Most of the British returned to Italy, leaving 4th Division split between Athens and Salonika, supported by a Military Mission provided by III Corps and the FS sections monitoring the threat to Greece from the communist factions in Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Counter-intelligence operations were controlled by Security Intelligence Middle East; 278 FSS on port security at Piraeus and Corinth had detachments in several Peloponnesian ports. On 12 February 1945, the Varkiza Agreement saw the communist hardliners fleeing to Yugoslavia and Albania after surrendering obsolete weapons. Villagers supplied information on caches of modern weapons. General elections in March saw the pro-royalist Populist Party winning a majority, which generated a third civil war. Citing severe economic problems, on 24 February 1947 the British announced their decision to leave the Balkans by the end of the year. But 24 FSS remained in Athens and Salonika monitoring the border with communist Bulgaria until late 1949.
When General Alexander lost XXX Corps for the invasion of North-West Europe, No. 1 Special Force supported Eighth Army operations throughout the autumn and winter of 1944/1945 by harnessing the partisans harassing Tenth Army as it retreated north toward the Ligurian Alps. Although possessed with strong communist sympathies, the northern groups were less tainted with political intrigue and were hosting Allied prisoners who had ignored the 1943 MI9 Stand Fast order. By the spring of 1945 most were being supported by Allied Military Missions. In October 1944, Major Alistair Macdonald parachuted near to the mill town of Biella, north-west of Milan in Piedmont, in command of Cherokee Mission. Commissioned in 1940, a year later he was seconded to the Political Warfare Executive. In July 1944, he had parachuted into the Central Massif in France to co-ordinate Resistance operations and advise General de Gaulle’s military delegation and, when the Germans withdrew from the region, he helped to re-establish local administration. Among the ‘Banda Biella’ reception party were three prisoners, one of whom, Gunner George Evans, lodged an account of the Cherokee Mission with the BBC in November 2003. A cook with 4th (Durham) Survey Regiment RA, he had been captured in 1942 when Tobruk surrendered and had ignored the Stand Fast order, as had his two Australian and Scottish colleagues. They refused Macdonald’s offer to escape to Switzerland. Hitherto, ‘Banda Biella’ had relied on private and captured weapons; however, with the Allied offensive expected in the spring, Macdonald organized a large supply drop into a snow-covered valley northeast of Biella. Under the guise of collecting firewood, the partisans hacked a drop zone by thinning the forest and then, during the night of 17/18 November, an explosive expert, a radio operator and an instructor dropped with the canisters. Evans was delighted to be wearing Battledress again. Macdonald attacked a railway bridge in the D’Aosta Valley, north-west of Biella, being used by a foundry to send steel to Germany through the Dora Valley. As German sappers were repairing it, Macdonald blew up another railway bridge south of Biella. The explosives officer trained two partisans to handle explosives and, after dark on 23 December, they carried the charges through the cellars of a hotel and collapsed a bridge into the River Dora, forcing the Germans to organize a bypass. When Macdonald arranged the largest supply drop of the Italian campaign on to the drop zone before sunset on Boxing Day, a squadron of Liberator bombers ignored anti-aircraft fire from the Fascist garrison at Lessona and dropped multi-coloured parachutes, each signifying a different content in the containers. However, recovering the supplies proved difficult because the only transport was a few donkeys. When Major Macdonald was captured in a café during a German security operation to protect their lines of communications and was taken to Gestapo HQ, the Banda Biella dispersed, with one group sheltering in the sewerage system of an isolated farmhouse. After Macdonald had quickly escaped and was rowed across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland by a boy, the partisans continued to harass the Germans by derailing trains, dropping pylons and damaging a bridge near Livorno, until a second mission arrived in the form of Lieutenant Amoore and three officers, with instructions to disrupt the enemy ‘scorched earth’ policy. By March 1945, the German Tenth Army was being pressed hard by the French and, while retreating through the D’Aosta Valley, was forced, by the destruction of two bridges, to transfer supplies from railway wagons to lorries and then back onto trains at Ponte San Martino. The troops marched on. By mid-April the partisans, supported by daily supply drops, had effectively closed the railway through the valley and then turned their attention to ambushing roads.
To the south-east of the River Po, F Squadron was warned by XIII Corps that a detachment was required for a parachute operation to support the partisans disrupting enemy lines of communications as the Germans retreated toward the river. Captain Gay advised General Sir Richard McCreery, who was now commanding Eighth Army, that either his whole unit would jump or none. In the event, the confusion caused by F Squadron in Operation Herring led to the capture of 8,000 prisoners. When the squadron was disbanded, it had lost thirty-five killed and twenty-nine wounded and had gathered several Italian gallantry awards. Many returned to Folgore Parachute Division.
Captain Amoore was visiting a well known Italian racing driver on 2 May, the day that the German Army in Italy surrendered and accepted unconditional terms offered by General Schlemmer, the LVII Corps commander, and 100,000 troops and Fascist militia. Major Macdonald and Amoore were both awarded Military Crosses. Macdonald returned to take up the post of Military Governor of Biella and Aosta.
By the time that the Germans surrendered, eighteen FS section and five Port Security sections were protecting Allied lines of communication that stretched from North Africa to Venice. Meanwhile, 417 FSS handed over to 418 FSS and moved to Pesaro and, in September, reached its final destination of Bologna, where it was actively involved in raiding hidden arms dumps and taking a greater interest in the activities of the communists. And 38 FSS was still in Bari when, shortly before midday on 9 April 1945, the Liberty ship Charles W Henderson exploded while unloading ammunition, killing 309 people, injuring 1,600 and causing extensive damage from debris and a tidal wave that ripped through the harbour. Among the fatalities was Lance Corporal Leslie Joseph, of 47 Port Security Section, who had boarded the ship for lunch while waiting for another vessel to dock. His colleague, Lance Corporal Ken Tomlinson, had returned to their office to type some reports when their office disintegrated around him. When 38 FSS was disbanded in June 1946 and Tomlinson was transferred to Taranto, he was the last British soldier to leave when the port was handed back to the Italian authorities.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Far East 1942–1945
Intelligence is never too dear.
Francis Walsingham
Responsibility for Imperial military activity throughout the Far East and South East Asia lay with GHQ India, until August 1940 when Borneo and Burma, both with important oil reserves, and Malaya were absorbed into GHQ Malaya with its Headquarters in Singapore. The strategic consensus was that while Hong Kong was largely indefensible and Burma was a backwater, except for its Arakan airfields, no-one could possibly overcome the power of the Royal Navy, land in Malaya, fight their way through the jungle, cross the Johore Causeway and land in Singapore. But, by the summer of 1940, this optimism was not reflected by the War Cabinet, who expressed concern, in the most secret Far Eastern Appreciation, that Malaya could be defended. Unfortunately, the assessment and a mass of other information were captured in November when the SS Automedon was intercepted by Germany’s most successful surface raider, the Atlantis. The Japanese Intelligence Service had developed very effective espionage throughout Malaya that included recruitment of an Indian Army captain who had detailed knowledge of airfields. Unfortunately, the Far East Command Bureau, tasked to co-ordinate military intelligence and counter-intelligence, was ineffective, indeed, GHQ India had failed to raise an Intelligence Corps, as had GHQ Malaya. .
The brutality of the 1936 Japanese invasion of China and warnings in 1941 from Colonel George Wards, a former Military Attaché in Tokyo and later a Cabinet Office historian, that the co
mbination of Japanese espionage and subversion in Malaya and Singapore and the combat efficiency and experience of the Imperial Japanese Army posed a major threat to British interests, went unheeded. Indeed, General Lionel Bond, General Officer Commanding, Malaya, censured him, ‘We don’t want to dismay the chaps; we must keep their spirits up’. Nevertheless, in August 1941, Major Anthony Charmier OBE formed HQ Intelligence Corps in Singapore to support HQ III Indian Corps, but he found that the lack of Photographic Intelligence and a Y Service meant that credible intelligence assessments were difficult to develop. With time very short, he formed the Command Intelligence Section that included a Cipher Section, and was sent interpreters and interrogators with experience of Japan, some arriving from the UK and others married to Japanese partners. Counter-intelligence was initially entrusted to 351, 352 and 353 FSS that were locally raised in Singapore. Meanwhile, 78 FSS, which had been formed in November 1941 from French, German and Arabic linguists in Winchester expecting to be deployed in North Africa, and which was commanded by Captain Lemin, arrived in the Dutch East Indies in December.
The years of complacency were shattered on 7 December, the day that Pearl Harbour was bombed, when the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army landed at Kota Bahru in north-east Malaya and advanced south against thinly spread defenders. Ten days later, the Twenty-Third Army poured into Hong Kong from China, smashed the defensive Gin Drinkers’ Line stretching across the New Territories, and forced the British and Canadian troops and Hong Kong Volunteers to surrender on 25 December. Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Ride (Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps), who had fought with the Australians in the Great War, was captured but escaped to China, where he established the MI9 British Army Aid Group to help prisoners escaping from Hong Kong. One with post-war connections to the Intelligence Corps was William Cheong Gun. Escaping in 1942, as Agent 50 he established a network that ran Red Cross supplies between Macau and Guilin and helped downed aircrew to evade capture.
By February 1942, the Twenty-Fifth Army, pushing their bicycles along jungle tracks, had forced III Indian Corps and an Australian Division across Johore Causeway to join the recently-arrived 18th British Division with its 15 FSS in the chaotic jewel of Singapore. When, on 13 February, the Royal Navy decided that several vessels should be denied to the Japanese and then allocated 3,000 berths to civilian government and Armed Forces for evacuation, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, the General Officer Commanding Malaya Command, instructed that specialists surplus to operational requirements should be evacuated. As HQ 18th Division reviewed its allocation, Major General Merton Beckwith-Smith instructed Captain Lemin to transfer 15 FSS to CSM John Wright and for him and his four most proficient linguists to be evacuated. But Lemin, in the chaos, could not find the four he had selected and missed the disaster that befell the convoy when it was intercepted by Japanese aircraft. Among the missing was Lieutenant Laurence Hamilton, who had been employed by the Japanese Government to teach English, and his Japanese wife, who had translated documents for Major Charmier. Lemin and his party arrived at the docks on 15 February, the day that Singapore surrendered, and joined several gunners and two Royal Signals searching for a suitable vessel. They selected the elderly launch, Siong Aik and, as they scrambled on board during an air raid, Lemin was wounded in the thigh. A former heating engineer coaxed the launch’s engine into life and thirty-six hours later the vessel made landfall on the east coast of Sumatra. Ferried by Royal Navy landing craft and lorries to Padang, the group boarded the destroyer HMS Tenedos on 1 March, transferred to HMAS Hobart and reached Colombo, Ceylon four days later.
The linguists, Lieutenants Brown, Storry and Tait, were on a ship sheltering near an island en route to Sumatra when it was sunk by aircraft. Joining about seventy other military personnel in a launch and landing in Sumatra, they also reached Ceylon. Lieutenant G.A.T. Shaw was an expatriate who had helped round up Japanese residents and was attached to an Australian battalion retreating from Johore when he and two other Intelligence Corps lieutenants were instructed to escort thirteen prisoners to Java. They reached Padang by gunboat and junk and transferred them to the Dutch. Of the three, Shaw and Clark reached Ceylon, but Lieutenant G. Rawkings was captured and sent to Changi prison camp as an interpreter. Of the Intelligence Corps in Singapore, 351 FSS lost two killed in action. The fate of 353 FSS is not known but 78 FSS, with no particular role in Java, assisted the military police until the Dutch East Indies surrendered on 8 March. Several members were transferred to Changi prison camp before being sent to Batu Lintang camp in Borneo. Originally a British barracks, the camp held 3,000 Allied prisoners and civilian detainees in cramped conditions. Life was harsh with about two-thirds of the British prisoners dying during or as a result of their captivity. Captain Lemin later wrote to Mrs Wright:
I am not going to pretend that the prisoners of war will have a wonderful time. They will not, but I can say on good authority that the Japs are keen on making Singapore a star piece for the prisoners, to counter the Hong Kong stories.
In 1939, the Imperial Japanese Army proposed building a railway from Siam (now Thailand) through Burma to support an invasion of India using local labour. When Singapore surrendered, the Japanese had cheap labourers – 130,000 Allied prisoners of war. Working under the direction of railway engineers, more than 60,000 prisoners and thousands of forced labourers built the 415km railway from to Nong Pladuk in Thailand to Thanbyuzyat (Three Pagodas Pass) in Burma. But in July 1943 Japanese engineers were instructed to finish on time ready to support operations in Burma and for the next four months the prisoners worked relentlessly in the ‘Speedo Period’, until both ends met in October. Despite the appalling brutality of the Japanese and Korean guards, disease, starvation, overwork and inadequate accommodation and sanitation, building the Burma Railway was a remarkable feat of discipline and engineering, but it cost 16,000 Allied prisoners and 100,000 labourers their lives, many during the Speedo Period. Ten Intelligence Corps died, six during the Speedo Period.
HQ Burma Army in Rangoon had no active counter-intelligence support until Captain Mains arrived as GSO2 Intelligence (B) in December 1941 from Iraq. Eight Indians provided the desert-trained 17th Indian Division FS section but it was attached to the Divisional Employment Platoon. In a city awash with rumour, disinformation, espionage, subversion and sabotage from agents, nationalist monks and Japanese expatriates, and soldiers with Burmese features sabotaging dock facilities, the port was a focal point for a constant stream of lorries carrying 30,000 tons of military equipment to supply the Chinese Nationalist armies fighting the Japanese 700 miles to the north. Using his experiences from Iraq, Mains formed No. 1 (Burma) Composite FSS from Burmese soldiers, the 1 Glosters boxing team then guarding Army Headquarters, four British Garrison Military Police and eight Indians. When the Japanese Fifteenth Army landed in southern Burma at the beginning of February, the collapse of infrastructure and the demoralization of the Burma Police led to Mains deploying the Section to support the railway authorities transporting refugees north toward Myitkyina. By early March, it was clear that Rangoon could not be held and No. 1 (Burma) FSS formed part of the 1 Glosters rearguard, which reached Maymo after narrowly avoiding capture when the Japanese cut the road at the Taukkyan Bend. Forming three more FS sections, Mains kept No. 1 (Burma) FSS with Army HQ, attached No. 2 (Burma) FSS to the 1st Burma Division, sent No. 3 (Burma) FSS to the Burma Frontier Force garrison at the Lashio rail head and despatched No. 4 (Burma) FSS to Myitkyina. All were on lines of communications security and expected to be self sufficient. By the end of April, Burma Army had abandoned Maymo and conducted a 1,000 miles fighting retreat along jungle tracks and across rivers to the Indian border province of Assam that would last until mid-May. Mains, in controversial circumstances, was instructed to destroy a petrol dump near Mandalay that would have been useful for the 7 Armoured Brigade tanks. General Sir William Slim, who commanded Burma Army, later wrote,
Our intelligence was extremely bad. We were like a blind boxer trying to strike an
unseen opponent and to parry blows we did not know were coming until they hit us. We never made up for the lack of methodically collecting intelligence or the intelligence organisation which should have been available to us when the war began.
The War Office admitted the weakness in response to his Despatches on the Burma Campaign,
This lack was not peculiar to Burma. It is fair to say that throughout the British Empire the necessity for an Intelligence system was realised by the Service Headquarters but the various Governments concerned were not prepared to spend the money to make it effective (PRO WO/166 266):
The four Field Security sections reached sanctuary but their contribution was not listed in the Official History of the War in the Far East. Mains:
The cool courage and good discipline of the four Field Security Sections was beyond praise during the whole of the campaign. In spite of the rigours, both mental and physical, of the period of policing Rangoon, when a crate of beer was always available in the Field Security billet for any man to help himself, no case of drunkenness and indiscipline occurred.
Meanwhile, IV Corps arrived from Basrah to guard Assam, the lines of communication to India being devolved to Eastern Army. With the Japanese lurking across the border, Lieutenant General Sir Neil Irwin, commanding IV Corps, issued orders to ‘retain the services of certain officers and other ranks forming part of the Corps and Army troops assisting in the reorganising of the divisions’. But the health of Major Mains had collapsed. Although he lost the opportunity of being either Chief Instructor, Field Security Wing at Karachi or second-in-command of his battalion, he returned to organize IV Corps rear area security and found that Captain Peter Leefe, who had been a FS sergeant in France, was his GS0 3 Intelligence (B). Their counter-intelligence resources had been reinforced by 25 (HQ IV Corps) FSS and the poorly-trained, all-Indian section supporting the 26th Indian Division at Manipur, minus its FSO who had become a psychiatric casualty. Still using the structure developed in Iraq, Mains combined Nos. 2 and 4 (Burma) FSS and the British sections into two Composite sections and provided lines of communications security at Dibrugarh, which is north of Kohima, and at Silchar, west of Imphal. In depth, he formed the semi-independent Gauhati Intelligence Detachment to co-ordinate intelligence emerging from the refugee camps, ensured that GHQ India provided interrogators and assisted the military police in counter-intelligence arrests. A persistent problem affecting lines of communication security in India was a nationalist unrest sponsored by Japanese agents that included sabotage and subversion against Indian units.
Sharing the Secret Page 14