In early July 1944, Bernard Knox, a captain in the U.S. Army, parachuted with a team of soldiers—known as Jedburgh team Giles—behind enemy lines in Brittany to prepare the local French resistance to assist the advancing Allied forces. The operation lasted into the fall, and for his courage Knox was in 1945 awarded the Bronze Star and later the Croix de Guerre. (In 1945 he also returned to combat and joined partisan forces in northern Italy, for which he was given a second Bronze Star.) This is the extraordinary report that Captain Knox, later one of the great classicists of his time and a regular contributor to The New Republic, sent to his superiors about the the Jedburgh operation.
For more on Bernard Knox, please read G.W. Bowersock's obituary and a collection of his best pieces for TNR.