Gold
GOLD
By, Theodore Aiello
Age 18
Theo: I want to do something today Marie. Like, to tell people I did something and have it be cool, you know.
Marie just shakes her head as she looks at her phone. Sitting outside in a lawn couch, next to a pool in front of a moderately sized house. Theo paces in the near distance.
Theo: We could build…
Marie keeps looking at her phone. (A rose gold Iphone 7)
Theo trailing off, walks back and forth: Why don’t we find some nazi gold.
Marie looks up in slight quizzical disdain: wh- no what we need to do is pick Gabe and YJ up from the train.
Theo: We could find the stuff the Nazi’s left when they landed on Long Island during World War II.
Marie: The what? The Nazis didn’t come to… and isn’t that anti -semitic or something? Why don’t you just write something for this Dan’s papers competition?
Theo: I heard that they came in during the war and landed near the South Fork or… Let me look it up. And we can donate some of the gold to…
Marie: Yeah great you do that, Ima take a shower.
Theo: You know ¼ of it could be donated and ½ of that can go into a fund for a predominately Jewish issue and the other can go to other charitable stuff.
Marie: as she is leaving: Yeah, Tell me if Mom calls.
Theo gets his laptop and starts reading.
Marie enters with chips, and a casual clothing.
Theo: I found it, I found the Nazi Gold.
Marie: Oh, you are still… well, where is it?
Theo: Ok, so -after Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States, a series of attacks were planned for American economic targets. Like the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls, factories, and other industries in Tennessee, and New York. The locks on the Ohio River, and many other attacks like this. Things like blowing up bridges, you get the picture. The team consisted of two groups of 4. One of the spies actually gets drunk before the mission and tells everyone at a bar that he is a spy. The leader, George John Dasch, leaves all the documents for the mission on a train. You know a real cracker-jack team. They are given driver’s licenses, $175,000, social security numbers, explosives and that kind of stuff. The first group pulls up by submarine in Amagansett on Atlantic Beach. They also ware German uniforms just in case they are caught because they want to be taken as prisoners of war and not spies. When they land, they go into the dunes, change and bury their uniforms. While in the dunes, an unarmed Coast Guard finds them. Dasch grabs him, and gives him $260 along with a threat. By the time the Coast Guard gets back to his station, reports the incident, and back to the beach the Germans are gone.
Marie: Well where did they go?
Theo: The other group, oh, they went to Florida. Arriving in bathing suits and just keeping Nazi Navy hats, they arrived and went to the meet up point without causing a massive manhunt.
Marie: No, the ones in Amagansett.
Theo: They took the train into the city, like any other casual. They got a hotel in New York, and discussed plans. Dasch opens one of the windows to a hotel room and calls one of the other operatives, Ernest Burger, into the room. Locking the door behind him Dasch tells Burger that he’s either agreeing with him or one of them will leave the room through the window (and this hotel room isn’t on the first floor). Burger, who was in a German concentration camp for 12 months agrees to help Dasch to betray the mission. Dasch then calls the police from a payphone on the Upper West Side. But, the police don’t believe him and just think he’s crazy. So 4 days later this guy gets a briefcase and goes on a train to Washington D.C. and goes to the FBI headquarters in person. But no one takes him seriously again, so he goes from office to office pleading his case. Finally the director of his case, the guy in charge of finding the German officers from the beach, says he will give Dasch, the German officer that was on that beach, five minutes. He doesn’t even believe Dasch until Dasch takes his briefcase and dumps the remaining $84,000 of funds leftover from the mission on the table. The next day, they are all arrested with no mention of the help from Dasch or Burger who answered many questions upon capture. This mission was ultimately such a failure that it persuaded the Nazi’s to only attempt something like this one more time.
Marie: So where’s the gold?
Theo: The story, the story is the gold, it’s great.
Marie: So what happens to the spies?
Theo: They were executed, all but Dasch who got 30 years and Burger who got a lifetime in prison. But were ultimately deported to Brazil.
Marie: Wow, that’s crazy.
Theo: Yeah and shout out to the single Amagansett Coast Guard, John Cullen, for stopping a German invasion.
