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In August 1944, Fred Bailey jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, landing in a disused brickyard. Growing up he had been a sickly child with a heart condition, which led his family to move out of London for his health. But in 1941 at age 18 he had joined the British Army’s Royal Armored Corps, and served with the Desert Army. Bored after the fight for North Africa was over, he volunteered for special duties, and soon found himself in the Special Operations Executive, assigned to be a radio officer in a Jedburgh team–groups of three soldiers designed to jump into France and support the French resistance in conjunction with the Allied invasion.
Fred Bailey died on January 29, 2023, at age 99, the last veteran of the Jedburgh teams living in Britain. When I read his obituary it seemed to me a very good time to have Ben Jones back on the podcast. Ben Jones is the State Historian of South Dakota and Director of the South Dakota State Historical Society, and he appeared in Episode 290 to talk about both of those jobs. But he is also a historian of the Second World War, and author of Eisenhower’s Guerrillas: The Jedburghs, the Maquis, and the Liberation of France, which is the subject of our conversation today.
For Further Investigation
- At the Imperial War Museum in London are records related to the Special Operations Executive, Section F, Operation Jedburgh. Among them are oral histories, including one with Fred Bailey. Recorded on December 11, 1990, it’s wonderful. Interestingly Bailey emphatically says “we went in far too late…”, and very crisply and incisively explains how the effects of the operation would have been better had they arrived two or three months before. You can also listen to his team leader, John Smallwood, talk about his experiences.
- Obituary of Fred Bailey
- Bernard Knox, “Premature Anti-Fascist”
- John K. Singlaub
- William Colby in Norway
- A Brian Lamb interview with Robert Merry about Joseph Alsop and (more importantly, for our conversation) Stewart Alsop
