PASSINGS : Col. Peter J. Ortiz; Behind-the-Lines War Hero

Col. Peter J. Ortiz, 75, a Marine Corps officer whose World War II exploits behind enemy lines formed the basis for the 1947 film “13 Rue Madeleine” and the 1952 picture “Operation Secret” with Cornell Wilde. Ortiz was born in New York but educated in France and volunteered for the French Foreign Legion in 1932. He was wounded in battle with the Germans in 1940 and imprisoned in Austria but escaped in 1941 and found his way to the United States where he joined the Marine Corps. He was sent to North Africa, organized Arab tribes to scout the Germans in Tunisia, was wounded again but recovered. Next Ortiz was placed with a British Office of Strategic Services team that parachuted into France in 1943 to aid resistance fighters. When the Germans began carrying out reprisals against French villagers who had helped his OSS unit, Ortiz surrendered and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp. In Prescott, Ariz., on May 16 of cancer.