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Oscar Drake
One day 3rd Battalion troops had overrun a hamlet and a few men had just thrown
a long rope up and across the telephone wires between poles when Lt Drake had a
brainstorm. "Vait! Don't pull 'em down yet." He found a telephone at the post office and
called the switchboard at the next village. "This is Oberleutenant Drake," he said in
broken French with a German accent. "I have lost contact with my company. Are there
any Wehrmacht troops in your village? ... What, no? Alas, I must try somewhere else. "
Hanging up the phone, Drake turned to the company commander. "Nobody there.
You can go straight on in!"
Months later, in bitterly cold February weather, we found ourselves up against the
Siegfried Line. Located in hilly country, it was an irregular line several kilometers deep.
It consisted of thick concrete pillboxes dug into the hillsides, hellishly difficult to
approach because they were carefully staggered in depth and situated to cover each other
by fire. One moonless night Lt Drake crept forward in the dark to find out what he could
see, hear, or feel. What he felt was a number of rough hands which grabbed him and
hustled him through a concealed door and into one of the pillboxes, where he was
relieved of his carbine.
"Herr Hauptmann!" cried one of his captors (in German), "we have a prisoner
who is an American officer!"
Drake was glancing around the dimly lit interior looking for useful information,
when the German's words caught his attention. "Prisoner, hell!" he said in polished
Hochdeutsch, "I am an emissary, come to save your lives. You are all but surrounded and
cut off: your position is hopeless. This is your last chance. If right after daylight you and
your company will come out of your pillboxes with your hands up, you will all be spared,
well fed, and sent to a comfortable prisoner of war camp."
"Ridiculous!" answered the German captain. "No man of honor would agree to
that!"
"All right, then!" snapped Drake. "I'll go back and tell my commander." He
picked up his carbine, walked out of the pillbox, staggered back to the 3rd Battalion CP,
and collapsed.
Three days later, our troops managed to infiltrate the line and blow open the
pillboxes with satchel charges. They captured the German captain with what was left of
his company.
When the captain was brought to Drake for interrogation, he grinned ruefully. "In
a way, it's a comfort to be captured," he confided. "I was in deep trouble for letting you
get away!"
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