Operation Jedburgh

Jedburghs on a high bars at an obstacle course in Milton Hall, England

Operation Jedburgh was a clandestine operation during World War II, in which personnel of the British Special Operations Executive, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the Free French Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action ("Intelligence and operations central bureau") and the Dutch and Belgian Armies were dropped by parachute into Nazi-occupied France, the Netherlands and Belgium to conduct sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and to lead the local resistance forces in actions against the Germans.

Jedburgh

The operation took its name from 12th-century guerrillas active in the area around Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. After about two weeks of paramilitary training at commando training bases in the Scottish Highlands, the "Jeds" moved to Milton Hall[1] near Peterborough, which was much closer to the airfields from which they were to be launched, and to London and Special Force Headquarters.

Operation Jedburgh represented the first real cooperation in Europe between SOE and the Special Operations branch of OSS. By this period in the war, SOE had insufficient resources to mount the huge operation on its own; for example, it had access to only 23 Handley Page Halifax aircraft for dropping agents and stores, barely sufficient to maintain SOE's existing networks. OSS was able to augment this force with Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft operating from RAF Harrington (see Operation Carpetbagger).[2] The OSS eagerly sought to be involved, since in a single swoop it got more agents into northwestern Europe than it had during the entire previous period of the United States' involvement in the war. Nevertheless, General Eisenhower, the American Supreme Commander, ensured that the French would lead the operation and gave them command on 9 June 1944 of the Jedburgh teams in France.

Jedburgh teams

Jedburghs in front of a B-24 Liberator prior to departure

Jedburgh teams normally consisted of three men: a commander, an executive officer, and a non-commissioned radio operator. One of the officers would be British or American while the other would originate from the country to which the team deployed. The radio operator could be sourced from any nationality. In addition to their personal weapons (which included an M1 carbine[3] and a Colt automatic pistol[4] for each member) and sabotage equipment, the teams dropped with the Type B Mark II radio, more commonly referred to as the B2 or "Jed Set", which was critical for communicating with Special Force Headquarters in London. They were also issued pieces of silk with five hundred phrases that they were likely to use in radio traffic replaced with four-letter codes to save time in transmission, and one-time pads to encipher their messages.[5]

As the Jedburgh teams' mission was to inspire overt rather than clandestine resistance activity, they wore military uniform and were equipped with a variety of personal equipment such as medical supplies, food such as "K" and "C" Ration packs, sleeping bags, field glasses and detailed maps of their operational areas, which were printed on silk like their radio ciphers. Agents who had previously been dropped to resistance groups had carried only "a gun, a spade (to bury their parachute) and false papers".[6]

Operations

List of Jedburgh teams, transcribed from French Wikipedia

The first team in, codenamed "Hugh", parachuted into central France near Châteauroux the night before the Allied landings in Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord. In total, 93 Jedburgh teams operated in 54 French metropolitan départements between June and December 1944.[7] They were known by codenames which usually were first names (such as "Hugh"), with some names of medicines (such as "Novocaine") and a few random names thrown in to confuse German intelligence.[8]

The Jedburgh teams normally parachuted in by night to meet a reception committee from a local Resistance or Maquis group. Their main function was to provide a link between the guerrillas and the Allied command. They could provide liaison, advice, expertise and leadership, but their most powerful asset was their ability to arrange airdrops of arms and ammunition.

Like all Allied forces who operated behind Nazi lines, the Jedburghs were subject to torture and execution in the event of capture, under Hitler's notorious Commando Order. Because the teams normally operated in uniform, to apply this order to them was a war crime. However, of the Jedburgh teams dropped into France, only British Captain Victor A. Gough met that fate, being shot while a prisoner on 25 November 1944.

Jedburgh operations in The Netherlands

From September 1944 to April 1945, eight Jedburgh teams were active in the Netherlands. The first team, code named "Dudley" was parachuted into the east of the Netherlands one week before Operation Market Garden. The next four teams were attached to the Airborne forces that carried out Market Garden. After the failure of the operation, one Jedburgh team trained (former) resistance men in the liberated south of the Netherlands. In April 1945 the last two Dutch Jedburgh teams became operational. One team code named "Gambling", was a combined Jedburgh/Special Air Service (SAS) group that was dropped into the centre of the Netherlands to assist the Allied advance. The last team was parachuted into the Northern Netherlands as part of SAS operation "Amherst".[9] Despite the fact that operating clandestinely in the flat and densely populated Netherlands was very difficult for the Jedburghs, the teams were quite successful.[10]

Jedburgh operations in the Far East

Jedburgh teams, or parties organised on a similar basis, also operated in the South East Asia Command (SEAC) in 1945, including Japanese-occupied French Indochina, where sixty French Jedburghs joined the newly created C.L.I. fighting the Japanese occupation. In Burma, Jedburgh teams were used in operations "Billet" and "Character". "Billet" was a plan to raise resistance to the Japanese among the majority Burman population, primarily through the largely communist Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO). "Character" was a scheme to raise the minority Karen people in the Karen Hills between the Sittang and Salween Rivers. The first Jeds to go on Character operations were flown into Burma in February 1945 with Lieutenant Colonel Peacock's Special Groups.

France and the United States would both use similar operations a few years later in Vietnam.

Aftermath

Many of the surviving American "Jeds" later held various positions of great responsibility in the US Army or the CIA. Examples include William Colby, who became director of the CIA, Lucien Conein, who was a key CIA officer in Vietnam, General John Singlaub and Colonel Aaron Bank (first commander of United States Army Special Forces).

Among French Jedburghs were Paul Aussaresses, later founder of the SDECE's 11e RPC, and counter-insurgency expert in French Algeria; Jean Sassi, another who later served in the 11e RPC, who pioneered conventional guerrilla commandos GCMA with Roger Trinquier during the First Indochina War; Guy Le Borgne, commander of the 8e Choc Parachute Battalion in Indochina, the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment in Algeria and 11th Parachute Division.

In Popular Culture

In You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger, a memoir of his offbeat adventures as an agent in the O.S.S., Roger Wolcott Hall describes his work with the Jedburghs. Hall's first assignment with the O.S.S. was as a Special Operations instructor, at Congressional country club in Maryland which had been converted into a training center. Hall trained several classes of O.S.S. recruits from which the American members of the Jedburghs were later chosen. Hall instructed the recruits in Special Operations tactics and demolition, often leading them on simulated night raids on the country club's golf course.

Hall himself was supposed to be the leader of a Jedburgh team that would parachute into Denmark and conduct Special Operations behind enemy lines. However, the operation was cancelled when "someone in the O.S.S. discovered that Denmark is as flat as a pancake. There's very little natural ground cover. A Special Operations team [in occupied German territory] would be lucky to last 72 hours there." [11]

In 1944, while stationed in England, Hall was assigned to join a Jedburgh team in occupied France and coordinate resistance operations following the D-Day invasion. However, the operation did not go as planned. Hall parachuted into France and linked up with the Jedburgh team, only to discover that a sudden offensive by General George S. Patton's tank divisions had pushed through the area a few hours before, and he had landed in friendly territory. Hall was back in London two days later.

In the historical fiction book War and Remembrance and its television miniseries, the fictional character Leslie Slote joined the Jedburghs, leading a team to organize French resistance. He was killed in an ambush.

References

  1. ↑ Hogan (1992), pp.49–50
  2. ↑ Boyce and Everett (2003), p.205
  3. ↑ Foot (1984), p.77
  4. ↑ Beavon (2006), p.12
  5. ↑ Foot (1984), p.124
  6. ↑ Walters, Anne-Marie. Moondrop to Gascony. Wiltshire: Moho Books. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-9557208-1-9.
  7. ↑ Inquimbert, Les Equipes Jedburgh: Juin 1944 - Décembre 1944, Lavauzelle, 2006
  8. ↑ Foot (1984), p.127
  9. ↑ Hooiveld (2014), p.7-8
  10. ↑ Hooiveld (2014), p. 243
  11. ↑ Hall (1957), p.45

Further reading

External links

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