One of the greatest yet most unheralded fighting units of World War II was so audacious, it made Steve McQueen and his band of POWs in The Great Escape look like amateurs.
The First American Ranger Battalion – otherwise known as Darby’s Rangers after its commander Major William Orlando Darby – was composed of 500 dangerous men seeking dangerous missions.
But it was their gutsy escapes from enemy prisoner-of-war camps that earned them their other nickname: The Houdini Club.
After successful assaults in Algeria, Tunisia and the Amalfi Coast, the Rangers ran into serious trouble while attempting to seize the key transportation hub of Cisterna, in central Italy.
Hundreds of Americans were captured and paraded through Rome past the Colosseum to celebrate the Nazis’ victory, before being sent to prison camps in Germany to wait out the war.
But these were not the kind of men ready to simply wait.
One of the most daring escapes was that of Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Merton Shunstrom.
A dashing, Hollywood A-list type of man, he was hard to his bones. A killer of men throughout their campaigns from 1942-1944, he was loved and hated by his fellow Rangers.
Steve McQueen as Captain Virgil Hilts in a scene from The Great Escape
Major William Orlando Darby on his motorbike – he was known to travel by foot, camel, mule, bike or car, and was always at the front
A dashing, Hollywood A-list type of man, Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Merton Shunstrom was hard to his bones
Considered the bravest of the brave by some, a psychopath by others, his was surely the greatest escape.
After his capture at Cisterna, Shunstrom ended up at a small Italian POW camp that was under repair.
Posing as an Italian worker, he soon overcame two strands of barbed wire and made good his getaway.
Moving though the countryside, he would take occasional chances by knocking on doors, seeking food and directions to safer, friendlier areas.
His plan was to cut across the Italian mountains during winter and escape to the east.
Pounding through four to five feet of snow and ice in the mountain ranges for days, Shunstrom covered around 215 miles until he joined a group of partisans. They viewed him as a gold mine because Allied intelligence services often paid to protect escapees.
Shunstrom, however, was not easily used. Instead of simply signing papers to be presented for payments, he insisted on leading the partisans in behind-the-lines guerrilla actions.
Together, they hit installations and train tracks, and captured fascist mayors of small villages, holding mock trials then executing those they found guilty.
Life after the war was not kind to Shunstrom, and he struggled to find success in movies
West Point cadet William Orlando Darby
Lt Colonel ME Vaughn, commander of a commando depot, with Major William Darby
Read More
EXCLUSIVE
The devastating true story of the Marines' 'Magnificent B*stards' battalion
Their activities led to increased patrols and eventually they found themselves surrounded by German troops.
Shunstrom and the partisans managed to drive the Germans back far enough to make their escape.
After six weeks, however, he grew tired of his amateur comrades and had them arrange a truck to drive him some 150 miles closer to a location where he could use a boat to aid his escape.
The vehicle was forced to stop several times at check points. At one, a German soldier made the mistake of lifting the tarp in the back of the truck. Bad move. Shunstrom killed him with his machine gun, then he and his fellow travelers killed another six before fleeing the carnage.
Afterward, Shunstrom did what he did best – he traveled alone, often disguised as an Italian laborer working on German defensive fortifications as he made his way back to Allied lines.
One day, while he was hiding in a small Italian village in a safe house, a young local boy warned him of the arrival of Germans. The enemy soldiers, alerted to the presence of several British escapees nearby, had already captured several, and shot one as he tried to flee.
Shortly after, a German knocked on his door. Shunstrom let him in and promptly knocked him out before, once again, bolting for the open countryside.
Walking and working along the way for food and shelter, he finally came close to Allied lines. He hid in a cemetery between two enemy outposts and, in the morning, simply walked between the two groups of Germans toward freedom.
Sergeant Carl Harrison Lehmann – like McQueen in The Great Escape (pictured) – had spent considerable time in ‘the Cooler’, a POW version of solitary confinement
Shots rang out and he ran as fast as he could straight into a fighting position manned by a Ranger. Shunstrom had made it ‘home’ two months and eight days after his capture at Cisterna.
Life afterwards was not kind to him. In the post-war years, he struggled to find success in Hollywood.
Depressed, broke and angry, he resorted to alcohol and robbed several gas stations at gunpoint.
He was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity by a sympathetic judge who blamed the government for failing to help its veterans. The killing of men and constant exposure to combat had scarred him physically and mentally.
Captain Charles Shunstrom died of a heart attack at the age of 52 in a liquor store near Buffalo, New York.
Sergeant Carl Harrison Lehmann had also escaped and been captured twice already, spending considerable time in ‘the Cooler’, a POW version of solitary confinement.
He had barely survived his capture at Cisterna when a young German soldier discovered numerous ‘scalps’ in Lehmann’s pocket – German Air Force wings he had found earlier in a barn.
Only the intervention by a Nazi sergeant had saved him from execution, believing him to have a German-sounding name.
Left to right: Wayne Ruona, Joseph Kiernan, David Weakes, Carl Harrison Lehmann and Arnold Johnson
He might have quietly sat out the rest of the war – if he survived the camp, where starvation was the daily diet – had it not been for two other Rangers.
After two failed escape attempts, Lehmann was done trying. But Sergeant Wayne Ruona and Private First Class Joseph Kiernan forced him to change his mind.
It was January 1945. The German prison camp Stalag IIB (modern day Poland) was being emptied due to the Russian advance, and its 700 Allied prisoners force-marched away during a snow storm.
They trudged for weeks through the desolate German wastelands, ill-fed and often sleeping in the cold. Some escaped; others died along the way.
One miserable day, Lehmann and the other Rangers saw the front of the column making a U-turn. Nobody was in the mood for that – why were they turning back?
When the Rangers came to make their turn in the formation, five of them leapt away and dashed into the nearby three-foot shrubbery, covered by the other marching men obstructing the guards’ views.
They now faced the most imminent of threats – German civilians and starvation.
Struggling through the land, they bumped into a German farmer who simply turned his back, not wanting to get involved. They had been lucky.
Sergeant Wayne Ruona and Sergeant Carl Harrison Lehmann photographed at a reunion in 2011
They moved south at night using a compass, covering six or seven miles at a stretch. They crossed a river and came to a swamp that rose so high it forced them back.
The Rangers watched an aerial battle between bombers and fighter planes, as hundreds of shell casings showered them like raindrops.
They were still alive but starvation was their constant shadow.
At one stage, a Russian slave laborer helped them secure food before they staggered on.
By April – three months after their escape – they were deep in a forest when they heard noises. Lehmann cautiously took a peek and recognized the well-known green berets of three British commandos who had escaped an ambush by playing dead.
They joined forces, hiding as hundreds of terrified German soldiers fled through the woods from the ever-advancing Russians.
Starved, exhausted but perceiving the lull in battle, the Rangers moved with a renewed sense of urgency until, on April 13, 1945, they encountered advancing Allied troops and were safe at last.
Their first full meal after months on the run was at a German farm. The men ate like kings and Lehmann scoffed three massive breakfasts – but could keep none of it down. He vomited each time.
Mir Bahmanyar (left) used previously unknown sources and uncensored interviews with Rangers for his book The Houdini Club
Staggering on to the next village, they liberated the mayor’s vehicle and drove to Brussels, where they sold the car and promptly lost all their money betting at a dog track.
Eventually, they made their way to Le Havre’s Lucky Strike Camp in France for out-processing. There, Lehmann, a veteran of so many battles and hardships, had his knuckles rapped by a German prisoner cook when he reached for another potato – and he snapped.
Years of killing and seeing friends killed, his brutal experiences as a prisoner, finally exploded like a volcano. Lehmann wrestled the spoon away and beat the cook in the head until too exhausted to throw another punch and the prisoner was nearly unconscious.
‘I had been unaware of the hate that had built up in me,’ he said later. ‘Much lasts.’
Carl Lehmann returned to the United States and became a lawyer.
These and many other remarkable stories of Ranger courage and tenacity can be found in Mir Bahmanyar’s The Houdini Club: The Epic Journey and Daring Escapes of the First Army Rangers of WWII, Diversion Books, 2025.