[4] Sage was born 1917 in British Columbia and grew up mostly in Indianapolis, Indiana, playing football and going to house parties while he was in high school.

Before entering the Army, he was the senior salesman for the middle Pacific region; Northern California, San Francisco, and Hawaii.

In December 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sage was transferred to Fort Lewis, Washington, to prepare for deployment to the Pacific against the Japanese.

He trained his bakery platoon in fighting infantry tactics, but within a few weeks, he received orders to report to the Q Building at the E Street Complex in Washington, D.C. Sage was recruited into an organization run by William J.

[7] He was one the first men from the Special Operations Branch selected by Millard Preston Goodfellow, David K. E. Bruce, and Garland H. Williams to attend a training camp set up by the British Special Operations Executive outside of Toronto, Canada called Camp X.

[7] There, he learned the British methods of sabotage, reconnaissance, guerrilla warfare, underwater and amphibious assault, trailing suspects, and managing networks.

[2] Sage was taken to the prison camp Stalag Luft III, where he passed himself off as an airborne infantry officer, never revealing his membership in the OSS - had he done so, he would have been executed.

Actor Steve McQueen portrayed a character based on Jerry and a mixture of other men in the movie, The Great Escape.