Meanwhile, 52 FSS remained in Freetown on port security duties, counter-intelligence and border missions until transferred to Gibraltar on port security in mid-1941 and was based at the Cecil Hotel. In 1943, 87 FSS arrived from Winchester on port and airport security and escorted agents and escapers through along the Embassy ‘pipeline’ from Madrid.
When the Abwehr persuaded a Spanish army officer to manage a network of saboteurs with access to the Rock, the operation was delegated to a Falangist, who organized the destruction of two small warships in 1942 and the blowing up of an ammunition dump in March 1943. Two months later a Basque lorry driver employed in the Naval Dockyard reported that he had been approached with a proposal to place a bomb on the minelayer, HMS Manxman, then being used as a fast carrier of supplies to Malta. When the Defence Security Officer proposed that he should be exploited under the Double Cross. Captain Scherr and 54 FSS also ‘turned’ several other agents and discovered several plots. A fuel tank fire on Coaling Island in late June led to Jose Munoz, a 19-year-old worker from La Linea, being convicted of acting with ‘intent to assist the enemy by an act designed to impede naval operations or to endanger life’. By July the Double Cross had undermined forty-three sabotage attacks. Also convicted for smuggling a bomb in a crate of bananas to a house in an Abwehr operation was Luis Cordon-Cuenca, who admitted that his contact, who lived in La Linea, had threatened to harm his family if he did not co-operate. Both men were hanged in January 1944 by the hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who travelled incognito to Gibraltar to carry out the executions.
When concerns were raised about Spanish soldiers apparently observing aircraft and shipping activity in Gibraltar from the roof of the Spanish Army headquarters in La Linea, the Spanish-speaking Sergeant Bernard Coulter, aged 40 years, breezed past sentries, bounded up the stairs, remonstrated with the corporal and then repaired to a bar opposite before returning to Gibraltar. He and another Spanish speaker disguised themselves as two workmen and, armed with identity cards marked ‘A. Hitler’ and ‘B. Mussolini’, entered Fortress Headquarters carrying coils of wire and pliers and, arguing loudly in Spanish, leaned over the desks of officers and removed unimportant papers. Their report resulted in an enormous row and a thorough overhaul of security. In January 1944 the British Government presented Madrid with substantiated evidence of Spanish Intelligence Service collusion with the Abwehr and sought a speedy remedy. Franco’s support for Germany was wavering anyway and, within the month, Madrid imposed ’strict neutrality’ and closed Abwehr operations in Spain.
West Africa
In September 1940, 52 (102 Royal Marines Brigade) FSS took part in the controversial naval operation ordered by Prime Minister Churchill to liberate Dakar from Vichy France. While the Brigade was waiting in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Sergeant Richard Heslop and Corporals Don Robinson and W.J. Waters infiltrated the French naval base disguised as Swedish and Spanish sailors to collect intelligence on the disposition of French warships. But their report of two submarines was disregarded and, when the Royal Navy attacked, the battleship HMS Resolution was badly damaged by a torpedo. A plan to kidnap the Governor of Dakar proved unrealistic. Heslop later joined the SOE F (French) Section as the agent ‘Xavier’.
As the fighting in North Africa rippled to and fro across the desert, West Africa became a focal point for convoys en route to the Middle East and the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope and an airhead from the USA. The Allied regional counter intelligence strategy was to destabilize Axis subversion in the Belgian Congo, the French colonies, Angola and South West Africa. Captain David Pearson, a former Intelligence Corps other rank, was part of the regional SOE Mission circulating anti-Vichy and anti-German propaganda and reporting U-boat activities. In 1942, masquerading as a Gold Coast police officer, he investigated the smuggling of industrial diamonds to Germany from the Belgian Congo. In July 1944. he parachuted into the Lorraine region of France on Operation Pedagogue and, gaining employment as an interpreter for the Germans, was given a pass that authorized him to visit Luftwaffe units in the region. The following month he passed information that resulted in the destruction of several newly-arrived German ME 262 jet fighters at Nancy-Essey airfield. When, in 1943, the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions sailed for Burma, and American ships and aircraft began ferrying equipment to West Africa, Kano in Nigeria and its airport became an important focus of counter-intelligence operations. The three FS sections reporting to the West Africa Intelligence Centre in Accra concentrated on preventing information leaking to U-Boats and surface raiders, particularly the convoy assembly port at Freetown. After 52 FSS had departed to Gibraltar, 66 (Port Security, Lagos) FS arrived direct from Winchester in 1941. On 5 July 1941, 70 FSS was en route to West Africa on board the SS Anselm with 1,200 Army and RAF when the ship was torpedoed by U-96 about 300 miles north of the Azores. RAF Padre Herbert Pugh was posthumously awarded the George Cross when he was lowered into the hold to succour troops and airman trapped by blocked escape routes. Among the 254 men lost at sea was Lance Corporal Sydney Hall. The section later deployed to the Gambian border security with Senegal and then took part in the advance through North West Europe in 1944/45.
The Spanish enclave in Fernando Po opposite the Nigerian border with Guinea posed several problems. In January 1942 Captain Peter Lake, serving with SOE and masquerading as a shipping agent, suspected that the Italian merchantman Duchessa d’Aosta and two German tugs that were anchored in the port of Santa Isabel were passing information and carrying ammunition. Lieutenant Colonel Hanau, who was now directing the SOE West Africa Mission, saw an opportunity to cut them out. The Spanish-speaking Lake had been a merchant banker on the Gold Coast and in 1939 had returned overland to England, where he was commissioned with the FSP before joining the Executive. ‘Specially employed’ in Nigeria as the Deputy Head of the Neutral Colonies Mission, Major Victor Laversuch, was also masquerading as a shipping agent. He had served with 30 and 50 FSS before being commissioned. Ignoring Admiralty ambivalence about the ships, Laversuch planned Operation Postmaster to cut out the ships. First, Lake discreetly distributed funds to local bars and restaurants at Santa Isabel to entice their crews ashore during the night of 14 January and also organized a ‘power failure’. In Operation Postmaster, under cover of darkness, Major Gus March-Phillips, a firm believer in attacking the enemy anywhere at any time, along with a piratical group of Army commandos from the Small Scale Raiding Force, reinforced by four SOE and several Colonial Service volunteers described as ‘as choice a collection of thugs as Nigeria has ever seen’ sailed into Fernando Po in the commandos’ Brixham trawler and cut out the ships and removed them to Lagos. To avoid diplomatic complicity of raiding a neutral port, the captured Duchessa d’Aosta was ‘intercepted’ at sea by HMS Violet and escorted to Lagos. Lake maintained his cover, thus preventing a Spanish reaction, and later parachuted into France. Operation Postmaster boosted the reputation of SOE at a critical time and showed that, given the opportunity, it could organize difficult clandestine operations. Also operating against the Spanish enclave was 93 (Nigeria) FSS. Corporal Charles Weaver, who was based in the British Cameroons detachment, ran a sea-going patrol with an open launch that effectively crippled smuggling and facilitated mail interception. He was awarded the British Empire Medal.
In other colonial territories, FS sections worked closely with local M15 representatives. Newfoundland became a centre of intrigue. When German agents recruited informants among neutral fishing fleets reporting on Allied convoy activities, Major R. Ardill and four Corps warrant officers interviewed all trawler radio operators in St John. When suspicions focused on a Portuguese hospital ship supporting the fishermen as the centre of the network, its radio operator was arrested at sea by the Royal Navy. In the West Indies, smuggling, support for the Nazis among Dutch colonists in Curaçao, spies arriving in Trinidad from Argentina and the security of British Honduras (now Belize), kept the local FS sections busy, as did the protection of the Duke of Windsor.
CHAPTER
SIX
The Central Mediterranean 1943–1945
Intelligence is about people and a study of people. It is not simply a question of studying people on the other side, but studying one’s own as well. We have to learn about one another, not just about strangers
Maurice Oldfield
The catastrophe that befell the Afrika Korps at Tunis was as serious as the reverse at Stalingrad six months later. Although there was debate among the Allies of when to open the Second Front in north-west Europe, an invasion of the soft underbelly of Southern Europe was the logical next step, initially by invading Sicily in Operation Husky.
Much of the photographic interpretation fell to the 1st Army Photo Interpretation Centre, which had been formed in March by Captain Tim Ashby. Since future operations were going to involve the Americans, a detachment commanded by Major Frederic Fugelsang joined the Fifth (US) Army Photographic Interpretation Centre, then receiving most of its photography from the 3rd US Army Air Force Reconnaissance Group commanded by Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the son of the US President. The Army Air Photographic Interpretation Unit in Cairo studying Sicily amalgamated in June with the RAF Middle East Interpretation Unit to form the Mediterranean Allied Interpretation Unit on an organizational basis similar to Medmenham. Its Western Desert Section took up residence in the Phoenicia Hotel, Malta in early July and was renamed the 8th Army Photographic Interpretation Unit, with an establishment of forty-seven officers. However, the island was an invasion assembly area and after two officers were killed in an air raid it moved to Maxim’s Restaurant.
While the First and Eighth Army Field Security sections prepared for the landings, a further five arrived from Great Britain, including 3 (1st Infantry Division), 31 (46th Infantry Division) and several Lines of Communication sections. Envisaging that Field Security and US Counter-Intelligence Corps would work together, on 2 June Allied Force Headquarters issued the security objectives during and after the invasion of Sicily, which had been codenamed ‘Horrified’. The content will be familiar to members of the Intelligence Corps of any generation:
To prevent the conduct of Allied operations being prejudiced through espionage or other causes by damage to our material through sabotage to our material and communications through subversion espionage directed against Allied activities.
The 1943 Manual of Field Security listed the duties of the FS sections:
• The compilation and issue of highly classified lists of ‘White’ (politically acceptable), ‘Grey’ (indeterminate or neutral politics) and ‘Black,’ (arrest on sight) of military and civilian Nazi and Italian functionaries and collaborators and members of the SS and Gestapo, and, since 1942, the German Secret Field Police.
The lists had been collated in card indexes at GHQ Middle East and at MI14 (Germany) by Lieutenant Shearer, who had started by listing German academics and their political leanings and then expanded the database to include information sources such as the London Reception Centre, interrogation centres, SOE and MI6.
• Field interrogations of high category prisoners, such as SS and Gestapo.
• Contributing to the Divisional HQ Intelligence Cycle by searching buildings, translating documents and briefing intelligence officers.
• The security of key points and conducting security investigations prior to deployment.
When not employed in security tasks, sections were liable to be called forward as infantry reinforcements and were on stand-by to be included in S Force-type operations. A censorship strategy was designed to prevent the transmission of information prejudicial to the security of the Military Government and the occupying forces by forming Field Censorship, Prisoner-of-War, and Mail Censorship sections. It was acknowledged that more information would be forthcoming about the Italian Secret Service and their agents and plans, the Italian Police, the Fascist Party, the German Intelligence and Security organizations in Sicily and, finally, elements friendly to the Allied cause. It was planned that a special unit of three officers attached to 5th Army, then codenamed Force 141, would develop agents and counter-intelligence networks inside the occupied territories.
The Intelligence Corps association with the Airborne Forces can be traced to 28 June 1942 when 89 (Parachute) FSS was raised to support the Airborne Division. It had an enlarged establishment of a FSO, Company Sergeant Major, four sergeants, twelve corporals and lance corporal/batman, with each brigade supported by a detachment of a sergeant and three corporals. In the event of successful airborne operations, the Section was expected to control the civil population. Interpreters and interrogators were also found from within Field Security. The first Intelligence Corps to earn his wings was Corporal John Loker, a French and German speaker, who was serving with 302 (Southern Command) FSS at Salisbury and had been attached to 31 Independent Brigade Group in October 1941 when it was converted into the 1 Air Landing Brigade. He and Lance Corporal Emil van Laer, a Dutch, Flemish, French and German speaker, were followed by Acting/Sergeant Grazebook, a French, German and Italian linguist, and Lance Corporal Jack Linden, who spoke Italian and German, completing the Airborne Forces Depot training at Hardwick Hall before winning their parachute wings and red beret by dropping through the hole in the floor of a Whitley bomber over RAF Ringway. The section formed up at Melrose Cottage, Figheldean, near Netheravon, under command of Captain Jack Dunbar. Within weeks, Loker was promoted to Company Sergeant Major (CSM) after two warrant officers were injured in training. In September, Loker, Granville and van Laer joined 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (1 Parachute Battalion) for Operation Crucible, a proposed raid on Ushant Island to eliminate the garrison and remove or destroy items at the radar and meteorological station, but it was cancelled minutes before the Whitleys took off.
Spearheading the British assault on Sicily was Operation Fustian involving the two parachute brigades and one air-landing brigade of the Airborne Division; 89 Parachute FSS arrived in April and was based in Oran before moving to Mascara where it liaised closely with the FS sections in Tunis. One role was to ensure that troop morale was maintained so when a Divisional Headquarters clerk was reported spreading rumours predicting a high casualty list, he was investigated and sentenced to fourteen days in prison.
A counter-intelligence watch was kept on the assembly airfields. Appreciating that an invasion of Sicily was likely, the Italians conducted several raids and information-gathering operations and 413 FSS was instrumental in capturing and interrogating several Italian parachutists tasked to raid an Allied airfield near Benghazi, as well as intercepting a raiding party landed from a U-Boat shortly before the landings. The section had fought through the advance from El Alamein and had lost Corporal Ronald Eastwood during a dive-bombing raid in January 1943. Reports of pigeons being released turned out to be that 1st Army had lost about ninety birds. Each FS detachment was expected to prepare a Top Secret Security Plan.
When Fifth and Eighth Armies established airborne intelligence cells in their Headquarters, Captain J.B. de Silva liaised with the Americans in Cairo and discovered that the Staff had little understanding of the nature of airborne operations and that his expectations were resented; nevertheless, he persuaded the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre in Cairo to form an Italian Section. In May, tasked to recce the drop zones, he was a passenger in an RAF Beaufighter which took off from Malta and, surveying the 1 Air Landing Brigade objective of Ponte Grande Bridge, he concluded that trees and farm walls would restrict glider operations. He believed that the surrounding high land at Primosole Bridge near Catania would confine the parachute drop to one brigade.
Operation Fustian did not go well during the night of 9/10 July. Offshore winds and poor visibility led to gliders ditching in rough seas and being shot down by nervous naval gunners, with just twelve landing anywhere near their landing zone. Captain Dunbar, a strong swimmer, was in a Divisional Headquarters glider that ditched near the shore but was drowned when he went to help a non-swimmer; the weight of his assault vest, camera and equipment may
have been a factor. Corporal Linden swam ashore and Corporal Granville turned up later, after being reported missing in action, having accepted the surrender of an Italian infantry company. For the next nine months, CSM Loker commanded the Section. When XIII Corps began landing at Cape Passero at dawn, CSM Reginald Weaver of 19 (50th (Northumbrian) Division) FSS was on board the landing ship HMS Winchester Castle:
The Mediterranean filled with shipping – the storm arose on 9th July and how we all lay in our bunks wondering how we could possibly get ashore in such seas. As if answer to prayer, the sea suddenly subsided and then in the early hours of 10th July, the engines stopped and we knew we had arrived. An Italian light suspiciously swept the sea and we held our breath as it crept nearer to our convoy and then, amazingly, was turned out. The tense voice over the intercom calling all troops to man their boats and then order ‘Away!’ These Landing Craft Assault (LCA) set off into the darkness with the first wave of the lads. I waded ashore a few hours later with ‘Ginny’ Anson. The warships were still shelling the coast.
Sharing the Secret Page 11