Synopsis
Jean Claude Guiet was born in Belfort, France. His parents headed the French Department at a college in the U.S. for 30 years, so he spent his school years here and summers in France. In 1940, at 16, he was recruited by the OSS (the precursor of the CIA). After Fort Bragg training he parachuted into France with Violette Szabo to prevent the 2nd SS Panzer Division from reinforcing Normandy before D-Day. Resistance groups organized by his immediate superior wrecked trains, shot up convoys and all the while Jean was coding and transmitting. As D-Day approached, he was a witness to the first daylight drop of supplies. After the liberation of Paris he was sent to Indo-China to train tribes to fight the Japanese in the jungles of China, Vietnam, Burma, Laos and Cambodia. After the war he worked for the CIA in Washington and the Far East. His unique story is told in a self-deprecating and elegant style., Jean Claude Guiet, born in France and raised in the US, attended Harvard aged 18 until, as a 'naïve' 19-year-old, he entered the US Army in 1943. As a native French speaker he was quickly assigned to SOE and the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) and parachuted into occupied France in the lead up to D-Day. After the liberation of Paris he was sent to Indochina to organise and train tribes in the jungles of the Far East to fight the Japanese. Subsequently he worked for the CIA in Washington.Told with characteristic understatement and charm, Jean Claude's writing perfectly captures the variety of his own long and fascinating life. Much more than one man's memoirs, Dead on Time is a tribute to a unique generation whose lives were regularly filled with both danger and laughter.
