Sharing the Secret: The History of the Intelligence Corps 1940–2010

By Nicholas van der Bijl

While written under the auspices of the Trustees of the Military Intelligence Museum, Sharing the Secret is not an academic regimental history. Rather it gives a privileged glimpse into a necessarily publicity-shy organization that has been deeply involved in military intelligence operations since its inception in 1940 through to 2010. Understandably, little has been written about the Corps' work for Official Secret reasons.The development of Field Security and Protective Security and measures taken to protect the Army for espionage, sabotage, subversion and terrorism in peace and war are examined. These tasks were particularly important during the de-Nazification of Germany during the aftermath of the Second World War. Field Security led to the successful arrest of leading Nazis, including Himmler and Doenitz.The author, who served in the Corps for over 20 years and saw active service in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, gives fascinating examples of differing Intelligence techniques in action. These include the exploitation of Imagery Interpretation, Human Intelligence, including the interrogation of prisoners of war, the examination of enemy documents and the deployment of Signals Intelligence so that commanders have enough information to fight the battles. The support the Intelligence Corps gave to the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War is well covered, as are examples of Special Duties since 1945.The reader will appreciate that, as with any work relating to national intelligence and security, Sharing the Secret has been written under the restrictions of the era. That said, it provides a long-overdue insight into the contribution of members of the Intelligence Corps over seventy years of war and peace.As featured in Burnham & Highbridge News

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473831766

Nicholas van der Bijl

Married with a daughter, Nick van der Bijl served 30 years in the Army, mainly in the Intelligence Corps, that included 3 Commando Brigade throughout the Falklands campaign, three years in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. His second career was as an NHS security manager; also a Justice of the Peace for fifteen years. He is a Trustee of the Military Intelligence Museum. He is retired. He has written a number of books about the Falklands War.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Formation of the BEF Intelligence Corps

Information is the soul of business

Speaker Harley, 1704

As the guns fell silent on 11 November 1918, the Allies left their muddy trenches and occupied a Germany shattered by the Armistice and political faction-fighting. Part of the occupying British Army of the Rhine was the Intelligence Corps. Hurriedly formed in August 1914 to support the British Expeditionary Force sent to France, the Corps of thirty-two carefully selected officers and 136 other ranks now providing intelligence support to General Headquarters and other occupation elements; counter-intelligence from the Intelligence Police and propaganda, in other words psychological operations, and censorship drove into Cologne, but as demobilization and the global impact of an influenza epidemic bit, some difficulty was experienced in finding soldiers with suitable languages and aptitude to undertake routine Intelligence and security tasks.

But, first – what is military intelligence? Using a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation definition as a basis:

…intelligence is the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation and interpretation of information concerning foreign nations, hostile or potentially hostile forces or elements, or areas of actual or potential operations’

Intelligence generally falls into two divisions. Basic or strategic intelligence relates to economic, political, sociological, industrial and military information of foreign countries and regions. While all information is accessible, the ease of its availability depends on the measures to defend it. Targets may be friend or foe. Current or tactical intelligence is the interpretation of recent activities, trends and patterns to predict a risk or threat. Fundamental to the development of the intelligence product is the Intelligence Cycle, a circular sequence of four mutually supporting processes:

Direction. Deciding the Essential Elements of Intelligence and maintaining a continuous check on productivity.

Collection. The exploitation of agencies and sources to deliver information. Agencies can be largely described as formed bodies, such as security and intelligence services and allied forces. Sources include prisoners of war, refugees and border crossers, photography and informers.

Processing. The fusion of information into evaluated intelligence through exploitation, evaluation, analysis, integration and interpretation and graded according to the reliability of the source and co-lateral to other information.

Dissemination. The timely distribution of intelligence, in an appropriate form, without bias and not tailored to please the decision-maker. Methods include verbal briefings and Intelligence Summaries and Intelligence Reports. Intelligence is usually advisory.

Human Intelligence is the oldest source of information. Defined in the World English Dictionary as ‘military intelligence gained from human sources with knowledge of the target area’, it is susceptible to deliberate degradation by counter measures and misinterpretation through the syntax of language and regional and cultural knowledge. Document Exploitation is the collection of information from usually written formats, some of which may be classified and protected, such as newspapers, periodicals, books and the Internet. Battlefields are littered with documents – orders, sketches, maps, notepads, personal letters, documents found on prisoners of war and in the pockets and equipment of the dead. The sheer volume can overwhelm the capability to extract meaningful information in a timely manner. Luck and chance plays a major part in finding valuable information. Communication intercepts, such from signal flags, heliographs, radio communications, electronics and telemetry, now known as Signals Intelligence is also centuries old. It requires the main components of intercept equipment, analysts to interpret the traffic and the ability to interpret codes. But, its exploitation has one major problem that some sources are considered so precious that the intelligence gained is not always shared, in order to protect the source. Not infrequently, this has cost lives. Imagery and Photographic Intelligence is relatively new. Once confined to ground views imagery, as balloons and aircraft appeared, air and satellite photographic interpretation as an important intelligence platform can be revealing.

Protective Security and counter-intelligence set out to create a series of mutually supporting defensive systems to deter and defeat espionage, sabotage and subversion by hostile intelligence services and, more recently, terrorism. As an island nation, the British have been successful in deploying counter-measures against internal and external threats – Spanish subversion during the Elizabethan era, the French Revolution, Irish republicanism, Nazism and Communism. One advantage is a most effective trench, the English Channel, and its guardians, the Royal Navy. The most dangerous threats usually originated via the back door – Ireland. For centuries, the geopolitics of European politics meant the Army never really knew when it was going to mobilize but when it was, it did so as an expeditionary force reliant upon its allies for current intelligence. While continental nations had plenty of opportunities to collect strategic intelligence, the British ran the risks associated with espionage.

Once on operations, an efficient intelligence machine was usually built but at the cost of defeats and long casualty lists. Between the Fourteenth and Seventeenth centuries, the Chief Scoutmaster, essentially the director of military intelligence reporting to the Quartermaster General, had the same status as the Chief Engineer and Master of Ordnance. During the Napoleonic Wars, in 1803, the Quartermaster General formed the Depot of Military Knowledge to collect information, prepare mobilization and contingency plans, make maps and start a library of past operations so that lessons could be learnt for the future. It established the close relationship between the sapper and intelligencer. But after victory in 1815 at Waterloo and the British withdrew from Europe, the Depot withered until only the Topographical Branch remained. For the next forty years, Britain concentrated on the Empire but serious intelligence failures during the Crimean War (1854-1856) saw recriminations. It also saw the birth pangs of the modern Intelligence Corps, although it would take 100 years to achieve total fruition. In an age of new technology also driving military strategy and tactics, the Royal United Services Institution (RUSI) was instrumental in publishing articles on the development of warfare. One young officer predicting in the 1860s that trench warfare would replace the ‘thin red line’ was criticized by senior officers. Reorganization in the War Office in 1871 saw the Topographical and Statistical Branch formed during Secretary of State for War Edward Cardwell’s reforms of the Army with the Statistical Departmental collecting strategic information on foreign forces from foreign newspapers, collating reports from military attachés and gathering covert intelligence of foreign fortresses and ports.

Two years later, Cardwell formed the Intelligence Branch. The Army remained focused on the Empire, in particular the ‘Great Game’ confrontation in Afghanistan as Russia set out to protect its borders in, arguably, the first Cold War. The Indian Intelligence Branch collected information on the threat. With the Duke of Cambridge, as Commander in Chief, resisting change, the Intelligence Branch faced an uphill struggle until Lieutenant General Sir Henry Brackenbury sowed the seeds of modern military intelligence as the first Director of Military Intelligence (1886-1891). With the new Intelligence Division part of the Adjutant General’s Branch, he replicated it with Field Intelligence Detachments reporting to campaign Directors of Intelligence, although their effectiveness depended on the attitude of commanders in chief. During the Second South African War, Major General Sir John Ardagh (1896-1901) was heavily criticized for failing to predict Boer preparations until it emerged after the war that his threat assessments, all accurate, had not been shown to the Cabinet by the War Office. After several defeats, Colonels George Henderson, Charles Hume and David Henderson, successively Directors of Military Intelligence (South Africa), deployed Field Intelligence Detachments in columns pursuing Boer commandos during the pacification phase. The first mention of an Intelligence Corps appears to have been when a Boer burgher named Theroux formed the Intelligence Corps in 1899. By the end of the war, the twelve original intelligence officers had grown to 132 intelligence officers, 2,321 other ranks and thousands of Africans, a feature of intelligence that is still evident today. Several outstanding officers reached very senior ranks, notably William Robertson who enlisted as a Private and retired as Field Marshal.

The decade after the Boer War saw the General Staff and the Intelligence functions absorbed into the new Directorate of Military Operations. In 1907, David Henderson suggested that an Intelligence Corps should be formed. One dominion that took note was Australia which formed the Australian Intelligence Corps in December. During that year, the Security Service Bureau was formed as Military Operations 5 to address the growing internal threats to national security. Military Operations 6 dealt with medical intelligence. Two years later the Bureau split, to form the Security Service from Military Operations 5 and the Security Intelligence Service from medical intelligence to address foreign intelligence. Henderson, now a Major General, had transferred to military flying to exploit intelligence from the third flank – the air.

When war with Germany broke out in August 1914, a hastily assembled Intelligence Corps of fourteen Regular, Territorial or Reserve officers and forty-one Temporary Commissioned second lieutenants formed up to accompany the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). In addition, twenty-four Metropolitan Police Special Branch linguists were recruited into the Intelligence Police as counter-intelligence non commissioned officers (NCO). For administrative expediency, all ranks in the Intelligence Corps were enrolled into the 10th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, Intelligence (B), later 10th (B) Royal Fusiliers. ‘B’ denoted counter-intelligence. The regiment formed at least forty-six battalions. The Corps Adjutant, Captain Dunnington-Jefferson, was a Royal Fusilier. As the war moved from fluidity to the positional strategy of trench warfare, the historically favoured intelligence arm, the cavalry, was rendered impotent and aerial reconnaissance flying over enemy lines contributed to shaping strategy. But British military thinking gained from Imperial campaigns against poorly-armed enemies was ill-equipped to fight a well-organized enemy in a technological age soon foundered with catastrophic casualties, several major defeats again proving that intelligence is more reliable than elan. Brigadier-General John Charteris, General Douglas Haig’s Director of Intelligence, committed the cardinal sin of manipulating information he thought Haig wanted, as opposed to painting an accurate intelligence picture, and was dismissed from his post in 1917. Other Intelligence Corps were formed for the fronts at Gallipoli and Greece. The East African Intelligence Department recruited agents from among big game hunters and Africans in the war against the Germans. The Middle East Intelligence Branch proved successful in fighting that was rarely positional. Deception became important. Human Intelligence remained important, including information supplied by Imperial prisoners of war using codes to report intelligence from inside Germany. Train spotting was a valuable activity. Intelligence Corps agents were among the first to be dropped by parachute. Refugees and travellers were screened at British ports. In Ireland, a system of district military officers was created, countering the ambitions of the IRA. By 1918, the Intelligence Corps in France had expanded to 3,000 of all ranks with, in general terms, officers engaged in intelligence while other ranks conducted protective security and counter-intelligence activities. Great Britain conducted counter-insurgency in Ireland between 1919 and 1921, but, as had happened before and would happen again, intelligence systems and processes quickly had fallen into disuse. HQ 5th Division in Ireland later reported:

One of the great obstacles to intelligence was the almost universal ignorance of all ranks as to what intelligence might be. It was generally regarded as secret service and nothing else, and comparatively few realized that conditions in Ireland emphasized the importance of the words that in war the bulk of all intelligence is, or should be, obtained by fighting troops. The first lesson we learn therefore is the necessity for a thoroughly good intelligence system so that the Government’s advisers may be in a position to appreciate the situation justly and to put it squarely, fully and honestly before the Cabinet.

An Irish Republican Army (IRA) intelligence coup in 1920 resulted in the killing and wounding of members of the Cairo Gang, a group of intelligence officers who had gained their experience in the Middle East.

By late 1922, as the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission took over from the Military Government, the War Office took responsibility for counter-intelligence. The Directorate of Military Intelligence was re-absorbed into the Directorate of Military Operations, nevertheless, the pre-war Directorate system of maintaining a card index of officers who could be formed into an Intelligence Corps, particularly those who spoke a foreign language or with intelligence experience, was kept. No such system was developed for other ranks. Intelligence as a subject was excluded from the Royal Military Academies at Woolwich and Sandhurst and at the Staff Colleges, indeed Field Marshal Douglas Haig said ‘Intelligence is a rather special kind of work and has a very small place in the Army in peacetime’. While commanding I Corps in 1914, he had rejected Intelligence Corps support. By 1925, the recognition of emerging states in Eastern Europe and normalization of relations with Germany agreed by the Treaty of Lucarno resulted in HQ British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) moving to Wiesbaden. The agreed merging of intelligence and civil affairs saw the Intelligence Corps exchange the word ‘counter-intelligence’ in favour of ‘security’ with its implications of protection. This led to the wartime Intelligence Police being renamed the Field Security Police (FSP). Most of their work was in civilian clothes. Nevertheless, the Corps was fully occupied addressing the spread of communism, the rise in National Socialism and opposition to the occupation. By 1928 predictions in Intelligence Summaries submitted by Directorate of Military Intelligence to the Committee of Imperial Defence about German resurgence were rejected on the grounds that they did not fit the profile of a defeated nation. By the time that HQ (BAOR) left Wiesbaden in December 1929, the Intelligence Corps had effectively become the Civil Affairs and Security Section. Its Rear Party included Major Kenneth Strong (Royal Scots Fusiliers), a former intelligence officer.

In 1931 War Office contingency planning for war in Europe continued the strategy of remobilizing the BEF to France and that it would be accompanied by a 175-strong Intelligence Corps. This 1922 Manual of Military Intelligence in the Field:

The best sources of supply for the Intelligence Corps will be the professional and literary classes, also public schools, universities, banks and commercial houses with overseas branches or trade connections with foreign countries.

While the principle demonstrated that the War Office had recognized that the management of intelligence and counter-intelligence requires skills and talents outside conventional military thinking, the figure of seventy officers and 120 other ranks to support the BEF General Headquarters (GHQ), I and II Corps and their cavalry, infantry and lines of communications divisions was well short of the wartime establishment in 1918 but nearly equated to the Intelligence Corps which entered occupied Germany. The 1936 Establishment listed an infantry division intelligence section to consist of an intelligence officer, two cipher officers, eight other rank cipher clerks and three batmen. Lines of communications sections were to have four intelligence officers, six cipher officers and six other rank cipher clerks and three officers and twenty-seven FSP sections spread between Cherbourg and Le Havre, with eighteen-man sections for each additional port. A definition of lines of communications is:

A route, either land, water or air, which connects an operating military force with a base of operations and along which supplies and military forces move.

In addition, the Royal Air Force Bomber Wings and Army Co-operation Squadrons were to be supported with an air photographic interpretation function. The Corps would be supported by Royal Army Service Corps clerks and drivers, Royal Engineer draughtsmen, Royal Artillery attached to the Army Co-Operation squadrons and Royal Signals cipher officers encoding and decoding classified signals, not forgetting batmen for officers. The 1931, 1936 and 1937 War Establishments also applied to Home and Overseas Commands raising Intelligence Corps from within their own resources. Mobilization was to be administered from Tournai Barracks, Aldershot by an officer appointed as Adjutant and Mobilizing Officer. The plan was:

Phase One. M+4 (Mobilization Day plus four days). Deployment of forty-six officers and ninety other ranks to support General Headquarters, HQ Lines of Communication and I Corps.

Phase Two. M+13. Deployment of fourteen officers and twenty-five other ranks to II Corps. It was also envisaged that each Corps would be commanded by a major, designated as the Commandant, commanding 300 Field Security Police spread in Field Security.

The Security Service had performed well during the First World War and adequately against the wily IRA but it lacked sufficient resources to create a security cocoon around the country to vet immigration. When in 1937, E (Port and Border Security) Branch was formed to address the threats of infiltration by hostile intelligence services during a war, Major Strong, who had been posted to the Directorate of Military Intelligence, injected energy into the review of national defence by inviting Captain Frank Davis MC (Glosters) to lunch with him and the Security Service founder and Director-General, Major General Vernon Kell. Davis was a former Intelligence Corps officer who had served in Ireland and was fluent in French and German and who had worked for Strong in Germany when he had advertised for officers to monitor the German press and periodicals. Although Davis had retired in 1935, Kell persuaded him to accept two months’ consultancy on a captain’s pay and develop a plan to deploy military counter-intelligence Home Port Security Sections (HPSS) at large ports to support his Port Security Officers and Security Control Officers, most of whom most were former First World War officers. As Davis explained the Home Port Security function to Chief Constables, it became clear his consultancy period was woefully inadequate; nevertheless, he proposed that the sections of an officer and thirteen other ranks should be raised locally under the cloak of the Corps of Military Police.

As the threat of combined aggression – from the tripartite Axis of Germany flexing its muscles in Europe, Italy expanding in northern Africa, and Japan eyeing up the Far East – escalated global tension, in 1938 General Hastings Ismay, Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, authorized detailed mobilization planning. Thus far, economic contractions throughout the Armed Forces had restricted the development of operational intelligence to table top planning and assumption that the battlefield would be static trench warfare. Although Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain cheerfully returned from meeting Adolf Hitler in September waving his ‘peace in our time’ note, anxiety filtered across Great Britain.

Captain Davis was then asked by Major Strong to train Field Security Police to manage Defence Security, the name given to the combination of protective security and counter-intelligence. Hitherto, training Field Security was a military police responsibility. Unable to separate office accommodation at the Corps of Military Police Depot at Mytchett, Davis negotiated two sections of a hut for the ‘Security Section, Corps of Military Police’ and then ran fourteen-day courses for intakes of twelve Regular other ranks nearing the end of their service and liable to be recalled to the Colours in the event of mobilization. Subjects included interrogation, the maintenance of morale through security awareness and counter-propaganda, and developing orders of battle, in particular of Germany. The course was taught on a need to know basis with lecture notes destroyed at the end. Those who passed were inducted as Corps of Military Police. Davis was helped by Captain S.H.C. Woolrych OBE, a First World War intelligence officer and second in command; Captain L. Wallerstein as the Military Training Officer; and Captain John de Vine as Adjutant. Sergeant William Smith was the Company Sergeant Major. The Orderly Room of eight included five Auxiliary Territorial Service. They continued the involvement of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in intelligence during the First World War and were forerunners of the women who have played such an important role in the development of the Intelligence Corps.

Posted to the Directorate of Military Intelligence in October 1937 as a General Staff Officer, Grade 2 Military Intelligence 1 (Administration, Personnel and Training), GSO 2 MI (Administration) was Major Gerald Templer, with a remit to review intelligence mobilization planning. Born in 1898 in Colchester, he had served with the Royal Irish Fusiliers in France from 1916. Templer found an immediate problem. Checking the card index of reserve officers, he found that it had been neglected and that of the 100 listed on the Regular Army Reserve of Officers list, just thirty were still eligible to be recalled to the Colours, of whom several were former Intelligence Corps – not enough to fill the intelligence officer slots. A search of the new volunteer Army Officers Emergency Reserve led to an additional 180 officers being talent-spotted for War Office and BEF intelligence appointments but while linguistic and academic abilities and business acumen were evident, most lacked basic military skills.

In March 1939, Colonel K.G. Martin, Deputy Director of Military Intelligence, advised Eric Shearer, joint managing director of Fortnum and Mason, that in the event of war he would be appointed Commandant, School for Intelligence Training at Minley Manor, near Camberley. Shearer was a former Indian Army officer who had served in the Directorate during the 1920s.

With those officers selected for intelligence appointments paying course fees, Templer and Shearer held the first of two introductory General Intelligence courses at the Royal United Services Institute over nine evenings between 7 March and 4 April. The eighteen lectures included Intelligence in the Field, Air Intelligence, Defence Security, the Intelligence Office, an introduction to the German Army and interrogation, during which Templer acted as a German prisoner. The courses allowed the Directorate of Military Intelligence officers to assess the aptitude of the delegates and test their language skills. Home Command intelligence officers attended ten day courses. Unfortunately, inexpert instruction weakened the quality of teaching; nevertheless, it was better than nothing.

Against the backdrop of the May 1939 Military Training Act enforcing conscription for all men aged between 18 and 41 years, Templer also talent-spotted several Emergency Reserve officers, all aged over 30 years, doing their best to avoid being assigned into military employment not of their choice and despatched them on a weekend Field Security Officer (FSO) course at Mytchett to equip them to command FSP sections. He also selected several ex-cavalry officers with good German and French, later known as the Twelve Apostles, to act as GHQ liaison officers. One was Captain Sir Basil Bartlett. King’s Messengers couriered classified documents to and from the War Office.

Between 3 July and 12 August, three weeks before war broke out, Colonel Martin organized a second course at RUSI for 150 delegates run by officers earmarked as Intelligence School instructors. Although still lacking sufficient linguists, Templer ensured that every intelligence appointment at the Military Intelligence Directorate, with the BEF and in Home Commands was filled, but few officers had been tested in action and there was no flexibility in the event of casualties. One of those selected was Arnold Ridley, who later achieved fame as the medical orderly in BBC Television’s Dad’s Army. While serving in the Somerset Light infantry during the First World War, he had been severely wounded and was invalided out but he apparently told no-one. When the GHQ sought four additional intelligence officers, only three were available and the fourth was found in the Emergency Reserve.

The Cabinet decision on 22 August not to mobilize disappointed the Service chiefs, however, it was rescinded two days later and Great Britain finally prepared for war with Germany. On 31 August, Captain (Retired) Arthur Sullivan (Queen’s) had accepted a proposal from Templer in 1938 that he be appointed the BEF Intelligence Corps Adjutant/Mobilizing Officer. The next day, as Germany invaded Poland, Sullivan, dressed in his old uniform, reported to the Corps mobilization unit, the 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (1 Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders) at Blenheim Barracks, Aldershot where he was allocated the only space available – the Sports Store. Helped by a formidable warrant officer Chief Clerk from the War Office and equipped with trestle tables, chairs and a typewriter and, working from 6.00am to 11.00pm, they soon developed an efficient administration to mobilize the Intelligence Corps. Equipment and transport was collected by grabbing ‘the first officers returning from leave, handing them a list of certain items and sent them off to draw our needs’, Sullivan later claimed that ‘If I was the mother of the Intelligence Corps, Colonel Templer, who had carried out all the planning, was its father’.

The FSP arriving from Mytchett were already formed into fourteen-strong sections of a Field Security Officer, usually an Intelligence Corps captain, his batman/driver, the Company Sergeant Major, two sergeants, four corporals and five lance-corporals. At Aldershot they collected a car for the officer and motor-cycles, other equipment and movement orders. The intelligence officers were a different matter. Some were serving Regulars and Territorial Army while others were First World War veterans gazetted onto the General List as honorary second lieutenants with no power of command, as instructed in the Manual of Military Intelligence in the Field (1939), but insisting on wearing their previous commissioned rank badges. Such were the complexities of the mobilization administration that some officers were financially embarrassed when their pay details did not follow them and a few families of other ranks experienced hardship when separation allowances were not received. A large number of officers and men were briefly declared ‘hors de combat’ after inoculations. The lack of a Depot meant that some officers were told to go home until they received their movement orders, thereby denying them the esprit de corps so important to the British Army.

CHAPTER TWO

The BEF Intelligence Corps September 1939 to July 1940

On 3 September, as the nation crowded around wirelesses to listen to Prime Minister Chamberlain announcing that Great Britain was at war with Germany, the Home Port Security Sections (HPSS) mobilized and the Field Security Police sections joined their formations and Home Commands. Lieutenant Colonel Shearer and several friends whom he had appointed as instructors assembled outside White’s Club in London and drove to Minley Manor in two cars. Captain Bartlett attended No. 1 Intelligence Course and then went to France. Major Thomas Robbins MC (Lancashire Fusiliers), a former Rio Tinto director, also attended the course but, having been appointed as an instructor on the German Army and interrogation, he found that there was no information on the latter. Incognito, he solved the dilemma by trawling second-hand bookshops in Brussels for books and pamphlets.

It had been intended that GHQ and the Intelligence Corps would assemble in adjoining barracks in Aldershot, but when the threat of air raids led to the Headquarters moving to Camberley, mobilization plans were thrown into chaos as officers and men reported to the wrong locations. Communications collapsed when telephones were not connected. Equipment arrived in single consignments but lacked unit or branch address labels. Some demands never appeared. Fortunately, the organizational abilities of Captain Sullivan and his Chief Clerk prevented the Corps mobilization developing into a shambles so that a day after the declaration of war, 15 (HQ Lines of Communication) FSP landed at Cherbourg and deployed to Le Mans to be followed the next day by 7 (HQ 1 Corps) and 10 (Port Security, Cherbourg) FSP sections as the Royal Navy shepherded 1 Corps from Southampton to Cherbourg, where the troops then boarded trains for the 250-mile journey to their defensive positions in northern France. Vehicles followed lines of communication routes from Brest and St Nazaire. On 11 September, in a unique event, the Intelligence Corps paraded under command of its Commandant, Major The Honourable Bertram Foljambe, a 1914 intelligence officer and a Reserve officer, and then crossed to France. On 22 September, II Corps began deploying. When 4 FSP, then supporting 3rd Infantry Division commanded by Major General Bernard Montgomery, was instructed at Mytchett to collect its Ford and thirteen motorcycles from a rubbish tip, the FSO, Captain Langdon, asked, ‘Hands up those who can ride a motorbike!’ Half could. The rest had a day to learn. On the drive from Cherbourg, on 20 October two NCOs were knocked off their motorcycles by a French driver at St Lo.

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 Intelligence) 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