, a relatively innocuous sounding organization headquartered in New York, was, in fact, a hub for all branches of British Intelligence and supplied Roosevelt with critical information.

By June 1940, the Soviet Union moved its soldiers into the Baltic States and took them, followed by Bessarabia and Romania. Although there had been some collaboration between the Soviet Union and Germany earlier, this made it serious. Later, when the two could not agree to work more closely together, relations became worse.

Then, on June 22, 1941, the European Axis countries turned against the Soviet Union. During the summer, the Axis quickly captured Ukraine and the Baltic regions from the Soviets. Britain and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance in July. Germany had now created an eastern battle front for itself. Although there was great progress in the previous two months, when winter arrived, the tired German army was forced to delay its attack just outside Moscow. It showed that the Axis had failed to secure its main targets, while the Soviet army was still not substantially weakened. This marked the end of the blitzkrieg stage of the war. Later on, with the impending D-Day invasion, Germany would battle on two fronts. The war dragged on for six bloody years until the Allies finally defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.

When Hitler invaded Norway, of the six army divisions Norway could mobilize, four were essentially destroyed; their soldiers either killed, wounded or imprisoned. This amounted to approximately fifty thousand men. All the towns of Østerdalen, Gudbrandsdalen and the northern Trondheim area were severely bombed and most of them were completely destroyed. Airfields, railroads, bridges, roads, and lines of communication also took tremendous tolls. These had been built with the blood, sweat and tears of the Norwegian people through a span of about a century.

***

Now to Lieutenant Colonel Bolland’s story. It goes like this.

Opening scene:

The timeline is rewound back to the United States a year after Pearl Harbor. Then Captain Bolland was taking a “get rich quick” course on “How to become a Battalion Commander and Staff Officer” in 13 weeks of accelerated training. Little did I realize this would be my first encounter with someone who had first-hand knowledge about the conditions in Norway.

Into sharp focus come the efforts of one Major Axel Petersen, a Norwegian. He was assigned the task of helping the U.S. Army develop equipment for use in the snow and cold of the mountains. My first meeting with him occurred in the Officers Mess at Fort Benning, Georgia, in January 1942. I noticed this lonely-looking major of the Norwegian Army having dinner a few tables from me. We were both alone so, having finished my entrée, I picked up my coffee cup and moved over to his table and introduced myself in Norwegian. This surprised him and the far-away look in his eyes faded into a pleasant smile. The patch spelled out “NORGE” on his tunic and the pips on his shoulders denoted the rank of major. This gave me a sense he had an adventurous tale to tell. He said, “I am Major Axel Petersen, just in from Camp Hale, Colorado, where I’ve been working up equipment for the 99th Mountain Battalion, special items such as ski equipment, rucksacks, parkas and the like.” Little did I know then that the equipment he had worked up would be playing a part in my operation three years later. He went on to explain how he escaped from Norway. He had skied deep into Russia, boarded the Trans-Siberian Railroad, proceeded by way of Japan, the Philippines, and eventually to our west coast, and then to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

We settled down into a real bull session about the conditions in Norway. Our conversation turned to the fate of the Norwegians under Nazi domination. At that time there was a question in many minds as to which way Norway would go, with Vidkun Quisling the traitor, or with the exiled King Haakon VII. He quickly dispelled any doubts I may have had. I listened to a long list of things the Germans had done and were doing to the intense displeasure, even hatred, of the populace as a whole. As he spoke, I could only agree that this was bad or that was bad. In fact, there was nothing the Germans had done or were doing that was good for the citizens. He convinced me of that. This went on for quite some time until suddenly his countenance became deadly serious and foreboding, almost emotional. His next statement did it. “Do you realize that in Norway today, you can’t even get a cup of coffee?” It couldn’t be! Denying Norwegians coffee was a cause célèbre if there ever was one. Norwegians the world over would now rally against the Germans. Anyone so stupid as to stop the coffee trade from South America to Norway had to lose the war. My reaction? How do you get into this war and quickly? Sign me up right now! Coffee, that’s just plain good ol’ Norwegian gasoline. Another cup and away you go! My Norwegian roots now kicked into high gear. Enough had been said. Bolland would like to go overseas immediately!

Fast forward to the East Coast where I found myself with 300 men, some from the 99th Battalion, in the pipeline of replacements leaving Boston and bound for Glastonbury, England. Glastonbury served as a replacement depot. The trip over was, for the most part, uneventful and crowded. We sailed on the British ship Cynthia which had some difficulty feeding us palatable rations. Many of us found ourselves trying our K-ration packets, although they were supposed to be our sustenance upon disembarking at the replacement depot. We were in a convoy. The monotony of the voyage was occasionally interrupted by a submarine scare followed by depth charge releases and explosions that sent up large spouts of water, hopefully fending off submarine attacks, real or imagined.

CHAPTER 2

The Making of a Paratrooper

Modern warfare had become three-dimensional. No longer would enemies be subverted on a flat battlefield. We would be the first to descend from the skies into any part of the interior of enemy-occupied territory in an effort to destroy its capabilities.

Before the Norwegian Special Operations Group (NORSO) and the Office of Strategic Service’s Operation Rype became a part of my military endeavors, I first saw action in France, dropping in behind enemy lines as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. We were the force needed to take the high ground during D-Day on June 6, 1944. Of course, before all of this, the military makes for a well-prepared soldier, especially those jumping from airplanes into battle behind enemy lines. Consequently “paratroops” were a little-known outfit and relatively new at the time to modern-day warfare.

My own paratrooper training began at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1942. Located just outside of Columbus, it is abundant with tall green pine trees, swamps, streams, and rivers. The only exception was the sand; hardly any grass at all, just sand. It seemed so out of place. There was also a place called Cactus Hill. It was appropriately named as some paratrooper trainees had the unfortunate luck of landing in it and being dragged by their chutes across its prickly terrain, adding further misery to the occasional broken legs, wrenched backs and sore muscles.

Fort Benning consisted of 180,000 acres of rolling pine-covered hills along the Chattahoochee River in western Georgia. It was called “the most complete Army Post in the continental United States” at the time. About a thousand new lieutenants were produced each week and shipped off to combat platoons at the front. They lived in small, unpainted barracks in orderly rows. There was also a large tent city set up on the west side. There were no glass windows in the barracks. Instead, large wooden shutters jutted out over screened openings and were let down during rainstorms. The buildings rested on short posts, or footings, and there were two steps up to a door located in the center at the front. If you were one of the lucky ones, you got assigned to a barrack that even had a door on the door opening. Two rows of barracks faced each other, creating a sort of street between the two. Located at one end were the mess halls, placed at right angles to the Company Street, forming a large “T.” The latrines were located at the other end, apart from the Company Street. Located further down the hill and closer to the blacktop road was the post exchange. Inside were “one-armed bandit” gambling machines where many a trainee frittered away their basic pay during leisure time.

Training began with the sergeant in command of our group spelling out some basic rules. “We’re going to do everything we can to make you quit the paratroops,” he said. “We’re going to be tough on everyone here. Don’t expect any sympathy from us.” He then briefed us on a few unwritten rules we were expected to follow while in camp. The cadre of sergeants were the ultimate bosses, law and order. No one was to question that. Rank meant nothing in jump school. Officers and regulars were mixed. In fact, most of the time we were stripped to the waist removing all evidence of official rank. At no time was a trooper allowed to sit down, lean against anything or stand in a resting position when he was outside the confines of his own barracks. In addition, no trooper was allowed to walk from one point to another unless ordered to do so. He must instead run, on double-time at that. This included falling out and into formation. He was only allowed two walking steps to get into ranks. Failure to do so meant an automatic 25 pushups the first time, 50 for the second, 75 the third, and so on.

Our first living quarters consisted of weather-beaten tents until we were assigned barracks. We unloaded our gear and then were marched around the camp and down the road overlooking the airfield.

The next morning we fell out at five o’clock and stripped down to the waist to begin our first day of training as paratroopers. This was to be our regular routine, wearing only jump boots and pants. It was still dark when we answered roll call. After everyone was accounted for, the process began to separate the men from the boys. The sergeant started us on a run with him setting the pace. We headed down the sandy road and onto the blacktop road towards the ferryboat landing on the Chattahoochee River. After a mile so or we were all expecting a quick break with the pace slowing to a march. Not so. This may be true in the regular infantry but not in paratrooper school. We made a wide circuit in the countryside before eventually heading back. The entire run that first day was six miles. I heard reports of men staggering and then passing out in the heat of the sun. The sergeants would order the men to pay no attention to them but keep going. Men behind them spread out on either si...