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According to a personal memoir, Johnson was drafted into the Army as a medic. That disappointed him, although he received valuable surgical training, so he volunteered for the OSS to avoid being \u201ca bed-pan jockey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Johnson\u2019s first mission, his unit, OG Patrick, successfully captured a dam in Central France after jumping behind German lines in August 1944, according to historical reports. They achieved this by linking up with the French Resistance and successfully convincing the dam\u2019s German garrison to abandon its post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After his unit\u2019s success in France, Johnson and many of his peers volunteered to jump into China in July 1945 with Chinese paratroopers of the 2nd Chinese Commando that they\u2019d trained. They led an assault on a Japanese garrison that inflicted significant casualties on the enemy but failed to take the town. A medical history report said Johnson successfully stabilized and evacuated wounded troops, including two Americans, while waiting for a doctor to arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Johnson and his fellow OSS troops made their way out of Asia and back to America, where he was discharged from the service. He went on to have a successful career in the cosmetics industry, according to an Army report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ellsworth Johnson is believed to be the last surviving member of the OSS Operational Groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":87253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","newsletters","good-news-report","news","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"}}},"categories":[100,23,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3376],"class_list":["post-50085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"Army officials believe he may be the last living member of the elite OSS Operational Groups","legacy_arc_id":"CUZYAUE7MFC4PLXOLUQRIR2CQ4","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2023\/09\/01\/world-war-ii-special-operations-veteran-receives-special-forces-tab\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n