CHAPTER FOUR
The Middle East 1940–1943
However soundly based one’s training may be, improvisation will be necessary in practice
Paul Crick
With Italy pursuing aspirations of a Roman Empire in North and East Africa, Great Britain’s greatest fear was the seizure of the Egypt and the Suez Canal which would severely restrict all communications with India.
Since 1937 British counter-intelligence provision in the region had been unofficially organized through Security Intelligence Middle East under command of GHQ Middle East. Security Intelligence largely fulfilled the role of MI5 and was located with the GHQ Middle East Forces Directorate of Intelligence. Using the same principles developed at Mytchett, two FSP sections were raised in Egypt. While forming sections overseas experienced the disadvantage of a small recruiting pool, it had the advantage of attracting soldiers with knowledge of local customs and languages.
North Africa
The entry of Italy on the side of Germany in June 1940 saw intrigue in the cosmopolitan city of Cairo rise to fever pitch as Italian agents, nationalist Egyptian officers, who included a certain Captain Gamel Nasser, competed with Allied counter-intelligence. Several Germans were arrested. In late 1939 Lieutenant Robin Wordsworth, a former colonial administrator in Sudan now farming in Dorset, agreed to a War Office request to fly to Cairo and work with the Egyptian Police to develop counter-intelligence and security. After attending the FSP course in Mytchett, in January 1940 he arrived in Cairo and found the two FSPs consisted of former military police but they had not been trained in Field Security.
When, in the autumn of 1939, the insurance agent Jake Jacobs learnt that the Army were looking for French speakers, he passed a short test in an office on Seven Sisters Road, London and was literally given a King’s Shilling and also a rail warrant to Mytchett. Several days after the New Year, having passed the course during the hard winter of November and December, in which learning to ride motor-cycles on ice and snow-covered roads and tracks proved hazardous, he joined the first FSP earmarked to be sent overseas. Travelling by troop train to Marseille and embarking on the troopship Lancashire, which was en route to India, the section was the only unit to disembark at Port Said on 29 January. They caught the train to Cairo where they were welcomed by Wordsworth, now promoted to major, as the first trained section in the Middle East. Sent to Suez and accommodated in a bar owned by a Maltese and frequented by soldiers and merchant seamen, Jacobs, now promoted to Sergeant, bought a suit and began collecting information from the brothels and the sophisticated French Club at Port Tewfik and monitored the morale of British troops. He periodically checked coal sacks being tipped into ships’ bunkers for bombs, not that he had seen any improvised devices. Meanwhile, Wordsworth established FS HQ in the former Anglican Archbishop’s Palace in Cairo’s garden city.
When Captain Gerald Robinson arrived in May, Wordsworth was developing an experimental composite British/Indian FSP section commanded by a British FSO to support the 4th Indian Divisions and was planning to train the Australians and New Zealanders. In July, Robinson, assisted by Lieutenants Francis Astley and ‘Sammy’ Sansom, both Arab linguists and recruited locally, organized the first overseas FS course. Three more sections arrived from Sheerness. Authority was given to form ten in Cairo to cover Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus and Sudan. The establishment of the Intelligence Corps on 19 July led, next month, to the two original Middle East sections being formed into 251 FSS under command of the first trained FSO in theatre, Lieutenant Derek Baker, who had arrived during the month as a sergeant. It deployed to Port Said and, reporting to the MI5 Defence Security Officer (Egypt), was engaged on border, port security and airport security at El Gamil and conducted counter-intelligence investigations into the Greek, French and Syrian communities. A naval officer later attached to the Section monitored Royal Navy ships passing through the Suez Canal. Jacob’s section was named 252 FSS. Meanwhile, 253 FSS was to be the Suez Canal Base FS (Town) Section.
The third FS course was underway in September when Wordsworth was authorized to establish HQ FS Wing, Middle East supported by two depot sections. After GHQ requisitioned the former Archbishop’s Palace, he moved into the Hotel Semiramis with himself as Commandant, an appointment he held until May 1944, and Robinson as Adjutant and Chief Instructor. By the end of 1940, 160 Dominion FS NCOs had been trained. Several months later the Wing was enlarged to the Intelligence Corps Depot and FS Training Centre. The combination of administering locally-trained Dominion FS sections and those arriving from Winchester and providing FS sections to support British Troops Egypt then necessitated the Depot and Centre moving to Helwan, opposite the ruins of Memphis on the River Nile. Although GHQ had been formed during the summer of 1939, it was not until mid-1940 that the pivot for counter-intelligence operations, General Staff Intelligence (Counter Intelligence) was formed, one desk officer being Lieutenant David Petrie.
To exploit weak Italian ciphers, Y Service operations had been merged into a single Service organization. In August 1939, No. 2 Wireless Regiment moved a detachment west from Sarafand to Mersa Matruh to reinforce information collection on the Italian Army and Navy for the Western Desert Force. In June 1940, No. 2 Special Wireless Group was formed at Heliopolis in the Cairo suburbs and became the parent organisation for Army Y Service operations in the Middle East. Field units were Special Wireless Sections that ranged in size from Type-A to Type-C. Type-B, for instance, consisted of about forty Royal Signals commanded by an officer and its attendant Wireless Intelligence Section of an Intelligence Corps officer, a sergeant and four NCO linguists. It was not unknown for the two officers to debate who was in command.
The three years of fighting in North Africa began on 10 June 1940 when Benito Mussolini declared war on Great Britain. Three days later Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, commander of the 180,000-strong Italian 10th Army, conducted a leisurely advance to within forty miles of the border with Egypt not far from Sidi Barrani on the Egyptian border. The delay gave General Archibald Wavell, who was commanding the Western Desert Force, the breathing space that he needed. He had been an intelligence officer during the First World War. With a No. 2 Wireless Company detachment providing intercept information, on 5 December Wavell launched Operation Compass and quickly forced the Italians to retreat. Lieutenant ‘Busty’ Peel, who had arrived as a lance corporal in the same Section as Jacobs, commanded 256 (Western Desert Force) FSS, which was reinforced by 252 FSS. Generally working in pairs, the FS NCOs searched abandoned Italian positions for intelligence and documents of interest, such as daily casualty ration, water and unit returns, and forwarded their findings to Force HQ. During the advance to Bardia, Peel, Jacobs and two New Zealand privates were given annotated air photographs of Sollum showing military HQs and civil administrative offices and instructed to seize documents of intelligence value. On 3 January 1941, the four were watching 7 Armoured Brigade attack the town when they noted a desert track leading to the harbour. Piling into their 15cwt truck, they headed across broken country and were within a mile of the town when they ran into an Italian infantry company dug in on both sides of the track. Jacobs was armed with a revolver that he had never fired:
Instead of opening fire on us, they waved white handkerchiefs and indicated their lack of interest in following Mussolini’s dictum of preferring to be like lions for a day rather than as lambs for a century. We called their officers down and formally took possession of their pistols. The occasion became quite emotional with the officers in tears and one of them producing his wallet and the inevitable family pictures. We told them to stack their arms and proceeded with our more urgent task.
On 10 January, the Western Desert Force, now reinforced by No. 101 Special Wireless Section/4 Wireless Intelligence Section, was renamed XIII Corps and by the end of the month had driven the shattered 10th Army west to El Agheila, capturing 130,000 prisoners and masses of equipment. When the 4th Indian Division was diverted to eject the Italians from East Africa, it was r
eplaced by the 6th Australian Division.
In Cairo, when Major Ralph Bagnold (Royal Signals), a desert explorer who had served in the Royal Engineers during the First World War, persuaded Wavell to allow him to form a scouting force to collect intelligence and commit acts of ‘piracy’, he invited two Intelligence Corps officers, Captain Patrick Clayton, a former member of the Egyptian Survey Department aged nearly 50 years, and Captain Bill Kennedy Shaw to join him as, respectively, his Intelligence officer and Chief Navigation officer. The unit became known as the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and, because of their tradition of self reliance, was initially assembled from former New Zealand farmers serving with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Captain Michael Crichton Stuart (Scots Guards), who later formed G (Guards) Patrol from 2 Scots Guards and 3 Coldstreams, described Clayton as ‘a grey-haired Englishman in a rather dishevelled fore-and-aft cap’. In his first patrol with two cars, Clayton mapped an unmarked sand sea and then in early September, he joined Bagnold with his six trucks to gather intelligence on the garrison at Al-Kufra, about 600 miles to the south-west of Cairo in Libya. While Bagnold attacked two Italian airfields, Clayton contacted the Free French desert outpost at Tekro 500 miles to the south. The next target was Murzuk about 900 miles west of Cairo and 300 miles south of Tripoli. While Bagnold flew to meet the Free French in Chad, on 26 December Major Clayton led both patrols across the Great Sand Sea and collected several Free French officers and native troops arranged by Bagnold. But during the attack on the garrison on 11 January, the senior French officer and a New Zealander were killed. Captain Shaw sifted for intelligence in the reams of paper. Heading south, Clayton met Colonel Jacques Leclerc and a French Camel Corps patrol and learnt that they were intending to attack Al-Kufra in their first foray against the enemy. Joining the attack, T (New Zealand) Patrol was providing the advance guard when, on 31 January, it was spotted in a narrow defile by an aircraft about sixty miles south of Al-Kufra and then attacked by the Italian Auto-Saharan Company and three aircraft, and lost four trucks. Clayton, who had been wounded, and two others were captured. Four reported missing reached Sarra ten days later with no food and little water after the first of several epic walks that punctured the desert campaign; however, one soon died from his exertions. Kennedy Shaw remained with the LRDG until he joined the HQ Special Air Service in England in 1944 as the GSO 2 (Intelligence). His book Long Range Desert Group was one of the earliest to be subjected to changes before approval by the War Office for publication. General Erwin Rommel, who commanded the the German Afrika Korps, would claim that ‘The Long Range Desert Group caused us more damage than any other unit of their size.’
East Africa
While the fighting was underway in North Africa, General Wavell assembled a corps to reduce the threat from the south to the Suez Canal by ejecting the Italians from East Africa. In January 1941, in a three-pronged attack, the 4th and 5th Indian Divisions, supported by 255 and 269 FSS, advanced from Sudan and by early April had driven the Italians from the craggy mountains and valleys of Eritrea. Major George Steer, a prominent journalist, used psychological warfare skills to drop propaganda pamphlets on the Italians and used traders to distribute pamphlets encouraging their askaris to desert. Steer was instrumental in restoring Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne. Accompanying the irregular Gideon Force led by Major Orde Wingate distracting Italian forces in Ethiopia were two Intelligence Corps officers seconded to the Sudan Defence Force. Lieutenant Guy Turrell, a highly regarded member of the Royal Geographical Society and ebullient former Royal Engineer aged 47 years, was rarely seen without his pyjamas and an enamel washing bowl. Wounded in the head during the fighting, he was awarded the Military Cross while serving as a mortar officer. Major L.F. Sheppard was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for leading a 5,000-strong guerrilla force. The 1st South African Division and troops from Rhodesia, East Africa and the Gold Coast (Ghana) advancing from Kenya routed the Italians near Mogadishu and forced them to surrender at Addis Ababa in May. Appointed as the Military Liaison Officer to Emperor Haile Selassie, Captain Ted Allbeury, the author, investigated Japanese business activities and uncovered stay-behind parties among Italian expatriates. He later moved to Mogadishu and found more stay-behind groups.
The occupation of Italian East Africa saw 260 and 261 FSS arrive from Sudan and pass under command of HQ 19 (Eritrea) Area in East Africa Command. Between January and October 1942, they conducted port security at Asmara and Massawa and intercepted agents disguised as crew or pilgrims, gathered information from dhow skippers and their crews, and inspected cargos and fishing hauls, tasks that the askaris relished more than their European counterparts. When 269 FSS was sent to the Somali border with Kenya, during a counter-intelligence investigation, a Swiss businessman was found to be recording in his sales ledger full details of the units with whom he traded, which included guard forces of prison camps holding Italians. Measures were immediately enforced to prevent military information being passed to businesses. In 1942, the Section crossed the Red Sea for Port Security duties in Aden
In Addis Ababa the section rounded up 20,000 Italian soldiers avoiding internment by donning civilian clothes by co-ordinating an operation in which the NCOs led detachments of the King’s African Rifles, military and Ethiopian police by driving in army lorries along streets leading to the city centre and arresting every male for screening.
The East African Intelligence Corps played an important role in the campaign by attaching 1 and 2 (East African) FSS to the 11th and 12th East African Divisions and organizing a network of informers among pro-Fascist Italian and local expatriates in Addis Ababa. Both Sections were formed in 1939 from European and African soldiers in Kenya and were later reinforced by 92 FSS and 294 FSS, retitled as 3 and 5 East African FSS respectively. Both were originally formed in the UK and had worked with the British South African Police before being posted to the East African Intelligence Corps Security Training Centre at Mombasa for Swahili language training. Nine Coast Security Sections were trained at the Coast Security Training School and Depot in Mombasa to cover the Indian Ocean on coast watching and port security operations from Kenya to Madagascar and manage the Shipping Intelligence Bureau and the Military Security Office at Zanzibar. The Mauritius section included a Royal Navy officer, a European NCO and six African soldiers. In 1943 the East Africa Intelligence Corps was centralized as the Security Training School and Depot, East African Intelligence Corps and directly subordinated to East Africa Command.
Also in the region was Lieutenant Colonal John Todd who was Head of SOE (East Africa Mission) between 1941 and late 1942, screening his operations by conducting market research as leader of the ‘East Africa Trade Mission’. Much of his activity focused on encouraging the Vichy authorities in the French colonies of Madagascar and Réunion to adopt a pro-Allied stance. Other officers were in Beira, Lourenco Marques, Mauritius, Dar-es-Salaam, Cape Town and Nairobi. A wireless operator on Madagascar aided the interception of Vichy shipping, the kidnapping of German agents, the capture of diamonds from the German Consulate at Lourenco Marques and the expulsion of Dr Wertz, the leading Nazi official in Portuguese East Africa.
Great Britain had no ability to conduct clandestine operations to degrade enemy economic performance until 1938 when the Foreign Office formed ‘EH’ at its offices in Electra House in London. In March 1939 the combination of ‘EH’, the knowledge of Major Lawrence Grand, a Royal Engineer loaned to MI6 to develop sabotage plans, and research by Major J.C.F. Holland into covert operations were amalgamated into Military Operations 1 (Special Project) or Special Operations Executive (SOE). When war broke out, its Headquarters at 64, Baker Street, London reported to the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was supported by subsidiary headquarters attached to overseas military Commands. After Prime Minister Churchill charged SOE to ‘set Europe ablaze’ in 1940 by co-ordinating resistance groups to sabotage, assassinate and promote industrial disruption, the Executive formed Country Sections to conduct operations us
ing methods modelled on those used by the IRA against the Army between 1920-1921. A number of SOE officers, often masquerading as businessmen and shipping agents, were spread across the world looking for opportunities to attack the economies of Germany, Italy and, later, Japan. The pseudonym the ‘Inter Service Research Bureau’ gave the Executive some anonymity.
Greece and Crete
Within a month of the Italian 9th Army attacking Greek forces in Albania on 9 March 1941, with the intention of using Greece and its islands as bases for Axis aspirations in the Mediterranean, A British Military Mission and several RAF squadrons also arrived in Athens. Providing counter-intelligence cover was a composite FS section commanded by Captain Geoffrey Household.
When, in 1939, MI6 planned to sabotage German access to Romanian oil by blocking the River Danube at the steep-sided Iron Gates on the border with Yugoslavia, the scheme was placed in the hands of Julius Hanau, an agent working in Romania and barred from military service by rheumatic fever. Among those helping MI6 to select targets was the Honourable Anthony Samuel, who had been specially commissioned into the Intelligence Corps because of his links with the family who had founded Shell Oil. In addition to acting as a courier for clandestine operation in the Balkans, he also organized the smuggling of explosives into Romania. Meanwhile, a group of saboteurs selected from the three Services, incongruously disguised in tweed jackets and flannel trousers, took the train from Dieppe bound for Budapest. Among them was Household, who had received demolition training from the Royal Engineers. But when, in early July 1940, Romania joined the Axis, the vigilance of the local police led to the saboteurs disposing of the explosives and leaving. Household was one of those who reached Cairo.
Sharing the Secret Page 7
