"Operation Jedburg"; Colin Beaven

JeffinMNUSA · #1 (**permalink**) May 14th, 2009, 09:15 PM

Operation Jedburgh - Book Review » Armchair General
I am into the last chapters of this page turner and it is quite a read. I don't think everyone will agree that the Jeds and French Resistance played an absolutely vital role in the success of the Western Alliance; but the author does make a good case for this assessment. It could be that the conventional military has downplayed the unconventional aspects of the Western campaign and that the shadow warriors are just fine with this arrangement?
This was a dirty war with no quarter given and many Jeds had second thoughts about their involvement in the bloody aftermath of the German expulsion; 30,000 French people executed in France in the aftermath for various reasons-equal to the number executed during the NAZI occupation. Small numbers in comparrisson to the oceans of blood that were spilled in Eastern Europe to be sure-but the injustice of some of these executions had more than a few Jeds wondering.
Yet still-there is no denying the fact that the Jeds and French resistants stymied the Third Reich's transportation nets (STOPPED the railroads) and tied down German troops; and that this was a vital contribution, especially during the early days. Of interest also was Patton's use of Partisan formations for screening forces and as scouts during his Brittany invasion-leave it to George to wield the weapons at hand and damn the hidebound military thinking! In the South the Maquis seem to have played a much larger role.
JeffinMNUSA

dgmitchell · #2 (**permalink**) May 14th, 2009, 09:32 PM

Jeff -- For more reading on the Jedburgh's, I enthusiastically recommend The JedBurgh's by Will Irwin. I believe it was published within the past two years and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!

JeffinMNUSA · #3 (**permalink**) May 14th, 2009, 10:10 PM

David;
On my list! It is amazing that there were only three hundred Jedburgs dropped before D-Day and that they had such an effect. Ah well; we all saw what some special operators and their radios could do in Afghanistan in 2001-WHEN linked up with guerrilla fighters who have really had enough with homicidal maniacs running the show.
JeffinMNUSA
PS. A critique; http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...ewis/Lewis.asp
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/natzwe...esistance.html

WotNoChad? · #4 (**permalink**) May 15th, 2009, 03:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffinMNUSA

Operation Jedburgh - Book Review » Armchair General
I am into the last chapters of this page turner and it is quite a read. I don't think everyone will agree that the Jeds and French Resistance played an absolutely vital role in the success of the Western Alliance; but the author does make a good case for this assessment.

Really? I think it's blindingly obvious, and many of the better historians agree, Ambrose did and that's usually enough for most.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffinMNUSA

Yet still-there is no denying the fact that the Jeds and French resistants stymied the Third Reich's transportation nets (STOPPED the railroads) and tied down German troops; and that this was a vital contribution, especially during the early days.

Quite, although the 7.5 kilotons of bombs dropped by combined airforces between Jan & June helped, but when it comes to efficiency the resistance rate as an elite. There's a wealth of operational stories but one of faves, and a good example of their outstanding efficiency, is that of some sub-agents of Anthony Brooks.

Quote:

Ambrose "D-Day" Pg. 105
In April 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division (the Das Reich) moved into a town near Toulouse named Montauban. It was refitting after hard service on the Eastern Front, receiving brand new tanks, Tigers, the biggest and best Germany could produce.The tanks were gas-guzzlers (Tigers weighed sixty-three tons and got one-half mile to the gallon). They were subject to mechanical problems. They had only Steel tracks, which wore out quickly on highway travel. Therefore the Germqans always moved the Tigers for any distance on railroad cars. The Tigers were concentrated in Montauban and kept under heavy guard. The railway cars they rode on were hidden in village railway sidings round Montauban, each conealed by a couple of worn-out French trucks dumped on top. The transporter cars were unguarded.
[Anthony] Brooks put his subagents to work. One of them was a beautiful young sixteen-year-old girl named Tetty 'who wasa the daughter of the local boss who ran a garage and she had long ringlets and her mother was always smacking her and telling her not to play with them.' All through May, Tetty and her boyfriend, her fourteen year old sister, and others sallied out after dark by bicycle to the cars, where they siphoned off all the axle oil, replacing it with an abrasive powder parachuted in by SOF. Brooks told Tetty and the others to throw away the oil, but "of course the French said it was ludicrous to throw away this beautiful green oil so they salvaged it as it was real high quality motor oil that fetched a fine price on the black market."
On D-Day, the Das Reich got orders to move out for Normandy. The Germans loaded their Tigers onto the railway cars. Every car seized up before they reached Montauban. The damage was so extensive to the cars' axles that they could not be repaired. It was a week before the division found alternative cars, in Periguex, a hundred kilometers away - bad luck for the tank's tracks and fuel supply.

Simplistically that's a few bags of grit, dropped by a single plane, used by several teenagers with a few of bicycles immobilising an elite armour division for a week and making a profit from recycling the oil... c'est fantastique!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffinMNUSA

It could be that the conventional military has downplayed the unconventional aspects of the Western campaign and that the shadow warriors are just fine with this arrangement?

I think it's more to do with the F section ops being highly classified for longer than any of the regular military ones, the landings became widely reported quite rapidly and the Germans already knew about them, while the resistance techniques would continue to be of use and many didn't get reported for decades.

Kai-Petri · #5 (**permalink**) May 15th, 2009, 06:26 AM

Didn´t De Gaulle deny some co-operation because the Allied were not giving France total freedom in the first place? And that was on D-day? or is it just another rumour?

JeffinMNUSA · #6 (**permalink**) May 15th, 2009, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WotNoChad?

Really? I think it's blindingly obvious, and many of the better historians agree, Ambrose did and that's usually enough for most.

Quite, although the 7.5 kilotons of bombs dropped by combined airforces between Jan & June helped, but when it comes to efficiency the resistance rate as an elite. There's a wealth of operational stories but one of faves, and a good example of their outstanding efficiency, is that of some sub-agents of Anthony Brooks.

Simplistically that's a few bags of grit, dropped by a single plane, used by several teenagers with a few of bicycles immobilising an elite armour division for a week and making a profit from recycling the oil... c'est fantastique!

I think it's more to do with the F section ops being highly classified for longer than any of the regular military ones, the landings became widely reported quite rapidly and the Germans already knew about them, while the resistance techniques would continue to be of use and many didn't get reported for decades.

Wotno;
The Resistance snowballed after Operation Cobra and the French themselves liberated numerous towns and cities; The Real History of World War II: A ... - Google Book Search
Did some Resistance Units on the French side ever achieve a degree of battlefield expertise comparable to the Eastern Partisan units? It's doubtfull for the simple fact that the French resistance units weren't really around for all that long. For the most part the Resistance could not go toe to toe with the better armed and trained German units-which is not to say that they weren't extremely usefull for the ALlied cause. The German Army in France was bedeviled with a two front war-one conventional and one guerrilla. It is interesting to note that once the Germans fell back on Germany proper-where there was no guerrilla movement dogging their supply lines and tattling on their movements-that the going got much rougher for the Allied forces.
JeffinMNUSA
PS. I read Max Hastings book "Das Reich" and Old Max did not mention the fact that it was some teenagers who WRecked the Division's flat cars. Interesting though... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Das-Reich-Pa.../dp/0330483897
PSS. A read on the making of the Free French Army of 1945; http://books.google.com/books?id=Twy...num=7#PPA69,M1
http://sonic.net/~bstone/history/freefrench.shtml
PSS. Kehoe in Brittany; https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f..._99/art03.html