Sharing the Secret

by Nick van der Bijl

  The section had been formed at Mytchett in April 1940 and had served in the Norwegian Campaign before arriving in the Middle East in support of 8th Armoured Division. Typical investigations included tracking pay books deposited with prostitutes by servicemen as security of payment; recapturing Italian prisoners who had bribed guards to turn a blind eye so that they could visit girlfriends; and trapping a gang stealing weapons and ammunition from the Tura Caves Ordnance Depot.

  When intercepts fixed the position of Signals Intercept Company 621 and HQ Panzer Army, during the first Battle of El Alamein in the night of 10 July the Australian 9th Division mauled the Italian Sabratha Division at the Tel el Eisa salient. Tasked to attack a ‘battery’, 26 Brigade overran the Company and part of the headquarters and captured about 100 Germans, including the mortally wounded Captain Alfred Seebohm, the Company 621 commander. Although interrogations proved difficult, the mass of captured documents, including seized British material, revealed not only the indiscretions of Fellers but also interrogations of captured Royal Signals and evidence of weak Allied wireless discipline. In quick succession, Rommel had lost two important assets that crippled his intelligence feed. HQ Eighth Army was shocked by the breaches of operational security and the War Office ordered an immediate tightening of adherence to signals procedures throughout the Army. A ‘J’ Service was formed for North Africa from Intelligence Corps and Royal Signals NCOs unfit or unsuitable for field work to monitor Base, Army and Corps communications for breaches of security. Among the Company 621 prisoners were a driver and a wireless operator, who admitted, to surprised interrogators, that they had communicated with two Abwehr agents in Cairo. The surprise was that it had been thought that most agents had been arrested.

  Count László Almásy was a Hungarian royalist who had lived in Eastbourne and was a desert explorer alongside Bagnold and Clayton but when Hungary sided with the Axis in 1940, the Abwehr recruited him to provide Rommel with ‘eyes and ears’ and a sabotage platform in Cairo. In May 1942, Almásy guided a convoy of captured lorries through the Qattara Depression and, on 23 May, dropped two agents, Joannes Eppler and Peter Standstede, near Asyut railway station. Although his delivery had been tracked by Bletchley Park, its purpose remained unclear. Reaching Cairo, Standstede, the radio operator posing as a Scandinavian-American, and Eppler, the saboteur masquarading as a Rifle Brigade officer, gained a reputation among Allied officers for hosting wild parties. They used the book Rebecca as a basis of their codes to transmit the information they collected to Signals Intercept Company 621. When it was overrun, the nationalist Free Officers’ Movement appointed the future Egyptian President, Captain Anwar El Sadat, as their liaison officer; he believed they had sabotaged their radio so they could enjoy the delights of Cairo. The pair also hired a houseboat on the River Nile, however, a neighbour was Major Dunstan of Security Intelligence Middle East. When their lifestyle attracted the attention of British counter-intelligence because it did not match a city in panic, 259 (Cairo Base) FSS was tasked to investigate. Co-located with 36 (GHQ – Military Security and 277 (Cairo Special Duties) FSS. An NCO involved was Sergeant Maurice Oldfield, (later ‘C’ – Head of MI6). When the two Germans were seen during a 259 FSS surveillance operation contacting a suspect Austrian employed at the Swedish Legation, both men were arrested on the houseboat on 25 July in a raid led by Sergeant Benjamin. Their interrogations led to the arrests of several pro-German Egyptians and Arabs. Eppler and Stanstede were spared execution. The episode was later dramatised in the film Foxhole in Cairo.

  The arrival of Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery to command Eighth Army in August saw an increased number of Intelligence Corps officers filling key intelligence appointments; for instance, 51st (Highland), 4th Indian, 9th Australian, 2nd New Zealand and 1st South African of XXX Corps each had a GSO 2 (Intelligence) major, two GSO 3 (Intelligence) captains and two Intelligence Corps (or Australian Intelligence Corps for the 9th Division) officer linguists in German and Italian as interpreters and translators. Typically at brigade-level was a GSO 3 (Intelligence) and an Intelligence officer. Recognition of the enhanced importance of intelligence was the inclusion of Intelligence 1-ton box-bodied vehicles alongside Operations, Air Support and the commander’s vehicle in command posts, as opposed to being expected to operate from tents packed and unpacked into 3-ton Bedford lorries, a system that had proved awkward in the fluid nature of the fighting. Intelligence summaries were disseminated during the morning and at night, often by motor cycle despatch riders. Summaries read over field telephones were sent in high grade cipher. Montgomery selected Bill Williams, now promoted to major, to be his Chief of Intelligence as a brigadier. In his Memoirs he attributes the success and influence of Williams as ‘possibly helped that he wore a Kings Dragoon Guard insignia in his cap and not that of the Intelligence Corps’. Montgomery also said the best intelligence staff officers were civilians. Williams said of Major Paul Crick (Intelligence Corps):

  He served on my staff in 8 Army in 1942 when his personal contribution to unravelling the secrets of the enemy’s defensive layout at El Alamein did most, on the Intelligence side, to enable economy of effort and casualties, which was most remarkable.

  Operation Crusader had resulted in a profound influence on the development of Y Service. Wireless Intelligence in A and B-Type Special Wireless Section increased to twelve Intelligence Corps led to the Eighth Army Y Service doubling from 1,300 soldiers in May 1942 to 2,400 in October. John Makower, promoted to lieutenant colonel heading General Staff Intelligence (Signals), reported to Brigadier Williams and worked on the principle that if Bletchley Park told him something he did not already know, Y Service was a failure.

  SOE operations in the Middle East, Africa, Greece and the Balkans were controlled by Force 133 from Cairo. However, it suffered a reputation for excessive security, faction fighting and inter-agency conflict. MI6 was wary of Greek resistance in case it affected relations with neutral Turkey and Cretan resistance was governed by its island independence. In Occupied Greece, the vacuum caused by the flight of the monarchy to Cairo, saw the emergence of the communist National People’s Liberation Army and its political wing, the National Liberation Front, and the right-wing National Republican Greek League, but they soon were fighting each other as much as the Italians and Germans.

  After being evacuated from Greece, Captain Hammond joined Colonel The Honourable Christopher Woodhouse, (late Royal Artillery), usually known as Monty, and Captain Patrick Leigh Fermor, travel writer, Greek speaker and former Irish Guards. Both were now Intelligence Corps and training Greek exiles at the SOE School in Haifa. Alexander (Xan) Fielding – a classicist who had studied at two German universities, travelled in Greece and who was not an entirely successful bar proprietor in Cyprus – had joined the Cyprus Regiment because British Army regimental traditions horrified him. After supporting clandestine operations in Crete and the Middle East, in December 1941 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and joined Force 133. Landed from a submarine near Rethymnon in Crete during the night of 11/12 February 1942 and disguised as a Greek mountain peasant, he met Leigh Fermor, who had landed in June 1941 and was masquerading as a shepherd, and together they persuaded the feuding resistance groups to co-operate. Initially responsible for the evacuation of Allied servicemen left behind after Crete was overrun and those who had escaped from prison camps, Fielding developed clandestine operations in the north-west and arranged supply deliveries, organized ambushes and sabotage, and distributed propaganda. The Cretans appreciated his bravado, especially when he established his headquarters near the coast road and attended parties given by the Germans for collaborators. When Crete became a transit camp and logistic base for the Afrika Korps, his reports of Luftwaffe departures enabled interception by Middle East Air Force.

  By mid-1942 SOE operations were beginning to be shoe-horned into military operations. On 4 September, Captain George Tsoucas, a Greek stockbroker aged 41, was captured with twelve Special Boat Service during a rai
d on a Rhodes airfield. He made three escape attempts, first by squeezing through a porthole of a ship in Patras harbour, but gave himself up when he heard that anyone helping him would suffer reprisals. He escaped from a prison camp near Modena in Italy but was captured near the Swiss border and, in his third attempt, he escaped from a German camp by exchanging places with an American prisoner, reached France and then was passed along MI9 escape lines until he reached Gibraltar. The raid was dramatized in They Who Dare (1953) starring Dirk Bogarde, with Akim Tamiroff playing Tsoucas. Several weeks before the Battle of El Alamein, Lieutenant Colonel John Haselden, who worked with the LRDG and the desert Arabs, suggested to Raider Headquarters at GHQ that the enemy fuel dump at Tobruk should be raided. Any scheme to deny Rommel fuel was welcomed but a bemused Haselden found himself planning a four phase major operation – Daffodil, Hyacinth, Snowdrop and Tulip – which had ballooned to 700 soldiers, the LRDG, the Special Air Service and a Royal Navy flotilla. But operational security was non-existent. Rehearsals were held near Alexandria Yacht Club and excited staff officers discussed the raid in the clubs of Cairo and on the pillows of girlfriends. On 13 September Force B, of Haselden and ninety ‘prisoners-of-war’, drove into Tobruk from Al-Kufra and was ambushed. The Force C amphibious landing was disastrous and, although two LRDG Patrols successfully attacked Barce airfield, Haselden ordered a withdrawal but was killed. The ships of Force A lost a cruiser, two destroyers and two gunboats; 746 men were killed while German and Italian losses were sixteen.

  Three weeks before the Battle of El Alamein opened on 23 October, General Sir Harold Alexander, the new Commander-in-Chief, instructed Force 133 to attack the German rail lines of communication between Salonika and the port of Piraeus in Greece. On 1 October, in poor weather, Harling Force of eight SOE commanded by Brigadier Edward Myers, parachuted to near Delphi and within a week was in contact with the National Republican League. Colonel Woodhouse was deputy to Myers. The remainder of the group jumped three weeks later and, linking up with the communists, were nearly executed as monarchist spies. Deciding to attack the Gorgopotamos viaduct near Thermopylae, Myers persuaded the dysfunctional Resistance to work together and attack the bridge garrison and ambush a trainload of Italian reinforcements during the night of 23 November, while a SOE demolition party collapsed a span into the river, severing the railway for six weeks. Woodhouse said of Operation Harling:

  It showed for the first time in occupied Europe that guerrillas, with the support of Allied officers, could carry out a major tactical operation co-ordinated with Allied strategic plans. It stimulated ambitious plans for developing resistance, primarily in Greece, but also elsewhere.

  However, that the attack took place after the Battle of El Alamein disappointed General Montgomery and, suspicious of raiding operations anyway, he never directly approached Special Operations Executive for an operational contribution. Harling Force remained in Greece and became embroiled in the bitter civil war in 1943 that saw the communists overwhelm its opponents and the Allies switch their logistic support to the People’s Liberation Army, even though it was clear that their aim was to convert Greece to a communist state.

  In the weeks before the second Battle of El Alamein, 263 (HQ Eighth Army) and 278 (X Corps) FSS carried out a wide range of tasks which included seeking Axis orders of battle and paraphernalia during house searches, rounding up security suspects, and providing conference and VIP security, including during the visit of King George VI to Egypt. During the battle a FS Headquarters, established with the GSO 3 Intelligence (b) at Divisional headquarters and detachments devolved to Brigade HQs during advances, set a pattern that was used in other theatres of war. Using Humber Snipe cars or Canadian Ford pick-up trucks, they searched abandoned vehicles, interrogated prisoners and translated documents. When Sergeant A. Potter, of 37 (1st Armoured Division) FSS, found an important map marked with minefields in a knocked-out tank, Major General Briggs authorized the section to wear Royal Tank Regiment black berets. When the FSO, Captain Bill Winlaw, was wounded in a mortar attack and evacuated to Sudan, he was replaced by Captain E.B. Every DSO, who is thought to have won the award during the First World War. On 4 November General Wilhelm von Thoma, who was commanding the Afrika Korps in the absence of Rommel on leave, was captured when his tank was destroyed. That evening, when he was invited to dinner by Montgomery and discussed the battle, he admitted, ‘I was staggered at the exactness of his knowledge… He seemed to know as much about our position as I did myself.’ Before the General was sent to England for detailed interrogation, Captain Wrobel escorted him for a day visit to the Pyramids. Photographic interpretation proved its worth by providing information with minefields and defensive positions annotated onto air photographs and maps. Major General Freyburg, Major General Douglas Wimberley of the 51st (Highland) Division and Major General Francis Tuker of the 4th Indian Division all expressed a high regard for the information that their photographic interpreters supplied. Their comments led to the deployment of specialists operating from a static headquarters studying a specific subject while field force interpreters operated from mobile offices. Most Army photographic interpreters were seconded to the Intelligence Corps for the duration of their tours.

  By the time that Panzer Army Afrika gave way after thirteen days of heavy fighting, the Allies had landed in Vichy French North Africa in Operation Torch on 8 November. At Liverpool, Sergeant T.E. Mason of 118 FSS was given eight Intelligence Corps and instructed to provide security for ships involved in the operation docked at Manchester. The ten FS sections landing with First Army had access to the US Army Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects. Meanwhile, 85 (HQ First Army) FSS, landing with US Rangers near Algiers, seized documents and wirelesses in the German Armistice Commission and arrested two German agents three days later. French troops shot the three Arabs who had sheltered them. Several days after the Section had requisitioned a villa previously used by the German consul and his mistress, Lance Corporal John Fraser had organized supplies and beds in exchange for a bottle of Scotch with a US ship’s chief steward. Sergeant Tony Thain was involved in investigations following the assassination of Admiral Darlan on 24 December but found, as did the section, that the Vichy French police were bent on revenge. The investigations by Thain and Fraser into an alleged double agent named Louis Slock, who claimed to have lived in Huddersfield, proved frustratingly fruitless. Two years later, when Slock arrived at Croydon Airport, claiming to be French but lacking papers, his interrogator was none other than Sergeant Fraser, now on airport security control. Lance Corporal Bates of 55 (6th Armoured Division) FSS was captured in an ambush while attached to an infantry unit and Sergeant Hayward was killed in action. Captain A. Lyle-Smith was also captured and twice escaped from prison camps in Tunisia before being transferred to Italy, where he escaped from a camp dressed in an Italian uniform provided by a guard. He was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits.

  By mid-November, Eighth Army had advanced to Derna. 278 (X Corps) FSS, well up front, stayed with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps overnight and, entering the town the next day, searched buildings identified as headquarters for documents, contacted locals, flushed out stay-behind parties and stray Axis soldiers, and liberated a prison camp of British wounded. Shortly after an air raid, their spirits rose when the New Zealand and Rhodesian FS arrived; 278 FSS handed over to 263 (Lines of Communications) FSS and rejoining X Corps on Christmas Day entering Benghazi under heavy shelling, helped 263 and 413 FSS, both Lines of Communications, establish a detention centre near the docks. After joining a LRDG patrol and suffering frequent mortar fire, shelling and air raids, 263 FSS reached Tripoli, where it linked up with 22 (44th (Home Counties) Division) FSS. Soon after Captain Winlaw returned from hospital and took over from Captain Peters, a priority task was to vet the separate brothels for officers, warrant officers and other ranks as Montgomery attempted to control the carnal pleasures of his battle-hardened soldiers. Throughout the advance, Ultra information from Bletchley Pa
rk played an important role interdicting German supply routes from Italy to the extent that 44 per cent of Axis supplies never reached Libya. However, Rommel was not known as the Desert Fox without good reason and, in February 1943, he ordered radio silence before routing US forces at Kasserine Pass. In early March 1943, as the Allies converged on Tunisia, 278 (X Corps) FSS met General Jacques LeClerc’s Free French nearing the end of their epic desert march from Chad and, when Eighth Army was held up by the formidable Mareth Line, it occupied a Foreign Legion fort used by the LRDG to meet Arab agents.

  Meanwhile, the Western Desert Section had moved its Photographic Interpreter base to Tripoli, where Captain Jack Middleton MC undertook an extensive interpretation of the desert and enemy defences in preparation for Montgomery’s left hook that outflanked the Mareth Line. Playing a key role in developing plans at HQ Eighth Army was Lieutenant Colonel James Ewart, previously the Director of Military Intelligence at GHQ. During the night of 27 March, with the desert Kamsin wind whipping up a sandstorm, as 1st Armoured Division swung south to outflank the German defences, 37 FSS was in a convoy of New Zealanders, Maoris, Free French and military police passing through the shambles of recent fighting and long columns of prisoners. An NCO captured an Italian brigadier.

  The 51st (Highland) Division was joined by 278 FSS after it had taken a battering breaching the Mareth Line, and 278 FSS was present when Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim surrendered Axis forces in Tunisia on 12 May, with 300,000 prisoners and masses of equipment. The previous day, after Colonel Pfeifer had surrendered his 21st Panzer Division Battle Group to one of its corporals, the section was instrumental in organizing the time and place of the formal surrender of the division. The section later operated with the French Foreign Legion and joined the local authorities and police in the Zahouan area rounding up collaborators and enemy agents, five of whom were executed and fifteen imprisoned. In December 1942, 68 (Combined Operations) FSS was the first of seven FS sections selected by Fifteenth Army Group to enter Tunis with S Force. The group consisted of the British First Army and Fifth (US) Army. An experimental advance guard of Intelligence Corps, Royal Engineers, Royal Signals, linguists, guides and interpreters and other support, such as medical, S Force was tasked to enter a town before the enemy had left, and ‘obtain the maximum intelligence material and equipment and to facilitate the entry in Tunis and Bizerte of those organizations whose duties necessitate their rapid entry into those towns’. Training included learning Italian from an Army Education Officer, booby-trap disposal and opening safes with explosives from Royal Engineers. S Force had teething problems; however, it set the benchmark for future operations in Italy, North-West Europe and the Far East.