| Original caption: “Two Jeds scale brick wall in training exercises. Milton Hall, England.” The grounds at Milton Hall, at Longthorpe on the outskirts of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, some 90 miles (144 kilometers) north of London, were created in 1791 by landscape designer Humphry Repton (April 21, 1752 – March 24, 1818) for the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam (May 30, 1748 – February 8, 1833), and enlarged and improved in the 19th century. It was an important house completed in 1773 by Sir William Chambers (February 23, 1723 – March 10, 1796), set in a 600-acre (242 hectares) park, including 30 acres (12 hectares) of formal gardens, and had a 9-hole golf course added in the 1920s. On October 16, 1943, Major John Tyson (January 4, 1904 – September 30, 2004) and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Spooner (July 10, 1893 – November 1968), who had already been identified as the commandant of the Jedburgh Training School, were taken to visit the estate by Colonel James T. Young (September 15, 1897 – June 2, 1979) of Special Operations Executive (SOE). They decided it would be suitable for the purpose, and SOE was asked to requisition the property. In fact, it had long been taken over by the British Government, and at the time of Tyson’s and Spooner’s 1st visit it was in use as an anti-aircraft training school and home to the Territorial Army’s 2nd Anti-Aircraft Division.) SOE gained possession, and Spooner and his staff began to move in, in late November. It had been hoped to open the Jedburgh Training School from January 1, 1943, but the necessary conversion work, although minimal, was hampered by lack of materials, and the inauguration slipped by a month. Extensive though it was, Milton Hall was never going to be big enough for all the Jedburghs and the training staff, and huts were erected in the grounds to provide additional living accommodation. Spooner’s deputy was the United State Marine, Horace W. “Hod” Fuller (August 12, 1908 – August 15, 1989), who had already seen action in France as a volunteer in 1940, and in the Pacific. When he departed for Algeria with 15 Jedburgh teams which were to be deployed from there, in early May, he was replaced by a United States Army Major, Richard V McLallen (December 28, 1904 – April 2, 1957), who had previously been Deputy Chief Instructor. There were 15 staff and administrative posts, 10 of them filled by British officers and 5, including that of Post Exchange (PX), the American equivalent of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute (NAAFI) officer, by Americans. There were 26 instructors under Major Oliver Brown (March 2, 1914 – July 2, 2005) and his deputy, 17 of them British and 9 American. All but 10 of the instructors, including Oliver Brown, later became operational. Major Brown, a fluent French speaker, was already in the SOE which he had joined the Jedburghs as an instructor in 1942. Brown trained Odette Sansom (April 28, 1912 – March 13, 1995) and Violette Szabo (June 26, 1921 – circa February 5, 1945), 2 of the leading F Section agents. When the matter of training the Jedburghs was raised, Brown was sent to Donovan and a Free French officer to get their opinion on how it should be run: “Donovan didn’t impress me the least little bit. I thought he was just another Custer. He was an unintelligent, bombastic American. But they loved him. He said he would leave it to [the British.] We wanted the Jeds to do their initial training before they arrived at Milton Hall near Peterborough. Most of the Americans were serving soldiers. Bloody undisciplined soldiers too. I got to like them so much it wasn’t true. We had tremendous difficulties with the Americans who wanted to start right away without any training. The French were disciplined. We didn’t have anything to do with selection. I wish we had. Some of the Americans and French were unsuitable. The French were too military and rather inflexible. The Americans were too undisciplined. A lot of the British were SOE instructors who wanted to get into the war. A lot of the Americans were very educated people from places like Harvard, and influential people. In the end they impressed some discipline on their fellow countrymen. I insisted that when I took the job I would only do it if I was sent to France myself. I couldn’t go on training people and sending them to their death without going myself. The response from Command was, ‘Yes, but only if the [Free French] agreed.’ I was older than the rest. They were in their late teens and early twenties, I was 30. I teamed up with ‘René Maitre’ [real name Lieutenant Karrière (1916 – 1979], and my wireless operator was old ‘Smithy’ [Sergeant George N. Smith (September 10, 1919 – January 17, 1991] who no 1 else wanted, he hardly spoke English let alone French. He was a marvelous operator. The officers’ syllabus consisted of sabotage, ambushes, guerrilla warfare, training with several types of firearm, unarmed combat, ciphers, reception of parachute drops and aircraft landings. Teams were briefed by agents specially flown out of France for the purpose. As Operation Anvil D-Day approached in August 1944, the teams due for the south of France were shipped to Algiers, to be flown in from there. Dozens of Quonset huts and pyramidal tents with wooden floors littered the lawns and the tennis courts, which had been covered with a layer of crushed cinders. The fairways and greens of the rolling 406-acre golf course had become an obstacle course, a confidence course, and other training areas. And across River Road, to the north, were pistol and machine gun ranges. Demolition classes included practical exercises – blowing up trees and walls and old cars. And nights were often spent patrolling through the moist autumn foliage. Physical training continued, with the men setting and breaking personal records in pushups and tearing through the obstacle course. The tough training and the Spartan mountain living had the desired effect, and the men grew hard. William B. Dreux (March 18, 1911 – September 1983) reports that 1 of the British Jeds made his own arrangements, and asked Spooner if he could set up a tent in the woods, far away from the house, pointing out that they would have to rough it in France, and should start to get used to it now. It transpired that “Major Whitley” (Dreux changed the names of his dramatis personae, and to muddy the water further, mixed up their character traits and histories) or “Captain Reggie Carlton” actually had an ulterior motive, and shared his campsite with a woman friend on a regular basis. The staff establishment of the Jedburgh Training School stuck to the accepted pattern, with a British officer in the leading role, seconded by an American. Lieutenant Colonel Spooner, whose pre-war career had been in the Indian Cavalry — was a Pukka Sahib type in his early sixties, with a craggy face and a bristling mustache. “When he wasn’t sure of what to say, which was often, he emitted a loud, prolonged grunt,” said Dreux. Spponer was to prove an unpopular choice as commanding officer, largely because the American contingent treated him with far less respect than he believed he deserved. He was eventually replaced, from April 8, by Lieutenant Colonel George R. Musgrave (September 3, 1909 – 1958) Officer Commanding Milton Hall, a big-game hunter of some note, pre-war, who had less of a “spit-and-polish” mentality and proved immediately popular. There seems to have been a persistent belief among Jedburghs that they engineered Spooner’s premature dismissal by behaving badly during a parade – though without agreement even as to the period at which it is supposed to have taken place; Dreux says it was during a visit by a senior figure from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), relatively late on in the training program. In fact, April 8, 1944, was a pivotal date, and indeed the change-over to operational status marked the end of the training which Spooner had been appointed to supervise. Certainly, if a change had to be made at the top, for any reason, this was the logical date on which to do it. The “bad behavior” involved the closest thing the Jedburghs had to a battle cry, which, perhaps not too surprisingly, had its origins with the American contingent. In Dreux’s version of its genesis, an Airborne officer at Fort Benning, late on parade, was told by the Sergeant-instructor to “drop and give me fifty” push-ups, and counted them off, culminating in a heartfelt “Some shit!” It came to Milton Hall with the volunteers from the American Airborne Divisions and got a new lease of life as a “hazing” response to unrealistic demands or anything considered to be bullshit or pomposity: someone would call out “Forty-eight!;” others would respond with “Forty-nine!;” more would add “Fifty!,” and the entire group would then shout “Some shit!” in unison. As an unwelcome visitor, William Stephenson (January 23, 1897 – January 31, 1989) came to visit. A senior British agent with the code name Intrepid, he had been handpicked by United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) to help bring the United States into the war and had helped William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) write the memo that resulted in Roosevelt’s establishing the OSS. Stephenson’s visit was 1 too many for the Jeds. In the middle of his talk, 1 of them suddenly initiated their now traditional obstacle course battle cry. “Forty-eight,” the Jed shouted. “Forty-nine,” called someone else. A last voice cried, “Fifty.” Then more than 100 men shouted in unison, “Some shit!” Stephenson left in disgust. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2026.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.03 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2908 x 2380 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Office of Strategic Services |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 1, 1944 |
| Location | Milton Hall |
| City | Peterborough |
| State or Province | Cambridgeshire |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-226-FPL-MH(126) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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