When the number of Intelligence Corps soldiers required fell short of the establishment, Major Davis persuaded the War Office to convince the BBC and national press to broadcast for ‘special work in the Army’. The 500 who volunteered generally matched the principles of the 1922 Manual of Military Intelligence and established a culture which still prevails. The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who had volunteered on 4 September and had been rejected because journalism was a reserved occupation, wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph complaining how difficult it was to enlist. A few days later he received a letter from Davis, who had met Muggeridge while he was teaching in Egypt, inviting him to report to Mytchett for Field Security (FS) training with other rank colleagues he described as ‘mostly schoolmasters, journalists, encyclopaedia salesmen, unfrocked clergymen and other displaced New Statesman readers’. Others included former Colonial Police, publishers, artists and businessmen. Under the disdainful gaze of the Military Police, these disparate and independently-minded recruits underwent a two week FS crash course that included mastering Norton 500s, BSA 350s and Matchless motor-cycles, as well as firing off a few rounds from .38in Webley revolvers. With the FSPs and Home Port Security Sections now part of the Intelligence Corps, some soldiers seemed to have filed the nomenclature ‘Corps of Military Police’ from their cap badges. When Captain Sullivan deployed to France, by October Mytchett had taken responsibility for Intelligence Corps administration. In October, Davis, now a major, wrote, ‘The Field Security Wing is developing into a kind of Intelligence Corps HQ in England but without the necessary facilities’.
The ‘Phoney War’ of the winter became real on 8 April when Germany invaded Norway. The first to see action were 26 and 27 FSP when they joined HQ North West Expeditionary Force when it was sent to Harstad to limit German exploitation but, sadly, the Force intelligence officers were so inexperienced that there were no checkpoints to vet anyone arriving from German-occupied Narvik. Meanwhile, 35 and 36 FSP, landing at Åndalsnes from the cruiser HMS York as part of Central Force, arrived with several Scandinavian linguists re-assigned from FSP sections in France. But the rapidity of the Allied collapse saw all but eight evacuated on a cruiser within days, along with King Haakon of Norway and the Norwegian Government. The hastily-assembled 39 FSP negotiated mountainous seas in a troopship and landed at Bodo on 12 May to reinforce the Expeditionary Force. Not for the only time over the next two years, the sections screened troops waiting to be evacuated for infiltrators and investigated reports of lone and small groups of parachutists. Two days earlier the Germans had attacked the Low Countries. Lance Corporal Cregeen earned fame when photographs he took of dive-bombers attacking Bodo appeared in the national press. When Lance Corporal Desmond le Grand was tasked to deliver a message to a unit east of Bodo, his apprehension about riding a motorcycle along icy roads with the persistent threat of ambush was heightened when he stopped at a farm to ask the way and saw a German motorcycle combination outside the barn. Although he came under fire, he successfully delivered the message but was then badly hurt when he skidded into a pile of rocks while crossing a mountain pass on his return to Bodo. Fortunately, a British patrol evacuated him to Bodo hospital where Norwegian doctors reset his shattered right leg and confined him to a bed fitted with weights and stirrups. After enduring several days of air raids, he was carried onto a destroyer and transferred first to a field hospital in Harstad and then onto the hospital ship SS Aba. Sadly, his leg had suffered irreparable damage and he was invalided out of the Army in June 1941.
To forestall a German invasion of Iceland, on 10 May, the day that Germany launched its offensive in France, 40 FSP landed with 2 Battalion, Royal Marines of C Force at Reykjavik and detained the German consul and salvaged documents he had tried to burn in his bathtub. The crew of Bahia Blanca, a German freighter that had collided with an iceberg in the Denmark Strait, whose crew had been rescued by an Icelandic trawler, were interned because Naval Intelligence believed they were reserve crews for U-Boats thought to be operating from Icelandic fjords. A naval officer established a coast-watching organization using fishermen and coastal communities. Later 49th Infantry Division, relieving C Force, arrived with its 60 FSP. In July it was joined by 38 Field Security Section (FSS) landing from a Dutch troopship. As we shall see, when the Intelligence Corps was formed on 19 July 1940, an early initiative was to rename the Field Security Police as Field Security Section (FSS). The Section deployed to Akureyri in the north of the island and rotated a detachment at Siglufjordur to protect the important herring industry. Both Sections conducted counter-intelligence operations, established port security and censorship functions, reported sightings of Allied convoys and German shipping and aircraft seen by fishermen and the situation in Occupied Norway after the crew of a Norwegian ship had defected. Captain Sichel, the FSO, intervened when Icelanders insisted that a whale attached to the bow of the cruiser HMS Shropshire should be handed over. With its Nordic-speaking FSO fluent in Icelandic, 74 FSS arrived in October 1941 and despatched one or two-man detachments to outlying settlements where horses were used for patrolling. The three FSS were later formed into Field Security Wing, British Forces Iceland until January 1943 when US forces assumed full control of the country. Several NCOs stayed for six months to provide continuity.
After the German occupation of Denmark, the Allies seized the Faroe Islands on 14 May, but it was not until September 1943 that the Field Security Unit, Faroes, commanded by Captain Larsen, arrived to conduct censorship and port security based at Torshavn. Later designated 319 FSS, it could muster ten languages. An apocryphal story is that when Sergeant Geoffrey Bibby mentioned in an interview that he could interpret the hieroglyphics of Egyptian pharaohs, the interviewing officer pondered, ‘Mmm, pharaohs, we have a unit up there, so I’ll post you there.’
Prior to the German invasion of the Low Countries, the GHQ Command Post was located in the depressing chateau at Habarcq with its branches dispersed in villas within a ten mile radius. The GSO1 (Counter-Intelligence) was Lieutenant Colonel Templer. The divisional FSP sections reported to their respective GSO2 (Counter-Intelligence) but such was the inexperience of most intelligence officers that they perceived that the Sections had a law enforcement role. The notion that other ranks could conduct counter-intelligence was discounted. Four intelligence officers had expert knowledge of Germany but their experience was confined to the First World War. A light on the horizon had been Major T. Robbins covert trawling of bookshops in Brussels for German military text books. Meanwhile, the Directorate of Military Intelligence agreed that women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service could join the Field Security Wing Staff Section in a support role. In early 1940, an officer and eleven other ranks were the first women to pass a Field Security course at Mytchett.
The complete lack of an interrogation organization saw Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland sent to France in February to create one. Aged 60 years, in 1904 he had held a German Army commission in South West Africa and during the First World War had been an Intelligence Corps interrogator. There was no manual on techniques, a situation he described as ‘pathetically inadequate’. Four photograph interpreters spent the winter training regimental officers in the skill of air photographic interpretation. Aerial photography had proven its worth during the First World War but the inter-war years had seen its value as an intelligence asset wane to the extent that the 1924 War Office manual Interpretation of Air Photography was essentially a reprint of the 1918 Notes on the Interpretation of Aeroplane Photographs. Captain Tom Churchill (The Manchesters), arguably the father of modern imagery analysis, updated the manual as the first definitive guide on training photographic interpreters. He was with his Regiment in France when he was posted to command the GHQ detachment of four officers and three NCOs in a farmyard in Habarcq village near Arras and organize courses. The Section worked closely with the French interpreting imagery of the Siegfried Line and front line. Captain Gerald Lacoste (Royal Artillery) joined GS Intelligence (Counter Intelligenc
e) as a specialist in camouflage, a skill that hardly existed in the British Expeditionary Force.
The decoding of communications had existed for centuries, however the methodology of wireless interception as a collector of intelligence was shrouded in mystery. In 1925, the War Office formed the Y Group to coordinate interception and by the 1930s had created a global network in which the Army monitored the Middle East through No. 2 Wireless Company at Sarafand, Palestine, while the Royal Navy monitored the Far East. The Air Ministry was confined to home defence. In 1934, No. 1 Wireless Regiment was formed at Aldershot to support the British Expeditionary Force. But wireless intercept was a largely Royal Signals function and under-represented by intelligence staff. The Metropolitan Police and Post Office ran domestic intercepts targeting subversive and diplomatic threats. In 1939, MI5 formed the Radio Security Service from amateur enthusiasts to intercept clandestine wireless stations operating outside the 1939 Defence Regulations Act. In February, the Government Code and Cipher School moved to Bletchley Park, where it was renamed the Government Communications Headquarters. In September, No. 4 Intelligence School was established as the lead Army Y Service unit and was followed a few days later by Military Intelligence 8 (Y Service) being reformed at the Directorate of Military Intelligence after being disbanded in 1919. An Intelligence School was cover for the Y Service unit that directed the Special Wireless Sections of the Special Wireless Group. When the Schools moved into the field, they were known as Special Intelligence Companies. The Military Section at Bletchley Park was established in Hut 3 by an intelligence officer with knowledge of the German Army. In early 1940, the Central Intelligence School and No. 1 Special Wireless Group formed up at Harpenden to analyze German wireless traffic and develop orders of battle from call sign research and direction-finding. In France, No. 2 (GHQ) Signals Company intercepted wireless transmissions.
By the New Year, eighteen FSP sections were in France with seven on lines of communications security, including 16 FSP at Marseille covering units and equipment arriving from and departing to India and the Middle East. Several medically unfit and unsuitable NCOs were transferred, with 2 (GHQ) FSP losing six and then joined by 6 FSP commanded by Captain Patrick O’Hanlon in November. Expected to be flexible, self-sufficient and capable of operating in field conditions or static in a town, the sections learnt their tradecraft against Fascist and communist agitators preaching anti-war propaganda and investigating reports of flashing lights, parachutists and Fifth Columnists. They monitored Italians building defences along a border, for which the Belgians enforced strict controls while the French were more relaxed. They learned that Defence Security has no fixed boundaries and few rules and therefore adaptability and independent thinking were critical, a philosophy that can be traced throughout the history of the Intelligence Corps. In the II Corps area, a network of eight Frenchwomen spying for the Germans was unearthed and a widely-reported ‘Monsieur Soupe’ excited gullible intelligence officers. The 51st (Highland) Division and its 21 FSP relieved a French division near Lille and passed under French command in January 1940. In April a detachment took over a small sector of the Maginot Line in the Saar region and became known as Saar Force. Previously, brigades had rotated through the sector to gain operational experience. Captain Bartlett was transferred from the Twelve Apostles to take command of 5 FSP in 5th Infantry Division. In December 1939, 17 FSP joined the Division while 5 FSP then supported 4th Infantry Division at Lille. A French-speaking detachment was sent to Metz. 17 FSP remained with 5th Division until 1946.
By February 1940, Major Sullivan had been promoted and replaced Major Foljambe as Commandant until in April, the BEF Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Noel Mason-Macfarlane MC, was appointed because the Corps establishment had doubled to 200 officers and 600 other ranks spread in more than fifty places between Calais and Marseille. Sullivan was appointed GSO2 Intelligence (Administration). Mason-Macfarlane was an energetic gunner who had seen service during the First World War and, while the British Military Attaché in Berlin, had proposed the assassination of Adolf Hitler. By the beginning of May, thirty FSP sections were in France with seven Lines of Communications sections covering Boulogne, Le Havre, Cherbourg and Brest. Seven BEF Air Liaison Sections, each of two intelligence officers and six other ranks, were attached to RAF stations.
By April, GHQ Intelligence possessed an accurate intelligence picture of German strengths and dispositions facing its sector. Orders for the 7th Parachute Division tasks and targets for the invasion of Belgium and Holland had been recovered from a crashed aircraft. At the end of April, Lieutenant Colonel Templer had reported petrol and ammunition dumps close to the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg. The decoding of enemy encrypted wireless transmissions was upset on 1 May when the Germans changed their codes – itself often an intelligence indicator of something important. The 7 May Intelligence Summary ominously reported German forces massing on the Dutch and Belgian borders and opposite the Maginot Line. The next night, a French pilot returning from a leaflet drop reported columns of armour and vehicles stretching toward Luxembourg from Germany. And then, on 10 May, the Germans attacked the Low Countries. Full of hope and sandwiched between two French armies, the BEF advanced.
Next day, Lance Corporal W.B. McGee, who was attached to No. 3 British Air Mission supporting the Belgian GHQ by supplying the RAF Air Component with information and prioritizing air requests, was delivering a despatch from the Belgians when his motor cycle was damaged during an air raid near St Trond. Repairing it under fire and then riding through enemy-held ground, he delivered the despatch; he was awarded the Military Medal. The Dutch surrender on 14 May exposed the Allied flanks and the counter-attack became a retreat. During the week, Captain O’Hanlon was reinforced by five Dutch and Flemish speakers from 9 (Lines of Communications) and 18 (Lines of Communications) FSPs at Dieppe and Boulogne respectively, plus a Royal Army Service Corps and an Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps private. The five Intelligence Corps arrived without their motor-cycles and revolvers because most Port Security Sections had been disarmed to provide weapons for Norway.
German tanks charged from the allegedly impenetrable Ardennes and, although the Allies wobbled under the fierce blitzkrieg of co-ordinated air and armoured attacks, ground-to-air communications frequently indicated the progress of the blitzkrieg. As the British withdrew through the First World War battlefields, the FSP sections were diverted to interrogating prisoners and liaising with French units and local authorities. Demoralized Belgian administrators trying to control thousands of refugees making their way from Menin to Ypres were helped by 23 (42nd (East Lancashire) Division) FSP which was among the last British troops to leave Tournai. No. 2 (GHQ) Signals Company was overwhelmed interpreting unfamiliar German tactical communications protocols and relayed intercepts to Bletchley Park. Intercepts were further restricted by the German use of secure landline and field telephones. Although Allied aircraft had produced good photography before 10 May, air photographic reconnaissance sorties were now vulnerable to marauding enemy fighters.
The GSO3 (Counter-Intelligence) in 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division was Captain Maurice Buckmaster. Partly educated at Eton, his father’s financial straits had led him to finding employment as a reporter in France and then as a manager of Ford’s of France before he returned to England in 1939. Supporting the Division was 20 FSP, which had been formed at Mytchett in December 1939 and had landed at Cherbourg on 15 January 1940. When the Division began withdrawing, Lance Corporals Naish and Corbett carried out several dangerous recces on their motorcycles on behalf of Buckmaster and helped evacuate wounded soldiers. Both men were awarded Distinguished Conduct Medals.
On 17 May, General Gort left the GHQ Main Command Post at Arras and, deploying with his mobile Advanced Command Post, took Major General Mason-Macfarlane and Lieutenant Colonel Templer with him. Mason-Macfarlane was later appointed to command a composite brigade tasked to shore up the BEF right flank. The loss of the most senior BEF intellige
nce officers catastrophically crippled the confidence of inexperienced and bewildered divisional, brigade and regimental intelligence officers struggling to analyze information and disseminate credible intelligence from a decreasing number of sources in fast moving battles. Major Sullivan felt:
Our organization for the collection and dissemination of intelligence was centred in Arras, so by the time it was conveyed to a constantly shifting Advanced GHQ it was late, and of little value.
Sharing the Secret Page 3
