Beaulieu
Page 1
This book is dedicated to
Lieutenant-Colonel S.H.C. Woolrych O.B.E.
Intelligence Corps
Commandant of the Beaulieu Finishing School
First published in Great Britain in 1998,
reprinted 1998 and again in this format in 2005 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Cyril Cunningham, 1998, 2005
9781783032174
The right of Cyril Cunningham to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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available from the British Library
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Prologue - THE PLAQUE IN THE BOOKCASE
Chapter I - THE SILENT SISTERS AND THE HOYDEN
Chapter II - THE REQUISITIONING
Chapter III - THE FINISHING SCHOOL
Chapter IV - STATION 36
Chapter V - THE PROFESSIONALS
Chapter VI - THE ‘PRETTY ODD FISH’
Chapter VII - THE STUDENTS
Chapter VIII - DOCENDO DISCIMUS
Chapter IX - SPYCRAFTS
Chapter X - SURVIVAL, SECURITY AND RESISTANCE TO INTERROGATION
Chapter XI - WHAT THE GERMANS KNEW
Epilogue - THE BONFIRE OF MEMORIES
APPENDIX A - MEMBERS OF THE STAFF OF THE FINISHING SCHOOL AT VARIOUS TIMES DURING THE WAR.
APPENDIX B - THE COMMANDANT’S OPENING ADDRESS TO NEW STUDENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Until he retired, Cyril Cunningham was by profession a Chartered Occupational and Forensic Psychologist. At the height of the Cold War he spent ten years working for various Defence Intelligence departments, was a frequent lecturer at the Army’s School of Military Intelligence and was seconded briefly to the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office as an advisor and data analyst.
He left the Civil Service in 1961 to practise as an occupational psychologist in the oil industry but was recalled on several occasions to give evidence on Intelligence matters to a Privy Council committee and other high level Government committees. Later he joined the staff of the Portsmouth Management Centre (now part of Portsmouth University) as its resident senior lecturer in Occupational Psychology and remained there until he retired in 1988.
He was educated at Cambridge University, where he read Law, and Reading University where he obtained an honours degree in Pure Psychology. He joined the Navy in 1943 via Cambridge University Naval Division and was commissioned in the RNVR. He saw active service in Normandy and North West Europe.
He has written many feature articles for commercial magazines and newspapers, including The Times, as well as a long list of papers for learned journals including the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. His book The Beaulieu River Goes to War was published by Montagu Ventures in May 1994.
FOREWORD
By
Sir Michael Howard, KT, CBE, MC.
Emeritus Professor of Modern History
Oxford University
In the darkest days of the Second World War, at the end of 1940, the British government established on the Beaulieu estate in the New Forest a very peculiar school indeed. Its curriculum included, among other scarcely less nefarious activities, burglary, forgery, sabotage, slander, blackmail and murder. By the end of the war over three thousand men and women had graduated in some or all of these highly undesirable skills and became agents or officials of the Special Operations Executive. Most of those trained as agents were then infiltrated into the mainland of Europe to inspire and assist the resistance movements in German-occupied territories. About 40% of them were caught by the Nazis, and many of those met terrible ends.
Many books have now been written chronicling the more spectacular of their adventures. M.R.D. Foot has given us an excellent ‘official’ history of SOE operations in France, and a similar volume has been promised on Yugoslavia, but even these cannot provide detailed and comprehensive accounts of their achievements. Perhaps no such account can now be written, or could ever have been written. Much of the necessary documentary evidence has been lost or destroyed, while even more vital information was never committed to paper. Yet the least that we can do for the memory of these lonely heroes is to ensure that every scrap of information about their activities should be preserved and published, and to this enterprise Mr Cunningham here makes a notable contribution.
As with so many aspects of the British war effort, much of what Mr Cunningham has to tell us is bizarre, verging sometimes on the farcical. Instructors in these arcane but necessary skills were not easy to find – at least, reliable trustworthy instructors. There was an understandable reluctance to recruit on to the staff people who were known to have spent their lives honing their skills at murder, burglary and sabotage, so amateur instructors had to learn as they went along. There was indeed one experienced safe-breaker on the staff, whose presence may remind admirers of Lewis Carroll of the billiard-marker, ‘whose skill was immense’ on the crew in The Hunting of the Snark. There was also a gamekeeper from the Royal Estates who was surprisingly skilled in survival techniques; but the nucleus consisted of handfuls of officers experienced in espionage from the First World War, which included the Commandant, Colonel Stanley Woolrych.
Otherwise the staff consisted of, as one of them put it, “some pretty odd fish”. These ranged from, at one extreme, the couturier Sir Hardy Amies and the film critic, scriptwriter and poet Paul Dehn, to the notorious Kim Philby at the other. Philby indeed played a major part at Beaulieu, not only as a memorably effective instructor, but in the foundation of the establishment and as a drafter of its syllabus. To do the old rogue justice, it must be remembered that for most of this period his employers in the Soviet Union were Britain’s allies and that he was as keen on the destruction of Nazism as anyone else. He deserves credit at least for the honourable part he played through his contribution at Beaulieu to bringing it about.
As for the students, they were an even odder collection of fish. In addition to the British trainees, there were the even more highly-motivated Frenchmen, Norwegians, Poles and Dutchmen dedicated to the liberation of their own lands. The Dutch were particularly ill-fated: most of them when they landed in Holland found Gestapo reception parties and became victims to the most spectacular German intelligence success of the entire war. The skill and courage of the French had to be balanced against their understandable determination to play the game by their own rules. Finally there was a group of Republican Spaniards, who had been
pushed from pillar to post until, as a well known SOE operative put it, “they would cheerfully have killed anyone in the uniform of a British officer”. They, needless to say, required especially sensitive handling.
All these groups had to be kept in isolation from one another, and indeed from everyone else. Naturally the purpose if not the very existence of the school had to be kept secret from the local community, which made for additional tensions and difficulties. Readers of another generation may wonder how such an establishment could survive and function at all for so long without being ‘blown’, but it was by no means exceptional in a wartime Britain in which secrecy was accepted as the norm and people knew that it was unwise to ask awkward questions – let alone publicize the answers.
In the following pages Mr Cunningham gives a wonderfully full account of how Beaulieu functioned; how it was staffed, how it was accommodated, how it was run, what the living conditions were like, what was taught there and by whom, and how the students reacted to the regime. Like the staff of the school themselves, he admits that they could do all too little to prepare their students for the terrible ordeals ahead of them; but the prospect of those ordeals had deterred none of them from volunteering. Most of them were very young, and all were completely inexperienced. Once in the field they would be hunted by ruthless and highly intelligent professionals. They might be prepared for brutality, but all too often they were to underestimate the skill and subtlety of their German interrogators. They also badly overestimated – at least in the early years of the war – the degree of support that they might expect from the population on which their lives depended. It was not all that easy, in 1941 – 42, to obey Churchill’s instructions and ‘set Europe ablaze’.
With hindsight it is easy to see, and Mr Cunningham freely admits, the shortcomings of the Beaulieu training. But — again as in The Hunting of the Snark – the crew had, at least initially, to depend on a map that was ‘a perfect and absolute blank’. They had to learn as they went along. As they gained experience they were able to fill in the blanks, and the disasters of the early years were to be redeemed by a steadily rising rate of success.
The history of SOE is one of lonely sacrifice and ultimate triumph. Mr Cunningham deserves our gratitude for describing how the seeds of the triumph were planted on the banks of the Beaulieu river.
INTRODUCTION
By
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu
In June, 1940, I was enjoying my last term at my prep school, St Peter’s Court, which had been evacuted from Broadstairs to Crediton in Devon, and was sitting the Common Entrance Exam for Eton, which I duly passed. But before the Battle of Britain began I was suddenly sent for by my headmaster and told that I was to go home immediately as I was off to Canada. I was excited, but nevetheless sad that I was unable to enjoy my final weeks at school and say goodbye to my many friends.
The aftermath of the surrender of France resulted in many parents making sudden decisions to send their children overseas, as it seemed inevitable that it was only a matter of time before Hitler would invade a largely undefended Britain. My mother’s decision was particularly influenced by my stepfather, Captain Edward Pleydell-Bouverie R.N., who had recently returned from France, where, as British Naval Attaché to the French Government, he was responsible for evacuating many of the diplomatic corps from Bordeaux. After seeing the blitz in France himself, he had no doubt that it was advisable to send us abroad. So after two hectic days at Beaulieu and shopping in London, I found myself on the liner Monarch of Bermuda sailing out of Liverpool, together with two of my sisters and a governess, and, after an exciting voyage, ended up living and schooling for the next two years in Canada.
When I returned home in September, 1942, Beaulieu was a very different place – the war had imposed itself on the whole area. There were pillboxes hidden in dovecotes, troops everywhere, including the Home Guard, the Navy on the River, but, most important, many of the houses which I knew were out of bounds. As a sixteen-year-old, all this secret activity fascinated me, but most intriguing of all was the talk of what went on in these houses, whose occupants were affectionately known locally as the “Hush Hush Troops”. No one was allowed to visit them and friends who had lived there had vanished. What was equally surprising was that the permanent Instructing Staff, some of whom were there throughout the war, and the officers were in the habit of dining with us regularly, playing tennis and attending parties, and the younger ones paying court to my sisters. Consequently, we got to know the Instructors very well, but it was not until V.E. Day that we found out what and whom they were instructing. We also learned that the Germans, as a result of their interrogation of captured SOE agents, knew a great deal about what went on at Beaulieu, and apparently there was a report in Nazi files fully describing my family, including the name of my dog.
After the war I became increasingly interested in recording the contribution that the SOE at Beaulieu had made to the war effort. So I was delighted when Cyril Cunningham accepted my commission to write a book about it and sincerely congratulate him on his comprehensive research and commitment to the task. His previous work, The Beaulieu River Goes to War, was equally well researched. Over the years I tried to meet as many SOE personnel as possible – people like Peter and Odette Chrurchill, Sir John Wedgwood, Hardy Amies, Maurice Buckmaster, and particularly Paul Dehn, who wrote the wording on the memorial plaque in Beaulieu cloisters, which I was finally able to persuade the Special Forces Club to support, after some years of frustrating opposition. The day of the unveiling by Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, former head of SOE, brought back many old SOE instructors and pupils from all over Europe, and many laughs and tears graced the occasion as old adventures were recalled and comrades remembered.
All at Beaulieu are proud of how this small Hampshire village played such a vital part in defeating the enemy and giving support and succour to those valiant men and women behind the enemy lines. Thanks to Cyril Cunningham’s efforts, this book will ensure that the achievements and courage of Beaulieu’s SOE pupils will be remembered for all time.
Montagu of Beaulieu
August 1997
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Foremost among those whom I have to thank is Lord Montagu of Beaulieu who commissioned and sponsored this research, gave me access to his archives, and above all gave me his continuous support and encouragement during the long and disheartening process of seeking a publisher.
I am enormously grateful to Mr. Robert Woolrych and Professor Austin Woolrych, sons of the late Lieutenant-Colonel S.H.C. Woolrych, the Commandant of the Beaulieu Finishing School, without whose generous subvention this book may never have been published. I also have to thank them for information about their father and for permission to use his photographs, the Woolrych Collection in the Intelligence Corps Museum.
My special thanks are also due to Mr Graham Carter of Montagu Ventures Ltd., for much practical help and sterling advice.
I have to thank the following for providing me with substantial amounts of information:-
Mr Gervase Cowell, SOE Adviser, Foreign Office, for information on the School’s establishment, curriculum, and an outline description of agent training.
Mrs Ann Sarell (nee Keenlyside) for much information on the School staff and a description of arrangements at The Rings.
Miss Susan Tomkins, Lord Montagu’s Archivist, for searching for correspondence between Captain Henry Widnell and the leaseholders of the requisitioned properties, and between Widnell and the Army authorities, including the School’s Commandants. Also for providing me with access to the reference library of Montagu Ventures Ltd.
Mr A. Nosak of the Polish Home Army Parachutists Association for supplying photocopies of original documents and for translations.
Mr C.P. Wykeham-Martin for information on the Small Scale Raiding Force and its occupation of Inchmery House.
Mr Gerard Brault for information on Inchmery House and the training of the first RF Section agents.
General George Berge and Madam Berge for information on Inchmery House and Operations Savanna and Josephine B.
Madam Alma Kerjean for putting me in touch with numerous former RF Section agents, and Mr R. Hansford for his unstinting assistance.
Major Richard Shaw, the Curator of the Intelligence Corps Museum, for allowing me access to documents and photographs.
Mr Denis Hendy, who provided much information on the early days of the SOE occupation of The Drokes.
One of my principal sources of information was the former Lieutenant-Colonel Cuthbert Skilbeck, one of the School’s first Chief Instructors, to whom I am greatly indebted and with whom I spent a very enjoyable day in February, 1995. Alas, he died in June, 1996.
The following also gave me help:-
Mr Owen Aisher for putting me in touch with Joachim Ronneberg; Miss Vera Atkins, the former Chief Intelligence Officer of the French Section, for putting me in touch with Mrs Sarell; Mr Francis Cammaert, Mr Daniel Cordier, Madam Pearl Cornioly, Mr J. Darton, all former secret agents; Mr Peter Doneaux; Mr Bernard Ettenfield, formerly of Field Security, for his information on the Spaniards at The Drokes; Sir Anthony and Lady Evans for allowing me into The Drokes; Mr John Farmer, former secret agent; Mr H.G. Fleming, formerly Field Security, for his information on the Dutch agents Dorlein and Ubbink; Mr George Jackson for information on Johnny Ramenski; Mr Ivor Kregland of the Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum; Mr R. Lagier, Mr J.J. Landau, Mr. G. Ledoux, former RF Section secret agents; Lieutenant-Colonel Terry Message, Secretary of the Special Forces Club, for putting me in touch with many former agents; Count and Countess Michalowski for allowing me into The House in the Wood; Mr A. Philion for allowing me to visit Inchmery House; the late The Hon. Mrs Pleydell-Bouverie; Mr Joachim Ronneberg, (who led the team of saboteurs that blew up the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant at Vemork); Mrs Decia Stephenson, Archivist of the FANYs; Dr B. Thornton; Mr Jack Trott, Mr Andre Watt, former secret agents.