Peter Ortiz: The WWII Marine Who Foreshadowed Modern-Day Special Forces

In 2017, journalist Katie Sanders discovered an episode of a radio program called This Is Your Life. It was a scratchy recording from 1949, and she heard the voice of 2nd Lt. Murray Simon, her grandfather, for the first time. In the episode, Murray was reunited with a man named Peter Ortiz, who had rescued him after his plane crashed over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. Ortiz became one of the most decorated Marine officers of World War II, undertaking missions now handled by units like the Navy SEALs and Green Berets. Katie and Nicholas Reynolds, a former CIA historian, went on to write Ortiz's War.

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