Vic Socotra

01 September 2009

Landing Party

(U-202 on the Surface, 1942)

The German School of Sabotage was called Quentz Farm, was under the direct control of the German Military Intelligence Service. It is about sixty kilometers from Berlin, close to Brandenburg, having been set up by German Military Intelligence, headed up by wily Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the kind of naval officer who never gave the “heil Hitler” salute if he could help it.

With the war formally declared, the Fuhrere ordered the school at Quentz to infiltrate the United States and destroy vital power plants, factories, and communications. Eight men were chosen, two of them naturalized American citizens, and six Germans who had at one time lived in the US. The selectees were given a crash course in tradecraft, and oriented in the delicate art of sabotage.

The two four man teams were to be transported to the east coast of the US by two submarines. Both of them were Type VIIC boats, the workhorse of the German undersea fleet. U-202, under the command of Kapitan-Lieutnant Heinz Linder, was to land a party of four V-mann (saboteurs) on Long Island. The other, U-584, Kapitan-Lieutnant Joachim Duker commanding, would take Edward J. Kerling, Herbert Haupt, Werner Thiel, and Herman Neubauer to the Florida coast and land near the exclusive beach resort of Ponte Vedre.

The team from U-202 was directed to destroy hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls that supplied the ALCOA aluminum plants, factories, and locks on the Ohio River. The U-584 group was tasked with blowing up the Pennsylvania Rail Road Station at Newark, a place I know well, and then attempt to destroy the New York City water supply on the way to St. Louis.

It was an ambitious plan.

Running on the surface at night and submerged during the day, the U-boats cross the Atlantic in less than two weeks.

They arrived in the waters off the designated landing zones within two days of one another. Onboard U-202, V-mann Richard Quiring summed it up this way:

“We came up on deck of the submarine and there were about fourteen members of the crew. There was a rubber boat tied to the side of the submarine with a line tied on the back of it. I think the reason for this line was because it was so foggy that they might not be able to find the submarine when they started back.”

“There were two sailors in the boat and the boat had regular oars. The boxes were already placed in the boat. Kapitan Linder wished us “good luck.” We stepped into the boat and started rowing for shore. I think we rowed for about ten or fifteen minutes. When we got to the surf it was pretty rough and when we got on the beach, I carried two of the boxes back up on the beach and then I changed clothes.”

“George said he was going out to look around. I forgot to say that when we left the submarine I had on a pair of blue swimming trunks with a white belt on under my uniform. After we got up on the beach, Pete came running back and said that George had met a watchman but that everything was all right - we were supposed to go ahead so we very hurriedly changed our clothes and I do not know whether we got all of it in the bag and one of them was supposed to take the bag back to the sailors to be taken back to the submarine, but I do not know whether they took them or not.”

“ We changed clothes and took the boxes a little further back on the beach and we had two trench shovels we were to use to bury these boxes which we had gotten from the submarine. These were short shovels about two feet long with a cross bar on them. I also buried the boxes and pretty soon George came up and we all left for the road.”

The watchman that George Dasch ran into was Punchy, also known as Seaman Duece John Cullen.

Punchy may have got that way from his boxing time. The Coast Guard, and the Navy, for that matter, was enamored of the idea that the sweet science of boxing would toughen up its recruits, and even hired the legendary pugilist Jack Dempsey to train Coast Guardsmen in training.

The concept lasted long after the war, and I recall learning of the astonishing power of the left hook from a rangy young man named John McClawhorn, from Albermarle, North Carolina.

I got my fill of those right then, on the first application. Punchy may have taken several dozen more than that, and may have been whistling as he walked on the hard sand near where the washing waves made it passable. You can imagine a six mile beach walk in the soft stuff in the middle of the dark night would be a real bitch.

Anyway, my pal tells me that the story in his family was that Punchy runs into these English-speaking guys coming ashore in a rubber boat the Atlantic surf on a lonely stretch of Amagansett beach.

Out of the foggy gloom one approaches him. Punchy waves his flashlight, the biggest weapon he has, and challenges the man. It is George Davis- actually George Dasch- who says “We are fishermen from Southampton, and we ran aground."

Punchy could see more close by in the fog, the smell of diesel fuel and the furious sound of a racing engine out at sea. Fishy yes. Fishermen, no, he thinks. One of the men comes close, speaking what he takes to be German.

Davis told him to "Shut Up, " making Punchy suspicious, and he suggests the group go with him to his Coast Guard Station.

Davis refused, naturally, and tells Punchy "I do not want to kill you." Instead, he offers Punchy a bribe from the wad of cash he is carrying to forget he has ever run into the team of four.

Cullen may have been punchy but he was no fool. He was outnumbered, and unarmed, and decided discretion was the better part of valor.

He accepts the money and helps to drag their rubber boat up the beach. They part friends, or so they think, and Punchy ambles off down the beach. The Germans head inland to find the Jamaica train station to get into the City.

As soon as Punchy gets out of sight, he starts running for the Amagansett Coast Guard Station, where he finds Boatswain's Mate Carl R. Jenette, who thinks at first Punchy might have been drinking. Then he sees the money, and calls the CO, Warrant Officer Warren Bains.

An armed party is quickly organized to interdict the German invaders, but by the time they get back to the beach, the saboteurs have caught a train, and Kapitan Linder has got the U-202 out of the sand and headed back toward deep water. All is still, but the Coasties find the boxes the Germans have left in the sand, and Punchy's story is about to take things to an entirely new level, the one that gets him the Legion of Merit.

The waters get much deeper then, but we will have to take a look at that tomorrow.

I will tell you now part of the secret. Richard Quirin, the man whose story I quoted above, is #274.

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