Nicholas Reynolds & Katie Sanders: The Untold Story of the Allies’ Secret Weapon in Occupied France

Peter J. Ortiz’s path to becoming the most battle-decorated member of America’s first spy agency—and one of the most decorated Marines of World War II—was unlike any other. Born in New York and raised between California and France, he would have stints as a merchant seaman, dude ranch manager, race car driver, lion tamer, circus performer, and Hollywood stuntman and actor. As a teenager, Ortiz ran away from boarding school in France to join the French Foreign Legion. He first experienced combat in North Africa against tribesmen in the Sahara. Fighting on the front lines against the Germans in 1940, he was badly wounded and captured. He repeatedly escaped, one time fleeing a hospital train after assuming the identity of a dead soldier.

Docking in the US the day after Pearl Harbor, Ortiz enlisted in the Marine Corps. As someone who could speak French like a native–and get by in Arabic, German, and Spanish–the dashing former Legionnaire immediately stood out. Instead of being deployed to the Pacific like the majority of Marines, Ortiz was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—America’s World War II forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency—for special operations in North Africa and Europe.

In 1944, Ortiz parachuted into France on two top-secret inter-Allied missions. Operating deep behind enemy lines, he traveled throughout Southeastern France—at times donning his Marine uniform—arming and training the Maquis, blowing up Nazi infrastructure, and aiding downed Allied airmen. Rotating his many covers—including as a fashion designer and minor Vichy government official—he infiltrated Nazi gatherings and funneled intelligence about German positions back to OSS London ahead of D-Day. By the time he escaped across the Pyrenees, he was among the Gestapo’s most wanted. 

Two months after the Normandy landings, Ortiz jumped back into the French Alps, this time with a team of Americans he recruited for “Le Grand Parachutage,” a drop that sent more than 150 tons of supplies raining down to the Maquis to fight the Axis. When his six-man patrol was surrounded by more than one hundred Germans at the village of Centron, Ortiz faced a choice: fight the enemy or save the village from Nazi annihilation.

A rare Marine in the European Theater, he received two Navy Crosses. Ortiz’s story—an untold corner of World War II history—is one of extraordinary courage, resistance, and self-sacrifice.

About the Authors

Katie S. Sanders is an award-winning journalist who often writes about World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and intergenerational connections. After discovering that her late grandfather—a Jewish-American pilot shot down on a secret mission over France a month before D-Day—was rescued by legendary OSS Marine Col. Peter Ortiz, she teamed up with Nicholas Reynolds to co-author Ortiz’s War. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she has written for National Geographic, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian, New York Magazine, Philadelphia, Marie Claire, Glamour, TIME, and Insider. She lives in Brookline, MA with her husband and sons.

Nicholas Reynolds has worked in modern history off and on for 40 years. After earning a PhD from Oxford University, he joined the Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as an official historian. As a colonel in the Reserves, he was Officer in Charge of Field History, deploying historians around the world to capture history as it was being made. For many years, he worked at the CIA, most recently as the historian for the CIA Museum. He is the author of the bestselling Hemingway biography Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy and of Need To Know: WWII and the Rise of American Intelligence, which The New Yorker named among the "Best Books of 2022." He has taught at the Naval War College, Johns Hopkins University, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He lives with his wife and a rescue Havanese in Northern Virginia.