NO BRIDGES BLOWN With the OSS Jedburghs in Nazi-Occupied France
WILLIAM B. DREUX
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright Š 1971 by University of Notre Dame Original cloth edition published in 1971 by the University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress@nd.edu New paperback published in 2019 All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contents
Foreword Preface
xi 00
CHAPTER ONE
The Decision
1
CHAPTER TWO
The Congressional Country Club and Raleigh Manhattans CHAPTER THREE
How Sane are Paratroopers?
21
CHAPTER FOUR
Jeds in the Highlands of Scotland
25
CHAPTER FIVE
“Go Out Like a Guardsman, Sir!”
37
CHAPTER SIX
All the Jeds Get ‘Married’
49
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Running In! . . . Action Stations!”
71
11
Contents CHAPTER EIGHT
The Hideout in the Rectory
97
CHAPTER NINE
Germans and Calvados Everywhere
129
CHAPTER TEN
Dialogue with a German
151
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Maquis Leader
175
CHAPTER TWELVE
“C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre” CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Orders from a General
211
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It Did Not Take Him Long to Die
229
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ‘Liberation’ of Dinan
259
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“But what we tried to do was correct” CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Farewell to Milton Hall
Epilogue
viii
307
299
285
191
Foreword
William Dreux’s No Bridges Blown is a great book not only because it tells an interesting story about a poorly understood topic of great importance but because it tells it so well. It’s certainly deserving of being republished so that we can use its wisdom today. The marvelous title evokes the futility of war in a Hemingway-like manner, and the experiences Dreux describes are both timely and rooted in history’s constants. How friendships are made, adventures experienced, and ambiguity endured can be fruitfully compared to American soldiers’ experiences since the end of the Second World War to today. Dreux was a member of the Jedburghs, an Allied unit comprised of special warfare soldiers from the United Kingdom, United States, France, the Netherlands, and Canada. The British Special Operations Executive anticipated the difficulty of replacing their intelligence operatives after the Allies invaded France on D-Day, when the German army and Vichy French police would find greater opportunities to arrest or kill British and French spies. Thus they developed the Jedburgh team concept: its members would parachute behind the German lines, make contact with already existing networks of resistance fighters, replace the recently lost British agents, and maintain operational momentum to conduct an unconventional war in enemy territory. Short of manpower, the British asked the United States to collaborate and contribute soldiers, aircraft, and other resources. After exercising and rehearsing the concept, the British realized native speakers would be critical to success, and so they also asked the French and Dutch to contribute soldiers to the effort. The French took up the offer with zeal as a way to contribute to France’s xi
Foreword
liberation and as an opportunity to demonstrate to the British and American governments that France maintained its sovereignty. The Jedburgh operation was the first planned guerrilla campaign designed to support a conventional campaign since the period when modern technology had made frequent tactical modifications possible after the campaign was underway. The British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services were led by people who had served in Ireland, India, the Middle East, Central America, and the Philippines. Moreover, they had read T. E. Lawrence closely, but twenty years after Lawrence’s campaign, armies could now use encrypted radio communications and the airplane to link the conventional and unconventional forces to each other. The Allied commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, wanted to use the French Resistance, but in a controlled manner that did not feed the German Army and Gestapo’s penchant for atrocities. The Jedburgh plan provided him a way to do that, because it meant that French soldiers and French resistance groups would be under his command. Having a French officer, General MariePierre Koenig, a leader of the Free French of the Interior, be his commander for unconventional warfare in France became the means to communicate with and coordinate guerrillas across a wide swath of occupied France. The Allied Jedburgh teams then reported to Koenig, a French general, who reported to Eisenhower. Because of this complicated arrangement that placed different nations together to fight a war for which they sought meaningfully different aims, the Jedburghs’ “fog of war” was thicker than most. Having Allied special forces operate in Jedburgh teams was a creature of its time. The British, American, and French agreed on this very odd idea of making an Allied unit down to the tactical level because each nation got something from it. But this Allied operational team concept was not to last beyond the war, as it proved too difficult to hold together when the conditions changed and the aims diverged even more. Over and above the typical complexities of combat, resistance leaders were unsure of their orders, their authority, their friends, and their enemies; long-suffering civilians were exhausted xii
Foreword
by war’s deprivations; a desperate but weakened enemy was comfortable with atrocity; and three nations warred with two nations, one of whom was on both sides. This was the fog that William Dreux and his Jedburgh teammates parachuted into in 1944. If you enjoy Ernest Hemingway novels, you’ll love Dreux’s writing. The prose is descriptive, clear, blunt, and sophisticated. Hemingway’s character Robert Jordan from For Whom The Bell Tolls seems to be the guide for Dreux in both style, pace, and tone. Jordan’s mission to destroy a bridge during the Spanish Civil War, his empty accomplishment, and the people he meets along the way are clearly something Dreux had in mind as he relates his experiences in France, his futile efforts to comply with his mission’s orders to blow up bridges, and his stoic outlook on the entire experience—which blew up no bridges. The fact that Hemingway was in France along with the OSS in July and August of 1944 could mean that the two collided at some point during the war or after. The odds of that are long, but what is clear is that Dreux read Hemingway: Dreux’s writing evokes the harsh and detached language of one of the twentieth century’s most successful authors. With American forces currently engaged in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and various African nations, and as the American public wearies of these wars, No Bridges Blown’s re-publication is timely. The dissonance Dreux suffers from—between the ideals and clarity of the mission he set about to do and the reality and complexity he found in France—sounds eerily familiar to us today. It also reminds us that the most lasting aspects of war are the intimate, exhausting, painful, uplifting, and wounding memories. The profound wounds they may leave on the memory of those who participate can be salved by being, as Dreux was, on the winning side. Since 1945 American soldiers like him have not had such victories to help them heal; only friendships with one another have done that. Recently, the U. S. Army revived Jedburgh teams to be liaisons to guerrilla groups, but while they remain a means to link to foreign forces, they do not include allies because the complexities are far too difficult to manage. In the author of No Bridges Blown we have a new friend, or perhaps a wise xiii
Foreword
grandfather, from Hemingway’s generation, to teach us all these things, while providing us a wonderful adventure to enjoy. Benjamin F. Jones
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Preface
xvi
Preface
xvii