Since the island of Cyprus lent itself favourably to Travel Control Security, in February 1956 a Regular Port and Travel Control Security Group, trained largely by those who had gained operational experience during the Second World War, deployed 52 (Famagusta) Section and 53 (Limassol) and 54 (Larnaca) Detachments. Group HQ was co-located at Famagusta Police Headquarters. Meanwhile, 188 Radar and Searchlight Battery RA played an important role in reporting suspicious vessels. Most nights, NCOs joined naval or police maritime patrols looking for gunrunners. The 54 Detachment accommodation close to the ports gates was staffed by a couple of NCOs during the day. It had a launch manned by a Royal Army Service Corps (Maritime) crew that was capable of intercepting any craft except that the keel had been weakened during the bombing of Malta during the war and it was this that led to her retirement when she grounded on rocks. She was replaced by the Carron, which was sister to the Char. One lance corporal who provided ship-to-shore communications from a launch when the tanker MV Clyde Guardian ran aground, received a £3 cheque years later from the ‘Divorce Probate and Maritime Department’ as his share in the salvage. As he later wrote, ‘There can’t be many National Service soldiers who have received salvage money’. The 52 Detachment launch, nicknamed the ‘Security Interception Barge’ by EOKA was sunk by a bomb that blew off its propeller shaft.
Operation Fox Hunter was launched in mid-December as the first of several cordon and search operations in the Troodos Mountains that destroyed the mountain guerrilla groups within six months and drove Grivas to a hideout in Limassol. It was during these operations that the Army Air Corps pioneered using Sycamore light helicopters to deliver patrols to ground inaccessible by vehicle. Several EOKA who defected to the Security Forces were formed into intelligence gathering and terrorist hunting patrols commanded by British Military Intelligence Officers and were either based in isolated houses or lived in mountain camps. The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre sought out EOKA hides and provided annotated air photographs of the maze of streets in towns and villages. The lack of linguists was partly resolved by using Intelligence Corps linguists who had studied classics, not that the Greek spoken by Alexander the Great of Macedonia was recognized by Greek-Cypriots.
An important intelligence resource was the Postal Detachment of two NCOs at Nicosia Central Post Office who supported Customs intercepting letters and packages, in particular those sent from Greece and the Greek Embassy to known and suspected EOKA. It was eventually enlarged to about ten NCOs examining all mail. The smashing of a smuggling ring in Limassol in December 1957 by a counter-intelligence operation uncovered weapons and explosives allegedly stolen from Greek Army armouries and magazines. The setback worried Grivas because three of those arrested had built his hideout in the town; nevertheless, Grivas organized another smuggling network, which remained undiscovered.
In early 1956, Human Intelligence operations had been sufficiently effective that Grivas accused the Security Forces of the mistreatment of suspects during interrogations. However, in appeasements some considered to signal the effectiveness of interrogations, Captain Gary O’Driscoll was one of two Army officers convicted of assault and cashiered. Field Marshal Harding did not confirm the finding against him. The fact was that EOKA had been thoroughly penetrated by Human Intelligence, including through interrogation. Grivas himself had been complicit in EOKA insecurity when he carelessly allowed his diaries to be captured on three occasions. A year later EOKA again accused interrogators and intelligence officers of torture until several allegations were exposed as dishonest. In mid-June, Harding published the Cyprus Government White Paper Allegations of Brutality in Cyprus in which he criticized lawyers for persuading witnesses to claim ill-treatment. The refusal by the British Government to hold an independent inquiry into mistreatment claims by those convicted EOKA sent to Wormwood Scrub Prison led to the allegations being aired by the Human Rights Sub-Committee of Europe and at the United Nations.
Within a fortnight of Major Stuart Macpherson arriving from 3 FSS in Libya to take command of HQ Field Security, Middle East Land Forces, he found a time bomb concealed in his married quarter garden. In mid-1957, 147 FSS moved to Nicosia and generally looked after the western segment of Cyprus while 253 FSS monitored the eastern districts.
Meanwhile in Egypt, Colonel Nasser had raised regional tension by nationalizing the Suez Canal and was resisting attempts from the main shareholders, Great Britain and France, to permit international control. Against international support, both countries adopted a military solution. Great Britain reformed II Corps from 3rd Infantry Division and 16 Parachute Brigade and mobilized the Regular Army Reserve of recently discharged National Servicemen. Corporal Warner had just completed his National Service with 242 FSS in the Canal Zone and 147 FSS in Cyprus when he was instructed to mobilize at the Corps Depot in Maresfield. The Air Photographic Interpretation Unit, Episkopi reported on the effects of preparatory air strikes against Egyptian targets. No. 1 Air Photographic Interpretation Unit was also formed at Maresfield from serving and Reservist photographic interpreters, under the command of Major Ian Alexander. It included the first two Intelligence Corps other rank photographic interpreters, Staff Sergeant G.A. Clarke and P.B. Watterton. 3rd Infantry Division had its own Air Photographic Interpretation Unit, commanded by Captain Gordon Mole. On 4 November in Operation Musketeer, 3 Commando Brigade and 3rd Infantry Division landed near Port Said while 16 Parachute Brigade seized Gamil Airport. At the same time, Israeli forces invaded the Sinai Desert.
In Libya, there had been a major breach of security. Sergeant Ward was at home when Captain Bignell arrived, ‘Get your skates on, Ward. There has been a nonsense’. Ushered into the office of Major General Sir Rodney Moore, they were told that a newly-arrived despatch rider (DR) had accidentally delivered a Top Secret Operational Plan that detailed the intervention of 10th Armoured Division into Egypt from Libya in support of Operation Musketeer to the Libyan Army barracks in Porta Benito as opposed to Commander Royal Engineers in the adjacent British barracks. The problem was that in the Libyan barracks, there were several Egyptian Army instructors. Ward:
I made my way with a Libyan friend and the two of us positioned ourselves with a good view of the Libyan barracks gate. We sat on the forecourt of a little Arab café keeping watch as we sipped Turkish coffee. Suddenly, a miracle occurred. The smart Libyan corporal came out to change sentries and I recognised the corporal of the Guard. Some years previously, he had been one of my apprentice tractor drivers when I was farming near El Marg in the Gebel area of Cyrenaica. I strolled over to him and was greeted as a long lost brother. Soon we were talking about old times on the farm over a Coke. Yes, he had seen an English DR arrive with the despatches being handed to the Orderly Officer. Where was the Orderly Officer now? Well, it was Friday, a day of rest and he had changed into his civvies and gone down town.
Further small talk and I was able to ascertain exactly where this officer’s billet was. Mingling with the odd soldiery wandering around the barracks caused no problems and soon I had my hand on the door handle of this officer’s room. And there in a corner was a cabinet. It too was not locked. Imagine my joy when on finding a service Dress KD jacket hanging in the cabinet and slipping my hand into the inner pocket, I pulled out three OHMS envelopes.
Ward rewarded his Libyan friend and the corporal but was somewhat deflated when his CSM said there were no funds to pay for his rewards.
Sergeant F. Yarwood was serving with the Field Wing (Malaya) in Johore Bahru when he and several NCOs were rushed to England in to be part of the reformed 1 (3rd Infantry Division) FSS. Within days of being sent on disembarkation leave, they were recalled to Maresfield to be refitted and ten days after leaving Malaya, the section departed from Heathrow in a British Overseas Airways Corporation Britannia and landed in Cyprus. Transferring to a Transport Command Dakota, the NCOs arrived at El Gamil Airport where a military policeman warned them that their holstered 9mm Browning pistols were at risk of theft and should b
e secured and so they fashioned lanyards from pyjama trouser cords. The section spent the first two nights in an insect-infested billet in Port Said above a tailor’s shop before moving to several damaged beach cottages near a 1 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders section. Staff Sergeant Eddie Hughes, formerly Royal Army Pay Corps, quickly organized a section bar. When intelligence emerged that Arab agents were infiltrating into Port Said using square-sailed feluccas, the NCOs and the Argylls also used feluccas to intercept suspect vessels. During an operation to pinpoint presses printing anti-British, French and Israeli propaganda plastered on walls throughout Port Said, Yarwood marked each cleared area on a map until he identified a suspect house. Charging through the back door with an infantry section, he waved his pistol, and its pyjama lanyard, at a room full of coffins. Meanwhile, other FS and infantry found the presses in the front room and arrested the propagandists.
As II Corps went firm, 7 FSS, which had been reformed in September, provided Port Said town security and was supported by two 902 FSS detachments, 1 Special Identification Section (Egypt) and 1 Special Counter-Intelligence Unit. Meanwhile, 152 Port Security Section passed under command of 3rd Infantry Division. A major problem faced by I Joint Service Interrogation Unit was that several prisoners, including an Egyptian brigadier, had been questioned by untrained ‘interrogators’ in the capturing units and, knowing what to expect, had become resistant. This was, by no means, not the first and only time that the amateur interrogation had led to intelligence lapses. After the ceasefire, some of 1 FSS returned to England on board the Empress of Australia and encountered the inevitable winter Bay of Biscay gale. The Intelligence Corps held their own during one memorable night in the Sergeant’s Mess with their version of ‘The Bloody Great Wheel’. The section was disbanded at Maresfield early in the New Year.
By the autumn of 1957, EOKA faced defeat. On 3 October, the same day that the wife of a Royal Artillery sergeant was murdered in Famagusta, one of two dependents murdered during the Emergency, the Royal Ulster Rifles surrounded three EOKA in a barn near Liopetri. Early the next day, the Greek-speaking Corporal Fleet, who was attached to the Battalion Intelligence Section, was unable to convince the gunmen to surrender. The informant was given sanctuary in England but was so overcome by guilt that he returned to Cyprus and appealed to Grivas, claiming that he had been tortured. Grivas had him executed, as he did with most compromised informants.
The February 1959 Zurich Agreement ended the Cyprus Emergency and Grivas returned to Greece. The Travel Control Security Group, which now included 73 (Airport Nicosia) Detachment deployed with small sections to Karavostas, Kyrenia, Latchi, Paphos, Xeros and Zyyi, remained for a year until it reformed as 7 Intelligence Platoon in London. The necessity to retain a command presence on NATO’s southern flank and control British interests in the Middle East saw HQ Middle East Land Forces divide, in 1959, to HQ Near East Land Forces in Episkopi and HQ Middle East Land Forces to Kenya. The 1960 Treaty of Guarantee acknowledging the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus gave the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots equitable constitutional assurances backed by mutual security support by Greek and Turkish national military contingents based on the island. The British withdrew into Sovereign Base Areas Eastern centred on Dhekelia and Western on Episkopi and RAF Akrotiri.
The wind-down after the Emergency saw HQ Field Security, 147 and 252 FSS and the Security Identification Section (Cyprus) merge first into Field Security Unit (Middle East) until it was split into two Counter-Intelligence Units supporting the two Commands in 1961, along with two Joint Intelligence Staffs monitoring regional security, which in Cyprus, included discreetly counting troops numbers during the rotations of the two national military contingents.
In the Middle East, the Trucial States, now known as the United Arab Emirates, and the rulers of Kuwait and Bahrain watched as communist subversion and nationalism fostered by Nasser spread and the use of Middle East oil as a political weapon. All had defence treaties with Great Britain. Warrant Officer 2 Colin Barnes spent ten years in the Middle East and accompanied the Trucial Oman Levies in two operations at Buraimi Oasis during the mid-1950s. At one stage, he and a brigadier were the only British Army representatives in the Persian Gulf. When dissidents supported by Saudi Arabia rebelled against Sultan Said bin Taimur of Oman, between 1957 and 1960, they were overthrown by the Omani Armed Forces, supported by the British Army and RAF. Tribal unrest in the Radfan mountains of the Aden Protectorate in the mid-1950s saw the deployment of the Aden Protectorate Levies supported by British units. In 1957, British Forces, Arabian Peninsula was reinforced by 4 FSS assembled from unmarried Intelligence Corps NCOs serving in West Germany and Berlin. Arriving in Cyprus on the troopship Empire Clyde, they flew to Aden via Turkey and Iraq. With Section HQ was in the Admiralty compound, Singapore Lines, detachments dispersed throughout the region. In 1958, 4 FSS reformed as the Counter-Intelligence Unit, Arabian Peninsula. Staff Sergeant Laurie Jones joined HQ Land Forces, Persian Gulf in Bahrain and was first attached to 1 Cameronians and then to the Trucial Oman Scouts, which gave him the opportunity to claim that he was the only Intelligence Corps in the Arabian Gulf. Another detachment covered three Aden Levy camps in West Aden. Sergeant Charles Butt acted as bait in an operation against a Yemeni Army detachment in As-Soumah, which frequently ambushed convoys passing along the road to Merta. Butt recalled:
I drove the decoy Land Rover when we countered a Yemeni ambush from As-Soumah against a resupply run to the Government Guard fort at Merta. I had to drive openly across the exposed stretch and when they fired, we really let them have it from 3in mortars, 75mm Pack Howitzers, machine guns from the Ferrets, rockets from Vampire jets and bombs from Shackletons of 37 Squadron.
Several newly commissioned Intelligence Corps officers completed their infantry attachments as platoon commanders with the Parachute Battalion Group at Hamala Camp on the west coast. The Corps presence in Bahrain remained until 1971 when their parent unit was the Security Unit (Gulf).
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Regular Years The 1960s
The real difficulty is not so much in devising standards or procedures, as in ensuring that they are regularly and properly observed
The Radcliffe Report
A review of the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the ability of the Armed Forces to meet Britain’s commitments led to the conclusion that there was a need for a well-equipped Army. At the time, the Armed Forces were midway through the Kenya Emergency and the Cyprus Emergency and near the end of the Malaya Emergency, Of 199 officers then serving with the Intelligence Corps, 120 were on short commissions from other Arms and Services.
In associated discussions to plan for the future and the availability of fewer officers, on 22 January 1957, the Army Council Executive Committee agreed that the Intelligence Corps should have a cohort of Regular officers on the basis that:
For an efficient Intelligence system, it is essential to have a nucleus of officers with a sound military background who are experienced in knowing what information is required, and how to get it, to assess it and to present the results.
A notable influence in the decision was Major General Davidson who had taken over Colonel Commandant from General Sir Bernard Paget in 1952. It was his personality, foresight, commitment and determination that ensured the survival of the Corps. His fighting call:
Onwards and Upwards – you are a great Corps, so continue to keep it that way and show the Army lead.
The Council agreed that officer-cadets at Sandhurst could apply to join and in 1958 Second Lieutenant John Landholt was the first Regular subaltern to be commissioned. In 1961 Captain Derek Hawker gained a competitive vacancy to Staff College by scoring a minimum of seventy per cent in all papers. He was followed by Major Brian Parritt. In 1965, Major Hawker, then commanding the Depot, produced the first History of the Intelligence Corps in The Rose and The Laurel. Major Parritt then persuaded the Intelligence Corps Association to publish The Intelligencers, his study of British military intelligence up t
o 1914, a project extended to include the First World War and which was reprinted by Pen & Sword Books in 2010.
In April, the Defence White Paper proposed calling up the last National Service intake in January 1960. Regular other ranks would serve a minimum of six years. The Army was to be reduced in size by means of disbanding and amalgamating regiments, and BAOR was to be reduced from 77,000 to 64,000 men. The defence strategy would be nuclear and overseas garrisons would also be reduced. To redress the reduction, the Strategic Reserves would be strengthened by a larger Territorial Army. To meet crisis, the Strategic Reserve was strengthened and the concept of autonomous Brigade Groups capable of operating overseas established.
To address the shortage of senior officers in the Corps, on 6 July 1957, the Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff issued Defence Council Instruction 281/57:
A permanent cadre of regular officers in the Intelligence Corps is to be formed and will provide a part of the officers required for intelligence duties in the Army. The cadre will consist of 100 officers. The remaining requirement will continue to be found by the present system.
‘The remaining requirement’ was Army and Royal Marines officers filling Staff intelligence appointments. lt was envisaged that the cadre would:
…not only improve the work of the Intelligence Corps through a better understanding of the use which is made of completed Intelligence work, but suitably qualified permanent regular Intelligence Corps officers would also have an opportunity to compete with other areas for promotion in appropriate branches of the Staff.
Sharing the Secret Page 33
