18
Wednesday, July 12, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Baron Von Ripper
Occasionally, in the heat
of summer, life will throw
us a gift. Such a thing hap-
pened to me the other night,
as I sat on the back porch
in the golden light, watch-
ing a squadron of swallows
dive-bombing around the
barn and reading from Ernie
Pyle’s magnificent collection
“Brave Men.”
Many folks know of Ernie
Pyle, the humble journalist
who followed American GIs
throughout World War II. He
wrote about them so endear-
ingly that he was embraced
as a comrade in arms by
“the violent, common men
who wash their socks in their
helmets” and by millions
of Americans at home who
eagerly awaited his columns.
In “Brave Men” Pyle
touches briefly on an
extraordinary man with
whom he was acquainted.
Baron Rudolph Von Ripper.
“He was so fabulous,” Pyle
wrote, that “a man might
have been justified in think-
ing him a phony until he got
to know him.”
It isn’t hard to see why, as
Von Ripper, even before his
legend grew in the Second
World War, had already com-
piled the kind of résumé that
would be difficult even for
Hollywood screenwriters to
imagine.
Consider: In 1905
Von Ripper was born into
Austrian aristocracy. His
father was a general in the
Imperial Austrian Army;
his mother a baroness. Von
Ripper eschewed the poten-
tial for luxury his family
wealth afforded and ran
away from home when he
was 15. He worked variously
in sawmills, as a garbage
collector, a circus clown,
and a coal miner. He studied
painting at the Dusseldorf
Art Academy before joining
the French Foreign Legion,
where he was wounded in
action while fighting Druze
tribesmen during the Great
Syrian Revolt.
Shot in both the knee
and the chest in Syria, Von
Ripper deserted the Legion
and left for Berlin. He took
up with a German actress.
Wanting to make docu-
mentary films, Von Ripper
skipped off again, this time
to China where, instead of
making movies, he joined
a syndicate of gunrunners
in Shanghai. Ultimately,
and only after his American
gang-leader was killed by
rivals, he returned to Austria,
married the daughter of a
playwright, indulged all
of the vices of the Weimar
epoch, and was ultimately
arrested by the Gestapo in
1933 on charges of treason.
Von Ripper had used his
prodigious artistic talent in
drawing cartoons satirizing
the ascendant Nazis. He was
tortured mercilessly during
his interrogation and sent to
a concentration camp, where
he was repeatedly beaten,
and languished for months
until the Austrian govern-
ment secured his freedom.
The baron then fled to
Amsterdam and Paris, and
finally to Majorca, in Spain,
where he continued to work
on his art, which a critic
called “horrific” because of
the stark depictions of Nazi
brutality.
In 1936 Von Ripper
joined the Republican Army
in Spain, fighting against
General Francisco Franco
and his Nazi and Italian
allies. Though he had no love
for communists, Von Ripper
became a machine gunner on
a Soviet bomber, and in 1937
was shot down by German
anti-aircraft fire, receiving
21 shards of metal in his leg
before parachuting into the
city of Madrid.
He abandoned the field
hospital when doctors sug-
gested they would need to
amputate his leg.
He landed in Greenwich
Village, in New York, where
he won a fellowship to the
famous Yaddo artist’s colony
in Saratoga Springs. From
there, Von Ripper moved to
Connecticut and lived in a
barn, working on his draw-
ings, until the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, when
he enlisted in the U.S. Army
as a private.
Von Ripper’s German
made him an ideal interro-
gator for the 34th Infantry
up his career this way:
“Outstanding in fieldwork,
but too restless for staff
work” — which is perhaps
the perfect professional epi-
taph, and one I might like to
borrow.
When the war ended, Von
Ripper divorced his wife
and married a California
blonde, won a Guggenheim
fellowship for his artwork,
and finally moved back to
Majorca, where he was ulti-
mately arrested by Spanish
police and accused of smug-
gling gems in what appeared
to be a revenge scenario for
his role in the Civil War.
In July of 1960, out on
bail, his wife found him dead
in the garden, the victim of a
heart attack. He was 55.
Von Ripper’s artwork
today is highly prized and
valuable. And it isn’t hard to
believe that this is the legacy
that would mean the most
to him, if we could ask. It
was why he fought, after all,
against the book-burners and
assassins and the corruption
of ideologues.
Watching the swallows
from my porch, gobsmacked
by a life so thoroughly lived,
I thought you should know
about Baron Von Ripper, just
in case you didn’t.
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Division, then gearing up
for the invasion of Italy. Von
Ripper made the landing at
Salerno, and fought continu-
ously at the front during the
horrible slog up the Italian
peninsula.
For his leadership of a
patrol that involved intense,
close-quarters combat, the
capture of 11 prisoners and
numerous weapons, he was
awarded a Silver Star and a
battlefield commission.
“He was a bit of John
Wayne, Ernest Hemingway
and Vincent van Gogh, all
wrapped up into one aveng-
ing presence,” wrote Colonel
Robert J. Berens.
After leading numer-
ous patrols Von Ripper
was wounded again in an
ambush. He was shot four
times by a German wield-
ing a machine pistol, bullets
tearing into his hand, his leg,
and disfiguring his face.
By this time Von Ripper
was a notorious individual.
The “Bravest man I’ve ever
seen,” said General Lucian
Truscott.
And then he disappeared
from the front, and no one
really knew where he had
gone.
Von Ripper had joined the
OSS — forerunner of today’s
CIA — and parachuted into
Nazi-occupied Austria with
a radio and a cyanide cap-
sule in order to organize
resistance and make reports
about the conditions on the
ground to higher headquar-
ters. Von Ripper worked
diligently behind the lines,
was captured and released
by the Gestapo, and his final
official evaluation summed
i
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