No Bridges Blown

William B. Dreux

Description

A rediscovered classic of military history back in print for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II

When William B. Dreux parachuted into France in 1944, the OSS infantry officer had cinematic visions of blood-and-guts heroics, of leading the French Maquis resistance forces in daring missions to blow up key bridges and delay the German advance.

This isn’t the glamorized screen-ready account he expected; this is the real story. Dreux’s three-man OSS team landed behind enemy lines in France, in uniform, far from the targeted bridges. No Bridges Blown is a story of mistakes, failures, and survival, a story of volunteers and countrymen working together in the French countryside. The only book written by one of the Jedburghs about his wartime experiences, Dreux brings the history of World War II to life with stories of real people amidst a small section of the fighting in France. These people had reckless courage, little training, and faced impossible odds. This story will resonate with veterans and everyday citizens alike and it brings to life the realities of war on the ground in Nazi-occupied France.

In movies and on television you sometimes see a tough American paratrooper knock out a German guard with a devastating karate chop or a swift judo throw. You will find none of that in this story. The closest any German ever came to me was when he was poking his submachine gun in my stomach as I sat trapped in a car. No karate or judo expert could have gotten out of that fix. I had to do it differently.

There are no great victories either. If anything, it was the other way around. Once I led a Maquis group and tried to punch a hole through the rear of the "Atlantic Wall" defenses on the Brittany coast. My group was made up of untrained young Frenchmen and some former Senegalese and Algerian soldiers. The Germans let me lead my men forward into a trap. Then they opened up on us; the Senegalese and Algerians panicked and ran. My young Frenchmen stood fast, but they took a beating. I had made a tactical error for which others paid the price. We were well clobbered that morning.

The people I knew in the Maquis were for the most part plain people, farmers, storekeepers, priests, mechanics, gendarmes, ex-soldiers, very young men and very old men, and the women. There was a butcher and a veterinarian, and both of them were shot by the Germans for helping us. There was also an elderly aristocrat in whose chateau I spent a night between sheets for the first time in months. I remember that he suggested that I keep my pistol at hand on the bedside table, and I did.

As guerrilla fighters most of these people in our area of Brittany were half-trained at best. But they all had courage, sometimes reckless courage. They also had faith in themselves and in France, and they were sure that at last the long night of Nazi tyranny was ending.

When I told a friend of mine that I was going to try to write this story he smiled a little and replied that if I did it would be because I wanted to re-live the war days and that evidently I missed the adventures, the hopes and fears, the camaraderie, the sense of achievement, and also the conviction, beyond any doubt, of having a cause. He said that perhaps I had a nostalgic feeling for what was and now is not, and that I would be writing to please myself. My friend is unusually perceptive, sometimes uncomfortably so. What he said may well be true and perhaps I am really writing for myself. But then it has been said that a writer should first of all try to please and satisfy himself, and that he should think of himself as playing to an audience of one. And yet here something else should be mentioned: the story which I tell is, in some ways, the story of a failure.

In writing this story I realize that I now see what happened in 1944 through the mellowing filter of time, and that I, the writer, am no longer the same person who jumped into France.· Some of the things I saw have acquired a richer meaning which I then saw only dimly, if at all. Time is a kind friend in those lonely hours when you start dredging up a part of your life, and the past becomes a constant companion, a sad one at times and a gay one at others, but always someone who is at your side and is, indeed, part of you.

Sometimes when I was asked after the war what it was like to be behind the lines and what I did, I would be reminded of the old story of the French nobleman who was asked what he had done during the French Revolution. And his reply was, "I survived."

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Historical
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• WW2
• Agencia Central de Inteligencia
• Nazismo
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Nazism
• Operation Jedburgh
• General officer
• Military
• World War II
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• General
• United States
• Nazisme
• Germany
• OSS
• Office of Strategic Services
• Maquis
• Eisenhower
• Seconde Guerre mondiale
• France
• Central Intelligence Agency

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268107994
• Langue: English

Extrait

Advance Praise for
NO BRIDGES BLOWN
“Quietly written yet intensely interesting.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A readable and interesting reconstruction of the past!”
— Library Journal
“I recommend No Bridges Blown as a book that ought to be a classic of wartime literature. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the personal implications of war, the stress of life in occupied territory, some of the roots of American special operations forces, or just wants a fascinating and beautifully written explanation of a tiny piece of the fight in France.”
—Russell Worth Parker, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps
“The men and women of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) were some of the most dynamic and pioneering in American history. Jedburgh captain William Dreux’s compelling prose captures not only the gristle but also the meat of these important contributions in his World War II memoir No Bridges Blown. What’s old is new—the tenets and principles developed by the OSS continue to ring true in today’s conflicts.”
—Patrick K. O’Donnell, best-selling author of The Unknowns and First SEALs
“No Bridges Blown is one of the most authentic accounts of life behind-the- lines in Occupied France that I’ve ever read.”
—Colin Beavan, author of Operation Jedburgh
“William Dreux’s account of his time with the elite Jedburgh teams of the OSS is the rare war story offering a glimpse into the vital work that took place behind the lines of battle. No Bridges Blown is a compelling, illuminating memoir of his time working with the French Resistance, a valuable companion to tales of combat.”
—Gregory A. Freeman, author of The Forgotten 500
No Bridges Blown

NO BRIDGES BLOWN
With the OSS Jedburghs in Nazi-Occupied France
WILLIAM B. DREUX
with a New Foreword by
BENJAMIN F. JONES
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 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 2020
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933746
ISBN: 978-0-268-10797-0 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10798-7 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10800-7 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10799-4 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To L. S.
and the others who didn’t make it
Grateful acknowledgment is made for excerpts from the following works:
“The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke. Reprinted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Copyright 1915 by Dodd, Mead & Company; copyright renewed 1943 by Edward Marsh.
“Under Ben Bulben” by W. B. Yeats, from Collected Poems by W. B. Yeats, reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company. Copyright 1940 by Georgie Yeats, renewed 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats and Anne Yeats.
“A Rendezvous with Death” by Allan Seeger. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Poem by Patrick Shaw Stewart reprinted from Dialogue with Myself by Martin C. D’Arcy, S.J., copyright © 1966, by Martin C. D’Arcy. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. publishers.
Contents
Foreword to the 2020 Edition, Benjamin F. Jones
Preface
CHAPTER ONE
The Decision
CHAPTER TWO
The Congressional Country Club and Raleigh Manhattans
CHAPTER THREE
How Sane are Paratroopers?
CHAPTER FOUR
Jeds in the Highlands of Scotland
CHAPTER FIVE
“Go Out Like a Guardsman, Sir!”
CHAPTER SIX
All the Jeds Get ‘Married’
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Running In! . . . Action Stations!”

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Hideout in the Rectory
CHAPTER NINE
Germans and Calvados Everywhere
CHAPTER TEN
Dialogue with a German
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Maquis Leader
CHAPTER TWELVE
“C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Orders from a General
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It Did Not Take Him Long to Die
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ‘Liberation’ of Dinan
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“But what we tried to do was correct”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Farewell to Milton Hall
Epilogue
Nous n’irons plus au bois, Jes Iauriers sont coupes.
Theodore de Banville
Foreword to the 2020 Edition
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 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 Marie-Pierre 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 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 b