First Navy Seal
As Lieutenant Jack Hendrick Taylor parachuted from the skies into enemy territory south of Vienna on October 13, 1944, he inadvertently became the first reported US soldier to operate in air, land, and sea. Taylor was injured during the precipitous fall, but he still went on with the dangerous mission involving secretly reaching out to anti-Nazi individuals in the area and forming an allied network. It was one of several high-stakes operations in which the orthodontist from California was involved during his extraordinary career. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Taylor could have joined the Navy Medical Corps, but decided to enroll in the Navy and fight against the Nazis instead, eventually becoming one of the first elements of the Office of Strategic Offices and mentoring hundreds of soldiers. But as fate would have it, his help was urgently needed in the European Theater, where he organized the Maritime Unit in the Mediterranean and unknowingly became the first unofficial Navy SEAL two decades before the special operations force was even formed.
Credit Dark Docs