The same system of coding, and many variations, could be used for written messages, either written directly on to paper by secret inks, or could be picked out of passages of print in books, newspapers and magazines by pricking holes or making minute dots with secret ink over individual letters. The books or newspapers and magazines could then be sent through the ordinary post. Later in the war, in July, 1943, microphotography came into use, that is, a minute negative, the size of a printed full stop but carrying an extensive message. A microdot the size of the dot at the end of this sentence could carry many foolscap pages of typescript. The dot could be stuck on to existing print and sent through the post or by courier.
Usually the mail containing the microdot or secret message would have to pass through enemy censorship to an address in a neutral country, although some of it was undoubtedly smuggled across frontiers. The addressee was, of course, a ‘post box’ for intelligence traffic, and would forward the message by various means to the intended recipients.
At Beaulieu the students were taught how to make secret inks using a variety of common substances and use suitable papers, especially newsprint. The common substances included lemon and other fruit juices, urine, the white of an egg, onion juice, a sugar solution, borax, baking powder, starch, porridge fluid and blood serum. Most of these could be exposed by subjecting them to a gentle heat. The trouble with all of them was that they were Boy’s Own stuff and would not pass professional scrutiny. Consequently the students were also taught how to use special chemicals that could only be exposed by subjecting them to ultra-violet light, mercury vapour, fluorescent light or ammonia fumes or other chemicals. SOE’s laboratories were very ingenious not only in their research into special chemicals but also into methods of secreting them. There is a recorded instance of a pair of socks being impregnated with a secret ink chemical that could be released when soaked in water. They were carried into the field on the feet of an agent! Some of these inks were made from complex chemical solutions and required other chemical treatment to expose them.
Microphotography was taught at STS 37a, Warren House, in an isolated spot near the mouth of the Beaulieu river, from mid-1943 onwards. But there is no information available on how it was taught or by whom.
Whatever the method of coding and writing, the students were taught that if the message was being transported by a courier it should be written on a substance that was easily and inconspicuously disposable, such as cigarette packaging or sandwich wrapping, or on one that could be easily destroyed like rice paper, which could be swallowed or rolled into a cigarette and smoked. They were also taught to conceal messages in articles of clothing that could be inconspicuously discarded. They were told to avoid if possible using any of their own body orifices for concealment since if they were caught they would certainly be subjected to the indignity of a body search as a matter of routine.
The problem with using secret inks and microdots is that if they are discovered they immediately identify the sender and the receiver as secret agents or as being associated with agent networks, and invite surveillance operations to be mounted, the first step in rolling up the network.
Less incriminating were visual and auditory signals using puffs of cigarette smoke or by drumming fingers on a table top or squinting with one eye pretending to have a nervous tic or a sequence of hand or foot movements, but obviously this sort of thing had to be very brief, and had to use pre-arranged morse characters or a single sign to convey a message or expression such as ‘I’m being followed’ or ‘I’ve made the drop, as arranged’.
The use of public telephones had obvious dangers but students were taught how to use negative verbal codes such as ‘I had no visitors today’ but meaning the exact reverse, or ‘Do come by all means’ meaning ‘Do not come under any circumstances.’ The wartime era had not got round to signalling by allowing telephones to ring a predetermined number of times or by interrupting the sequence of rings by picking up the handset and replacing it without answering.
Every student was taught how to approach a contact, known or unknown, make contact without appearing to do so and pass a message by, for example, making an innocuous comment and listening for a prearranged and equally innocuous reply, or by dropping a newspaper carelessly into a waste bin or upon a café table as if finished with, by sticking a message under a bench seat with chewing gum or between the slats of a seat or by throwing down an apparently empty cigarette packet or other carton.
As the war progressed the students were taught to use more complex codes and more sophisticated methods of transmission like one-time pads, microdots, and a gadget similar in appearance to an abacus, the balls of which were magnetically marked and were arranged as required in blocks of the code. Rapid transmission was achieved by wiping a stylus across the balls which sent the message at 600 characters per minute.
Almost all of the agents who were taught at Beaulieu remember their lessons in the criminal skills and many wrote about them with relish in their memoirs.
It must be remembered that in those days house building and the construction of metal safes were simpler than they are today. There were few, if any, 5-lever mortice locks and burglar alarms were unheard of. The locks on main doors were very simple rim locks screwed to the inner surface of the door and the tongue of the locks also fitted into a screw-on housing. They were therefore fairly easy to force open with a crudely made key or a piece of wire or celluloid. Almost all houses were built with ill-fitting sash windows, the glass of which had been puttied in, and most windows and french doors were fitted with paltry catches; people were more honest in those days.
Obviously the mode of entry depended very much upon whether it had to be made without leaving any evidence. If secrecy did not matter, the ubiquitous jemmy and other tools for forcing an entry, including bolt-cutters and wire cutters, would be used.
The students were taught how to break a pane of glass noiselessly by using the old Victorian burglar’s method of coating a piece of brown paper with treacle, sticking it to the glass and then tapping it sharply with a hammer or even with their elbows. The paper would then be peeled off, hopefully with the shards of glass sticking to the treacle or some other sticky substance. A hand could then be put through the opening to release the catch or lock. It was also fairly easy to cut out the putty and remove the pane of glass.
Because windows and doors of many pre-war houses were so ill-fitting it was usually possible to insert a penknife or kitchen knife or a piece of celluloid into the gap that always existed where the upper and lower sashes of a window met in the middle, or between the door and the doorframe. An expert slice at the window catch, or a smart push with a piece of celluloid between the doorlock and jamb would often suffice to effect a noiseless entry.
Students were also shown stripped-down door locks to reveal their internal mechanisms and were then taught how to use piano wire to make a burglar’s key to pick the lock. They were also taught how to take impressions of Yale-type and barrel keys, using soap or plasticine or modelling clay as a mould, and how to cast a new key from the mould and make skeleton keys using readily available metals such as tobacco tins. One former agent said that an outhouse at The Drokes was equipped with benches fitted with engineering vices so that the students could learn to cut and file key blanks into duplicates of the real key; it took practice to make one that worked.
Every student who attended Beaulieu seems to have a clear recollection of the safe-breaking demonstrations. At one stage of the war expertise was provided by a well-known firm of safe manufacturers on condition that they did not demonstrate how to break into their own safes! Somebody must have obtained a continuous supply of old safes for the demonstrations. ‘Killer’ Green, for a long time the main instructor in criminal skills, taught his pupils how to break into the backs of the safes with steel cutters, should the backs of the safe be accessible, and how to blow open the locks using a coin the size of an old penny piece, pressed into the shape of a cone and filled with half a
n ounce of explosive. Exactly how this was done has not been recorded! He also taught them how to blow the safe to bits, though the chances of its contents surviving intact seem dubious. The students were given some practical experience in safe-breaking by picking the locks or by making duplicate keys but for obvious reasons all of them could not practise forceful entry.
All the students were required to go on exercises in housebreaking, and every one who did remembers it as a traumatic experience. The students would be told which house to break into and would be instructed to find their way into particular rooms and break into particular desks, cupboards or filing cabinets to steal particular documents or articles to prove that they had effected an entry. The houses used most frequently for these break-ins were The Rings and The House in the Wood, and sometimes one of the student houses that was not currently in use by students, including Inchmery House, but all of them manned by members of the staff. The students, usually working in two or three-man (or woman) teams, first had to find the house from a map, make a secret reconnaissance of the property and grounds and then devise and execute the break-in and obtain proof of entry. There are numerous stories of their adventures in making the reconnaissance and the attack; men wearing women’s clothing and vice-versa, so as not to arouse suspicions; hair-raising experiences creeping up gravel driveways in the dead of night trying to avoid making a noise, watching for primitive booby traps laid by Nobby Clark using thread and empty food tins containing pebbles, or trip wires; with their hearts in their mouths, breaking into premises, leaving behind a nervous lookout. And afterwards the elation of achievement with the attendant risk of an over-exuberant, careless getaway.
One English student records that after successfully ‘casing the joint’ by getting admission under false pretences, he made a reconnaisance inside the premises and stole a key and made an impression in a mould to make a duplicate. Subsequently, during the attempted break-in, he discovered that he had not made a very good job of making the duplicate. It failed to work and he had to get a ladder to climb into an upstairs room to gain access to the drawing room on the ground floor where he had to find and steal a vital document. Another English student reported that his team had to burgle Inchmery House during a reception that was being held there by the staff.
There is little doubt that the staff of these houses were well aware of the presence of the burglars and kept away from the rooms that were being burgled. Philby relates that on one occasion when he and other members of the staff were on night patrol round a house a whole group of Norwegians succeeded in reaching an upstairs room after penetrating thick woods strewn with alarms and booby traps laid by Nobby Clark, having crossed an open garden unseen by the patrols.
One woman agent related how she had used her safebreaking and housebreaking training to get into the Commandant’s office and break open the cabinet containing her personal file in order to read the School’s reports on her progress. She did not say whether she effected entry by day or by night.
Lord Montagu’s mother, the Hon. Mrs Pleydell-Bouverie, who lived in Palace House throughout the war, recounted how the House was burgled at least once and the thieves, thought to have been SOE students of unknown nationality, stole a bottle of Milton from a bathroom and an unsigned cheque with the Montagu name on it as proof of entry.
In Nazi-occupied Europe strict controls were imposed upon peoples’ movements and upon essential supplies, such as food, clothing, tobacco and toiletries. German administrators were notoriously bureaucratic and the native population could not survive without possessing pocketsful of permits, passes and ration cards which had to be stamped with a vast array of franks by the civil and military authorities.
SOE possessed a first-class forgery factory that could reproduce any kind of document, however sophisticated the paper, watermark, ink and typescript. Agents were provided with essential forged documents before being dropped into occupied territories, but thereafter access to professional forgeries became difficult, as was delivering them to agents in the field. Hence many students were taught at Beaulieu how to acquire by theft, burglary and false pretences, genuine documents and alter the essential details using various materials including cigarette ash to erase the critical information or dirt to fudge it and make it unreadable. They also learned how to make use of their training in inks to produce various types of ink. They learned how to make impressions of official franks and stamps and reproduce them using linoleum and other substances including the common potato. And they were taught how to forge signatures with the help of a hard-boiled egg. Exactly how the egg was used has never been revealed, perhaps to prevent the wholesale use of the technique by criminals.
Part of the forgery training involved teaching students a little about the printing trade and small printing presses. This was a subject that also formed part of their lessons in propaganda warfare so that they knew how to print mischievous pamphlets and underground newspapers.
The old Manual of Military Intelligence, issued shortly after the First World War, listed no fewer than thirty characteristics that should be noted by Field Security personnel when compiling descriptions of suspects. These included the obvious physical dimensions of height, weight, age and general shape, posture and gait, and mode of speech and accent or dialect. It then added a large amount of detail about the face shape, complexion, type of eyebrows, colour of eyes, shape of nose, height of forehead, hair colour and style, scars, rashes, face hair and so on.
These details provided an exceedingly useful basis for teaching the students how to disguise these dimensions of their appearances and make use of a variety of cosmetics and commonplace substances to do so. The very first lecturer in this subject was Peter Folliss, who, students and staff alike believed, had been an actor. No doubt in the occupied countries genuine stage make-up and cosmetics were difficult to obtain, but where available had obvious uses in colouring and covering or accentuating prominent facial features and blemishes and in creating blemishes where there were none. The students were also taught how to alter the shape of their facial contours by stuffing sponge pads into their cheeks, to discolour their teeth using iodine, to emphasize wrinkles using soft black lead pencils, to darken their hair with charcoal or lighten it with bleach and colouring, to blacken their jowls and make themselves look dirty with burned cork, charcoal or cigarette ash, to fake scars using collodion, a substance that forms a crinkly film or use wax to fill in chin clefts and other indentations. The use of false whiskers and wigs was also demonstrated, but if discovered during a search would obviously arouse suspicion.
It is generally well-known that recognition of familiar people at a distance takes place long before details of their faces can be seen. It is made from clues such as their mode of dress and by their characteristic gaits and other movements known to psychologists as expressive movements, or, in modern parlance, body language. Students were therefore taught the necessity of altering their mannerism, such as the way they handled and smoked cigarettes, folded a newspaper, swung their arms and the way they walked. A small stone in one shoe can produce a convincing limp and hunching one’s shoulders can also make a material difference.
There are many well-known ways of altering one’s appearance by altering one’s characteristic style of dress, such as changing from city to country clothes, or from a tidy to a scruffy appearance, or by adding or subtracting accessories. It may sound corny, but wearing or removing a pair of spectacles, and combing one’s hair on the opposite side or in a radically different way and darkening or lightening one’s complexion can make substantial differences to one’s appearance. Similarly, removing a raincoat or hat or putting them on can make a significant difference, especially if accompanied by a limp or hunched shoulders. Even a simple ruse such as stealing an umbrella, or disposing of one, accompanied by a change of gait can be very effective. In his autobiography Philby admits to using the raincoat, stick and hat trick to throw off the British security man following him on one particularly important occasi
on.
Violent criminal acts, such as sabotage, including arson, murder and assassination, were taught at Beaulieu at various stages of the war. Undisguisable acts of sabotage were classed as Attributable Sabotage in the SOE training establishments and such acts were likely to incite vengeful retaliation from the Germans. Therefore they had to be carefully considered and authorized.
In the early days railway sabotage was part of the curriculum, including sabotaging the track or the points and the rolling stock with explosives, or by manual means like prising the rails from their sleepers, loosening the gravel in the sleeper beds along a stretch of track, putting small rocks in points to prevent them being closed and damaging the axles of rolling stock. After training in the classroom, the students went to Brockenhurst station by day for demonstrations and were sent back at night to attack the main line or the sidings using dummy charges. However, it was soon realized that sabotage required specialized knowledge and special equipment, so a special course was arranged at STS 17 at Brickendonbury run by Major G.T.T. Rheam, a sabotage expert.
A spectacular derailment of an entire train is not easily organized and a railway locomotive is not easily destroyed. If it rolls off a damaged track it can be easily lifted into the upright position and placed back on the track by a crane. A small portable bomb planted on a locomotive will cause only limited damage to the metalwork. If placed against a wheel it will have no effect on the wheel’s heavy steel construction, nor will it have much effect if placed against the boiler. Hiding a bomb in the coal or shovelling it directly into the furnace will cause only temporary, easily repaired damage. But, as one very successful SOE agent, Ben Cowburn, related, placing a bomb against the blocks supporting the steam cylinder will put the locomotive out of action for months. These cylinder blocks were made of cast iron and were easily cracked, and since they were parts that did not normally wear out, the workshops tended not to keep many in stock. It took quite a while to manufacture them.
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