With the Royal Navy largely driven from the Indian Ocean and Allied sea lines of communications around the Cape of Good Hope under threat from German proposals to occupy Vichy-occupied Madagascar, on 5 May 1942 in Operation Ironclad, Force 121, which was built around the British 5th Infantry Division, landed west of Diego Suarez at the northern tip of the island. It was a significant operation for the Corps because, for the first time, an Intelligence Corps unit took part in an amphibious assault. In March 1940 29 (HQ Combined Operations) FSS, commanded by the Portuguese-speaking Captain Annis, was formed for lines of communication duties at St Malo. In May 1941 it joined Combined Operations at Dumfries and was attached to 102 Royal Marines Brigade for amphibious operations on the Azores and Canary Islands should Hitler move against Spain. The section then joined 29 Assault Brigade for further training in Scotland and, during Operation Ironclad, landed with the main assault force and had established a Field Security office before the senior intelligence officer arrived. The landings had been supported by SOE operations tying down the defenders. Meanwhile, Captain R.E. Colby distributed leaflets inviting the garrison to surrender and ran a psychological warfare wireless service to counter Vichy broadcasting. After the garrison had surrendered, the section helped separate Vichy from Free French and undertook port and airport security duties, during which they detained the crew of a German ship suspected of passing intelligence. Sergeant Rupert Croft-Cooke (the novelist and playwright) later wrote an account of the Section’s activities in The Blood-Red Island. Several Field Security sections deployed to Madagascar, including 9 and 6 (East African) Coast Security Sections, with specific responsibility for passport control, border controls, shipping intelligence and interrogation of enemy aliens. In Mozambique, Captain Malcolm Muggeridge, now attached to MI6, engineered the capture of one of the U-Boats that was regularly resupplied by a ship in the Mozambique Channel.
As preparations for a counter-attack through Burma developed, a proposal in September 1942 to raise the Burma Regiment of six battalions failed within six months with only 750 applicants of mainly expatriate government officials, oil men and businessmen of a mix of Anglo-Burmese and Indians and from the Chin, Kachin and Karen hill clans. The applicants were assembled into sixteen forty-strong platoons of the new Burma Intelligence Corps with the intention that every Corps, Divisional and Brigade headquarters would be supported by interpreters and guides with good local knowledge of Burma. Having lost its guns during the Retreat, 3 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment was transferred en bloc. The Corps depot at Mhow in the United Provinces in India was part of HQ Burma Auxiliary Forces.
Major John de Vine arrived in India in mid-June 1942 with orders to establish the Field Security Depot at Karachi. Formerly an Indian Police officer who had served in Burma and had then returned to Great Britain in 1936, he enlisted in the FSP as a Private in September 1939 and was then Adjutant/Mobilization Officer at Mytchett. In October, de Vine, now promoted to lieutenant colonel, formed the Intelligence Corps (India) with Field Security HQ, Training Depot and Centre and was appointed Commandant, a post that he retained until 1945. A very high percentage of recruits were inducted from South-East Asia Command, which had been created in September 1943, and India Command. Major Mains would later write that while the original British FS other ranks consisted of men of ‘high mental and social category’, some of whom would be commissioned to command the new sections, the locally-recruited other ranks were of inferior quality but once the unsuitable had been weeded out at the Depot, ‘the remainder gave good service’. Divided into the British and Indian Wings, the Depot followed the curricula at Winchester, ran cadre and language courses and was organized to represent the dialects of India, in addition to the ubiquitous Urdu. Among his instructors was Captain Philip Wright, who had enlisted into the Intelligence Corps in 1939, had been on lines of communications security in France in 1940, and had been with 609 (39th Light Indian Division) FSS. About 300 US Counter Intelligence Corps attended Orientation Courses. Double the size of British FS sections, the Composites were divided into identical British and Indian detachments commanded by a British FSO. The British consisted of a company sergeant major, two sergeants and three corporals while the Indian element comprised a Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer, three havildars (sergeants), three naiks (corporals), two lance naiks and either a British or Indian batman. It was equipped with two 15cwt trucks, usually two Jeeps, eight motor cycles and five bicycles. Generally, the divisional FS sections devolved a FS detachment of minimum of a British and an Indian NCO to the brigades within the division. Close relationships developed between the Field Security sections and the Burma Intelligence Corps to the extent of joint detachments from Division and Brigade headquarters patrolling villages behind British lines to identify collaborators, recommend security measures to prevent pilfering from supply dumps, search captured Japanese for documents and prevent infiltration. They also infiltrated behind Japanese lines to meet agents and collect information. By 1945, the Depot had turned out 118 FS Composite sections, of which only seven were all-British. Thirty-nine of the 500 Series FS sections served in the Middle and Far East while the 600 Series served exclusively in the Far East. The four Burma Composite FS sections were retitled with No. 4 Section, for instance, becoming 565 (5th Indian Division) FSS. Concerns that the perceived difficulties of Japanese and lack of linguists hindering code-breaking, interrogation and translation were eased by the careful selection of individuals with a proven record of languages, such as classical Greek, and intense courses that confounded the doubters. Nevertheless, some found the speed with which Japanese prisoners spoke a temporary difficulty.
In 1943, Colonel Wards was appointed Commandant of the Intelligence School (India) where Indian Viceroy’s Commissioned officers destined for intelligence and security appointments attended six week courses. Interestingly, its General Intelligence course later formed the basis for the Advanced Intelligence Course at Maresfield. Major General Walter Cawthorn, who held senior intelligence staff appointments throughout the war, was Director Military Intelligence, GHQ India in New Delhi. During the year he instructed that all Intelligence staff officers were to be attached to, but not badged as, the Intelligence Corps (India), a ruling that also applied to commissioned British FS NCOs, who were badged as Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence School (India) and the Depot remained separate functions until June 1945 when they were amalgamated into the Intelligence Corps Training Centre in Karachi, with the Depot forming the Security Wing. Both were commanded by Colonel Wards until 1947 when he handed over to an Indian officer, however within the year of Partition, the Centre was closed so that the newly-formed Pakistan Government could take over its offices.
While several Port Security sections were formed locally, such as in Colombo, the bulk of the Field Security sections in India provided lines of communications security on roads, rivers and railways and at ports, airports and border crossing points in a vast country that was politically unstable because of the ‘Quit India’ politics of the Indian National Congress Party generated by Mahatma Gandhi. In April 1943, 82 FSS and 567 FSS on Port Security in Bombay checked ships transporting enthusiastic Italians and sullen Germans captured in North Africa to prison camps. Having been fed the idea that India was seething with hatred against the British, eight Germans dived over the side of one ship hoping to join the rebellion and surrendered three days later, thoroughly disillusioned by diffident Indians. In April 1943, 567 and 613 FSS reformed from 82 FSS with the former becoming the Bombay Town section while the latter was port security. It lost Sergeant Sam Touche, killed on 14 April 1944 in the Bombay Explosion, when cargo on the SS Fort Stikine of ‘just about everything that will either burn or blow up’ (high explosive, bales of cotton, timber, Spitfires) exploded killing 740 people, including 476 servicemen, injuring 1,800, sinking eight merchantmen and damaging five warships. Some of the £2 million in gold bullion is still being recovered. Meanwhile, 600 (United Provinces) FSS in Lucknow covered an area the size of the U
K with the internal security of the hill stations complicated by the combination of nationalism, refugees from Singapore and Burma, the risk of Japanese infiltration and American missionaries attempting to subvert British and Indian soldiers to their creeds. In Lucknow, a communist organization harbouring British deserters was unearthed. One of the few Intelligence Corps units with a woman soldier under command was 619 (Delhi) FSS, which employed the Anglo-Indian Sergeant Mavis Comerford-Bailey, of the Women’s Army Corps (India), as a Confidential Clerk. On security duties were 629, 630 and 631 FSS, who were deployed at several airfields in Assam to protect the security of the precarious airlift of supplies over the Himalayas to Chinese nationalist forces, known to Allied aircrew as the Hump.
In September 1943, General Wavell, now Commander in Chief India, instructed Eastern Army to take advantage of the dry monsoon and attack Japanese positions in Arakan and capture the airfields on Akyab island but the offensive ran into stubborn defence and, crippled by exhaustion and lack of confidence of fighting in the jungle, it was driven back to its start point. HQ 6 Brigade was overrun by the Tanahashi Group and Brigadier Cavendish killed. The Brigade was supported by the Composite Field Security section to pass out from Karachi, 607 FSS; it is thought that one of its NCOs was killed in the attack. The section received this accolade from Director of Military Intelligence, India:
Complete and vitally interesting reports have been regularly sent to the Depot from this section notwithstanding the difficulties of operations. These reports have been of great assistance to training new sections.
Following the first Arakan campaign, Fourteenth Army was formed as part of Eleventh Army Group to control operations in Burma with rear area security remaining with Eastern Command reporting to GHQ India. Later dubbed ‘The Forgotten Army’, it was commanded by the charismatic Lieutenant General William Slim, whose experiences in the Burma Retreat and lessons learnt in Europe ensured that intelligence became a high priority.
Air photographic interpretation in the Far East had not existed until early February 1942 when four officers destined to form the APIS, Singapore where diverted to Delhi and Calcutta. Eleven more interpreters, including Major Stuart Piggot, established a joint Army/RAF photographic unit which, by October 1943, was providing Army Headquarters with photographic interpretation. The three Corps of Fourteenth Army each had a detachment followed a month later by photographic interpreters supporting the divisions. The climate caused considerable difficulties, not the least of which was photographic reconnaissance sorties in the monsoon, and the jungle environment limited exploitation. However, imagery contributed to surveying unmapped areas.
By the time that Major P.W. Murray-Thriepland arrived from the Mediterranean in mid-1944, the situation had improved markedly with analysis divided between the strategic Central Photographic Interpretation Section (South-East Asia) at New Delhi and tactical tasks undertaken by the Photographic Interpretation Department in a luxurious house not far from Allipore airfield near Calcutta. South-East Asia Command in Ceylon and, later, Headquarters Twelfth Army in Calcutta also had photographic interpreters. Captain John Noel used his experiences as the photographer for the 1922 and 1924 Everest expeditions to search for the best routes to supply Fourteenth Army from India.
The Far East Combined Bureau had been formed as a Government Cipher & Code School outpost on Stonecutters Island, Hong Kong by the Royal Navy and RAF to intercept Japanese, Chinese and Soviet communications. In August 1939, it transferred to Singapore but the detachment left in Hong Kong was captured. Shortly, before Singapore surrendered, the Army and RAF codebreakers were transferred to the Wireless Experimental School in Delhi while the naval contingent first went to Colombo. The School was a fifth the size of Bletchley Park and was lodged in part of Delhi University, with the ‘secure’ element on an isolated hill named Anand Parbat (‘Hill of Happiness’). Its two sub-stations supported Western Wireless at Bangalore in southern India and Eastern Wireless at Barrackpore, near Delhi, feeding from about eighty static intercept stations and several mobile Y Service units targeting Japanese communications. Among the 1,000 staff were Intelligence Corps. In the spring of 1943, Alan Stripp, a Cambridge classics undergraduate, attended a Japanese language course and, after being commissioned into the Corps, was posted to Bletchley Park, where he was one of the very few officers analyzing Japanese Air Force signal traffic in Burma. After about five months, he was posted to the School where he continued his work on the Air Force and concluded that Fourteenth Army Intelligence had a clearer knowledge of Japanese strengths, positions and intentions than Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo. Stripp later wrote a novel, The Code Snatch, about an Allied plan to snatch the only two codebooks of a new issue by convincing a Japanese intelligence officer to hand them to a ‘general’, in fact a Nisei officer flying into a Japanese air base in a captured aircraft. It is speculative that this stranger than fact operation took place except that Stripp once revealed to his wife that he had flown behind Japanese lines. He later co-wrote Codebreakers: The Inside Story. Nisei were Japanese-Americans and Japanese–Canadians; hundreds had been detained as enemy aliens before their value was realized.
In February 1943, 24 (Type-A) Wireless Intelligence Section had arrived from England with twenty-seven Intelligence Corps. ‘A’ Special Wireless Group was formed in Barrackpore from elements of 1 Wireless Company Group and 1 (UK), 3 (Middle East) and C Special Wireless Groups to support Fourteenth Army operations with tactical intercepts. During the Arakan offensive, it had been based in Chittagong and intercepted communications of the Tanahashi Group (in fact 112 Infantry Regiment), and passed it to the Wireless Experimental School, where it became evident that Japanese regiments and battalions were named after their commanders. This practice caused difficulties in tracking identifying units when commanders became casualties or were transferred, and in estimating unit sizes. With the Intelligence Section sub-divided into five sections, Sergeant W.C. Smith, in Section B, compiled a list of units in every Burmese town and village and tracked the building of the Burma Railway. By late 1943 intelligence, including Signals Intelligence, was suggesting the Japanese were massing east of Assam but their intentions were unclear.
Formed in late 1940, SOE India Mission, which was based in Ceylon, controlled clandestine operations throughout South-East Asia Command until it reformed as Force 136 in 1944. As in Europe, its role was to support resistance movements, such as the communist Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) led by Chin Peng, and V and Z Forces deeper in Burma. Attempts to form the Singapore Mission by GHQ Malaya had been foiled by official opposition. Conducting guerrilla warfare in Borneo was first proposed by Second Lieutenant P.M. Synge, an Intelligence Corps officer then serving at Headquarters Intelligence Corps in Oxford. Benefiting from his experience of the 1932 Oxford Sarawak Expedition, he proposed that about 500 men raised from the interior longhouses could form effective guerrilla forces but acknowledged that they would have difficulty in denying an enemy the use of the oilfields in Brunei. Synge was interviewed at the Directorate of Military Intelligence and although a good type, he was not regarded as the right type and his scheme was rejected. His ideas were identified as practical and were passed to Services Reconnaissance Department, the Australian equivalent of the Executive, then under US command. One of those selected for guerrilla operations was another member of the expedition, Captain Tom Harrisson (Reconnaisance Corps), one of the founders of Mass Observation.
Captain Rupert Mayne twice dropped into Burma, each time being recovered by submarine. In 1944, when an Indian paid by the Japanese attempted to murder him in Calcutta, his Indian bodyguard hit the assassin with a heavy torch. Mayne maintained that his most alarming mission was to collect a suitcase of lewd photographs from a Calcutta address that would be dropped from aircraft, as part of a subversive programme, and organized in sets to encourage Japanese soldiers to swap them and read the propaganda. Mayne collected the suitcase but when his driver failed to turn up, he trudged through
hostile suburbs wondering what Mrs Mayne, who knew nothing of his activities, would conclude if he was found with his throat cut and in possession of a suitcase full of pornography. Later, Mayne joined G Intelligence at Headquarters Fourteenth Army as a lieutenant colonel and liaised with the Chinese nationalist forces under General Chiang Kai-shek.
Colonel Orde Wingate’s first Chindit operation in February and March 1943, when the largely regular 77 Indian Infantry Brigade had penetrated into central Burma through terrain believed impassable, had deeply impressed Lieutenant General Mutaguchi, the Burma Area Army commander, even though about a third were lost from clashes, sickness and fatigue. He therefore decided to pre-empt an Allied offensive by attacking XV Corps in northern Arakan in Operation Ha Go and force Slim to send reserves from IV Corps in Assam and then open up a route across the border, in Operation U Go, by attacking Imphal and Kohima. His forces would march with the minimum of equipment and therefore a major objective would be to plunder the logistic depot at Dimapur, west of Kohima before marching into India. The offensives would include the Indian National Army Division of mainly former prisoners of war who had surrendered at Singapore and had been released on the Japanese promise of Indian independence.
Sharing the Secret Page 15
