Trieste
For forty days, the Allied Military Government in Trieste was unable to intervene while the Yugoslav Secret Police and Italian communists conducted a regime of terror, abduction and summary justice. Nevertheless, the Field Security sections stuck to their Security Plans of tracking down stay-behind agents and arresting those on their wanted lists, which included three generals. As the Italian communists became increasingly intolerant of the brutal behaviour of the Partisans, the sections exploited the split to destabilize ‘spontaneous’ communist demonstrations. On 12 June the Partisans withdrew, allowing the Military Government to re-establish confidence with XIII Corps taking control of Venezia Giulia with 56th Infantry Division and its 35 FSS in Trieste. Meanwhile, 411 FSS moved up to the border with Austria while 412 FSS deployed on counter-intelligence activities against Yugoslav Secret Police stay-behind parties and agents masquerading as businessmen and railway employees. The border with Yugoslavia and the Morgan Line was monitored by 419 FSS, who also liaised closely with 47 (Port Security) Section in Venice. One problem was anti-communist Yugoslavs slipping across the border to kill partisans and distribute propaganda. During August and September, 12 FSS was attached to the US 88th Infantry Division and, in addition to normal FS activities, arbitrated in skirmishes between local partisans, local inhabitants and Allied forces. The arrival of the US Counter-intelligence Corps with their telephone-tapping equipment and eavesdropping technology was a novelty for the sections; it was their Human Intelligence expertise that established credibility with the Americans. When Sergeant Tom Norton found the body of an American signalman murdered while repairing telephone lines and then learnt from an informant that two brothers were responsible, a raid was organized, but an excited American accidentally discharged his pistol and they escaped. The Section submitted recommendations firming up the border between Italy and Yugoslavia and was gratified to learn that their report had been read by Ernest Bevin. The current frontier generally conforms to their recommendations. Meanwhile, 429 FSS vetted Allied Military Government local employees. Also in Trieste were a Postal and Telegraphic Censorship Unit, a forward Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre and No. 5 Special Counter-intelligence Unit for specialist operations. The Venezia Giulia Police Force, supported by Field Security acting as Special Branch, maintained law and order.
Under the February 1947 Italian Peace Treaty, the Free Territory of Trieste was formally demarcated into the Allied Zone A to the north and Yugoslav Zone B to the south. The 5,000-strong British Element of the Trieste Force merged with 5,000 Americans. To simplify intelligence operations, intelligence and security functions were integrated, although Major J.D. Gimblett maintained that it was more ‘duplication than integration’. Nevertheless, it was an early example of integrated Allied counter-intelligence staff. The District Security Office was formed by the amalgamation of 411, 412 and 429 FSS, 21 (Port Security) Section and No. 5 Special Counter-Intelligence Unit. However, when its mail was frequently sent to the Duty Signals Officer, the nomenclature was changed to the Trieste Security Office. Consisting of about fifty-five soldiers, some three-quarters were National Servicemen. The Intelligence Corps lived in flats and were supported by Italian house staff and frequently used weekend leave passes to travel to Naples. In addition to attending an intensive Italian course, most spoke another language. Some Regulars were accompanied by their families. Home leave for the National Servicemen was two weeks every six months and for those returning to Great Britain, this meant a road journey to Villach in Austria and then the relatively comfortable thirty-six-hour ‘Mediterranean Locations’ (Medloc) troop train journey. The train plied to and from the Hook of Holland, passing the relatively untouched meadows and mountains of southern Europe through the wreckage in the centre. Trieste and Italy were welcome changes to the austerity of the UK.
With access to a telephone-tapping system installed by the Italians during the war, activities included counter-intelligence on political parties, the Yugoslav Intelligence Service, neo-Fascists and communists; interrogation of frontier crossers and liberation groups; vetting locally employed civilians; and monitoring the transportation of strategic materials, such as chrome from Albania to communist countries in Eastern Europe. Some NCOs were provided with passes by US Customs that enabled them to search ships. Several low level tasks were conducted for MI6, which was half-mockingly known as the ‘Chinese Laundry’, including searching for the Soviet spies, the two British defectors Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, and liaising with the Italian Intelligence Service. During a disagreement between Italy and Yugoslavia over the status of Trieste, in 1952 Captain Dickie Richards organized the smuggling onto a British ship of a defecting Serbian intelligence officer, his wife and family. During 1953, in spite of the UN declaration that Trieste was to be an independent territory, Italy claimed it, by force if necessary. Major G.D. Gimblett remembers:
I therefore found myself in a tent, for ten days, at the side of the main coast road into Trieste at Duino on the frontier with Italy, accompanied by a company of infantry. My brief was to confront any invading troops from Italy, in Italian, with the words, ‘In the name of General Winterton, Commander of Allied Forces in the Free Territory of Trieste, I forbid you to advance further.’ Presumably I was to leap aside in order to avoid the first tanks rumbling forward!”
During this tense period, NCOs scouted north-eastern Italy in civilian cars and wearing civilian clothes, and collected information on the Italian order of battle. On 8 October, the British and US announcement that their troops would be withdrawn from Trieste led to fury in Yugoslavia, nevertheless, a year later, on 25 November 1954, Major Richards disbanded the Trieste Security Office and instructed three NCOs commanded by Sergeant Leighton-Jones to escort their card index to MI5. They travelled by train.
Austria
For the occupation of Austria, Major R.E. Johnson commanding HQ Field Security (Central Mediterranean Forces), based in Bouzarea, Tunisia, had used the Intelligence Corps (Field) model to form the Intelligence Organisation (Austria) of three Area Security Offices, each reporting to a provincial Field Security headquarters. The de-Nazification process was eased by the rejection of the Austrian Nazi Party, an ineffectual Communist Party and the absence of other irritants, such as resistance groups. Security Office A based in the former Gestapo offices in Klagenfurt controlled a Detailed Interrogation Centre and 428 FSS, which had joined 6th Armoured Division on 25 May. Arriving at Wolfsberg on 6 May, 16 FSS took custody of John Amery after he had been captured by Italian partisans at the end of April. Sent to England, he was executed for treason. At Millstatt, 88 FSS had, by the end of August, arrested 531 suspects, including Dr Friedrich Rainer, the Nazi Governor of Carinthia. The Castle housed an interrogation centre. Area Security Office B covered the demarcation with the Soviet Zone through 313 FSS at Leibnitz. Area Security Office C operated from Graz with two Field Security sections in the city, two at Leibnitz, one at Bruch, one at Weitz and 418 FSS at Leben. As was customary in Germany and Austria, when the Army Photography Unit filmed concentration camps, Field Security sections forced local inhabitants to attend showings. Most were deeply shocked but anyone showing dissent was ordered to watch the same films for the rest of the day.
A major problem was that the detention camps were full of displaced people, former prisoners of war displaced by the Soviet occupation of their homelands and concentration camp victims, all surviving in overcrowded and unhealthy conditions that bred personal and political disagreements. This made it easier for Field Security to recruit sources and informants. Searching several compounds for East European agitators, 88 FSS unearthed the pro-Nazi Hungarian League of Former Officers. Austrians detained by the Soviets’ occupation proved useful sources of information on communist internal security techniques and political organization. Some inmates found employment with the Allies as drivers, guards, translators and interpreters and domestic staff. While some detainees wanted repatriation to their homelands, others applied fo
r emigration to such countries as the USA, Canada and Australia and, for the Jews, Palestine.
As part of the post-First World War settlements, the League of Nations gave Great Britain a Mandate over Palestine in the expectation that London would create:
such political, administrative, and economic condition as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home … and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
But, by 1945, policy contradictions had emerged. Cautious about upsetting the Arabs, London rejected linkages between Palestine and European Jews but, faced by the US Congress determined to support a Jewish state in Palestine, the British had little option but agree an annual quota. But this was rejected by Jewish extremists determined to create a home for displaced and destitute European Jews and they opened a campaign of terrorism in Palestine in October 1945. After terrorists attempted to blow up a ‘MedLoc’ troop train en route to Villach in 1947 as it descended the slope near the Mallnitz Tunnel near Spittal, several suspects were sent to Millstatt Castle. In Germany, Major Chaim Herzog, the future Israeli President, was an Area Intelligence Officer covering Brunswick and Hildesheim. When he learnt that Jewish refugees were using mine tunnels near Helmstedt to escape from the Soviet Zone and were making their way to northern ports to embark on ships that would take them to Palestine, he discreetly ensured that the Jewish Brigade replaced Danish border guards.
At the end of June, demobilization saw Major Johnson reduce the Area Security Officers in Austria to two, each covering about fifty per cent of the border with Yugoslavia with Area Office C bordering the Soviet sector. The frontier was designated a Prohibited Area with access controlled by the Border Field Security sections working with military patrols. Duties included interrogating Illegal Frontier Crossers for information on the Yugoslavian military order of battle, monitoring political activity, in particular communist sympathizers, and intercepting smugglers infiltrating the streams of refugees. The Bleiburg FS detachment had its offices above the town prison. In order to deal with the vast numbers of Hungarians, 96 FSS established an interrogation centre at Strass.
Security Office A had three Border Field Security sections, including the 91 FSS Rosenbach detachment located at the main rail crossing point between Yugoslavia and Austria at Klagenfurt, where endless disagreements with the Yugoslavian border police on the validity of refugees and displaced people sometimes led to trains being shunted back and forth through the Rosenbach tunnel connecting the two border posts until compromises were agreed. Sergeant William Otley of the Radkersburg Detachment and Sergeant Peter Dickinson, of 313 FSS, developed close working relationships in the town that lasted fifty years. Relations eased when the US supplied its armed forces with equipment after Tito had split with Stalin. When British military patrols were unable to apprehend a band of Yugoslavians terrorizing the border, the Section ‘turned’ a member, which resulted in a joint Field Security/ Gendarmarie raid arresting the gang, all blissfully drunk after an orgy.
On 1 July, 409 FSS took over security responsibility for the Wolfsberg sector from 313 FSS and deployed to the border but, within the fortnight, two new arrivals, Corporal Mahoney and Private Kenneth Dixon, were arrested by the Yugoslavians after accidentally straying across. Released after eighteen days, both were sentenced at their courts-martial to fifty-six days detention. The severity of the sentence seems not to have worked. Corporal Gordon Watt from the Deutchlandberg Detachment also strayed across the border and spent six months in the forbidding Moribor prison before his release was negotiated. Wolfsberg-based 409 (Lines of Communications) FSS had landed in Brindisi where it requisitioned a launch, formerly owned by King Zog of Albania, fast enough for port security duties and for towing a surf board. Offshore patrols in an Italian Navy trawler were skippered by Sergeants Blanchflower and Norton with an Italian Navy crew; they also supported clandestine operations in Dalmatia. At Leece, when faced by thousands of refugees crossing the Adriatic, the Section arranged for them to be driven by Royal Army Service Corps lorries to the outskirts of the fishing village of Santa Maria al Bagno, where the Intelligence Corps NCOs and the drivers broke into several luxurious holiday villas, arranged for Royal Engineers to rig a field kitchen and persuaded a Royal Marines detachment to patrol the complex. When the Section advanced to Pescara during the summer of 1944, they retrieved about half of fifty Bailey Bridges stolen by locals from river crossings and hidden in undergrowth. In June 1945 the section was earmarked to join the Brazilian Division in Italy; however, it was sent to Austria and took over from 31 FSS in Wolfsberg and commenced frontier duties between the British and Soviet zone. A detachment at Wolfsberg internment camp screened 4,000 Yugoslavs previously imprisoned by the Soviets for information of intelligence interest and exploited violent factional clashes between Chetniks and Partisans. It then settled down to arresting Nazis and collecting political intelligence.
In early July, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, Austria and Vienna were divided into four occupation zones, with the Soviets transferring Styria to the British. Vienna soon became a vigorous hive of intrigue as the occupying intelligence agencies competed. The Field Security sections faced the additional problem of subversion through a political ideology about which little was then known, namely Communism. Headquarters Field Security was based in a house in Wenzgasse District. Meanwhile, 291 FSS had been evacuated from Turkey following the debacle to seize the Dodecanese Islands and was placed at the disposal of Security Office (Mediterranean) in Bari where it provided security for the SOE. In early 1945 it was reclaimed by Allied Forces Headquarters to be part of the S Force that entered Padua. Arriving in Vienna, it requisitioned a palatial house in Sebastian Platz that housed the complete section of fourteen soldiers and had interrogation cells, a bar, a Bechstein piano and a garage large enough for six cars. The section was also responsible for airport security at Schwechat, which was then under RAF control but in the Soviet sector. As part of collection information about the Soviets, the section persuaded Austrian women cleaning offices in barracks to pass the contents of wastepaper baskets.
In order to enable it to cover the seven districts of Vienna in the British sector, 20 FSS had been enlarged to fifty soldiers, its principal functions being protective security, censorship and movement control. On one occasion the Section hosted a defecting Bulgarian basket ball player and his wife, two members playing bridge with the couple, all conversing in French. When the time came to exfiltrate the couple, the van was intercepted on the way to the airport and the couple seized.
Formed in Winchester in September 1941, 310 FSS joined Eighth Army in North Africa as it closed on Tunisia. In July, now commanded by Captain Eric Peters, it took part in the invasion of Sicily with XXX Corps and lost Sergeant Rupert Hawley, killed in a German air raid on 10 July 1943. In Perugia in February 1945, it arrested ten security suspects, including an agent dropped by parachute. Handing Vienna to 418 FSS, the Section joined 263 FSS in Klagenfurt and formed exploitation and interrogation teams rounding up those on their Arrests Lists and searching factories and scientific laboratories of intelligence interest. On 13 July, it joined the specialist Counter-Intelligence (Austria) and was instrumental in the arrest of a SS-lieutenant colonel doctor who had conducted medical experiments in concentration camps. In September the Section joined 20 and 291 FSS in Vienna and was located in the Schönbrunn Palace, where it continued counter-intelligence activities that included investigations into several SS sergeant majors, senior directors of aircraft factors, such as Willam Junkers, and denunciations emerging from Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps of several Vienna University professors and the authors of anti-Semitic articles, correspondence and broadcasts. It also kept a close watch on an internment camp outside the city holding Yugoslavian refugees.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Victory in the Far East
Nowadays, the commander
is confronted with too much information, rather than too little, and it is his informed judgment which ultimately decides what is relevant and important.
Hugh Farringdon
The fortnight delay imposed by General MacArthur between 15 August and 2 September gave some Japanese occupation authorities time to destroy incriminating war crimes evidence, which included murdering potential witnesses among prisoners. For some prisoners of war and civilian detainees spread across South East Asia, many in poor health, the delay proved lethal. Two Intelligence Corps died of disease during this period.
Malaya and Singapore
By September 1944, Major Guy Turrall had left the Chindits and, joining SOE Force 136, had twice parachuted into Burma. On his second mission in mid-April 1945, his attack on the Kempei Tei HQ at Kyaukkyi accounted for forty-one Japanese and then he arranged for artillery shelling and air strikes that caused more than 900 casualties. On 16 August, he attempted to convince elements of a unit of the 55th Division to surrender; however, it was unaware that Japan had capitulated and he was beaten as a spy and shot at as he tried to escape. Reports of his capture led to consternation at HQ Twelfth Army and South-East Asia Command, both trying to ensure controlled surrenders, until a Japanese staff officer informed the capturing unit that the war was over and then made arrangements for the Kempei Tei to release Turrall near where he had been captured. Interestingly, he had undertaken a similar venture when the Armistice was declared on the Western Front in 1918.
Of the 214 Intelligence Corps killed on active service before Victory Over Japan Day, sixty-eight died in Great Britain. Nine died as prisoners of war in Germany and Austria, with six executed or dying of maltreatment. Twenty-one died as prisoners of Japan with four lost at sea in ships sunk by US submarines. They were among thousands of prisoners being transported to Japan to work in mills, foundries and coal and zinc mines jammed into the locked holds of ships that were ovens in the heat and fridges in winter and lacked adequate food, water and medical supplies. None of the ships were marked with Red Crosses. Lance Corporal William Shaw of 15 FSS had survived the Burma Railway. Of the survivors, Lance Corporal J.D. Smith published an account of his experiences in And All the Trumpets (1968). Of several liberated from Batu Lintang prison camp in Borneo by Australian troops, the South African author, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens van der Post, had maintained morale by organizing a ‘camp university’, with courses ranging from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and had managed a farm that supplemented nutritional needs. When depressed, he once wrote, ‘It is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity.’ He wrote about his experiences in A Bar of Shadow (1954), The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). The film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1982) is based on his experiences. Lance Corporal William Lambert, 78 FSS and a former Palestine Police officer, died in hospital five days after the Japanese capitulation. Known as ‘Palestine Billy’ and the wearer of a rampant Victorian moustache, he was a notable scrounger who disappeared from the camp at night and returned before dawn with a chicken or eggs. He was placed in charge of the prisoners’ most valuable possession – the illicit radio known as the ‘Old Lady’.
Sharing the Secret Page 26