SOE
Page 12
The second story was set around Christmas 1944, when the Head of the German Directorate, Gen Templer, was urgently considering ways of disposing of Hitler (Operation Foxley). Among the assassination methods examined was the use of poisons. Templer seems to have had some doubts but he called upon the AD/Z Directorate to assess the possibility and report. A small committee prepared a research assessment. Blount, Ogston and Haas were almost certainly members and the wording of the report bears the stamp of Blount’s views.
Two physiological agents were considered: one, coded as ‘W’, was ricin,18 the toxin from castor beans and the other ‘N’, a bacteriological substance. But according to the story, Blount is said to have proposed the use of substance ‘I’, thallium acetate. This account is attributed to Dr Paul Fildes, FRS, the Head of the Medical Research Council’s Bacteriological Metabolic Unit in the 1930s and leader of the British biological warfare team established at Porton Down in 1940. There is no evidence to corroborate this story of substance ‘I’, nor is there any indication of how it was intended to administer the toxin.
The reality was that after full consideration of the possible routes set out in detail by Rigden in Kill the Führer – by mouth, inhalation, injection or absorption through the skin, Blount’s report rejected the use of poisons as impractical. As already indicated in Chapter 4, Blount was sceptical and the report commented, ‘There is often a tendency for the non-scientist to be rather bemused by the power of science: this may be flattering to the scientist, but is the enemy of clear-headed thinking.’
The association between Station IX and Porton Down was formalised on 10 November 1943 when Dr Ogston, representing SOE, met Dr Fildes in his capacity as member of the Biological Warfare (Policy) Panel and agreed that when the clandestine organisation required technical advice on biological warfare matters, Porton would be their sole adviser. SOE was to originate any proposals but it had to be understood that they could give only an outline of the proposed use of a material with no justification nor any guarantee to supply Porton with details of its effectiveness in use. For their part, SOE accepted that there were some uncertainties about the effectiveness of the doses of materials Porton could produce. Inevitably, SOE would have to disclose certain details of their operational plans so that the Biology Section at Porton could establish the quantities of any materials to be used as these were often related, for example, to the body weight of the victim. The section would advise on matters of practicality and the best way of carrying out projects. They, with the expertise and more sophisticated facilities, would be the laboratory undertaking any research and development work needed and they would supply approved materials. This effectively prevented SOE’s Physiological Section scientists from becoming directly involved in biological warfare matters with academia or commercial bodies such as the Lister Institute at Elstree in Hertfordshire, which had been engaged on highly sensitive work of this nature since 1940.19
In mid-1944 there was concern that the enemy might use biological weapons in a last-ditch attempt to gain the initiative in a war which was now going disastrously wrong for them. Intelligence reports spoke of hangars in occupied Denmark containing thousands of rats and fantastical stories of plans to drop infected ones by parachute. There had already been suspicions that the Japanese might have dropped infectious material on a Chinese town, causing an outbreak of bubonic plague, but the evidence was not conclusive. A memorandum of 16 June 1944 from G.H. Oswald and O.H. Wansborough-Jones of the Inter-Service Sub-Committee on Biological Warfare suggested that definite instructions should be issued to Dr Fildes of Porton Down regarding collaboration with SOE. At the sub-committee’s meeting the following month it was decided to invite Gen Gubbins to attend the next meeting to explain SOE’s interest in biological warfare in the past and what role, if any, it might have in the future. The minutes of that meeting contain no reference to Gubbins’ attendance, nor can any other reference to it be found. Did this mean that SOE had not been involved and therefore had nothing to say? Something must have made Oswald and Wansborough-Jones feel that Fildes was perhaps getting too friendly with SOE. Or was it that now the invasion of the European mainland had started, any proposed clandestine use of biological agents needed even higher grade political clearance?20
A publication to which Physiological Section must have made a significant contribution was a little book on how to fake illnesses. Agents or resistance workers who found themselves in danger of being sent to factories engaged on enemy war-work or even perhaps press-ganged into the Forces, needed to know how to convincingly fake an illness to escape from their predicament. This book was also used at a time towards the end of the war when attempts were being made to encourage German forces to desert or to fake illnesses as excuses for avoiding further participation in the conflict. It was, in essence, a Malingerer’s Handbook and could be supplied with a kit of substances capable of imitating the symptoms of various debilitating illnesses.
The book gave detailed instructions on how to hoodwink the most sceptical of doctors and obtain a certificate of unfitness to work. Emphasis was placed on the need to adopt the right attitude when visiting the doctor: to make him believe you did not want to be ill, and to display the right symptoms but not to tell him too much. Let him ask the questions and make it easy for him to be convinced of your illness.
The choice of illnesses which could be faked included pains in the back, partial paralysis, pain in the chest, severe digestive trouble, mental blackout, tuberculosis, infectious inflammation of the throat, serious diarrhoea, jaundice and a range of skin diseases. For whichever complaint was selected there was set out full details of how the sufferer could contrive the symptoms. In the case of back pain, for example, a walnut placed under the trouser belt would cause pain and by learning how to move without using the muscle one could give the exact impression of someone suffering from a serious back condition. A diagram showed the position of nerves which could be subjected to pressure overnight to display paralysed limbs the next day. Some illnesses such as inflammation of the throat and diarrhoea required the administration of harmless solutions, sometimes readily available herbs. If it was decided that severe digestive trouble was the illness of choice, one had to be prepared to attend hospital and surreptitiously consume a small amount of dried blood in order to impart the correct colour to one’s stools. Confidence was imparted to those who took this route by the writer pointing out that when you were eventually operated upon it would be under a general anaesthetic and you wouldn’t feel a thing!
Among the other helpful sections of this excellent little malingerer’s bible were instructions on how to remove ink writing to alter a doctor’s certificate and how to reproduce an official stamp using potatoes, hard-boiled eggs or kitchen gelatine.21
Meanwhile, at HQ, Blount, Ogston and others were concerned with the welfare of agents. They designed ration packs for issue to agents and the three-man Jedburgh teams in Europe, and others specially adapted for use in arctic or tropical conditions. Extensive use was made of concentrated, dried food now being developed by the industry.
This group also designed a compact medical kit which fitted into a flat cigarette tin. Besides ordinary medicaments it also included a small supply of self-inject morphia to counteract pain.
In the spring of 1944, with the invasion of the European mainland imminent, the group’s attention turned to the well-being of agents going to the Far East. Sqn Ldr Callow, an organic biochemist, was given the task of preparing advice on personal health for agents going to work in the tropics. With Ogston he wrote a comprehensive paper, Ref. AGO/3903 (R.1837), ‘Health and Hygiene in the Tropics’, covering everything from diet, clothing and sunburn to the avoidance and treatment of infectious diseases caused by contaminated food or insects. It even included a table showing the intake of water and salt required for heavy, medium or light work during hot or cool days and nights. This became an extensive manual on keeping fit and well in the tropics and many of its warnings and recommendatio
ns are now incorporated in the travel guides for tourists to these regions.
In January 1943 the chemical destruction of crops was considered but SOE was told ‘on the highest authority’ not to pursue this line of research ‘at present’. The main difficulties were said to be the then prevailing inadequacy of transport and the shortage of operational personnel, but it is more likely that such action would have denied food to civilians and would therefore have been politically unacceptable. Furthermore, when the planned invasion of Europe did take place, local food supplies would be vital to feed the displaced populace, the captured Axis forces and to supplement the Allied rations. Minutes of the War Cabinet Inter-services Committee on Chemical Warfare dated 18 August 1944 reveal that a substance known only as ‘1313’ could disrupt farming with a dose of only 1 lb per acre, though how it could be applied offensively was not known. With the widespread spraying of crops not yet developed, the opportunity for secretly substituting this material for a commercial pesticide or fertilizer did not exist. Work was also being carried out on ‘1414’ to establish how persistent was its effect after ploughing and re-sowing. But the time required for building the chemical plants to produce the substances on an adequate scale ruled out the possibility of their use against Germany. This decision was welcomed by Mr J.C.S. Fryer of the Agricultural Research Council, who wanted effort diverted from research into operational use and on to commercial uses.22 Nevertheless, experimental results were available in March 1943 from work undertaken into the contamination of rice.
SEVEN
CAMOUFLAGE SECTION
Inevitably, camouflage has an important role to play in clandestine organisations whose covert actions have to be concealed from the enemy. In the case of SOE, as Newitt quickly realised, a Camouflage Section would be needed to enable the devices and methods developed at Station IX and produced at Station XII to be deployed effectively for use by agents in the field. In this context the term ‘camouflage’ had a somewhat different connotation from that normally associated with its military use. It was not to make an object blend with its surroundings but rather to conceal an object either by making it look like something else, or by hiding it in what appeared to be an everyday item.
To establish this component of his organisation, Newitt recruited in November 1941 an Army Camouflage Officer, Capt J. Elder Wills. He was to lead one of SOE’s most colourful research and development sections that produced what must have been some of the most exotic gadgets ever used in warfare. His recruitment to run the Camouflage Section was a stroke of genius.
Wills, born in April 1900, was educated at Christ’s College and joined the Army. In a short military career he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (which later became the Royal Air Force), became deaf in one ear and suffered a leg injury as a result of an air crash, before being demobilised in February 1919. After some time at London University and an architectural school he had a short-lived job with a firm of builders, tried his hand as a scenic artist at Drury Lane and even lasted three weeks as an actor. When he obtained the position of display and advertising manager to a firm of wine merchants he achieved some success and for two successive years won the Crawford Trophy, being second at his third attempt. Then followed a career in film-making. From 1926, still in the era of silent films, he was at various times art director, director and producer. The first film he wrote and directed was Tiger Bay, released in 1933 but his most successful was the 1935 musical Song of Freedom starring Paul Robeson. At the end of this decade he was working for a tiny firm which was eventually to become Hammer Studios.
Wills volunteered for service when war was declared in 1939. But he was disappointed when, at 39 years of age, weighing 18 stones, deaf in one ear and sporting a beard, he was rejected by the RAF and the Royal Navy. When he learned the Army was seeking Camouflage Officers, he shaved off his beard and obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers. He went to France but was brought back just before Dunkirk with a wounded leg. After recovery he set up the Army School of Camouflage and made two training films on the subject. He spent a year camouflaging buildings and aerodromes and making dummy aircraft and tanks from cardboard to deceive the Luftwaffe into believing that Britain was stronger than it really was. In November 1941 Capt Elder Wills joined the ISRB as Camouflage Adviser. He returned to the film industry after the war, working for the Rank Organisation and later at Hammer once again.1
In January 1942, Wills opened a small camouflage workshop at Station IX, as The Frythe was designated, assisted by one ‘other ranks’ (ORs) and a civilian. He was to build up his section with great vigour, eventually, as Lt Col Elder Wills, controlling around 300 people at various stations in most of the main theatres of war. The following month the section took over the Victoria and Albert Museum’s larger workshops at 56 Queen’s Gate in London and recruited six additional ORs who in the main had been film studio technicians in civilian life. Capt Wills could see the way demands were likely to go and sought out the skills he had been familiar with.
It soon became clear to Wills that requests were likely to become more exotic as SOE expanded and required items commonplace in countries occupied by German, Italian or Japanese forces. Once more he drew upon his pre-war experience and recruited an expert buyer from the film industry who could quickly procure such varied items as 150 rat skins, 100 varieties of coal, stones and logs, a Belgian gas meter, a French mechanic’s tools, Polish patent medicines and a German toothbrush. The buyers had to be civilians who could think up plausible cover stories for their often strange purchases.
In June 1942 the group had outgrown its accommodation and was moved to the Thatched Barn road-house not far from Elstree film studios, which must have been familiar to Elder Wills. A small staff was retained at Queen’s Gate, which now became Station XVa, for work on the design and fabrication of prototypes and for personal contact with agents. At the Thatched Barn (Station XV) Wills recruited leading stage props experts from the film world and embarked them on an incredibly skilful and original programme of work devising methods of concealing vital stores within mundane items and putting them into large-scale production. In stepping up production care had to be taken of the fundamental tenet of camouflage, that standardisation in the end defeats its own ends. If intelligence from the field indicated that camouflaged stores had been compromised, then alternative designs had to be available as substitutes. Another tenet of camouflage is that attention to detail is essential: Wills’s production staff followed this rigorously.
Camouflage techniques were involved right from the moment of arrival of stores in occupied territories, through various stages of their deployment and in their final use. The presence and subsequent distribution of supplies had to be concealed from the enemy. They were usually delivered by air and the first problem was that of ensuring the rapid collection, emptying and hiding of the containers and packages, and the destruction of their parachutes. Where items had to be buried, signs of disturbance of the ground had to be reduced as far as possible. Use could be made of natural materials such as foliage and undergrowth, but these could be supplemented by covering with rubber latex sheets disguised as bark and twigs. Where subsequent storage was in farms and barns it was often desirable that the individual items be camouflaged by concealing them in, or making them look like, common articles appropriate to the region concerned and which would not, therefore, arouse suspicion in a casual search. Likewise, when stores were being transported in cars, carts or lorries to caches or ‘safe houses’, the nature of the loads being carried had to be disguised as, or hidden among, appropriate merchandise.
DEVICES
The Camouflage Section was thus faced with a plethora of challenges and opportunities which led to the invention of an enormous array of weapons and devices, many of which were displayed in the secret SOE museum (Station XVb) in the Demonstration Room of the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road, accessible only to senior SOE personnel and selected agents – and, incidentally, to the King and members of his fami
ly.
The large number of items which could be fabricated were listed in an illustrated catalogue. It is not thought that all of these were ever produced in great quantity but were made up specifically in response to requests from agents who had probably seen a prototype on a visit to Station XVa or XVb. In many cases where the item concealed an explosive charge and/or a time fuse or switch one suspected that the ingenious ‘props man’ thought he was devising some dramatic effect for a film to be operated by an experienced stunt man rather than by an agent with little training. As a result inadequate account was often taken of the need for safe operation of the device, a failing fortunately identified during user trials.
Among the early items produced in small numbers by the highly original group at the Queen’s Gate workshops were a lipstick holder to conceal a message, a pair of sabots carved from wood but with a false sole which provided access to a cavity filled with plastic explosive (sometimes already fitted with a time delay) and pit props reproduced in plaster concealing 3-in mortar barrels. In another project the glass floats of a fishing net were drilled and filled with a fluorescent substance to act as underwater markers. The small band also made self-exploding tobacco boxes, a grenade disguised as a toothpaste tube, a piece of coal which exploded when struck with a shovel and a Tunny fish concealing a Sten gun outfit.