RESISTANCE FETE REJOINS 200 WHO 'KILLED AND VANISHED'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090025-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: June 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090025-7
4 ARTICLE APP ED NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE -1 June 1984
Their British, agues were were
leagues French and other col
Who `Killed and Vanished le
similarly honored.
Resistance Fete Rejoins 204 Merit,ix de Guerre; the Le-
;gion of Merit, the Silver. Star, the
By DREW MIDDLETON
Special toTbeNew YortTtmes
p
,,
..pp- o e reach
Resistance in the German Army's
rear areas.
Many of the Jedburghs have lived
their postwar lives at quiet'jobs in,
small towns, but not all of them. The
ng
renc
e
gian and Dutch...
,
burghs who gathered Wednesday At Milton Hall, they practiced si
night at the Hotel George V to cele- lent kiling in sunken gardens,
brate the 40th anniversary of their ! gypped in training harnesses onto
e
o rations i
rt f th F
r
n
on
June 6.'
They.', were underground agents"'
known as Jedburghs, whose strategy
.was "surprise, kill, vanish."
But it is hard to imagine a more
peaceful group than the 200 or so Jed-
PARIS, May 31- Their names are " The members"were chosen careful:
Mike and Elmer and Nigel and Pier- .,y. Elmer Esch, a farm boy from
re. They are retired insurance sales- ..Iowa, remembers that he was headed
men and farmers and real estate . for duty at a camp for German
salesmen. Forty years ago, some *prisoners of war when he was tapped
were in German-occupied France and for a specal service. He did not know after theeAllied invasion of N
.I what it.was, but "anything sounded
ma
d
On Wednesday night, they sat in the '
resplendent Salle de Paix in the hotel, .
all of them older but with a few excep
tions remarkably trim. Their wives
said they had never known about that
episode of their husbands' lives until
a few years ago, when reports of the
Jedburghs' operations began to leak
out.
Their operations did not end with
the end of the war in Europe. Some',
were shipped to China and Burma for
the last actions of the Pacific-.War: A
Jew moved from the O.S.S."to the Cen-.
tral Intelligence Agency,. and one or.
:two - they were growing old no*--.
-: pperated in Vietnam. :
' Tonight, they participated. in a
better: than that assignmet," he
said. So be was shipped 6, Milton
Hall , . an Elizabethan mansion .100
miles" north of London, -where he
joined 240 other volunteers, most of
them American and"British 'but also
includi
F
h
B
l
quiet lawns;, fired demolition charges
on the golf course and practiced the
Morse code Arl hand-powered wireless
sets.'It was all, as they said in those
('lave "vpTV l,l,d, hnct, 91 :
ceremony at the Resistance Monu-
ment at Mont Val6rien outside Paris.
And on Friday night they will relight
the flame at the Arc de Triomphe.
At the dinner Wednesday night, the
stories, in no way diminished by time,
passed back and forth across the din-
ner tables:
master of . ceremonies Wednesday parachute training concluded withla . men?"
night was William E. Colby, a. former night drop after three. days. At Fort . ' The Germans were more scared
Director of Central Intelligence. And than I was, which is saying some-
some-
Benning, Ga., where American Para- thing"
at the head table sat Jacques Chaban- troopers had been trained, troops did' ?Delmas, the youngest general in the'! not do a jump until they had six weeks Met an Englishman who was on
French Resistance and later Prime o my team. Hadn't seen him for 40
Minister of France. Putting three-man teams y ; Fine guy. Never knew he was it
lord." Was Formed in 144 that would work effectively was a problem.. Ultimatel As a guest left the hotel, the door
The Jedburghs originated' early in p Y' It was decided man asked who the old fellows were.
1944, when the American Office of that teams that formed by mutual
Told, he shrugged his shoulders. It
Strategic Services ' and the British consent were likely to be more effi- was not his war.
Special Operations Executive estab-, cient. So an Englishman, and an _ _...