The contribution towards the success of deception plans which has been made by MI5 has been outstanding. The Twenty Committee have, from the earliest days, gone out of their way to help.
By early 1944, Twenty-First Army Group Signals Intelligence assets dispersed across southern England were plotting the German order of battle by using Direction Finding to pinpoint unit locations, while Traffic Analysis collected intelligence on tactical philosophies, however German counter-measures of limiting wireless traffic and using line and despatch riders hindered collection. Lieutenant Colonel L. Winterbotham, GSO1 Intelligence (Signals), commanding HQ Twenty-First Army Group Signals Intelligence, had a sizeable organisation:
• HQ Twenty-First Army Group; semi mobile 1 Special Wireless Group/1 Wireless Intelligence Company of eight Special Wireless Section each with its Wireless Intelligence Section.
• HQ Second Army: 8 and 53 (A-Type) Special Wireless Section and 1 Special Intelligence Company of sixteen officers, thirteen being Intelligence Corps, and fifty-seven other ranks.
• The four British Corps each allocated a B-Type Special Wireless Section and its attendant Wireless Intelligence Section.
• The First Canadian Army: a mix of British and Canadian Special Wireless Sections.
• In reserve were an A-Type, three B-Types and one R-Type Special Wireless Sections.
Since US Signals Intelligence lagged behind the British, training and information was shared. Serving with 118 (B-Type) Special Wireless Section at the US Army Air Force base at Great Glenham in April 1944 were Lieutenant A. Macdonald and Corporal F.T. Fowler. When a B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ crashed with a full bomb load, their gallantry in rescuing crew members earned them George Medals.
In May 1943 General Sir Bernard Paget GCB DSO MC, then Commander in Chief, Home Forces, had accepted an invitation to be the first Colonel Commandant of the Intelligence Corps. Two months later, Major General Davidson, who was Director of Military Intelligence between December 1940 and April 1944, suggested to him that the Corps should be retained after the war because it had justified its existence, and its functions and organizations, in particular Field Security, were not found elsewhere in the Army. He had written several papers emphasizing that the starvation of intelligence during the inter-war years had adversely affected early military operations and proposed:
• The establishment of HQ Intelligence Corps, Depot and Training Establishments.
• The development of a cohort of Staff College-trained officers to fill 117 senior intelligence appointments, including the Director of Military Intelligence and Military Attachés.
• Promotion for specialist intelligence officers, such as photographic interpreters.
• A system of Short Service Commissions.
• An Intelligence Corps in the Reserve Army.
• Outlets into civilian intelligence and security opportunities on leaving the Army.
Paget placed the proposals in front of the Adjutant-General with several additional principles that included:
• Intelligence should not be merged with Operations.
• Intelligence should be on the Staff College syllabus.
• The Joint intelligence organizations developed during the war should not be allowed to lapse.
In many respects, both officers were visionary but they were constrained by the Adjutant-General Branch sticking to the 1939 Manual of Military Intelligence view that there was no room for an Intelligence Corps in a peacetime Army and that the provision of intelligence was inconsistent with officer career prospects. And yet, General Lord Hastings Ismay KG GCB CH DSO, who had served in the Directorate of Military Intelligence in 1932, later wrote:
Of the dozen or so lieutenant colonels and majors who served under me (in the Directorate), not one failed to reach the rank of major general.
In preparation for the invasion of Europe, HQ Intelligence Corps (Field) was formed in May 1943 under the command of Lieutenant C. Buss to support Twenty-First Army Group counter-intelligence. On 5 January 1944, Intelligence Corps (Field) moved to 18, Bishopwood Road, Highgate in London and passed under the command of Major Sir Francis Colchester-Wemyss until, a fortnight later, he transferred command to Major William Sedgewick-Rough (14/20th Hussars). With a staff of six officers and twenty-seven other ranks with a remit to:
• Train and administer Twenty-First Army Group Field Security.
• Refit, reform and disband sections, as necessary.
• Assemble a pool of supporting specialists.
Sedgewick-Rough planned to support the existing FS sections with twenty-five Field Security Reserve Detachments (FSRD) numbered from 1001 to 1025. Usually commanded by SNCOs, their principal roles were to provide general support to the close support FS sections and take over when they moved into forward positions. In their ranks were ethnic Germans and Austrians and Jews. For instance, in 1011 FSRD was Sergeant Arthur Britton. Britton was the nom de guerre of Arthur Verdun Britton Schrijnemakers, the son of a Dutch father and a French mother, but, himself, an Englishman, who had reached England in 1940 with his mother and two siblings. When he joined the Guards and it became known that he spoke German, Dutch, and French, he was transferred into the Intelligence Corps and had served in Tunisia. Where officers commanded, they were usually referred as Officers Commanding, as opposed to FSOs. Second Army, the British element of Twenty-First Army Group, had fifteen FS, five Reserve and eight Lines of Communications sections. They were supported by three Special Counter-Intelligence Units and an Intelligence Laboratory. Twenty-five Field, four Prisoner of War, four Special, one Telegraph and two Special Mail Censorship Sections supported by code-breakers from Posts and Telecommunications Censorship were tasked to:
• Prevent the transmission of information prejudicial to the security of Twenty-First Army Group as it advanced and during the occupation of Germany.
• Implement policies of the Occupying Powers.
• Disseminate information of value to the security of the occupying forces.
As plans developed for the occupation of Germany, the Allied Control Commission was formed to oversee arrangements from occupation until the British Military Government transferred power to the civil Control Commission for Germany (British Element). Part of the Political Division and Internal Affairs and Communications Division was the Intelligence Division, which was to be commanded by Major General (Intelligence), the first being Major General John Lethbridge MC CB OBE (late Royal Engineers). When the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) commissioned an Intelligence Corps planning group, chaired by Brigadier Kenneth Strong, to develop an intelligence and security plan, from it emerged, in September 1944, the Twenty-First Army Group Counter-Intelligence Instruction No. 3 in which the Intelligence Corps was expected to lead once military government was imposed on Germany, and Austria. So far as the Corps was concerned:
• Field Security to be renamed Counter-Intelligence Sections. In reality, most retained their FS nomenclature for several years.
• Field Security and Field Security Reserve Detachments to be devolved from their formations and allocated to areas of occupation on the basis of one section per provincial capital; to towns with a population of 100,000 people; and to cover ports and frontiers.
• Top priority was the liquidation of the Nazi Party by the imposition of the Black Lists and war crime investigations. It was estimated that these measures would apply to 70,000 people in the British sector of the estimated 300,000 throughout Germany.
• Security controls would include a non-fraternisation order; movement controls; purges of the police and local government; censorship of the press, wireless and telegram communications; and imposition of a curfew.
Acknowledging that other divisions in the Commission would collect intelligence, the JIC recommended that each should develop an Intelligence Branch subordinate to the Intelligence Division. The Counter-Intelligence Bureau would be headed by a Brigadier while the Postal and Telecommunication Censorship Bureau would be comma
nded by a Colonel, with both officers reporting directly to Major General (Intelligence). Coordination was to be controlled by the Control Commission.
On 1 April 1944, all unauthorized travel to and from a coastal zone from The Wash to Land’s End and an area around the Firth of Forth was forbidden, other communications to and from those areas were considerably restricted. The prime task was now to prevent unauthorized leakages of information and protect the security of key points and assembly areas. Limitations were placed on military movement. Travel to Ireland was suspended and all leave for the British suspended. Although Churchill insisted no-one must leave Great Britain, Combined Operations continued to reconnoitre the assault beaches. Concerns were raised that the capture of departing SOE agents could compromise the landings; however, ceasing operations was a potential intelligence indicator and so the Special Security Panel tightened operational security with stringent searches of agents, ceasing leave in the restricted zone and restricting the use of wirelesses. A Field Security Movements using UK-based and Twenty-First Army FS and FSRD sections controlled access to, from and within the restricted zone. Arrangements were made to separate those troops who had been given their orders from those who had not. One NCO sat beside the hospital bed of an anaesthetised Twenty-First Army Group staff officer because he had babbled classified information in a previous post-operative trauma. But the plans for Operation Overlord had been leaked to the Soviets by Major James MacGibbon (later owner of MacGibbon and Kee Publishing). Employed in Directorate of Operations 3 at the War Office and a member of the Communist Party, he believed it was his duty to share information with the Soviets, who had taken such heavy casualties on the Eastern Front, and provided details, including German troop movements copied from the War Room Map Room, to his London and Washington contacts.
Michael Pertwee, now a captain, commanded 50 (HQ Twenty-First Army Group) FSS. In May, Sergeant Norman Kirby was detached to be the Field Security NCO of General Montgomery’s Tactical Headquarters; this consisted of two caravans captured from Italian generals in North Africa, an articulated command post complete with maps, and a defence company. One of the seven trained by MI5 to test key and vulnerable point security in 1942, Kirby was expected to help select new positions and was therefore advised of the latest counter-intelligence information from HQ Intelligence Corps (Field). Field Security duties were detailed in the 1943 Manual of Field Security. The White, Grey and Black Lists had been enhanced by access to the US Army Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects since the landings in Sicily and Italy and, by 1948, had expanded into 85,000 ‘wanted’ reports. Eventually HQ Intelligence Corps (Field) would administer 1,500 men organized into eighty-three sections.
On 6 May, 49 (Lines of Communications) FSS left Fort William and three days later arrived at Southend-on-Sea where it was billeted in a private house on the outskirts, having spent the intervening nights in well-organized tented transit camps. The next month was spent completing assault preparations that included waterproofing and painting unit insignia on their 3cwt Ford truck, Jeep and 350cc Matchless motorcycles, test firing their pistols and Sten guns, loading stores, providing security at briefings and conducting security patrols. Some sections had been with their formations for some time; 19 FSS, commanded by Captain Maurice Hockliffe, had been attached to 50th (Northumberland) Division since 1942. After returning from North Africa in November 1943, it was accommodated in Bury St Edmunds and rejoined the Division at Brockenhurst to train for the Normandy landings. In March 1944 it was reinforced by 1016 Field Security Reserve Detachment, which had been formed in London in February. The two sections were fortunate that Major General Graham was interested in their activities.
The experiences of Captain Frank MacMillan give an overview of the preparations of most Field Security sections. A languages teacher from Glasgow, MacMillan was posted from 301 (Southern Command) FSS to 317 (6th Airborne Division) FSS at Bulford Camp, where he took over from Captain Donald Loudoun, a barrister, who had been posted to HQ Twenty-First Army Group as GSO 3 Intelligence (B).
On the day that he arrived, MacMillan was briefed at the Divisional planning headquarters in the Old Vicarage, Brigmerson, that the Division was to secure the British left flank and that not only was he to prepare an Appreciation of the security threat, he was expected to organize security awareness lectures to the Division and some civil Southern Command elements. Prior to Divisional Headquarters moving to its concentration area, MacMillan burnt unwanted classified documents in the garden. Acknowledging that casualties would be hard to replace, he allocated four-man detachments to support the glider-borne Divisional HQ and 6 Airlanding Brigade and 3 and 5 Parachute Brigades. The Sea Tail under command of CSM Roberts would follow, when instructed. The Divisional Security Plan tightened as maps and photographs were issued, models built and briefings became more explicit. Only senior officers and FS patrols were permitted to leave the concentration area. Post-war newspaper stories, praising 9 Parachute Battalion for not divulging that the Merville Battery was their objective to several Servicewomen masquerading as ‘honey traps’ tasked to test their security awareness, did not mention that transport taking them to an exercise failed to turn up! Although Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe had prepared a Proclamation for liberated parts of Normandy, MacMillan and Captains John Max (Parachute Regiment), the GSO 3 Intelligence, and Freddy Scholes, Intelligence Officer 1 (A), prepared a proclamation asking the French population not to interfere in operations. Divisional Headquarters had two other Intelligence Corps officers, Lieutenant D.C. O’Grady, who worked with Scholes, and Captain P.W. Ridley, one of three interrogators. A 22 Independent Parachute Company platoon commander was Lieutenant John Vischer, also Intelligence Corps.
CHAPTER TEN
North-West Europe 1944–1945
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know from what you do.
Duke of Wellington
Normandy
As with most operations, the 317 (6th Airborne Division) FSS assault did not pass without incident. Sergeant Leon Butcher broke his shoulder hurtling through a greenhouse. Sergeant Emil van Laer was wounded in the head by flak, broke both ankles as his glider landed ten miles from its Landing Zone and was captured. Sergeant Dick Burgess (HQ 3 Parachute Brigade) dropped twenty miles from Drop Zone V after his Dakota was attacked by a fighter and was also captured. Sergeant Rene Howse (HQ 5 Parachute Brigade) was captured and placed on the bonnet of a German lorry until the driver was shot and he fell off as it careered out of control. He met Sergeant Fraser Edward, who was Brigadier Poett’s interpreter, and made his way to the Chateau de M. Cheron, which was a German headquarters, captured four Germans and sifted through a mass of abandoned documents. Nevertheless, by the end of D-Day, 6th Airborne Division and 4 Special Service Brigade, which had landed on Sword Beach, were defending the Orne Bridges on the beachhead left flank.
For CSM Weaver of 19 (50th (Northumberland) Division) FSS on a Landing Craft Tank off Gold Beach near Arromanches, D-Day was his third landing:
5 June. Again to experience that feeling of uncertainty as to what fate had in store for us on the morrow. We sailed, everyone thinking the same thoughts but none expressing them. We played Bridge to pass the time.
6 June. The day (D Day) – the sea full of shipping – the warships shelling any sign of enemy life. Our LCT was shelled as it nosed its way offshore and we all flattened on the deck as the shells straddled the ship. My feeling of thanks to the Navy as they silenced the gun. Going ashore at Le Hamel in a Rhino (tracked amphibious APC) – the sign of recent battle – the dead – the ambulances. The march to our first halt a few miles inland – the noisy night as we lay in a farm and listened to the Jerry planes attacking our shipping – the beauty of the tracers (if one could appreciate beauty at such a time) gratefully going up to meet the attacking planes.
A 33 (3rd Division) FSS sergeant is thought to have landed with 8 Infantry B
rigade on Sword Beach and another sergeant was with 185 Brigade; 8 Brigade nearly faltered getting off the beach due to the cautious nature of its Brigadier.
Early next morning, 19 FSS collected their motorcycles from Gold Beach and by next morning were based in the German Secret Field Police HQ in Bayeaux. Several suspects were sent to Camp 020 under the agreement that any operational intelligence gained in London would be disseminated within the week. A tenacious liar, former film extra and salesman, Georges Laurenger was denounced by a woman who heard tapping from his room. The former soldier, Yves Guilcher, was exposed by the Resistance. Incriminating torn paper found during the search of his house led to his radio buried in his garden. He admitted to being associated with the SD and supplied a long list of fellow collaborators.
Captain MacMillan established HQ 317 FSS in a school where he was joined by Major Fred Adams, a Canadian with responsibility for Civil Affairs, a decision that led to an effective relationship that lasted until the end of the war. Ignoring an agreement reached between Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and the French Provisional Government that national identity cards would not be defaced, 317 FSS applied a scheme devised by Divisional HQ of authenticating French identity cards with British 2d postage stamps. Several days after D-Day, MacMillan was at HQ I Corps when he was asked by correspondents how had the airborne landing gone and he replied, ‘We caught the Hun with his trousers down’. The story appeared in British newspapers from a non-attributable source, apparantly much to the annoyance of Rommel and Hitler. The Division was meant to withdraw after seven days but Twenty-First Army Group failed to capture Caen, which led to more than two months of some of the fiercest fighting on any front and it had no alternative but guard the left flank.
Sharing the Secret Page 20
