by Helen Fry
Wilton Park initially held captured Italian generals and some lower-rank German POWs. Later, principally after D-Day, it housed German generals before their transfer to Trent Park. Wilton Park had a block of cells and interrogation rooms in a format similar to its sister site. St Clare Grondona described it:
Our troop’s hutments were spaced amid tall trees within a few hundred yards of a Georgian mansion – the White House – which was our officers’ mess and, at the outset, our living quarters, although it was subsequently to be put to very different use. The prisoners’ compound, with its four long intersecting corridors leading to brick-and-cement cells, had been built within a 14ft brick wall that had enclosed a two-acre vegetable garden and orchard; and its low roofs were so camouflaged as to merge into the surrounding landscape and be invisible to other than low-flying aircraft. Cells were centrally heated and each had ample space for four spring-mattressed beds.28
The first prisoners there were a cocky lot, confident and hardened, believing that Hitler would still win the war. St Clare Grondona wrote that: ‘It was our job to extract from them as much as possible of this – always with proper regard to the Geneva Convention.’29
It was not only the German generals who, unbeknown to themselves, were under the surveillance of British intelligence, but a number of captured Italian generals and senior officers. They included Field Marshal Giovanni Messe captured in North Africa after the fall of Tunis in May 1943. On the morning of 17 May, Lieutenant Colonel Leo St Clare Grondona received a telephone call from the War Office informing him that the Italian Field Marshal and several of his generals were arriving at Hendon airport from North Africa that same afternoon.30 The Italian commanders arrived at 3 o’clock. St Clare Grondona described the scene:
A small group of British officers were waiting when staff cars – led by two jeeps bristling with armed sergeants – came through the gate. The party was under the escort of an Italian-speaking Colonel from the War Office. Out stepped the Marshal of Italy – a jaunty little man, not unlike Franco – with about 15 of his colleagues. Most were Generals, but they included two Admirals, a Colonel and a very tall subaltern. The contents of our guests’ baggage made it evident that they had campaigned with no shortage of such minor solaces as liquor and cigars. The lists of their personal effects – all in sealed packages – revealed that the Marshal had £1,000 in £5 Bank of England notes, all apparently genuine, and that almost all the others had been carrying from £200 to £500. Their personal accounts were duly credited and they were allowed a limited weekly expenditure.31
The Italian commanders were taken to Camp No.4, an annexe at Wilton Park. The following month, they were joined by Italian Admiral Gino Pavesi who had surrendered on 11 June 1943 after heavy Allied bombing of Italy prior to the invasion of Sicily.32 They would be joined a few days later by Italian Generals Guido Boselli, Giuseppe Falugi, Francesco La Ferla and Arturo Scattini. Messe remained at Wilton Park until 5 November 1943 when he was released because of the Italian Armistice a few weeks earlier.33
Whether dealing with German generals or prisoners of other ranks, the M Room could only work to full efficiency with a combination of interrogation, bugged conversations and befriending ‘the guests’. Interrogators took turns to accompany a prisoner on the ‘depression trip’ around London, as Matthew Sullivan recalled:
We went by car and the driver was always an ATS girl who was fair, buxom and pretty with a large beauty spot on her cheek. She was known to us just as ‘Carmichael’ and was part of the treatment. She never spoke to, or answered, the prisoner who was always aware of her and whose confidence was being undermined as he was driven through large areas of London without any bomb-damage at all, totally belying Goebbels’ propaganda. The carefully chosen route always led to Harrods. A stroll through the elegant and still well-stocked store – especially the food halls – was well calculated to shake morale. London life looked astonishingly normal and the sight of all the different Allied uniforms in the street and a table for two at a good restaurant or at thé dansant at the Piccadilly Hotel (though not for dancing) continued the softening-up process. Carmichael was waiting to take us back. When next day the prisoner was faced with his tough-type interrogator, it was reckoned he would be more malleable.34
Prisoners at Wilton Park and Latimer House were taken on walks around the Buckinghamshire countryside and ‘befriended’ by the British officer accompanying them. Over beer and tobacco, friendships developed which led to the exchange of information and ideas.35
M ROOM TECH AND LOGISTICS
MI19(e) was the section of MI19 that was responsible for the setting up of M Room sites (whether in Britain or abroad), the technical equipment, accommodation, personnel and gaining security clearance from MI5 for new staff members.36 The section was headed by Major John Back and run efficiently with the help of Subaltern Winifred Felce.
In 1942, twenty-one-year-old Catherine Townshend was transferred to MI19(e): ‘I was chosen because none of the efficient German-speaking women officers at Trent Park could be spared from the daily pressure of typing reports.’37 When Townshend arrived, she was greeted by Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson (head of MI19) and introduced to his immediate staff: Major John Back, Major Rait, Captain Bellamy and two members of the ATS, Subaltern Dawn Rockingham-Gill and Subaltern Winifred Felce. She was assigned to Major Back’s office:
I was much in awe of Major Back, an efficient administrator with a cold blue eye. For security reasons, he kept no records and expected Felce and me to cultivate an encyclopaedic memory like his own. All the reports from Trent Park were circulated in English and German for our information, so that I did not feel cut off from the gathering of intelligence, as I feared I would be in my new position. On the contrary, I was more involved than ever as a witness to the making of policy decisions, and privy to urgent operational questions, answers to which the Chief of the Imperial General Staff hoped MI19 would provide … Most secret of all were the negotiations with the inventors and suppliers of microphones. ‘The work is more important and varied than at Cockfosters,’ I wrote to my mother, and added with relief: ‘Felce and I can call upon three clerks – we ourselves never use a typewriter.’38
On 5 October 1942, Major Back and Winifred Felce left Wilton Park and Townshend found herself in charge of MI19(e). Before he left, Major Back called Townshend into his office. He explained that she was the only person who knew the work and could take on the responsibility of MI19(e). Now, the highly classified work of overseeing all the technology for the M Rooms – and one of the most sensitive and hush-hush roles within MI9/MI19 – was taken on by a young female officer. Townshend went on to send listening equipment and recording machines to interrogation centres in England, the Middle East, India and Australia. She recalled the moment she walked into Major Back’s empty office:
It was alarming to find an ‘IN’ basket piled high, but I was determined not to disappoint Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson – or confirm the opinion of some of my colleagues that he had made a mistake in asking me to carry on – and so, nervously, I tackled one memorandum at a time … After drafting replies, I took them across the hall for Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson’s approval. Rawli, as he invited us to call him, was a big man in his early fifties. His skill in delegating work to his subordinates left him free to make policy decisions and to be welcoming if we needed help. He kept nothing on his desk but a blotter and two telephones, a black one and a red – the red one was for scrambling and unscrambling messages of extreme secrecy.39
It highlights an important point – that the intelligence services were often decades ahead of civilian life in appointing the right person for the job, irrespective of gender. Consequently, during the Second World War, women played vital roles within the intelligence world because they developed the necessary skills for a particular job. Townshend was also responsible for keeping the operations map in Rawlinson’s office updated.
With the benefit of Townshend’s memoirs, it has been possible to
piece together links between MI9/MI19 and Latchmere House – MI5’s secret interrogation centre at Ham, near Richmond. It was known as Camp 020, not to be confused with Wilton Park’s Camp 20. Latchmere House played a crucial role in the Double Cross System, where captured German spies and agents were interrogated in attempts to ‘turn’ them to work for the Allies as double agents.40 MI19(e) supplied microphones and trained personnel to a highly secret installation rarely mentioned, except in hushed tones. The commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Stephens, supervised the interrogation, trial, imprisonment – even the execution – of enemy agents. Townshend recalled:
We knew little about him; consequently, alarming stories grew up concerning his past and methods of operation … Communication between 020 and MI19(e) was conducted by scrambler telephone or correspondence. For months, everything went smoothly until I received a request from the commandant for permission from the War Office to promote members of his staff. Rawli ordered me to refuse with a polite explanation that the establishment of 020 did not permit higher ranks. Lieutenant Colonel Stephens was adamant. Again I explained. Exchanges became tense. ‘I will come to Beaconsfield in person,’ he said. I made an appointment for him to see Rawli, but on the day of the meeting Rawli was called to Whitehall on an urgent matter, leaving me to talk to the irate and formidable head of 020. Tall, with a black patch over one eye, he strode along the corridors of Camp 20, flung open the door of my office, and stood for a moment in amazement before bursting into a loud laugh. ‘Are you Junior Commander Townshend?’ he asked, ‘I thought you were going to be a fierce bureaucrat in her fifties!’41
ANGLO-AMERICAN COOPERATION
The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941 finally brought America into the war. Within a matter of weeks, American personnel began to arrive at Kendrick’s unit to receive training in specialist intelligence and interrogation.42 American intelligence was now copied into the Special Reports and information being generated at Kendrick’s sites.
Cooperation between British and American intelligence over the handling of Axis prisoners of war was already under way during autumn 1941, nearly two months before Pearl Harbor.43 In October 1941, the Director of Naval Intelligence in Washington dispatched Lieutenant H.T. Gherardi of the United States Naval Reserve to the United Kingdom to ‘get an idea of the types of personnel required for work in connection with prisoners’.44 He visited Trent Park to understand the background of the bugging operation as preparation to setting up parallel sites in the United States. A secret memo of 28 October 1941 noted that Gherardi had been ‘attached to our Prisoners of War Section … Presumably you would not wish to hold back on any technical methods as in actual equipment the US is undoubtedly as well versed as we are. The line we have taken all along over the subject of prisoners generally is such as it is hoped will encourage the Americans to use our background, and facilities rather than start their own.’45
Over the course of the next three years, Kendrick and his officers oversaw the training of a number of American intelligence personnel and, from 1942, worked closely with the newly-formed US intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency – CIA). Based in the Rockefeller Center in New York, the OSS was established on 13 June 1942 by Major General William Joseph Donovan with the express aim of coordinating operations behind enemy lines in Europe, and subversion operations in liaison with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Kendrick and Felkin’s involvement in the training of American intelligence officers placed them at the highest level of Anglo-American relations; a contribution for which they would later be rewarded with a Legion of Merit from the White House. Major Frank Cassels, who oversaw the M Room and its personnel on a daily basis, was awarded the Bronze Star for assuming ‘the burden of directly supervising the training of American intelligence personnel in a highly specialized branch of interrogation’.46 Several hundred American officers received instruction from him, and went on to serve in American mobile intelligence units.47
That same month, Lieutenant Colonel W. Stull Holt of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) was appointed to command the American presence at MI9 and MI19,48 located at both Latimer House and Wilton Park. Other US personnel, including from the FBI in Washington, passed through these sites for special intelligence training by Kendrick’s officers, for anything from two weeks to two months. Close cooperation had already existed between the Americans and Bletchley Park and the work with CSDIC was an extension of that.
On 15 August 1942, Mr Witney Shepardson and Mr Maddox of the OSS visited Latimer House from America. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) ruled that copies of transcripts emanating from the M Room should now also be circulated to American intelligence, including copies to Washington.
The following month, Mr H.M. Kimball of the FBI made a trans-atlantic visit to Latimer to see the operations at work. Kendrick impressed Kimball with the highly efficient nature of the covert work. A grateful Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, wrote a personal letter of thanks to Kendrick afterwards:
My dear Colonel, I am writing to express to you my deep appreciation for the assistance which you rendered to Mr H.M. Kimball of this Bureau during his recent visit to London. It was very good of you to be so helpful, and you may be sure that your kindness is sincerely appreciated by me.49
The following months saw a number of site visits from personnel of the US army to Latimer and Wilton Park. These included Colonel Conrad, Captain Grimmel, Major Settle and Major Yudelson.50 In the coming year, Kendrick accompanied other top officials from the United States on visits, including Brigadier-General Kroner (Chief of Military Intelligence Section),51 Commander Riheldaffer (US Navy, CSDIC section) from Fort Hunt,52 Colonel Catesby-Jones (Military Intelligence Section, POW department, Washington) and members of US intelligence G-2 ETOUSA. Commander Charles Herbert Little, Director of Naval Intelligence, Ottawa, also visited in order to cement the Canadian intelligence cooperation.53
In October 1942, the US Air Force joined with AI1(K), the latter still under the command of Felkin and now based at Latimer House, with a small presence at the other sites. Felkin later wrote: ‘A successful fusion of the RAF and USAAF air interrogation was founded. This cooperation was maintained with the highest measure of success until well after the closure of the war.’54
One American intelligence officer at Latimer House was Heimwarth Jestin who, after initial training in the United States, had originally been attached to the 169th Infantry Regiment, 43rd Division.55 After several other training postings within the US, he was sent to Camp Ritchie where officers received in-depth training in interrogation and intelligence work. In February 1943, he received orders for an overseas transfer to England for top secret work. One of his first assignments was to the London Cage in Kensington Palace Gardens where he first met Colonel Alexander Scotland. There, Scotland insisted that German was spoken at all times, to enable the interrogators to learn the dialect and inflections of the language. Jestin commented: ‘We interrogated special prisoners and were vetted in regard to language usage, technique, and ability to understand the prisoners we talked to. It was a thorough and careful training.’56 After a short posting to Glasgow to interrogate POWs of the Afrika Korps, captured in North Africa, Jestin was sent back to London and soon was posted to Latimer House where, ‘the interrogation was more exacting, for these prisoners were, on the whole, intelligent and unwilling to disclose information’.57
From Latimer, Jestin was posted for the remainder of the war to Wilton Park where the prisoners knew him as ‘Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins’. Here, he interrogated captured German generals before their transfer to Trent Park.
Thousands of lower-rank prisoners from all three services – the German navy, air force and army – would pass through Latimer House and Wilton Park before the end of the war. The tens of thousands of transcripts of their interrogations and bugged conversations survive in the National Archives, revealing an extraordinary volume and bre
adth of intelligence which warrants detailed analysis by historians.
Trent Park at Cockfosters was now reserved for a very special ‘guest’. The stage was set to receive the first captured German generals and some of the most prized prisoners ever held by British intelligence. Much drama would unfold in the stately house in the coming years, more astonishing than fiction, in scenarios that kept Kendrick’s staff busy for the duration of the war.
CHAPTER 6
Battle of the Generals
May 1942 saw the capture of the first German general in North Africa.1 Infantry General Ludwig Crüwell’s plane was shot down over British lines in North Africa after his pilot lost his way.2 For British intelligence this was just the beginning of what would become the saga of the German generals. University-educated, Crüwell (b.1892) had served in the First World War, then during the Second World War had commanded the 11th Armoured Division in the Balkan campaign (1939–40) and the Russian campaign, which began a year later.3 During the latter, he had seen fighting around Rowno and Kiev, and was decorated with the Oakleaves to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. In October 1941, he succeeded Rommel as German Officer Commander of the Afrika Korps, then was taken prisoner on 29 May 1942. At the time of his capture near Cairo, he hastened to defend himself against rumours that he was responsible for massacres in the neighbourhood of Kragujevac, in Serbia.
Crüwell was finally brought to Trent Park on 22 August 1942. His personal file does not mention where he was held prior to that. Crüwell’s character was summed up by British intelligence: ‘He tried to impress everyone with his own importance and knowledge, a trouble-maker and a bore.’4