Operation Jedburgh

The recruiting pitch was read out over loudspeakers at American military bases. It asked for volunteers for immediate overseas duty who knew French or another European language, could qualify as parachutists, and would accept a mission whose danger was guaranteed¹. Those accepted became Jedburghs: soldiers in uniform, dropped in small teams behind German lines in 1944 to turn scattered resistance groups into a force the Allied armies could use.

Origins

By 1943 the British Special Operations Executive had spent three years building clandestine networks in occupied Europe, but it lacked the aircraft and manpower to arm resistance on the scale an invasion would need⁵. In May 1943 SOE and the London office of the American Office of Strategic Services Special Operations branch agreed on the Jedburgh concept⁵. Instead of civilian agents living under cover, the teams would be military personnel in uniform. They would drop in around the time of the invasion, link up with resistance groups, and call in arms and supplies^1,5. Wearing uniform was meant to give them the protection of the laws of war if captured. The CIA notes that the Americans deliberately fought in uniform with no visible OSS connection, to reduce the risk of being shot as spies¹.

The project was the first large joint venture in Europe between SOE and OSS⁵. How it got its name is unknown. The CIA lists several theories, from the Scottish border town of Jedburgh to the possibility that the word was simply next on a list of codenames¹.

Teams and training

A typical team had three men: two officers, one of them from the country where the team would operate, and a radio operator, who could be of any nationality⁵. The CIA describes teams of two to four drawn from American, British and Free French personnel, sometimes with Belgian, Dutch or Canadian members, and always with one radio operator¹. About 300 were selected. After paramilitary training in the Scottish Highlands they were based at Milton Hall near Peterborough, close to the airfields⁵.

Each team carried a portable radio, known as the "Jed set", to talk to Special Force Headquarters in London. Messages were enciphered with one-time pads and shortened by printed code lists^1,5. Officers carried large sums in French francs to pay and supply the Maquis⁵.

France, 1944

The first team, HUGH, parachuted into central France near Châteauroux on the night of 5–6 June 1944, hours before the Normandy landings^1,5. Its report is among the SOE team files at Kew³. Ninety-three teams went into France between June and September. Counting radio operators, roughly 280 men served on the French teams, with the French the largest group, then the British, then the Americans⁵. They usually landed at night to a reception committee from a local resistance group. Their most valuable asset was the ability to call in parachute drops of weapons and ammunition^1,5.

Results depended heavily on timing. Teams dropped early could help organize sabotage of railways and roads and attacks on German columns as the Allied armies broke out of Normandy and landed in the south¹. Several teams sent in August and September found that the Allied advance had already liberated their area⁵. In the Haute-Loire, team JEREMY arrived on 25 August 1944 to support Maquis battalions that Virginia Hall had been arming for weeks. She noted dryly that the Germans had already gone⁵.

The danger was real. Germany treated many captured special forces men under Hitler's commando order. Three members of team AUGUSTUS, a French captain, an American major and an American radio operator, were executed by German troops on 30 August 1944 near Barenton-sur-Serre in the Aisne⁵. SOE's file on the team survives⁴.

The Netherlands and beyond

From September 1944 to April 1945 eight teams worked in the Netherlands. The first, DUDLEY, dropped a week before Operation Market Garden, and four more accompanied the airborne forces in that battle⁵. Jedburgh-style parties later served in Burma and French Indochina under South East Asia Command⁵.

Afterward

Many American Jedburghs went on to the CIA. The best known, William Colby, led a team into France in August 1944 at the age of 24. In 1945 he led an OSS ski-parachute operation in Norway, and he served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1973 to 1976¹. SOE's records of the teams, including individual team reports in series HS 6 and a 1947 roll of Jedburghs by codename and team, are at The National Archives^2,3,4.

Read next

United States · 1942–1945 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) America's wartime intelligence service, 1942–1945: William Donovan's mix of scholars, spies, saboteurs and propagandists, abolished by Truman and reborn in parts as the CIA. United Kingdom · 1940–1946 Special Operations Executive (SOE) Britain's wartime sabotage and subversion service, created in July 1940 to arm resistance movements in occupied Europe and Asia. It ran Anthropoid and Gunnerside, suffered the Englandspiel, and was wound up in 1946. 1906–1982 Virginia Hall American who ran SOE's first lasting network in Vichy France, escaped over the Pyrenees, returned with the OSS in 1944, and was the only civilian woman awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in World War II. 1920–1996 William Colby OSS parachutist, CIA station chief in Saigon and head of the Phoenix program, Colby became Director of Central Intelligence in 1973 and chose to open the Agency's files to the investigations of 1975. January – September 1944 Operation Fortitude The Allied deception that invented armies in Scotland and southeast England in 1944 to make Germany expect landings in Norway and the Pas-de-Calais, and to see Normandy as a feint.