James Shipman - Task Force Baum

General Patton was questioned carefully by the press when news leaked that his son-in-law had been in the camp. The general denied any pre-knowledge and showed his official and personal journals as proof. General Dwight Eisenhower also admonished Patton over the raid. General Patton later said that Task Force Baum was one of the greatest mistakes of the war, and that he should have sent the entire Combat Command Force instead of a mere reinforced company.

The secret of Patton’s knowledge was kept for another twenty years, despite numerous individuals having knowledge of the truth. This was a different time.

Twenty-five men were killed under Baum’s command, and another thirty-two, including Baum himself, were wounded. All of the vehicles were destroyed, and the vast majority of the rest of the command was immediately captured.

General George S. Patton is considered by many to be the greatest tank commander and tactical ground commander produced by the United States during World War II.

Patton gained valuable combat experience in tank combat during World War I, where Alexander Stiller served on his staff. In the years between the wars, Patton was a critical component in the US development of armored combat theory.

With the coming of the World War II, Patton commanded significant forces in North Africa and Sicily. After an infamous episode in which he slapped a soldier suffering from PTSD, Patton was removed from command, but he served in a vital role as the commander of a “ghost” army allegedly preparing for an invasion across the narrow portion of the English Channel at the Pas-de-Calais.

Installed in command of the 3rd Army after the actual invasion of Normandy in the summer of 1944, Patton streamed through France and southern Germany. He was pivotal in the reversal of German fortunes at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

Patton ordered Task Force Baum in late March 1945, only six weeks short of the end of the war in Europe. After the war, he was assigned to command the military district in Bavaria, where he was killed in an automobile accident.

Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams was in charge of Combat Command B of the 4th Armored Division in March 1945. When Abrams received the orders from Patton to form a task force to go after Oflag XIII, he lobbied hard to send the entire combat command. Patton refused, and Task Force Baum went forward with a few hundred men instead of well over a thousand.

Abrams was a top commander. Patton said of him, “I’m supposed to be the best tank commander in the Army, but I have one peer—Abe Abrams. He’s the world champion.”

After the war, Abrams served in staff positions before serving in Korea. Abrams was promoted to full general in 1964 and played a prominent role in the Vietnam War. He was the proponent of the “Hearts and Minds” strategy. Abrams was the chief of staff of the US Army from 1972 until his death. He was instrumental in the creation of the Rangers. He died in 1974 at just 59 years old.

Captain Abraham Baum was the commander of the task force that carried his name. He was an officer under Creighton Abrams in Combat Command B. Baum was a respected combat commander and was selected by Abrams because of his abilities and experience to lead the desperate raid behind enemy lines.

Baum carried out a brilliant expedition, despite the horribly under-armed and undermanned mission. He carried the forces all the way to the camp, despite a lack of intelligence and an imperfect knowledge of the terrain and road system. He was captured along with the rest of the raid survivors on March 28, 1945.

Patton had promised that Baum would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor if he was successful. However, any award of the top US medal requires a full investigation of the facts. Likely because of the secret element of the mission, Patton instead awarded Baum the Distinguished Service Medal.

Baum was ultimately promoted to the rank of major, and he retired to become a garment manufacturer and salesman. He wrote a non-fiction narrative of the raid called Raid!: The Untold Story of Patton’s Secret Mission . This book was published in 1981 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons of New York.

Baum passed away at age 91.

Second Lieutenant William J. Nutto was commander of a company of Sherman tanks of the 37th Battalion, 4th Armored Division.

Nutto commanded the medium tank element of Task Force Baum, with 59 men and 10 M4A3 Sherman tanks. He was wounded at Gemünden but bravely continued to serve throughout the expedition, including hours of start-and-stop groping in the darkness when the force attempted to escape Oflag XIII through the winding hills near Hammelburg. Nutto’s tank was ambushed, and he was captured when the force was attempting to find an escape route near Höllrich.

William Nutto became an attorney in Corpus Christi, Texas, after the war.

Lieutenant Colonel John Waters was the son-in-law of George Patton, having married Beatrice Patton in 1934. Waters attended West Point, graduating in 1931. He served in North Africa, where his force was captured by German forces at the city of Sidi Bou Zid, in Tunisia. Waters was in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland when the installation was evacuated before the oncoming Russian invasion. Waters and others were marched in a tortuous journey across Germany to Oflag XIII at Hammelburg in January 1945. He became the camp’s executive officer under Colonel Paul Goode.

Waters had no idea that Patton had sent a raid to rescue him. When Task Force Baum attacked the camp itself, Waters led a small group under a flag of truce to try to compel the German forces to surrender. Badly wounded by a German guard, he underwent lifesaving surgery by a Serbian doctor (there was a large Serbian POW camp attached to Oflag XIII).

After the war, Waters became the cadet commander at West Point. He served in Korea and eventually commanded the 4th Armored Division, the V Corps, and the Fifth US Army. He was promoted to full general (four-star general). He retired in 1966. Waters died in 1989.

Major Alexander Stiller was a staff member of Patton’s who had served with the general during World War I, before returning to Texas and working as a Texas Ranger. Stiller rejoined Patton to serve with him throughout World War II.

The major was sent on Task Force Baum for the express purpose of finding John Waters. He knew the secret and refused to reveal this information, even after Patton died in 1945. Stiller was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism during the raid on Hammelburg.

Hauptmann (Captain) Richard Koehl was a Catholic priest who commanded an anti-tank armored company during World War II. His force tracked Task Force Baum and engaged it on several occasions, including the final attack on Hill 427.

Although the death of his sister was fictitious, Task Force Baum did gun down a convoy of women antiaircraft troops on the way in to the Oflag, sickening many of the GIs. Koehl’s experiences mirror the feelings of so many Germans at this desperate point of the war: a desire for one last victory mixed with a wish for safety and a hopelessness about the future.

Sergeant Knorr also was a real character, a skulking and dangerous guard nicknamed “the Ferret.”

Colonel Hoepple, commander of the German forces around Oflag XIII, orchestrated the destruction of Task Force Baum. He committed suicide shortly thereafter.

Captain Jim Curtis is a fictitious character, but his experience certainly was not. Oflag XIII was filled with officers from the 106th Division, a fresh force with no combat experience that was overrun by a massive German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. The men who survived and were taken to POW camps were angry and disillusioned, feeling they’d been betrayed by their commanders, who had not prepared them for the attack. They shared a collective frustration that they had trained for combat for years and then, amid all the massive American victories in the summer and fall of 1944, somehow had been placed in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time and suffered a crushing defeat and humiliation during their first trial by arms.