Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

by Giles Milton

  As the workload grew heavier, even occasional staff found themselves building weaponry. Mr Bridle was a hairdresser by profession, with a particular skill at blending oily concoctions for damaged hair. After clipping everyone’s hair and oiling the heads of those who wanted his tonics, he would help to fill shells with high explosive. Macrae watched him at work, surprised by his fearlessness. ‘Although Mr Bridle appeared to be a quiet and courteous fellow who would treat even a small firework with great respect, he showed no signs of fear whatever in his new profession and the thought that the slightest mistake on his part might blow not only himself, but also the rest of us to kingdom come, never seemed to enter his head.’

  Many of the staff kept to Jefferis’s sixteen hours a day rule, working so hard that they often forgot what day of the week it was. ‘We would discover it was Sunday only when we tried to ring up some other department,’ said Macrae. Jefferis had limited entertainment to one Sunday a month but Macrae overruled him, aware of the need for in-house entertainment. He established a permanently open bar, a cinema with 35mm projector and even launched the Firs magazine. One of the more clownish members of staff, Gordon Norwood, was invited to stage a series of regular theatricals, ‘which were put on at his carpenter’s shop under the title of “Woodchoppers Balls”’. The pun was most definitely intended.

  Stuart Macrae worked hard to keep the Firs running on schedule, but he was driven to distraction by Jefferis, who was constantly sidetracked by matters of no relevance to the war effort. ‘When we were in the heat of the fray at Whitchurch,’ said a frustrated Macrae, ‘he got involved in producing a theory of prime numbers and it became very difficult to get him to think about anything else.’ Matters were scarcely helped by the fact that Professor Lindemann encouraged him in these lofty abstractions. Macrae watched in despair as Jefferis got ‘involved in these mathematical problems and, in the middle of devising some new weapon, would write a treatise on the formulae governing the calculation of compression spring movement under varying loadings’.

  Gubbins drove out to the Firs on a monthly basis in order to consult with Jefferis. He was delighted to learn that his L-Delay fuse was almost ready for use. After much experimenting, Jefferis had discovered that the purest lead wire from the Broken Hills Mines in Australia, when blended with 5 per cent of tellurium, crept with absolute uniformity under tension. It was the breakthrough he had been seeking for so long and meant that a highly accurate fuse could now become a reality. Constructing the prototype was a complex process that required the latest automatic lathes. The lead had to be stretched to an accuracy of one-tenth of a thousandth of an inch, a process that initially involved much trial and error. But when it worked, and was linked to a striker, it performed with an accuracy never previously achieved in the history of warfare.

  Even Jefferis’s harshest critics at the Ordnance Board were forced to concede that his L-Delay was a work of genius. They ruled that henceforth it was the only fuse to be used in all army, sabotage and guerrilla operations. Within days of this ruling, the first of more than 5 million L-Delays were rolling off the Firs’s production line. ‘They were used everywhere in the world,’ wrote Macrae at the war’s end, and yet ‘there was not a single report of a failure with them, or an accident.’

  Macrae continued to be surprised by the size of the orders coming from both the commandos and from Baker Street. He was no less surprised by the fact that they were expected to supply the weapons free of charge. Ever the racketeer, he politely suggested that Gubbins’s Baker Street agents should start paying for the weaponry: after all, ‘they had bags of money’. A deal was struck, a delivery arranged and Macrae ‘walked off with £500 in cash in payment for 500 limpets, for which they did not want a receipt’. He was delighted and said that this money ‘started off my new bag of gold very nicely and enabled us to take on new staff right away’. Macrae kept ‘most careful accounts covering these highly illegal transactions’,2 lest he should ever be challenged by the War Office, but he kept the paperwork well away from Jefferis, who was so morally upright that he would have been horrified.

  Winston Churchill demanded frequent updates on the rates of production at the Firs and was most impressed by the growing output of weaponry. In one six-month period between the autumn of 1941 and spring of 1942, Jefferis’s ever growing team of workers, now organized into a production line, produced 15,000 limpets, 10,000 clams and 600,000 detonators. These were now being shipped to saboteurs around the globe, not just Occupied Europe, but as far afield as Cairo, Alexandria, New Zealand, Rangoon and Bombay.

  Professor Lindemann reminded the Prime Minister that Jefferis’s inventions were also being used by the regular army. ‘I believe the value of the orders placed approaches £18,000,000,’ he said. ‘Considering that the cost of the experimental work is only about £40,000 a year, I think this can be considered a very satisfactory yield.’3

  The quality of the weaponry produced by the Firs was in striking contrast to the other development stations up and down the country. The experimental base at Welwyn, known as Station IX, was producing all manner of prototype machines, yet few of them ever entered production. There was also the Thatched Barn in Hertfordshire, Station XV, that produced such curiosities as exploding rats and self-detonating camel dung, the latter designed for use in North Africa. Such items produced much laughter among the staff, but were dismissed by Jefferis and Macrae as gimmicks that were never going to turn the tide of war. They contended that the Firs alone was producing all the most effective weapons of sabotage.

  Churchill agreed with this assessment and rewarded Millis Jefferis by making him a Commander of the British Empire in the 1942 New Year’s Honours list. Macrae at last saw an opportunity to drag his boss away from his work. He arranged a celebratory dinner at the Bull’s Head Hotel in Aylesbury, inviting Mrs Jefferis, Norman Angier and a couple of other members of Jefferis’s senior staff. The hand-printed menu bore all the hallmarks of Macrae’s ready wit. The main course was faisan roti à la bombarde, a reference to the Bombard mortar, and the pudding, bombe sticky, referred to another of Jefferis’s inventions. At the bottom of the menu he recycled an office joke: the menu, he said, was ‘subject to revision or amendment at any moment’.4

  * * *

  Colin Gubbins had also established a formidable little inner circle of talent by the spring of 1942. Cecil Clarke was one of his rising stars, working around the clock at Brickendonbury Manor as he trained a growing number of would-be saboteurs. The numbers passing through his classes were impressive: 667 Norwegians, 258 Poles, 209 Czechs and 118 British, along with men from eight other countries. Most had arrived in Britain in the spring of 1940, but some – particularly Norwegians – continued to trickle into the country after making perilous journeys across the North Sea in the so-called Shetland Bus. Men were now starting to be sent back into Nazi-occupied Europe. Clarke had already seen off 80 Norwegians, 65 French and 151 other nationalities. They were tasked with building underground networks and creating weapons’ dumps in preparation for forthcoming strikes.

  Cecil Clarke was by no means the only cog in Gubbins’s machine. Six hundred miles from London, Sykes and Fairbairn had increased the scope of their activities and were now training hundreds of would-be guerrillas in the fine art of killing. Gubbins had also established a specialist parachute training school at Ringway, near Manchester, along with a ‘finishing school’ at Beaulieu. This was where men and women were trained in how to live undercover in occupied territories.

  The team working in Baker Street had also expanded rapidly. Just two years earlier, when Gubbins was still in Caxton Street, his outfit had consisted of four men, one secretary and an office not much larger than a living room. Now, hundreds of staff were working for him, plotting guerrilla operations in almost a dozen countries. These operations were being planned without any of the constraints placed on the regular army. They were discussed only at the highest level, directly with Churchill and the Chiefs of Imperial Staff, and G
ubbins was already eyeing the day when they could be undertaken without discussing them with anyone at all.

  One of his more efficient members of staff, Bickham Sweet-Escott, returned from a trip to the Middle East to find everything changed. ‘We were now in close and constant touch by wireless with the nucleus of resistance organisations in Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia.’ When Gubbins had joined Baker Street, there had not been a single wireless set operating in Occupied Europe. Within eight months, more than sixty agents had been trained and dropped into the countries of north-west Europe, along with sophisticated wireless equipment.

  A shortage of aircraft remained a constant headache and Gubbins fought a tenacious battle to be given more. They were needed for dropping both saboteurs and supplies. The Air Ministry and Bomber Command did their best to block his requests, informing Churchill that all available planes were needed for the bombing offensive. Gubbins argued his corner with skill, reminding the chiefs of staff that ‘a hundred bombers can fail to hit their target, but one aircraft could drop a party of saboteurs who might make certain of it.’

  His persistence eventually won the day. He was granted the use of ten Halifaxes ‘which could cover the whole of Western Europe, and which could take up to fifteen containers of 300 lbs each’.5 He was also given a fleet of Lysanders, smaller planes that could be used for pick-up operations in France. After much arm-twisting he was even granted the use of Tempsford airfield in Bedfordshire. It was to become a vital component for operations into Occupied Europe.

  Gubbins’s change of office, from the back rooms of Berkeley Court to Norgeby House, enabled him to establish a centralized Operations Room. This allowed him to keep an overview of all the missions being planned at any given time. As director of both training and operations, Gubbins had become, in the eyes of one observer, ‘the mainstay of the Baker Street organisation’.

  Hugh Dalton and Frank Nelson were both quick to recognize his vital contribution and placed him in direct control of the two French sections, along with the Belgian, Dutch, German and Austrian sections. This was in addition to the Polish and Czech sections, for which he had been responsible from the outset. He also continued to take a keen interest in Gus March-Phillipps and his No. 62 Commando, which was engaged in a series of spectacular hit-and run raids on the coastline of northern France. One of these, Operation Basalt, involved an attack on one of the German-held Channel Islands. It so infuriated Hitler that he issued his Commando Order, instructing that all captured commandos were to be shot.

  Some of the bankers and accountants in Baker Street were unhappy about Gubbins’s growing control: they clung to the idea of mass civilian uprising against Nazi rule in the occupied lands. In order to help ‘smooth feathers ruffled by the extension of Gubbins’s empire’,6 Frank Nelson instituted a weekly council in order that everyone could express their opinion about missions that were being planned.

  In spite of these consultations, Gubbins’s personal responsibilities grew with every month that passed and he found himself invited to participate in consultations with the army top brass. According to Joan Bright, who saw him regularly in her new job as secretary to General Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay, he was by now at the very heart of decision-making. ‘Not only was he involved in discussions of policy and future strategy at the highest levels with the Chiefs of Staff and with many of the leaders of the allied governments-in-exile, but in an organisation which was rapidly expanding and recruiting often inexperienced and untrained officers, he was frequently obliged to supervise the detailed work of the country sections.’ By the spring of 1942, ‘it was no exaggeration to say that he had become the mainspring’ of Baker Street and had transformed it into a body to be taken seriously.7

  Gubbins’s ever faithful secretary, Margaret, often worked until the early hours as she tried to keep pace with her boss. He spent much of each day in meetings and didn’t return to the office until late evening, when she was required to type up all the most important decisions of the day. She was constantly exhausted and needed strong tea to keep herself awake. Yet she was happy to be ‘doing her bit’, even when she found herself ‘wrestling with manual typewriters and carbon copies that wrinkled’.8 Only when everything was typed up and the office cleared for the night did the two of them join the rest of the team for liquid refreshments at the Nut Club.

  * * *

  On the afternoon of Saturday, 21 February Gubbins heard the first whiff of a rumour that later turned out to be true. Hugh ‘Dynamo’ Dalton, the ministerial head of Baker Street, had been removed from his post. Churchill had decided to move Dalton to the Board of Trade, a job that he was reluctant to accept. Indeed, he was deeply upset at the prospect of leaving Baker Street and confessed that ‘it twanged my heart-strings’.9 He tried to negotiate with Churchill, but the Prime Minister was adamant. Dalton had little option but to accept his new job: he was quick to inform his parliamentary colleagues that he had been promoted.

  His place was taken by the Earl of Selborne, one of the more unlikely candidates to spearhead a guerrilla outfit. ‘A small, stooping figure with a deceptively mild appearance’,10 or so thought Joan Bright, who liked to keep tabs on all the senior figures in Whitehall. Selborne was a bureaucrat, a grey man in a grey suit who even friends found to be entirely lacking in chutzpah. ‘I dare say it will work, but he is not very inspiring,’ was the comment of one Whitehall insider.11

  Just a few weeks after this unwelcome surprise, Gubbins was handed an even bigger bombshell. Frank Nelson, operational head of Baker Street, had tendered his resignation. ‘He had worked himself almost to death,’ said Joan, who had been alarmed by his steady decline.12 He had been working for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for eighteen months. Now, he was suffering from burn-out.

  Gubbins was the most obvious choice to replace Nelson and was certainly the most qualified candidate for the job. But the old school network closed ranks and promoted the international banker Sir Charles Hambro, originally hired by Dalton on account of his financial connections. A former captain of the Eton cricket eleven, Hambro had a quick brain, an oil-slick of charm and scores of important contacts across Europe. ‘He kept more balls in the air than any man I knew,’ said Dalton, in justification of the appointment.13 Others quipped that Hambro had so many balls in the air that he was unable to concentrate on any single one of them.

  Gubbins was ‘suspicious of Hambro’s charm’ and confessed to his colleagues that he was ‘slightly resentful of the easy assurance with which the latter delegated the too difficult problems’.14 He was not alone in wondering if Hambro’s overweening self-confidence would be enough to keep him in such a demanding job. ‘He lives by bluff and charm,’ noted one.15 An additional drawback to his appointment was the fact that he already had three full-time jobs. He was a director of the Bank of England, a managing director of Hambro’s Bank and chairman of the Great Western Railway Company.

  He certainly had no intention of continuing his predecessor’s habit of working sixteen-hour days. Bickham Sweet-Escott noted that the new boss would make a leisurely start to the day, coming in ‘for an hour or two in the morning’. He would then pursue his business interests for the rest of the day, ‘and not return till late at night, when he would work till the small hours’.16 Even these long nocturnal stretches at his desk were few and far between. Each time the Luftwaffe hit the Great Western Railway, which was often, he left the office in order to inspect the damage. The prevailing opinion in Baker Street was that he would be out within a year.

  All eyes were already focused on Gubbins, who was being openly talked of as Hambro’s replacement. Even Hambro himself recognized Gubbins’s unique talent and promoted him to a position – Deputy for Operations – that gave him effective control over all the sabotage and guerrilla warfare being planned.

  The prominent civil servant Gladwyn Jebb had been watching Gubbins in action for more than a year and was one of those who predicted that he would soon be
head of his own empire. ‘I have seldom met a man more vigorous and a more inspiring soldier, or incidentally possessing a more political sense. There is no doubt that he is the lynch pin of the existing machine.’17

  Lord Selborne agreed, saying that there was no one ‘who is more vital to the continuance of the work of this organisation than Brigadier Gubbins’. He added that Gubbins had been the principal architect of guerrilla warfare since the very beginning and was now the undisputed master of the Baker Street machine. ‘He has acquired a technique, a knowledge and experience which are really irreplaceable … It is a truism that no one is irreplaceable, but for the many reasons which I have explained, Brigadier Gubbins comes very close to it.’18 Winston Churchill gave Lord Selborne’s assessment a stamp of approval. ‘Indispensible to Baker Street,’ he said.19

  Gubbins increasingly found himself surrounded by devoted acolytes who admired his two principal qualities: sharp intelligence and relentless energy. ‘An outgoing, energetic, gung-ho sort of chap’, was the opinion of one of many.20 Yet Gubbins had an additional quality that captivated those close to him, one they found impossible to pin down. ‘There was something about him that made him somehow different,’ said his friend Peter Colley.21

  That ‘something’ was almost certainly the fact that he was an outsider. The names of his acolytes spoke volumes: Alfgar Hesketh-Prichard, Edward Beddington-Behrens, Douglas Dodds-Parker and Bickham Sweet-Escott: all had been educated at the same universities and all had known each other since prep school. Now, they found themselves working for a boss who came from a world at a far remove from the silver-spooned squirearchies of the Home Counties. Gubbins had left school at sixteen, he had not gone to university and had none of the old boy connections of those who now served under him.