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Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War [Hardcover]

COLIN BEAVAN (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)


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Book Description

May 4, 2006
The thrilling inside story of the secret “special operations” mission that paved the way for D- Day—and changed the way America waged war

On D-Day, three hundred young American and Allied soldiers were dropped behind enemy lines to launch a secret sabotage mission code-named Jedburgh. Working with the French Resistance, the “Jeds” launched a stunningly effective guerrilla campaign against the German war machine. In this compelling narrative, Colin Beavan, whose grandfather Gerry Miller helped direct the operation for the OSS, tells the incredible story of the rowdy daredevils who carried out America’s first special-forces mission.

Drawing on scores of interviews with Jeds, Beavan’s history reads like a spy thriller. Dodging Gestapo spies, the Jeds armed and trained fighters who liberated Paris, snarled German transport throughout France, and provided essential cover to the invading Allied forces. Beavan focuses on key figures like William Colby, Stewart Alsop, and John Singlaub—all of whom went on to high-profile postwar careers—and shows how Jedburgh pioneered the specialforces procedures still used in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

This gripping history of the original special ops mission makes a major contribution to the literature of American warfare.



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While Hitler considered western European resistance forces a minor annoyance, movies and popular writers invariably extol the havoc they wreaked behind enemy lines, perhaps tipping the balance toward victory. In this vein, Beavan (Fingerprints) delivers a lively account of the immense Allied effort to stir up trouble in occupied France in support of the Normandy invasion in June 1944. Since 1940, the British and Free French had sent agents into France, but the Nazis tracked them down with alarming efficiency. Backed by U.S. leaders, Operation Jedburgh was born in 1943: hundreds of American, British and French volunteers parachuted into France to organize resistance forces and then lead them in a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla action. Many operations failed, but there were plenty of triumphs—perhaps the most spectacular being the surrender of 20,000 German troops in September 1944. Beavan, whose grandfather was a "Jed," interviewed 30 operatives, including former CIA director William Colby and Green Beret founder Aaron Banks, and recounts Jedburgh's exploits through their eyes. This involves a good deal of recreated dialogue and speculation—but it rings true. Historians may not share the author's conviction of Jedburgh's crucial role in the Allied victory, but he makes an entertaining case. (May 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

One D-Day problem for the Allies was preventing Nazi reinforcements from traveling to the Normandy battle area. One of their solutions, and Beavan's topic, was the sabotage and ambuscade of German units advancing by road. For this irregular warfare, planners had an asset in the French Resistance, but it lacked sufficient weaponry. How the Allies supplied the guns guides Beavan's story, which opens with the trawl through the ranks for French speakers able to fight behind the lines. Eventually, about 100 three-man teams were recruited, subsequently parachuted into the region in the period surrounding D-Day, and cooperated with the Resistance in harassing the German army into withdrawing from France. Beavans tells a bloody story of World War II small-unit combat and pitiless settling of scores between resisters and collaborators among the French. With able integration of secondary literature on Allied special operations with his original interviews with dozens of veterans of Operation Jedburgh, Beavan has produced an energetic, tension-soaked account of its face-to-face firefights and their significance to the big picture. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Viking Adult (May 4, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0670037621
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670037629
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,248,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As the news stories go: "Colin Beavan is a liberal schlub who got tired of listening to himself complain about the world without ever actually doing anything about it..." Thus, in November, 2006, Beavan launched a year-long project in which he, his wife, his two-year-old daughter and his four-year-old dog went off the grid and attempted to live in the middle of New York City with as little environmental impact as possible.

The point of the project was to experiment with ways of living that might both improve quality of life and be less harmful to the planet. It also provided a narrative vehicle by which to attract broad public attention to the range of pressing environmental crises including: food system sustainability, climate change, water scarcity, and materials and energy resource depletion.

Beavan's experiment in lifestyle redesign is the subject of his book (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and a Sundance-selected documentary by independent film producers Laura Gabbert (Sunset Story, Getting to Know You) and Eden Wurmfeld (The Hammer, Puccini for Beginners, Kissing Jessica Stein). Both the book and the documentary will be released in September, 2009. Columbia Pictures also plans to make a feature film (produced by Todd Black) based on the book.

Beavan writes and administers the provocative environmental blog NoImpactMan.Com, which has become a meeting point for discussion of environmental issues from a "deep green" perspective. In addition to some 2,500 daily visitors and 4,000 daily page views, the site has 10,000 email and "newsreader" subscribers. About 1.8 million people have visited the blog since he established it a year and a half ago.

Beavan was named one of MSN's Ten Most Influential Men of 2007 and was named an Eco-Illuminator in Elle Magazine's 2008 Green Awards. His blog NoImpactMan.com was named one of the world's top 15 environmental websites by Time Magazine. He was named a 2008 Eco-Star by New York City's Lower East Side Ecology Center.

The No Impact project has been the subject of stories in the New York Time, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other national and international news outlets. Beavan has appeared on The Colbert Report, Good Morning America, Nightline, The Montel Show, and all the major NPR shows. He speaks regularly to a wide variety of audiences, is frequently quoted in the press and consults to business on the intersection of sustainability and human quality of life.

Beavan is a PhD electronic engineer (University of Liverpool). He spent the late 80s and early 90s as a consultant to philanthropic organizations such as social housing providers, drug treatment agencies and hospitals, helping them to promote themselves in order to secure increasingly scarce, Thatcher-era funding.

In 1992 Beavan returned to the United States and wrote for magazines until Hyperion published his first book Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science (a popular history of criminology) in 2001. In 2006, Viking published his second book, Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow (about the operation that formed the precedent for U.S. anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan).

He is director of the No Impact Project, a visiting scholar at NYU, an advisor to the University's Sustainability Task Force, and sits on the board of directors of New York City's Transportation Alternatives and on the advisory council of Just Food.

 

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Average Customer Review
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Story Of Operation Jedburgh's Impact On The D-Day Invasion, December 9, 2006
By 
H. J. Rossi (Shawnee Mission, KS USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War (Hardcover)
In Colin Beavan's OPERATION JEDBURGH, the now declassified files of the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) are opened to reveal the huge contribution of the French Resistance forces before, during and after the landings at Normandy. Strategic thinkers realized the potential value of the Resistance, but they also knew that these groups needed weapons, explosives, organization and training to be effective saboteurs.

The "Jeds" as the teams were called, consisted of two officers and an enlisted radio operator. One officer, either British or American, was the leader, and the second officer was from the country where the team was to operate (in this case, France). The early part of the book outlined the extensive training these teams underwent, including the dangerous technique of low-altitude parachuting.

So, into France the teams went. Right away, the Jeds were faced with the difficult task of redirecting the Resistance's priorities. All they wanted to do was kill Germans, rather than to assist in the important work of co-coordinating with the needs of the regular Allied forces at the beachhead. To a large extend, these tasks were successful, and the sabotage to delay German forces reinforcing the defenses at Normandy turned out to be critical, especially during the storms in the Atlantic immediately after the invasion.

Then, it was the formidable task of protecting the flanks of Patton's 3rd Army as they slashed across France to the German frontier.

Although I've read many books on the invasion, I'd never learned of the importance or successes of the Resistance during those desperate weeks at the beachhead and the eventual break out.

Well worth the reader's time and I would recommend this book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good addition to WWII or Unconventional Warfare Library, January 11, 2007
This review is from: Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War (Hardcover)
Operation Jedburgh is a solid history of the unconventional warfare operation to strengthen the French resistance and prepare the way for the D-day invasion. The author does not hide the failures and does not over-stress the successes but provides an objective narative of the people and events. The writing style is pleasent and easy to read. A very good addition for any WWII or unconventional warfare history library.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great, exciting and informative read!, August 21, 2007
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This is a fantastic read. I found my heart pounding through much of the book. The author makes you feel like you are there... I never knew about these guys and their mission. I wish the vulgarity was less but it is infrequent. I have really enjoyed this book. These guys were very brave heroes in a horrible situation. I hope there is a movie based on the book.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
When Odette Sansom entered, Sergeant Hugo Bleicher, a counterintelligence officer of the Abwehr, stood up from his little wooden table, as if he were a gentleman, and offered her a cigarette. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
post date unknown, individual team reports, shadow bosses, shadow chiefs, paratroop lieutenant, maquis leaders, maquis groups, southern invasion, shadow armies, author interview
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Bernard Knox, Milton Hall, World War, Paul Cyr, Aaron Bank, Jean Sassi, Tommy Macpherson, North Africa, Franklin Canfield, Bill Dreux, French Resistance, Lou Lajeunesse, New York, Armored Division, Bill Thompson, Dick Franklin, Free French, Team Gavin, Arthur Brown, Massif Central, Winston Churchill, Adrian Wise, Armistice Army, Patton's Third Army, Stewart Alsop
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