The operation took its name from 12th-century guerrillas active in the area arou

nd Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. After about two weeks of paramilitary train
ing at commando training bases in the Scottish Highlands, the "Jeds" moved to Mi
lton Hall[1] near Peterborough, which was much closer to the airfields from whic
h 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 ins
ufficient 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 t
his force with Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft operating from RAF Harringto
n (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. Nevert
heless, General Eisenhower, the American Supreme Commander, ensured that the Fre
nch would lead the operation and gave them command on 9 June 1944 of the Jedburg
h teams in France.
Jedburgh teams[edit]
Jedburghs in front of a B-24 Liberator prior to departure
Jedburgh teams normally consisted of three men: a commander, an executive office
r, and a non-commissioned radio operator. One of the officers would be British o
r American while the other would originate from the country to which the team de
ployed. 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 pi
stol[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 cr
itical for communicating with Special Force Headquarters in London. They were al
so 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, a
nd one-time pads to encipher their messages.[5]
As the Jedburgh teams' mission was to inspire overt rather than clandestine resi
stance 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 pac
ks, sleeping bags, field glasses and detailed maps of their operational areas, w
hich were printed on silk like their radio ciphers. Agents who had previously be
en dropped to resistance groups had carried only "a gun, a spade (to bury their
parachute) and false papers".[6]
Operations[edit]
List of Jedburgh teams, transcribed from French Wikipedia
The first team in, codenamed "Hugh", parachuted into central France near Chteauro
ux the night before the Allied landings in Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlor
d. In total, 93 Jedburgh teams operated in 54 French metropolitan dpartements bet
ween 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 l
ink between the guerrillas and the Allied command. They could provide liaison, a
dvice, 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 subjec
t to torture and execution in the event of capture, under Hitler's notorious Com
mando 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, on
ly British Captain Victor A. Gough met that fate, being shot while a prisoner on
25 November 1944.
Jedburgh operations in The Netherlands[edit]
From September 1944 to April 1945, eight Jedburgh teams were active in the Nethe
rlands. 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 at
tached to the Airborne forces that carried out Market Garden. After the failure
of the operation, one Jedburgh team trained (former) resistance men in the liber
ated south of the Netherlands. In April 1945 the last two Dutch Jedburgh teams b
ecame operational. One team code named "Gambling", was a combined Jedburgh/Speci
al Air Service (SAS) group that was dropped into the centre of the Netherlands t
o assist the Allied advance. The last team was parachuted into the Northern Neth
erlands as part of SAS operation "Amherst".[9] Despite the fact that operating c
landestinely in the flat and densely populated Netherlands was very difficult fo
r the Jedburghs, the teams were quite successful.[10]
Jedburgh operations in the Far East[edit]
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by addi
ng citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and remov
ed. (June 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Jedburgh teams, or parties organised on a similar basis, also operated in the So
uth East Asia Command (SEAC) in 1945, including Japanese-occupied French Indochi
na, where sixty French Jedburghs joined the newly created C.L.I. fighting the Ja
panese 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 decades lat
er in Vietnam.
Aftermath[edit]
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by addi
ng citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and remov
ed. (June 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Many of the surviving American "Jeds" later held various positions of great resp
onsibility 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, Gener
al John Singlaub and Colonel Aaron Bank (first commander of United States Army S
pecial Forces).
Among French Jedburghs were Paul Aussaresses, later founder of the SDECE's 11e R
PC, and counter-insurgency expert in French Algeria; Jean Sassi, another who lat
er served in the 11e RPC, who pioneered conventional guerrilla commandos GCMA wi
th Roger Trinquier during the First Indochina War; Guy Le Borgne, commander of t
he 8e Choc Parachute Battalion in Indochina, the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute R
egiment in Algeria and 11th Parachute Division.
In Popular Culture[edit]
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 Jedburgh
s. Hall's first assignment with the O.S.S. was as a Special Operations instructo
r, at Congressional country club in Maryland which had been converted into a tra
ining center. Hall trained several classes of O.S.S. recruits from which the Ame
rican members of the Jedburghs were later chosen. Hall instructed the recruits i
n Special Operations tactics and demolition, often leading them on simulated nig
ht raids on the country club's golf course.
Hall himself was supposed to be the leader of a Jedburgh team that would parachu
te 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 a
s flat as a pancake. There's very little natural ground cover. A Special Operati
ons 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 i
n occupied France and coordinate resistance operations following the D-Day invas

ion. However, the operation did not go as planned. Hall parachuted into France a
nd 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 hou
rs 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 o
rganize French resistance. He was killed in an ambush.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Hogan (1992), pp.49 50
Jump up ^ Boyce and Everett (2003), p.205
Jump up ^ Foot (1984), p.77
Jump up ^ Beavon (2006), p.12
Jump up ^ Foot (1984), p.124
Jump up ^ Walters, Anne-Marie. Moondrop to Gascony. Wiltshire: Moho Books. p. 21
9. ISBN 978-0-9557208-1-9.
Jump up ^ Inquimbert, Les Equipes Jedburgh: Juin 1944 - Dcembre 1944, Lavauzelle,
2006[page needed]
Jump up ^ Foot (1984), p.127
Jump up ^ Hooiveld (2014), p.7-8
Jump up ^ Hooiveld (2014), p. 243
Jump up ^ Hall (1957), p.45
Further reading[edit]
Beavan, Colin (2006). Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War.
New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-03762-1.
Boyce, Frederic; Everett, Douglas (2003). SOE
the Scientific Secrets. Sutton Pub
lishing. ISBN 0-7509-4005-0.
Foot, M.R.D. (1999). The Special Operations Executive 1940 1946. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7
126-6585-4.
Funk, Arthur Layton (1992). Hidden Ally: The French Resistance, Special Operatio
ns and the Landings in Southern France, 1944. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISB
N 0-313-27995-0.
Hall, Roger Wolcott (1957). You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger. Annapolis, M
D: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1591143536.
Hogan, David W. (1992). U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (PDF). Wash
ington D.C.: Center of Military History, Department of the Army.
Hooiveld, Jelle (2014). Operatie Jedburgh: Geheime geallieerde operaties in Nede
rland 1944-1945. Amsterdam: Boom. ISBN 9-78908953256-5.
Inquimbert (2006). Les quipes Jedburgh: Juin 1944 - Dcembre 1944. Lavauzelle. ISBN
2-7025-1307-7.
Jones, Benjamin F. (2016). Eisenhower's Guerrillas: The Jedburghs, the Maquis, a
nd the Liberation of France. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-99
4208-4.
Irwin, Will (2005). The Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forc
es, France 1944. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-58648-307-2.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Operation Jedburgh.
Jedburgh Team Operations in Support of the 12th Army Group, August 1944 - Dr. Sa
m Lewis.
Jedburgh Team roll of honour, awards and images.
Categories: Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'ActionOffice of Strategic Serv
icesSpecial Operations Executive operationsMilitary operations of World War II
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