Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

by Giles Milton

  In London, he devoted much of his time to establishing the Special Forces Club, whose purpose was to foster the comradeship of the saboteurs and guerrillas who had survived the war. Here, he continued to meet with both Joan Bright and Margaret Jackson in order to reminisce about the old times. The club exists to this day, housed in an anonymous red brick Edwardian mansion in one of the quieter streets behind London’s Sloane Square. If you succeed in getting inside – and make your way to the bar – you’ll likely as not find a handful of nonagenarian ladies, still formidable in spite of their vast age, who will spill you stories of the days when dashing young Colin was at the helm.

  Gubbins hoped his greatest legacy would be the devotion to expertise: he wanted British Special Forces to be the best in the world. Yet his most enduring triumph was not to be found in Britain, nor even in Europe, but across the ocean in North America. He had travelled to Washington shortly before the war’s end and been astonished by the ‘lavish scale’ of Wild Bill Donovan’s guerrilla headquarters. He realized that the Office of Strategic Services was establishing itself as a ‘serious institution’ – one that intended to play a vital role in shaping the post-war world.22

  He found it a humbling experience. Donovan’s organization had been born out of the trip that the two of them had taken to the Scottish Highlands in 1940. Now, with President Truman in office, it was to be expanded, modified and given a permanent role in both America and the world. Today’s CIA, as it became known, has a pedigree of which few are aware: it is the direct descendant of a tiny and secret organization that began life in a smoke-filled room in Caxton Street, St James’s. It was here, back in the spring of 1939, that a giddy young secretary named Joan Bright first learned that the world was a more complex and far less gentlemanly place than she had ever imagined.

  Gubbins had divorced Nonie in 1944: in 1950 he married his new love, a Norwegian widow named Anne Elise. Ever gracious, Nonie asked to meet his new bride and expressed her approval. She confessed that she’d never really understood Colin’s ‘blythe spirit’, as she put it.23 He was too energetic, too charismatic, too relentlessly dynamic for a wallflower like her.

  In the summer of 1975 Gubbins and Anne Elise decided to move to Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. This was where Gubbins felt truly at home, amid the limpid sea lochs and windblown headlands. Here, just sixty miles from Arisaig, was a place to reflect on everything that had passed.

  The two of them were settled in by Christmas and were looking forward to their new life in the Highlands. But it was to be rudely cut short. After less than six weeks, Gubbins collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was seventy-nine.

  His funeral eulogy was given by Peter Wilkinson, appropriately enough, since he had been Gubbins’s first recruit to Caxton Street. ‘Whatever Colin Gubbins was called on to do in his long life,’ he said, ‘he not only did it extremely well, but he contrived in the process to make life extraordinarily rewarding and agreeable for anyone who had the good fortune to be with him.’

  Gubbins had fought a good war. And so had those who had fought it with him.

  Acknowledgements

  This book has brought out a destructive tendency in me that I never knew existed. For some years now, I’ve crossed Chelsea Bridge each morning as I make my way to the London Library, pausing for a moment to gaze at the eddying river, the seabirds and the exposed mudflats of the Thames foreshore. But ever since embarking on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, I’ve found myself examining instead the bridge’s vast iron girders and working out where I would plant my explosives if I were attempting to blow it up.

  Sabotage is by its very nature a subversive business: after two years spent researching this book, I can understand why Colin Gubbins and Millis Jefferis were so careful to ensure that information about irregular warfare was kept under wraps. It was essential that documents, diagrams and technical drawings did not fall into the wrong hands.

  Their caution made researching the book a tricky business, for information is not readily forthcoming. Even Gubbins’s handbook, The Art of Guerrilla Warfare, is extremely hard to find in its original form.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to descendants of the principal characters in the book – the saboteurs, guerrillas and creative architects of destruction – who have preserved a wealth of material in lofts and wardrobes.

  John Jefferis (Millis’s son) was not only generous with his time, but also made available to me his family’s extensive archival material. Without these letters, diary extracts and anecdotes, my account of life at the Firs would have been much the poorer. Other members of the extended Jefferis family also gave their help and agreed to be interviewed.

  Thank you to Ann Clarke, daughter-in-law of Cecil Clarke, for generously welcoming me into her Plymouth home and allowing me access to her impressive family archive. ‘I’ve got a spare bedroom full of Cecil’s letters and papers,’ she told me when I first contacted her in the autumn of 2014. This was no exaggeration: she had boxes of documents, diagrams and photographs, including letters from Winston Churchill himself. Thank you also to the Reverend David Clarke, Cecil’s son, for regaling me with colourful family stories.

  I am grateful to John Macrae, son of Stuart Macrae, for allowing me to quote extracts from his father’s informative and highly entertaining book, Winston Churchill’s Toyshop. Thank you also to Amberley Publishing, who have republished this book.

  Thank you to Tony and Peter Goodeve, sons of Charles Goodeve, for providing a great deal of background information about their father’s ground-breaking inventions. Goodeve’s extraordinary wartime work is much in need of a full-length study.

  I owe gratitude to Gordon Rogers, who has spent half a lifetime gathering information on the Firs. Not only did he provide me with photocopied documents from various archives, but he also provided me with contact details for experts in the field of Second World War sabotage. Mr Rogers gives regular talks about the work of Millis Jefferis and the team at the Firs; more details can be found on his website: www.gordonrogers.co.uk.

  Much of this book has been researched in specialist archives. Thank you to the staff of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, which houses all of the surviving archive of the Firs, along with much other material that proved of use, particularly for the chapter on Colin Gubbins’s Norwegian campaign.

  Sincere thanks to the ever-helpful staff at the archive of the Imperial War Museum who helped me locate a great deal of hitherto unknown material. I spent many fruitful hours in the museum’s archives during the autumn and winter of 2014, when the museum was closed to the public for its extensive renovation. The constant crashes and bangs caused by workmen demolishing walls provided a fitting soundtrack to my sabotage researches.

  I would particularly like to thank Jane Fish, senior curator of the IWM film archive, for allowing me to view the transcripts of Carlton Television’s series Churchill’s Secret Army, broadcast in 2000. Carlton’s in-depth interviews with saboteurs such as Tommy Macpherson – and secretaries such as Margaret Jackson – proved invaluable. Sadly, many of these interviews never made it into the final documentary.

  Thank you to the staff at the National Archives, where so many surviving documents relating to individual guerrilla operations are now safely housed. Some of the files – notably those concerning Operation Josephine B, Operation Gunnerside and Operation Anthropoid – contain a wealth of information.

  I am grateful to John Andrews of the Special Forces Club for his help in putting me in touch with various survivors of the grand old days, notably Kay O’Shanohun,

  Thank you to the staff of the British Library, with particular mention to Steven Dryden of the sound team, who kindly commissioned (at my request) a digital copy of an inaccessible master-tape interview with Colin Gubbins and others.

  Thank you also to the staff at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives in King’s College, London; to Laura Dimmock-Jones of the Royal United Services Institute for finding a very rar
e account of Colin Gubbins’s guerrilla operations in Norway, 1940; and to Lydia Saul, Keeper of Social History, Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford.

  I would also like to thank Bernard O’Connor for his help, as well as Bill Tibbits, whose grandfather lost his life in the raid on St Nazaire.

  A warm thank you, as ever, to the staff of the London Library, where so much of this book was written. A handful of library regulars – writer friends – generously offered their time in order to read the book and make much needed suggestions. I am particularly grateful (in alphabetical order) to Peter Ettegui, John McNally, Rick Stroud and Rupert Walters.

  Thank you to my wonderful agent, Georgia Garrett at Rogers, Coleridge and White, and also to Emma Patterson, for seeing the project through from half-baked idea to completed book. Thanks also to RCW’s foreign sales team for their usual sterling work.

  Roland Philipps, my editor at John Murray, was instrumental in launching my writing career some two decades ago when he published Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. Separated by force of circumstance, but never out of touch, we are once again under the same publishing roof. I am delighted that Roland was so quick to see the potential of the book; grateful, too, that he has proved such a capable, generous and experienced editor.

  I would also like to take this opportunity thank the rest of the John Murray team who work so tirelessly behind the scenes: Becky Walsh, Yassine Belkacemi, Rosie Gailer, Ross Fraser and Ben Gutcher. Also, to Juliet Brightmore for help with the plate sections and to Morag Lyall for her eagle-eyed copy-editing.

  Thank you equally to my film and television agent, Rob Kraitt of Casarotto Ramsey and Associates, and to other players in the screen world who have provided much encouragement and support: Tom Mangan and Kit Golden in New York; Shawn Slovo and David Freeman in London.

  Lastly, the warmest of thanks (as ever) to the home team: my girls – Madeleine, Héloïse and Aurélia – who have grown up in an environment where creativity always goes hand in hand with angst. It remains to be seen whether the creative urge will rub off on them.

  As ever, my most sincere thanks and gratitude go to Alexandra, who has always been ready to break off her own creative endeavours in order to indulge mine. Her support, encouragement and advice are deeply appreciated.

  Illustration Credits

  Akg-images: 14 below. Alamy: 10 above left/Pictorial Press Ltd. Bundesarchiv, Bild: 1011-065-2302-31/Koch: 9 above right. Courtesy of Ann Clarke: 1 below left, 2 below left, 3 above, 6 below right. © Crown Copyright/OGL v3.0: 7 centre left, 8 below right, 9 centre right, 10 centre left and centre right, 11 centre left. Getty Images: 12 above/Keystone. Greek Railways: 11 above. Greynurse at the English Language Wikipedia/licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0: 3 below right. © Andrew Hackney: 4 below. Courtesy of the family of Knut Haukelid/Skis Against the Atom, 1954, by Knut Haukelid: 12 below left (still from The Fight for the Atomic Bomb 1948, Hero-Film/Le Trident), 13 above left and below right. Hodder & Stoughton Publishers: 4 centre. Courtesy of John Jefferis: 7 below right, 8 above right and centre left. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images: 10 below. Courtesy of John Macrae and Amberley Publishers Winston Churchill’s Toyshop 2012, by Stuart Macrae: 1 below right, 2 above right and below right, 5 below, 6 centre and below left. © The National Archives, London: 8 below left, 14 above left. © National Museums Scotland: 15 above right. Courtesy of the Norwegian Resistance Museum: 13 below left. Private collections: 2 centre right, 3 below right, 4 above left, 7 above left, 13 above right, 14 centre. Courtesy of the family of Joachim Rønneberg: 12 below right. School for Danger 1947, produced for the Central Office of Information by the RAF Film Unit: 16 above and centre. Courtesy of the Special Forces Club: 2 above left, 3 below left, 16 below. Tabor of Aylesbury: 5 above (postcard The Firs, Whitechurch, Aylesbury). © Andrew Tibbits: 9 centre left. TopFoto: 1 above/Roger-Viollet, 6 above left, 7 centre right, 9 below. Courtesy of Philip Vickers/Das Reich Battleground Europe 2000, Leo Cooper, Pen & Sword Books Ltd: 15 below. © C. M. Woodhouse Something Ventured, Granada Publishing 1982: 11 below right.

  * * *

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, John Murray will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printings or editions.

  Notes and Sources

  Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.

  Abbreviations

  CC:

  Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge

  CP:

  Cherwell Papers, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

  IWM:

  Imperial War Museum archives

  LH:

  Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College, London

  NA:

  National Archives

  RUSI:

  Royal United Services Institute

  Prologue

    1. Joan Bright Astley, The Inner Circle: A View of War at the Top, Hutchinson, 1971, p.31.

    2. IWM: Documents 16248: Private Papers of Professor D. Dilks.

    3. Astley, Inner Circle, p.31.

    4. IWM: Documents 16248.

    5. Astley, Inner Circle, p.31.

    6. Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill’s Toyshop, Roundwood Press, 1971, p.8. My account of the work of Millis Jefferis and Stuart Macrae at Portland Place and the Firs is derived from two principal sources, Macrae’s book and the extensive archive of the Firs’s work now housed in the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge under the general shelfmark MCRA 1-6. There is also impressive documentation of the Firs’s work in the Cherwell archive, Nuffield College, University of Oxford. This has proved most useful in assessing the work of the Firs.

  Chapter 1: The Third Man

    1. Caravan and Trailer, April 1937, p.269.

    2. BBC People’s War interview with John Vandepeer Clarke, www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/34/a5961134.shtml

    3. Stephen Bunker, The Spy Capital of Britain: Bedfordshire’s Secret War, Bedford Chronicles Press, 2007, p.14.

    4. Bernard O’Connor, Nobby Clarke: Churchill’s Backroom Boy, Lulu Press, 2007, p.5.

    5. Caravan and Trailer, June 1937, p.443.

    6. Macrae, Toyshop, p.7.

    7. Ibid., pp.1–6.

    8. Ibid., p.6.

    9. ‘Memel in the Reich’, The Times, 23 March 1939.

  10. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, Macmillan, 1946, p.404.

  11. Macrae, Toyshop, pp.8, 9.

  12. BBC People’s War interview with John Vandepeer Clarke, www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/34/a5961134.shtml

  13. Macrae, Toyshop, pp.10, 11. See also ‘Limpet Bomb’, The Times, 17 November 1953.

  14. Astley, Inner Circle, p.34.

  15. Joan Bright Astley and Peter Wilkinson, Gubbins and SOE, Pen & Sword, 1993, p.35.

  16. IWM: Documents 16248.

  17. Astley, Inner Circle, pp.32, 33.

  18. Ibid., p.34.

  19. Peter Colley in Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, p.28.

  20. Astley, Inner Circle, p.34.

  21. Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, pp.7, 9.

  22. IWM: Documents 12618.

  23. Peter Colley in Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, p.28.

  24. Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, p.18.

  25. Ibid., pp.26, 34.

  26. IWM: Documents 18587: Interview with Sir Peter Wilkinson.

  27. Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, p.35.

  28. IWM: Documents 12618.

  29. Astley, Inner Circle, p.34.

  Chapter 2: Thinking Dirty

    1. ‘The Sword’, The Times, 22 March 1937.

    2. ‘The Sword’, The Times, 29 March 1937.

    3. ‘Use of Force’, The Times, 27 May 1937.

    4. ‘Use of Force’, The T
imes, 10 June 1937.

    5. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=1940-05-08a.1326.1

    6. Astley, Inner Circle, p.34.

    7. John Jefferis, The Life and Times of Millis Jefferis, privately published memoir, n.d.

    8. Astley, Inner Circle, p.34.

    9. Royal Engineers Journal, vol. 77, December 1963.

  10. Jefferis, Jefferis, pp.39, 123.

  11. Macrae, Toyshop, pp.16, 12, 33.

  12. Astley, Inner Circle, p.36.

  13. Macrae, Toyshop, pp.33, 19, 59.

  14. Bickham Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular, Methuen, 1965, p.24.

  15. Macrae, Toyshop, p.13.

  16. Astley, Inner Circle, p.36.

  17. Peter Wilkinson, Foreign Fields, I.B. Taurus, 1997, p.62.

  18. Vera Long in IWM: Documents 16248.

  19. James Darton in ibid.

  20. Vera Long in ibid.

  21. Astley and Wilkinson, Gubbins, p.28.