By: Marc Liebman, Captain (USN retired)
Time Period: World War II, Korean War
Born in 1902, Aaron Bank traveled extensively as a young man through Europe and became fluent in German and French. When Germany invaded Poland to start World War II, he was 37 and volunteered to serve. Bank went through Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. His language proficiency led the Army to send the Bank to the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.).
After training on how to conduct clandestine operations in the U.S. and U.K., Bank parachuted into the Lozère area of southern France on July 31st, 1944, as the leader of the three-man Jedburgh team code-named Packard. Bank’s mission was to link up with the French resistance and harass the German Army as it tried to stop the advancing allies moving north after the invasion of Southern France.
Bank knew if he was captured, the Gestapo would torture and kill him. His team, aided by French partisans, harassed the Germans until he was pulled out in late 1944.
Bank’s next assignment came directly from the head of the O.S.S. General William Donovan, told one of his subordinates, “Tell Bank to get Hitler.” As the leader of Operation Iron Cross, Bank recruited a team of anti-Nazis and former German soldiers who would parachute into Germany and kill Adolph Hitler if/when he fled to his redoubt in Berchtesgaden. The mission was canceled just after the team boarded its airplane to fly into Bavaria in late April 1945.
With the war over in Germany, Bank was sent to French Indochina to lead teams that rescued French and other Europeans held prisoner by the Japanese. While there, Bank worked with Ho Chi Minh, who was fighting the Vietnamese, and encouraged him to contact the U.S. State Department and ask for help rebuilding his country.
Minh sent three different letters to the U.S. government, which were delivered via diplomatic channels. Each request was either ignored or rebuffed as both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations supported the French’s efforts to regain control of Indochina.
After the war, Bank remained in the Army and served in intelligence billets in Europe before being sent to Korea as the executive officer of the 187th Regimental Combat Team which fought in several actions while he was there. Rotated back to the U.S., Bank’s next assignment was in the Chief of Special Operations Branch of the Army’s Office of Psychological Warfare where he was ordered to “staff and gain approval for an O.S.S. Jedburg style team.”
In 1952, the Army approved and funded a 2,500-man unit. Its mission was “to infiltrate by land, sea or air deep into enemy occupied territory and organize the resistance guerrilla potential to conduct Special Forces operations with the emphasis on guerrilla training.”
Bank and seven others started the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Fort Bragg, NC, on June 19th, 1952. Within two years, the 10th was manned and operational. After the Berlin uprising in 1953, the 10th was split into two units, the 10th and the 77th and expanded in size. The structure, training, tactics, and employment of Green Beret A Teams Bank outlined in 1952 are still used today. Colonel Bank retired in 1958.
After Bank left the Army, President Kennedy authorized the wearing of the “beret, man’s, wool, rifle green, Army shade 297.” Since then, the Army Special Forces have been known as the Green Berets.
In his retirement, Bank wrote two books. One was the story of his career, From O.S.S. to Green Berets. The other was a novel called Iron Cross that Ethan Nathanson, author of the novel The Dirty Dozen, helped him write.
This quiet warrior didn’t stop serving his country after he left the Army. Horrified at the lack of security at the San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California near where he lived, Bank lobbied for change. Twice, he had to publicly expose the vulnerability of the plant to sabotage. Finally, in 1974, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acted on his recommendations for all nuclear power plants in the U.S.
Bank died in 2004 at the age of 101. Rest in peace, Aaron Bank. You served your country well.
Marc Liebman is a retired Navy Captain and Naval Aviator who as a helicopter pilot, flew combat search and rescue and special operations missions. He is a combat veteran of Vietnam and Desert Shield/Storm spent 26 years in the Navy. Today, he is an award-winning author with 14 books, all of whom have Jewish Naval officers as the main character. In each novel, the character must deal with some aspect of anti-semitism.
Originally published in the Tishrei 2024/5785 issue of The Jewish American Warrior.
