He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book A Guest of the Reich: The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre’s Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany, and reported the following:Page 99 drops you down in a prisoner of war hospital in Limburg, Germany, about 45 miles northeast of Frankfurt, in October 1944. Major Maxwell Jerome Papurt, a U.S. counterintelligence officer, is being treated for his wounds. He was shot and captured the previous month with Gertrude Legendre, the protagonist of A Guest of the Reich, and two other Americans serving with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime espionage service and forerunner of the CIA.Learn more about A Guest of the Reich at the publisher's website.
Legendre – known as Gertie -- was the first American woman in uniform captured by the Nazis. Because of her wealthy background and elite connections – Gertie knew many senior military men, including Gen. George Patton -- she became a prisoner of special interest to the Germans and was transferred to the Gestapo for possible exploitation as a propaganda tool. Gertie was shuttled between interrogation centers, including Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, Nazi villas, hotels and private homes, all the while witnessing the collapse of Hitler’s Reich as no other American did. In March 1945, she narrowly escaped into Switzerland, crossing the border near Lake Constance.
Papurt’s story is a significant subplot. He knew one of the great secrets of the war – that the Allies had broken Germany communications and a bounty of ongoing intelligence was disseminated as part of a program codenamed Ultra. Papurt was also a capable and experienced officer who had served in the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps in North Africa and Italy and in Limburg he managed to deceive his captors and disclose nothing about Ultra.
Page 99 is the opening of Chapter 11 under the heading “Naples.” The chapter explores the love affair between Papurt and Margaret Bourke-White, the great Life magazine photographer who covered the North Africa and Italian campaigns. Unsurprisingly, at least in hindsight, she was barred from the main Western Front because her independent, journalistic spirit had offended some senior military bureaucrats. Bourke-White was informed of Papurt’s capture as she docked in Naples in October 1944 for a second tour covering the Italian campaign. (She hoped her work in Italy would ultimately become a ticket to the main event, the assault on Nazi Germany.)
Bourke-White learned that the Vatican could deliver very brief messages to prisoners of war. She wrote to Papurt, “I love you. I will marry you. Maggie.” She never learned if Papurt received the message. He was killed when Allied bombs struck the hospital where he was being treated on Nov. 29, 1944.
--Marshal Zeringue
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