It had begun on an October morning in 1943 in Washington, D.C., in an office in the Munitions Building. IIe'd gotten there after answering a call for Foreign-language-speaking volunteers who were eager for hazardous duty behind enemy lines (he spoke fair French). The outfit issuing the call was the OSS — Office of Strategic Services — about which Singlaub knew very little, except that it was involved in secret intelligence and sabotage operations overseas and was commanded by the legendary General 'Wild Bill' Donovan. That seemed pretty good to Singlaub.
A grueling interview determined that he might have what the OSS needed, and he was ordered to show up in the headquarters parking lot the next morning for transportation to the Congressional Country Club. The name was not a joke. At one time, congressmen
In fact, training at the Congressional Country Club did not seem discordant to the average OSS volunteer. Before Franklin Roosevelt had picked him to run his new intelligence organization, Donovan had been a Wall Street lawyer with the kind of blue-blood, Ivy League connections that were common at the time. It was only natural that he had built his OSS out of the same privileged, clubby extended family. Most senior officers came from Ivy League — dominated professions, as did many who were present for the orientation with Jack Singlaub that October morning. To his immense relief, however, it wasn't only the social elite he saw there. Also present were hardened- looking airborne lieutenants like Singlaub who'd come out of OCS or ROTC, as he had (the war had cut his college career short).
The welcoming colonel made instantly clear what they'd be facing:
'You've been brought here,' he said, 'to evaluate your suitability for combat duty with resistance groups in enemy-occupied areas…. I'm talking about guerrilla warfare, espionage, and sabotage. Obviously, no one doubts your courage, but we have to make certain you possess the qualities needed for a type of operation never before attempted on the scale we envision.
'Guerrillas move fast, operating mainly at night, then disperse into the countryside and reassemble miles away. The skills required of a guerrilla leader will be the same as those shown by the best backwoods fighters and Indian scouts.' Singlaub brightened when he heard this. He had always loved outdoor sports — hunting, fishing, camping — more than the regimentation of playground and team sports. All during high school and college, he had spent whatever time he could trekking the High Sierras. He was happy in the woods and the wilderness.
'We aren't looking for individual heroes,' the colonel concluded, 'although your courage will certainly be tested in the coming weeks. We want mature officers who can train foreign resistance troops, quickly and efficiently, then lead them aggressively. If we are not completely satisfied with your potential, you
Over the next weeks, Singlaub and his companions learned, and were tested on, the basic skills of guerrilla warfare — how to move stealthily at night (over grassy fields that had once been manicured fairways); how to take out targets like railway switches, power transformers, sentry posts, and bridges. But most important, they were tested on how well they could handle what they'd be up against psychologically. Behind the lines they'd be on their own. How well would they hold up? How well could they handle the inevitable crises and screwups? How well would they handle men who were incompetent or overaggressive or nuts?
To that end, ringers from the training staff were inserted into teams in order to screw things up. How well the team handled this subordinate was often more important to their final evaluation than how well they placed demo charges on a railway trestle.
Once they had successfully passed over these hurdles, the OSS candidates were sent to what was called Area B-1. This had once upon a time been a boys' camp in western Maryland, and later FDR's weekend retreat, Shangri-la. After the war it became the presidential retreat now called Camp David.
Here the training emphasized tradecraft, and especially hand-to-hand combat.
For that they had probably the best instructor in the world, the British Major William Fairbairn, the inventor of the world-famous Fairbairn double-edged fighting knife (the commandos' close-in weapon of choice) and the developer of the hand-to-hand training course for the commandos. Fairbairn's philosophy was simple: You trained for months with a wide variety of Allied and enemy weapons until you handled any of them as instinctively as a major-league ballplayer swung a bat.
And so from early morning until late at night, that's what they did — not to mention the morning runs, the labyrinthine and dangerous obstacle courses, the nighttime crawls through cold, rain-soaked woods to plant demo charges, or the hours practicing encryption and clandestine radio procedures.
In December, Singlaub sailed for England on the
The training in England was no less grueling than that in Virginia and Maryland. Initially, the focus was on parachute training and live-fire exercises; but there was also increasing emphasis on real-life situations the teams might run into — clandestine tradecraft and living cover stories. Men who failed these tests were sent back to regular units.
After a time, three-man teams were formed — an American or British officer, a French counterpart, and an enlisted radio operator. These teams were to be air-dropped into occupied France, where they would help organize, train, and lead Maquis resistance units in support of the Allied invasion. It was hoped that by then Maquis troops would number in the tens of thousands, and that the occupying Nazi army would find itself attacked on two fronts — Americans, Brits, and Canadians driving west from Normandy, and Maquisards making life hard for the Germans in their rear areas.
In order to minimize Nazi reprisals against civilians, it was essential that the major Maquisard offensive not break out until after the invasion had been launched. And then Maquis objectives and timetables had to be coordinated with overall Allied goals. This would require considerable psychological, political, and military acuity — in a fiercely high-stress, high-threat environment.
The operation was named JEDBURGH, after a castle in Scotland, and the teams were called Jedburgh Teams.
Singlaub landed in waist-high brush, rolled to the ground, then picked himself up and, as he gathered his chute into a bundle, made sure that Dominique and Dennau had come down safely fifty yards away.
Darkened figures emerged from the trees, calling out softly in French. Some separated from the rest in order to grab the cargo chutes. Most of the others spread out into a periphery defense. A single figure approached, their contact, a British SOE officer named Simon. They had landed about three kilometers from a village called Bonnefond, he explained, and about twenty kilometers from a German garrison in the town of Egletons.
After months of training, Jack Singlaub was at last in occupied France. He was twenty-three years old.
Soon the three newly arrived Jeds were ready to go. The heavy radio was stowed in Dennau's rucksack; Singlaub had slid a magazine into their submachine gun and readied the weapon; they had disposed of their chutes and shouldered their rucksacks; and Simon and the Maquis were leading them off into the night-shrouded woods. As they went, Singlaub noted with professional satisfaction that the Maquis troops were both well-trained and well- armed. They kept a good interval in their column, there was a point squad ahead, and flankers were on the sides.
Here was the situation they faced: At that time, 8,000 Maquisards of the Force Francaises d'Interieur (FFI) operated in the region. Of these, 5,000 belonged to the well-trained and well-armed Gaullist Armee Secrete (AS), while most of the rest were Communist Franc Tireurs et Partisans (FTP). Though there was little love or cooperation between the two, Maquis attacks on German garrisons and convoys had grown since D Day.
Meanwhile, a breakout seemed near out of the Normandy beachhead. Once it came, Allied armies would race west along the Loire. An increasingly likely second Allied invasion — from the Mediterranean coast up the Rhone valley — would put further pressure on the Germans.
