Operation Jedburgh
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Jedburgh was an operation in World War II in which men from the US Office of Strategic Services, the British Special Operations Executive joined with men from French BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action, "Intelligence and operations central bureau", WWII-era forrunner of SDECE), or the Dutch Army to parachute into Nazi occupied France, Holland, or Belgium to conduct sabotage and guerilla warfare, and to lead the local resistance forces against the Germans. The operation took its name, probably assigned at random from a list of pre-approved code names, from the town Jedburgh in Scotland. After about two weeks of paramilitary training at commando training bases in the Scottish highlands, the Jeds moved to Milton Hall, which was much closer to London and Special Forces Headquarters.
The Jedburgh teams comprised three men: a leader, an executive officer, and a non-commissioned radio operator. One of the officers would be British or American while the other would hail from the country to which the team deployed. The radio was critical for communicating with Special Force Headquarters in London.
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 guerillas and the Allied command. They could provide liaison, advice, expertise, leadership, and -- their most powerful ability -- they could arrange airdrops of arms and ammunition.
Like all Allied forces who operated behind Nazi lines, the Jedburghs or Jeds as they called themselves, were subject to torture and execution in the event of capture, under Hitler's notorious Commando Order. Because the Jeds normally operated in uniform, to apply this order to them was a war crime, but the illegality of the order must have been small consolation to those Jedburgh members executed.
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; OSS jumped at the chance to be involved since in a single swoop it got more Special Operations agents into northwestern Europe than it had had in the entire war.
Many of the surviving American Jeds went on to great responsibility in the US Army or the CIA. Examples include CIA director William Egan Colby, key CIA officer in Vietnam (Lucien Conein), Gen John Singlaub and Col Aaron Bank (founder of United States Army Special Forces). Among French commandos, Paul Aussaresses, later founder of 11ème Régiment Parachutiste de Choc, and counter-insurgency expert in Algeria.
[edit] Further reading
- Beavan, Colin (2006). Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-03762-1.
- Funk, Arthur Layton (1992). Hidden Ally: The French Resistance, Special Operations and the Landings in Southern France, 1944. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-27995-0.
- Irwin, Will (2005). The Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forces, France 1944. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-58648-307-2.
