File No.:
Title: "Word War Two Submachine gun used by Jedburgh team member"
Investigation made at: The Netherlands
Period Covered: MAY1943 - 01FEB2024
Date:  18AN2024
GPS Location: N/A
Case Classification: Description of a World War Two US 9mm UD M.'42 submachine gun most likely used by a "Jedburgh" team member during Operation "Market Garden" in September 1944.
Case Status: Case Closed

(click to enlarge)

Machine gun stock with name of previous owner
REASON FOR INVESTIGATION:
On 18JAN2024 this agency made use of the opportunity to behold, handle, examine, and document a rare American United Defense Supply Corporation 9mm UD M.'42 submachine gun (SMG) manufactured and used in World War Two. Evidence points to the original user as being SSGT Willard "Bud" Beynon, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) radio operator and member of Jedburgh team "CLARENCE" deployed during Operation "Market Garden" in SEP1944. It will be described as Battle Relic #34 below.

SYNOPSIS:

United Defense UD M.'42 submachine gun
The UD M.'42 is a weapon manufactured by the Marlin Firearms company for the United Defense Supply Corporation. The UD M.'42 was designed and patented by Carl Swebilius, founder of the High Standard Firearms company, who in turn had the Marlin Firearms company produce the SMG for the UDS company. It was designed/developed in 1940 but was not produced until 1942, hence the later model number of "UD M.'42". The UD M.'42 was originally intended as a substitute for the Thompson SMG, but by the time they got into production, the Thompson/Auto-Ordnance company caught up with their back orders and the intended orders for the UD M.'42 never materialized in any sizeable quantity. It is estimated that total production was approximately 15,000. The weapon functions in a blow-back type operation that uses a 20 round Thompson SMG magazine. The UD M.'42 proved to be robust and reliable, weighing only 9 lbs. empty, a pound lighter than a Thompson and much simpler to maintain. Lively in the hands and well-balanced, it pointed naturally, more like a rifle than an SMG. Accurate in single shots, the UD M.'42 was also very controllable in full-automatic fire, despite a cyclic rate approaching 1,000 rounds per minute. U.S. infantry doctrine considered such a high rate to be excessive, but it was prized by some expert users disciplined to fire in short bursts.

(click to enlarge)
   
Design diagrams for the UD M.'42 self-loading repeating gun,
filed on 15OCT1944 and patented in 1944
UD M.'42 Serial No.'s 8854/9192
The current owner is a collector and is known to this agency but wishes to remain anonymous. He resides in the Netherlands and is licensed to own historical firearms for collecting purposes. In fact, he even has two UD M'’42's in his collection. The other gun has been deactivated, like the one we will describe here as Battle Relic #34 but has a lot more features of the weapon welded shut, such as the bolt and the double magazines.
The owner purchased this UD M.'42 several years ago and it was already deactivated by that time. He stated, without revealing too much about previous ownership, that the entity who sold the gun to him, originally had acquired the weapon in working order. It had to be deactivated due to Dutch laws concerning possession of historical firearms in a collection. There is no provenance as to how the gun ended up with the seller, but the owner has a working hypothesis about it.
As can be seen in the image below, one significant feature of this UD M.'42 is the name "BEYNON" carved in the left face of the stock.
 

(click to enlarge)
    
“BEYNON” carved in the wooden stock of the gun
Beynon
Beynon is the name of a US Army Master Sergeant, Army Serial # 13151112, who served in the Office of Strategic Services as a radio operator of a "Jedburgh" team that was deployed in the Netherlands during Operation "Market Garden" in September 1944.
Willard "Bud" Beynon was born on 2JUN1923 in SCRANTON, Pennsylvania. He was a 1940 graduate of Scranton Technical High School, a graduate of King's College and the Pennsylvania State Police Academy. He received three Bronze Stars with Oak Leaf Clusters among other decorations.
He was presented the Bronze Oak Leaf and British Campaign Star by the British government and the Dutch Resistance Cross by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

(click to enlarge)
Willard "Bud" Beynon at far left without helmet and some of his OSS buddies. Beynon was a non smoker and the cigar and the cigarettes in the other men's mouths were handed to them by the photographer just for the picture.
Personnel dossier
The OSS Personnel File of  Beynon, Willard W M/Sgt (file # 54 230/86/27/03- RG 226 ENTRY 224 12/23/2010)
in the National Archives in Washington D.C. have been restricted until 2010. This agency asked for the help of Joe of Absolutely Archives to get access to the file and on 31JAN2024 we received a scan of al fifty plus pages in the folder.
The scanned documents reveal that Willard Beynon weighed 155 lbs at a height of 5' 9". He was raised by his stepmother and finished high school in Scranton, Pennsylvania prior to joining the US Army. In school he had learned the trade of tool grinder and had one year of Spanish language lessons.
During OSS training Beynon stood out, but not always as an exemplary soldier, as this anecdote shows:

(click to enlarge)
On 30JAN1945 it was reported that Beynon "Wants to get into combat agai.n Hopes to join his friends of the Jedburgh teams in the Far East. Buoyantly heedless of danger, this young soldier contentedly accepts whatever lot befalls him, so long as it is a role of action. War morale very high. His greatest wish is to get into combat, although when he jumped into Holland with the American Airborne troops to aid in organizing the Dutch underground, he was constantly in danger, and the other members of his team were seriously wounded. Though raised by a step-mother who doted him, he shows little evidence of bad effects from this upbringing, and indeed has high emotional stability. Good practical intelligence. Superior social relations; if he were older he will make a good leader."
 
On 10DEC1945 Beynon was interviewed for his separation from the Army. He had then served for 28 months of which 21 overseas.
After Beynon had returned to civilian life, he was awarded for a Bronze Star Medal.
CAPT Arie Bestebreurtje recommended Beynon for this decoration as follows:

(click to enlarge)
The file, unfortunately, does not contain any references to the type of weapons Willard Beynon was trained on. Several documents however bear Beynon's signatures but as his name is scratched in the UD M.'42 in capital letters.
A handwriting analysis therefore does not render the inconclusive evidence that Benyon wrote his name in wood:

Provenance and previous ownership
From the book "Operatie Jedburgh; geheime geallieerde missies in Nederland 1944-1945" of 2014 by Jelle Hooiveld of the Netherlands Institute of Military History (ISBN 9789089532565) we know that a man named Theo Smiet, a local resistance fighter from the Nijmegen area, was assigned to Beynon as a guide. After Operation "Market Garden" Beynon went on leave in LONDON for a few days to report to Special Forces Headquarters on the operation.
It is the owner's hypothesis that Beynon for some reason, prior to his trip to England, handed over the UD M.'42 to Theo Smiet who in turn kept it.

(click to enlarge)

 Theo Smiet, resistance fighter from the Nijmegen area and Beynon's local guide

(click to enlarge)


United Defense Sypllies Corporation M 42 submachine gun w/serial no.'s 8854 and 9192 from four angles
Stacked magazines
Moreover, the owner bought the gun initially, without the double Thompson-like magazines. He then acquired a regular 20 round .45 caliber stick-magazine for a Thompson Submachine and inserted that in the magazine well of the gun. This agency is familiar with the tight knit Dutch community of World War Two- militaria collectors and could relate to the story that the owner went on to tell us. The ownership of the UD M.'42 became known among several collectors, and it was at a Dutch military show which we frequent as well, that the owner was offered to purchase a double magazine for 9mm ammunition designed for the UD M.'42. The price was very high but still too good to pass on. The provenance of this magazine could be traced back to a well-known army surplus shop in midtown NIJMEGEN. The surplus shop owner had been sold the magazine from an unknown seller, without recognizing its historical significance. He then sold it to the previous magazine owner for a fraction of the price who in turn made a profit off the current owner.
 

(click to enlarge)
Double stacked and single 9mm magazines for the UD m.'42 submachine gun seen from both sides.
On the right is a 20 round single magazine for.45 ACP ammunition, shown here for comparison.

Top: UD M.'42 magazine with manufacturer's details.
Bottom: Auto Ordnance magazine for Thompson Submachine gun.
Serial numbers
Other features of this UD M.'42 are two different serial numbers. On the lower receiver, stamped left from the trigger on the right side, is the number 8854. Also on the lower receiver, on its bottom side behind the trigger, is the number 9192. On the bottom side of the barrel extension is also the number 9192.
At first, we thought this could be attributed to the fact that all parts of UD M.'42's are interchangeable and that this gun was reassembled from one or more of these weapons. But in a recent article in the Dutch SAM gun magazine (issue number 216 of DEC2018) we found that it is common for UD M.'42's to have two different numbers in the same three places.

(click to enlarge)
1 2 3
 Serial numbers:
 1) 8854 lower receiver, left from the trigger,
2) 9192 lower receiver, behind the trigger,
3) 9192 barrel extension.
Interchangeability of UD M.'42 parts
Nonetheless, interchangeability of UD M.'42 parts can also be traced back to the Netherlands. At first the UD M.'42 was designed in .45 ACP caliber with the intent to sell it to the US government to replace the Thompson SMG. The first potential buyer however became the Dutch government in exile who wanted to purchase submachine guns for the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger (KNIL; Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army) fighting the Japanese in Indonesia. This was in JUN1940. The Netherlands in Europe at that time were already occupied by Nazi-Germany since MAY1940. The Dutch wanted the UD M.'42 to be chambered in 9mm gun and ordered the parts to be interchangeable. Interchangeability of gun parts had been the standard since the 19th century but at first United Defense Supply Corporation hadn't thought of this. The Dutch found this out from the sample guns provided to them prior to the sale. They made it a deal requirement that all parts of the weapon could be used on every UD M.'42. After the occupation of Indonesia by Japan, the Dutch no longer had any use for the UD M.'42's ordered.


(click to enlarge)
  
Although never issued in full scale, the UD42 machinegun did well in Dutch military advertising in 1944-'45:
Left: Cover of a book titled "Netherlands Sea Forces at War" by author A. Kroese, published in London in 1944 .
Right: Recruitment poster for the Dutch Marines "On land, at sea, the Marines" 1945.
Both Dutch warriors are showed armed with a UD M.'42
Procurement by OSS
The Dutch were however instrumental in a subsequent deal to sell their batch of guns, still in storage stateside, to the Office of Strategic Services. This US agency, the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had an urgent need for easy to operate machine guns to be airdropped into the hands of anti-Nazi resistance groups in Europe. Also, the OSS preferred the UD M.'42 to be chambered in 9mm pistol ammunition as this type of ordnance was available in abundance in Europe rather that the .45 caliber ammo.
US government records indicate that 2,405 9mm UD M.'42 SMGs were air-dropped in France from JAN to OCT1944 for use by OSS-related resistance operations.

Source: "U.S. Infantry Weapons of World War Two" by Bruce N. Canfield, 1994, ISBN 0-917218-67-1
 

(click to enlarge)

"Not so rare at the time"
An member of the Office of Strategic Services leans on a pile of UD M.42's
about to be distributed to resistance fighters in Southern Europe.
"Jedburgh"
These operations stemmed mostly from Operation "Jedburgh", a clandestine operation during World War II in which three-man teams of operatives of the OSS, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Free French Bureau central de renseignements et d'action and the Dutch and Belgian armies in exile were dropped by parachute into occupied France, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Jedburgh teams' objective was to assist allied forces who invaded Nazi-occupied Europe on 6JUN1944 with sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and leading local resistance forces in actions against the Germans. From SEP1944 to APR1945, eight Jedburgh teams were active in the Netherlands. The first team, code named "DUDLEY" was parachuted into the east of the Netherlands one week before Operation "Market Garden". The next four teams were attached to the Airborne forces that carried out Operation "Market Garden".


Jedburgh team "CLARENCE" in the Netherlands
One of these teams was code named "CLARENCE", landed near Groesbeek on 17SEP1944 during Operation "Market Garden" and consisted of Dutch CPT Arie Bestebreurtje and the American 1LT George Verhaeghe and SSGT Willard Beynon. They landed in the operations area of the 82nd Airborne Division and performed several tasks, including intelligence gathering and liaison work between 82nd Division staff and local resistance fighters in the NIJMEGEN area.

(click to enlarge)

Team "Clarence" from left to right:
1LT George Verhaeghe, SSGT Willard Beynon and CPT Arie Bestebreurtje
The 82nd Airborne Division manifested SSGT Beynon separately from his officers for the flight to the Netherlands. CPT Bestebreurtje and 1LT Verhaeghe accompanied Brigadier General James M. Gavin, the Commanding General of the division, in the division’s lead plane. Beynon was in Plane 3 with the team's equipment and radios. The C47s encountered heavy flak en route. All members of team "CLARENCE" jumped safely with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, but the team's equipment was lost. Instead of repacking the three equipment bundles and attaching them to the wings of the plane so they could be dropped simultaneously with Beynon's stick, the IXth Troop Carrier Command chose to drop the equipment from the door before the stick jumped. As a result, the equipment landed in the REICHSWALD forest in Germany. Beynon and another paratrooper went off to the forest in an attempt to recover the equipment, but quickly met automatic weapons fire and returned.

Team "CLARENCE" was very successful in vetting and organizing members of the resistance. Within one hour after their drop, CPT Bestebreurtje had contacted the leader of the 80-man GROESBEEK resistance movement and assigned some of these individuals to the division's regiments as guides and interpreters. The GROESBEEK resistance leader found CPT Bestebreurtje a telephone and provided him the special code which enabled him to talk to underground leaders in NIJMEGEN and ARNHEM. The resistance in ARNHEM informed him that the British had landed safely and that all seemed to be going according to plan. He relayed this news to General Gavin. ON 20SEP1944 a platoon of U.S. paratroopers averted SSGT Beynon from driving into a minefield. Beynon, who was en route to corps HQ, temporarily joined this platoon. While Beynon was with them, the platoon repelled two German crossing attempts along the canal at MOOK. Communications improved for team "CLARENCE" from 22SEP1944 until the end of their mission. SSGT Beynon borrowed team "EDWARD"'s B-2 set to request another radio from Special Forces Headquarters (SFHQ).

Although SFHQ never supplied a W/T set, "CLARENCE" retained "EDWARD"'S set when the headquarters mission exfiltrated on 27SEP1944. Sergeant Beynon remained in LONDON for approximately 48 hours, and returned to Holland on 3OCT1944 with CPT Peter Vickery, a British Jedburgh who replaced the wounded 1LT George Verhaeghe. CPT Bestebreurtje, who had remained in country and was now receiving orders directly from Prince Bernhard's HQ, linked up with these men in the ARNHEM-NIJMEGEN area to form team "STANLEY II". "STANLEY II"'s mission differed greatly from "CLARENCE"'s earlier mission to organize underground and local populace support for the 82nd Airborne Division. SFHQ, in coordination with Prince Bernhard's HQ, directed "CLARENCE" to train resistance groups into functional military organizations that could perform conventional missions when operating with Allied forces. Beynon later deployed with a Jedburgh team to the China-Burma-India-theater. Willard "Bud" Beynon and George Verhaeghe both survived the war.

Source: “The Role of Jedburgh Teams in Operation Market Garden” by MAJ Robert G. Gutjahr, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, 1JUN1990
Online: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADB149933.pdf retrieved 20JAN2024
 
Stoottroepen
In order to "train resistance groups into functional military organizations that could perform conventional missions when operating with Allied forces" Dutch volunteers from liberated areas were added to newly formed Stoottroepen (storm troops). To this day the Regiment Stoottroepen Prins Bernhard  is an integral part of the 11th Air Mobile Brigade of the Royal Netherlands Army.
CPT Bestebreurtje and SSGT Beynon established several Stoottroepen training centers by the end of NOV1944. They were assisted by Dutch instructors SGT R. Westerling and SGT G.H.J. Bendien.
 

(click to enlarge)
 
Left: SGT Westerling instructs Stoottroepen recruits in the art of unarmed combat.
Right: SGT Bendieen explains how British Stenguns and Brenguns work.
Note American uniforms on Dutch recruits.
- Source: oorlogsbronnen.nl
A scenario in which Westerling or Bendien have handled Beynon's UD M.'42 or were even instrumental in the weapon staying in the Netherlands, is not unthinkable.
 
Postwar
Beynon became an officer with the Scranton, Pennsylvania Police Department where he set up the Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT)- team.
He passed away on 15JAN2011.

(click to enlarge)
    
From left to right: Beynon receiving a Dutch award at the West Point US Military Academy in 1947,
Beynon with Prince Bernard of the Netherlands in Washington DC in 1982,
Beynon showing some of his war trophies in 1985, a UD M.'42 is not among them.

Exhibits:

(click to enlarge)
123
From left to right:
1) Beynon's UD M'42 and a second gun of the same type in the owner's collection
2) Under the butt plate is a small space for a maintenance kit. Empty in this gun.
3) Beynon's UD M'42 and several items typical for OSS agents
such as various edged weapons, Special Forces wings patches and 4-cell magazine pouch, typical for the UD M.'42.

CONCLUSION:
It is not often that we are given the opportunity to describe a firearm as a Battle Relic here.
UD M.’42s submachine guns are not only rare, but the evidence surrounding this particular gun all points towards an original owner who took special part in an operation that is one of the specialties of this agency. This weapon that is most likely used by a participant of Operation “Market Garden” in an intelligence and a clandestine operations role, is considered a true Battle Relic.



Fig.: signature from Beynon's OSS Personnel File
UPDATE 24NOV2024:
Earlier this year a friend of this agency contacted us regarding the request of a relative of William Beynon to see and hold Beynon's UD M.42. We in turn, contacted the owner who was willing to meet this man, a grandson of Beynon. This took place on 16SEP2024 in a museum in the south of the Netherlands.
The grandson was able to tell a family story that grandfather Beynon had a habit of marking all his tools with his name in capital letters. Just as he carved "BEYNON" into his UD M.42.
Below is a photo of the family member holding the weapon. We have made the picture unidentifiable due to privacy reasons:

(click to enlarge)

Back to Battlerelics

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(c) 2007-Present Day Battledetective.com. Email: tom@battledetective.com. all rights reserved.