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ZINN THE VETERAN Fred works alone, doing his lonely searching sometimes long after the battle forces have moved away. He works on meager clues, doggedly keeping to the faint trail of a name. A bit of wrecked plane to localize the hunt for a grave. An initialed handkerchief, a scrap of paper on which some dying ›yer has scrawled his name, a worn envelope. —American Legion, November 1944 Fred’s son, Richard “Bud” Zinn, was in Europe at the same time as his father . At twenty years of age, Bud was not involved with aviation despite his piloting license and the family history. Instead he was a private ‹rst class attached to Company E of the 129th Tank Destroyers based out of Fort Hood, Texas. Bud was attached to Patton’s 3rd Army in its drive across Europe, having joined after D-day as one of thousands of replacement soldiers.1 From September of 1944 through November of that year, Patton became focused on seizing the heavily forti‹ed city of Metz. Metz was located between the Sielle and Moselle rivers and was a series of forts, observation posts, and interconnected bunkers and tunnels. For Patton, it would be a step backward in time, attempting to raze an enemy that was heavily entrenched, just as he had done during the Great War. Metz could have easily been bypassed and encircled, but for Patton it represented too large a risk to have it in his rear area. Patton was determined that Metz be taken. Bud, like his father, was no stranger to danger. In the ‹ghting for Metz he was wounded twice, receiving the Purple Heart for his efforts. The French decorated him with the Fourageres for the Croix de Guerre, a medal that his father had also received in the previous war. During the ‹ghting that took place at Metz only 101 of these awards were presented to units that distinguished themselves in battle, and Bud was in one of those units.2 174 10 The three months of ‹ghting at Metz were brutal, slow, and methodical for the usually lightning fast Patton. Bud received the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. He also received his Combat Infantry Badge, testimony to the tough ‹ghting he witnessed. For all of his time ‹ghting in Metz, what Bud didn’t realize was just how close his father was to him—ful‹lling his ‹nal missions for the OSS. Fred Zinn was still attached formally to Algiers X2 but had physically shifted to operate from the Air Force command at Caserta, Italy. The Caserta operation was located in a massive castle and was used as a command post by the Allied occupation forces. It provided Fred with a good starting point for his continued forays into the countryside. By April he was shuttling between Sicily and Italy doing what he could to expand the information he was gathering. For example, just a mile from the Naples airport Fred found the remains of two crews, both located in “almost inaccessible locations.”3 Working with the Carabinieri he was able to determine that they, too, were British wrecks and located the burial sites of their crews. In May of 1944 Fred roomed with Captain Justin Greene of the OSS. The two of them had their room robbed while Fred was present. The robbery consisted mostly of clothing, but for two OSS men the incident must have proven embarrassing. It is notable that Fred was bunking with Captain Greene who was not part of X2 (counterintelligence) but part of secret intelligence (SI).4 Members of the SI had responsibilities for setting up new ‹eld stations, training case of‹cers, and processing intelligence reports. The fact that Fred was bunking in a small, four-room apartment with Captain Greene may be an indication of how well he got along with his X2 superiors. Throughout this time Fred continued to push the OSS and the Air Forces to establish a centralized clearinghouse for information on missing airmen. As he put it, he was a “traveling salesman” in the Mediterranean and European theaters, pitching his ideas and concepts. According to a news story, “He was selling—and without of‹cial status in this respect—his system of tracing missing air crews. He went from one base to another, not neglecting the subsidiary units, ‘talking up’—his plan. When he found an of‹cer unreceptive, he worked around and contacted another ‘higher up’—his old friendships proving of invaluable assistance...

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