Leah Garrett - X Troop

Copyright 2021 by Leah Garrett

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

The Sweet Life by Peter Masters reprinted by permission of the Masters Family Collection.

Jacket photo: Group photo of X Troopers, with Geoff Broadman (center) holding tommy gun. Used by permission.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Garrett, Leah, 1966- author.

Title: X troop : the secret Jewish commandos of World War II / Leah Garrett.

Other titles: Jewish commandos of World War II

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020044747 (print) | LCCN 2020044748 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358172031 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358533306 | ISBN 9780358533399 | ISBN 9780358177425 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain. Combined Operations Command. Commando, 10th. No. 3 TroopBiography. | World War, 1939-1945Commando operationsGreat Britain. | World War, 19391945CampaignsEurope. | World War, 19391945Secret serviceGreat BritainBiography. | Masters, Peter, 19222005. | Gans, Manfred. | Anson, Colin Edward, 19222016. Classification: LCC D794.5 .G37 2021 (print) | LCC D794.5 (ebook) |

DDC 940.54/86410923924dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044747

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044748

Cover design by Martha Kennedy

Front cover photographs: courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (top); courtesy of the Broadman family (bottom)

Map by David Lindroth

Author photograph Deb Caponera / Hunter College

v1.0421

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE EXTRAORDINARY MEN OF X TROOP & THEIR FAMILIES

LIEUTENANT GEORGE LANE is in big trouble. His waterlogged Sten gun has jammed, and bullets from German rifles and MP40s are flying all around him. He is hiding in the surf next to beach obstacles made of thin iron girders. The Nazis are shooting blindly into the darkness while Lane and Captain Roy Wooldridge, an expert in mines, desperately seek cover. Its May 17, 1944, Ault, northern France, two hours after midnight, three weeks before D-Day.

Something has spooked the Germans, and Lane doesnt know whether they have been discovered and the mission compromised, or the bored guards are now simply letting off steam. He does know that if they are taken prisoner, it will mean almost certain death. Adolf Hitlers 1942 Kommandobefehl edict states that all captured Allied commandos are to be summarily executed.

The two men lie as still as possible on the beach, and after ten minutes the shooting stops. The British officers find their concealed rubber dinghy, which is miraculously unpunctured. They jump in, push into the waves, and start paddling out to sea, hoping to make it back to the motor torpedo boat from which they deployed.

They begin to think that they might just make it back from this mission, but after rowing frantically for twenty minutes, they are spotted by a German E-boat. A blinding spotlight turns on them, and a 37 mm flak cannon and machine guns are pointed at their torsos. Hnde hoch, Tommy! a Kriegsmarine lieutenant shouts.

Lane and Wooldridge have no choice but to surrender. Lane is thinking more about torture than the Kommandobefehl and summary execution. The Gestapo make everyone talk, he has been told.

Lane is not worried about giving up any details about D-Day. As a lowly lieutenant hes not privy to such operational information. He is concerned that the Germans will crack his cover story. And if they crack that, they might find out about his brother soldiers and their secret unit: X Troop.

The E-boat takes them ashore. Still in soaking-wet clothes, the prisoners are driven to a command post and put in two separate basement cells for a long, cold, hungry night. Desperate to escape from a likely firing squad, Lane manages to pick his doors lock with a piece of metal ripped from a floor pipe. As he steps out into the dark corridor, a guard yells at him to get back into his cell.

The next morning Lane and Wooldridge are driven to a village in the French countryside. They are wearing blindfolds, but Lanes has been fitted poorly and he is able to make a mental map of his bearings. They arrive at a place on the Seine River called Chateau de La Roche-Guyon, which has been turned into a Wehrmacht headquarters for Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel has chosen this spot because it lies neatly at the boundary between his two armies.

The British officers are separated. A German captain offers Lane something to drink and tells him that he should tidy himself up.

Lane asks why.

Because youre going to be interrogated by someone important, the German explains.

Lane washes his face, cleans his fingernails, and is led into a study.

There is a man at the fireplace with his back to him. He turns. Lane is stunned to discover that it is Field Marshal Rommel himself. Lane instinctively gives him the salute due a superior officer. Its an odd moment. Lane, like all the members of X Troop, is a fanatical anti-Nazi. His unit of Jewish commandos has been mostly recruited from German and Austrian escapees of the Nazi regime. This ragtag group includes a semiprofessional boxer; an Olympic water polo player; a previously Orthodox Jew obsessed with science; and painters, poets, athletes, and musicians. By this stage of the war, the summer of 1944, most of their relatives who werent able to escape have been murdered in the death camps. To protect themselves and any family members still alive, the men in X Troop have all taken on fake English names and identities. Lieutenant George Lane himself is Lanyi Gyorgy from Budapest, pretending to be a Welsh infantry officer. Hes lived in England for the past eight years; his English isnt bad, but his Welsh accent is terrible.

You realize that you are in a very tricky situation here, Lieutenant Lane? Field Marshal Rommel says through an interpreter.

I dont think so. I happen to be a POWtheres nothing tricky about that, Lane responds.

Well, my people seem to think that you are a common saboteur, Rommel says.

If the field marshal believed I was a common saboteur then I dont think he would have invited me for tea, Lane replies.

So you think this is a polite invitation?

Indeed I do and Im greatly honored by it, Lane answers, to a smile from the field marshal. The ice has been broken.

Rommels adjutant pours the tea.

So how is my friend General Montgomery? Rommel asks.

Unfortunately I dont know him personally, but as you know hes preparing the invasion, so I imagine youll see him very soon, Lane says.

Rommel asks Lane where he thinks the invasion might be. Lane explains that he is only a junior officer who is not privy to any of the invasion plans.

Rommel nods. Of course what you dont realize is that the greatest tragedy today is that you British and we Germans are not fighting side by side against the real enemy, Russia.

Lane knows he should keep his mouth shut, but he cant help himself and he says, Sir, how can the British and Germans fight side by side considering what we know about what the Nazis are doing to the Jews? No Englishman could ever tolerate such a thing.

Well, thats a political argument, and as a soldier you shouldnt be interested in politics at all, Rommel answers curtly.

Im sorry, sir, but its very important to us English, replies the Jewish refugee from Budapest.