SOE in 100 Objects E-Book

Belinda Curwen

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 543

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

By the summer of 1940, as France fell and war raged across Europe, the invasion of Britain – once unthinkable – seemed all but inevitable. It would take fresh thinking and bold moves to turn the tide of the war: a challenge that Churchill and his Cabinet would be set to conquer in no small part due to their formation of a 'fifth column'. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was soon born, its purpose to hamstring the enemy from the shadows. Agents drawn from diverse professions and countries were trained in subversion and espionage before being dropped behind enemy lines to mobilise resistance and disrupt the occupying forces. From local operations in France and wider Europe, SOE's missions would spread worldwide to pave the way for D-Day and help halt the Axis war machine in its tracks. SOE in 100 Objects picks up the clues they left behind – a button compass in Greece, a silk map in Burma – and follows their trail across land and sea, from moonlight flights to high-risk missions and, ultimately, hard-won liberation.

Leseprobe

Spirit of resistance, sculptural relief designed by Gervase Cowell. The memorial plaque, unveiled by HRH The Princess Royal on 20 April 2004, is dedicated to ‘all the men and women who served with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) at home and overseas during the Second World War’. The relief depicts an SOE agent parachuting into occupied territory to fan the flame of resistance behind the lines.

For Amanda, Flavia, Griselda, Cressida and Venetia

First published 2025

The History Press

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www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Belinda Curwen, 2025

The right of Belinda Curwen to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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ISBN 978 1 8039 9612 7

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Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Foreign Terms

1 Spirit of Resistance

2 Schools for Saboteurs

3 Winston’s Wizards

4 Moonless Voyages

North Sea

Channel Sea

5 Moonlight Flights

6 Behind the Lines

7 Eyes for Spies

8 Wireless Wars

9 In Hostile Waters

10 Strategic Operations 1941–

11 Arrest and Resistance

12 Homeward Bound

13 In Memoriam

Postscript

Notes

Bibliography

Photo Credits

Acknowledgements

Preface

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

The past ‘speaks, don’t it’, mused the gruff archaeologist Basil Brown in the acclaimed period drama The Dig (2021). Set against the sweeping skies of Suffolk, The Dig recounts the dramatic discovery on the eve of the Second World War of the spectacular Sutton Hoo burial ship, with its dazzling trove of gold-and-garnet treasures (AD 600–650). Among the Anglo-Saxon masterpieces unearthed, a splendid battle helmet, bristling with martial motifs, now takes its place alongside the ninety-nine other ‘objects’ explored in A History of the World in 100 Objects.1 The pioneering project – a collaboration between the British Museum and the BBC – precipitated a surge of popular interest in object-led histories – and object-led books – of which SOE in 100 Objects is among the latest examples.

What lies behind the widespread appeal of telling stories through ‘things’ and why have historians turned increasingly to material objects, or ‘material culture’, as a complementary means of exploring history?2 Much like time capsules, concrete objects can conjure up a tangible sense of connection with other cultures and times in a way that text-based evidence alone cannot. A Viking langskip (longship), Celtic chalice or covert wartime compass (object 20) – all have the power to pivot us across space and time into another realm and to connect imaginatively with people and events from another era. The connection is always human, linking people, now and then. In the words of the historian Serena Dyer, ‘Objects are omnipresent, and act as a uniquely sympathetic point of connection between humans, past and present.’3

The time-defying objects here help us to relate to the people who played a part in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Winston Churchill’s secret army of fifth columnists, who were rapidly mustered and mobilised at a critical watershed in world history as a tidal wave of Nazi tyranny threatened to engulf Europe in the summer of 1940 (object 1). After intensive training, SOE’s secret saboteurs dropped behind enemy lines to kindle the ‘spirit of resistance’, hobble the enemy from the shadows and pave the way for D-Day, when the Allies would return in force to free all occupied countries.

What’s unusual and especially intriguing about the objects explored in this book is that few can be taken at face value. Many were, in fact, brilliantly designed to deceive and dissemble – either by hiding a secret or by hiding in plain sight, much like stick insects. Camouflage, of course, was far from new, but SOE’s backroom boffins took deception to new levels. Covert wireless sets, for example, were disguised as Continental suitcases (objects 23 and 24), while booby-trapped sabotage devices might be camouflaged as everyday commodities, such as wine bottles or coal (object 13). Other household objects – an ink-pen, hairbrush or telephone – might hide secret aids (objects 43 and 51), or be used in covert ways to transmit coded messages (object 50).

Whether hidden in plain sight, hiding a secret or used in secret ways, the undercover objects here trace the history of SOE, from its rapid rise in 1940 to its eventual demise at the close of hostilities in January 1946. Each object – like a clue on a trail, or a piece in a giant puzzle – can be explored by itself, with its own story, but it can also serve as a stepping stone on a long-haul journey, leading from war to peace, from oppression to hard-fought freedom.

Wherever feasible, the objects illustrated relate to specific missions or individuals, such as the rag dolls of Odette Sansom (object 86), the silk code sheet of a wireless operator (object 48), or the covert cameras of agents in the field, who turned their lens on secret worlds behind the lines (objects 53–58). Cameras and other creative devices can act as particularly dynamic intersection points, with the capacity to connect not only with a long line of photographers behind the lens but also to generate yet more time capsules, such as strips of microprints that, in turn, open more windows on unexplored worlds.

As with any journey, everyone will come away with their own discoveries. Among the most inspiring takeaways for me are the game-changing human qualities that underpinned the SOE story. Many of us will, for example, be awed by the spectrum of courage that unfolds across these pages, ranging from daring raids on enemy bays to solitary moral stands in prison cells (objects 76–77, 86–91 and postscript).

Just as remarkable and inspiring in many ways was the blue-sky creativity of SOE’s best strategists, agents and engineers, who pushed out the boundaries of what was possible in impossible situations.4 At home stations, for example, the restless, problem-solving creativity of SOE’s ‘Q’ boffins, such as the lateral-thinking cryptographer Leo Marks, inspired new ways of outsmarting the enemy, as touched on above (objects 19–29). Equally, in the field innovative solutions emerged. The wireless operator Georges Bégué dreamt up the far-reaching tactic of messages personelles as the simplest and safest system for fast-track covert communiqués (object 60). In similar vein, both Harry Rée and Michael Trotobas developed smart and humane ways of undermining enemy infrastructure (object 78), while Virginia Hall and Christine Granville staged brilliant jailbreaks to free captive colleagues (objects 47 and 95).

Few such smart strategies, however, could have succeeded without a shadow network of ‘kind strangers’, most of whom remain unsung.5 Like an invisible safety net, a host of silent helpers – from French farmers to Burmese villagers and Sami herders – quietly risked their lives to shelter, support and safeguard undercover operatives, facilitating the success of their missions and, more often than not, their safe return home (objects 92–97).

Lastly, perhaps most striking of all, is the enduring resonance of SOE’s ‘spirit of resistance’ and ‘just’ fight for freedom and human rights6 – the ‘oxygen of humanity’ – a cause as relevant today as it was eighty years ago.7

Abbreviations

AFO

Anti-Fascist Organisation, Burma

AIF

Australian Imperial Force

BCRA

Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action, France (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations)

BNA

Burma National Army

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency, USA

CLE

Central Landing Establishment

CLH

Calcutta Light Horse

CND

Chinese National Dollar

CNR

Conseil National de la Résistance (National Council of Resistance)

DF

direction-finding

DSO

Distinguished Service Order

EDES

National Republican League, Greece

ELAS

People’s Liberation Army, Greece

F

SOE’s country section for France

F–S

Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife

FANY

First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

FFI

French Forces of the Interior

FO

Foreign Office

GDR

German Democratic Republic

Gestapo

Geheime Staatspolizei (secret military police, Nazi)

GFP

Geheime Feldpolizei (secret field police, Nazi)

HQ

headquarters

ICC

International Camp Committee, Buchenwald

ISLD

Inter-Service Liaison Department (also known as MI6)

LFP

Levant Fishing Patrol (SOE caique fleet)

MBE

Member of the British Empire

MC

Military Cross

MEW

Ministry of Economic Warfare

MFAA

Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives

MGB

motor gunboat

MI5

Military Intelligence, Home

MI6

Military Intelligence, Foreign

MI9

Military Intelligence, Escape

MI14

Military Intelligence, Germany

MSC

motorised submersible canoe

N

SOE’s country section for the Netherlands

NID

Naval Intelligence Department

NPS

National Pigeon Service

OBE

Order of the British Empire

OSS

Office of Strategic Services (US intelligence agency, SOE’s counterpart)

PE

plastic explosive

POW

prisoner of war

PWE

Political Warfare Executive

RAF

Royal Air Force

RAN

Royal Australian Navy

RF

SOE’s Gaullist country section for France

SD

Sicherheitsdienst (security service of the SS)

SFHQ

Special Forces Headquarters

SHAEF

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force

SIS

Secret Intelligence Service (alternative name for MI6)

SMP

Shanghai Municipal Police

SOA

Special Operations Australia

SOE

Special Operations Executive

SS

Schutzstaffel (protection squadron)

STS

Special Training School

UNRRA

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency

VPK

Vest Pocket Kodak

W/T

wireless telegraphy

WAAC

War Artists Advisory Committee

WAAF

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

WOK

worked-out key

X

SOE country section for Germany

Foreign Terms

Abwehr

German military intelligence

Andartes

Greek Resistance members

Geheime Staatspolizei

Gestapo (Nazi Secret Military Police)

Cichociemni

the Silent Unseen, elite Polish Paratroops

Funkabwehr

Nazi radio intelligence

Geheime Feldpolizei

Nazi secret field police

Gestapo

Nazi secret state police

Hauptsturmführer

head storm leader (senior commander)

Kempeitai

Japanese military police

Kommandørkaptein

Norwegian commander

Kapteinløytnant

Norwegian lieutenant commander

Kriegsmarine

German navy

Luftwaffe

German air force

Milice française (la milice)

Vichy French militia

Nacht und Nebel

Hitler’s Night and Fog Decree (1941)

Obersturmführer

senior storm leader (junior commander)

Reichsprotektor

governor

Schutzstaffel (SS)

Protection Squadron

Shetlandsbussen

Shetland Bus

Shetlandsgjengen

Shetland Gang

Sicherheitsdienst (SD)

security service of the SS

Wehrmacht

unified armed forces of Nazi Germany

Spirit of Resistance

1. AN INTRODUCTION: PROPAGANDA POSTER, c. 1940

‘Well, posters were everywhere’, in village halls and city squares, on shopfronts and subway walls, recalled a wartime air warden during a post-war interview.1 In an era before television or the internet, posters – alongside film and radio – played a pivotal role in informing, encouraging and unifying the nation.

The upbeat poster shown overleaf – portraying the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill in buoyant mood beneath a phalanx of Hurricanes – expressed a spirit of defiance in the face of the Nazi threat engulfing Europe in the summer of 1940. The poster was produced in the immediate aftermath of Churchill’s inaugural speech of 13 May, promising, ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’, and closing with his signature rallying call, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength’.2

But behind the stirring speeches and graphic posters, secret plans were under way to fight a different type of war, a shadow war behind the lines to fan the flames of resistance and pave the way for D-Day. At the time, Britain faced an uncertain future. The Nazi blitzkrieg had blazed across much of Europe, culminating in the devastating evacuation of Dunkirk in May and the Fall of France in June. The invasion of Britain, once unthinkable, now seemed inevitable – but Churchill’s War Cabinet resolved to try every means to turn the tide.

One of their boldest moves was the formation of a fifth column to fight a subversive war behind the lines and hamstring the enemy from the shadows. The idea of an irregular shadow war was far from new. Pre-war models included the strategies of Lawrence of Arabia during the First World War and the Irish Sinn Féin in the interwar years.

Churchill himself had witnessed the potential of irregular warfare during the Boer War (1899–1902). Now it was time to put subversive theory into practice and undermine the enemy on its home ground.

With that end in mind, on 27 May 1940, Churchill’s new War Cabinet resolved to set up a ‘special organisation’: ‘We regard this form of activity as of the very highest importance. A special organisation will be required and plans to put these operations into effect should be prepared, and all the necessary preparations and training should be proceeded with as a matter of urgency.’3

The ‘special organisation’ that emerged in July 1940 hid behind many cover names but would be secretly known as the Special Operations Executive (SOE). On 16 July, Churchill summoned SOE’s newly appointed director, Dr Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare, to a midnight meeting and famously exhorted him to ‘set Europe ablaze’. Three days later, on the 19th, the founding charter of SOE was submitted by Neville Chamberlain: ‘A new organisation shall be established to coordinate all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas. This organisation will be known as the Special Operations Executive.’4 Within a week, on 22 July, the ‘new’ organisation was formally established.

New though it was, SOE did not start entirely from scratch. The foundations had already been laid in the late 1930s when the clouds of war were looming after Hitler had annexed Austria in 1938. In anticipation of future conflict, the British Government of the time had rapidly developed three separate secret services to explore the potential of subversive and irregular warfare: the War Office’s MI(R) (Military Intelligence, Research); the Secret Intelligence Service’s Section D (Destruction); and the Foreign Office’s Electra House, focused on propaganda.5

Now, all three pilot services would provide the building blocks for the nascent SOE, which soon subsumed the earlier secret services and renamed them SO1 (propaganda), SO2 (operations) and SO3 (planning). Within a year, SO1 was siphoned off from SOE to form a separate propaganda organisation, called the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), while SO2 and SO3, already closely linked, merged.

With the earlier secret services came some promising former operatives, among them the dynamic and imaginative Brigadier Colin Gubbins, DSO, MC. A veteran of both regular and irregular warfare, Gubbins would play an instrumental role in shaping and running SOE: first as its Director of Operations and Training, then from 1943 as its Executive Director (objects 2 and 8). Gubbins’ vision for SOE was insightful and inspired: according to his PA, Margaret Jackson, he ‘saw SOE’s role as part of the strategy to give people in the Nazi-occupied countries the hope of freedom – and to restore their honour’.6

Churchill wryly dubbed his new secret army the ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ and charged Dalton with two key missions: first, SOE should awaken and foster the spirit of resistance in Nazi-occupied countries; second, SOE should forge a force of specially trained fifth columnists tasked to hamstring the enemy from within and pave the way for D-Day, when the Allies would return to liberate all occupied countries.7 By the end of the conflict, SOE’s missions had reached across much of the globe.

Propaganda poster entitled ‘Let us go forward together’, produced by the Ministry of Information, c. 1940.

Turning from the shadow war to the propaganda war – the poster of Churchill rallying the nation was published throughout the war in more than one language to galvanise Allies across the globe. It appeared in countries as far flung as the British Mandate of Palestine (modern Israel), where its Palestinian calligraphy read, ‘We shall be Victorious’ and where SOE would train many of its agents destined for service in the Balkans, the Middle East, Italy and Greece (objects 55, 64–67, 73, 81 and 98). Closer to home, a surviving Czech poster, probably aimed at Czech resisters, carried the buoyant banner, ‘CECHOSLOVÁCI! HODINA VAŠEHO OSVOBOZENI PRIJDE!’ (‘Czechs! The hour of your liberation shall come!’)

2. SOE PLAQUE

It’s easy to miss the understated plaque highlighting SOE’s former headquarters at No. 64 Baker Street in Marylebone, London. In wartime, the upper floors were a hive of clandestine activity. Behind windows taped against bomb blast, SOE staff worked intensively, often late into the night, planning strategic missions from 1940 until the close of hostilities.

SOE – Churchill’s ‘secret army’ of fifth columnists – was rapidly pulled together in July 1940 in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s retreat from Dunkirk in May 1940 and the Fall of France in June. SOE’s mission to ‘set Europe ablaze’, as tasked by Churchill on 16 July, was more formally expressed in SOE’s charter of 19 July: ‘To co-ordinate all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas’ (object 1).8

To that end, the staff at No. 64 Baker Street served as SOE’s brain from October 1940 until January 1946 when the organisation was disbanded. Here SOE leaders took vital decisions that would affect agents in the field, resisters under occupation and, in some measure, the course of the war itself.

Baker Street was ideally located at the heart of the capital, within easy reach of Whitehall and just a stroll away from the Bakerloo Underground line, with links to London Paddington, Euston and St Pancras for overland routes across the UK.

Once established at No. 64 Baker Street on 31 October 1940, it was not long before SOE started filling up more of Baker Street with its varied subsections. By the winter of 1943, most of the western side of the street was occupied by SOE.9 A few doors down from No. 64, for example, Michael House at No. 82 hosted the ciphers and signals section. Further along the street, at No. 221, the clothing section turned out camouflage outfits to afford field agents some protection from detection (object 42). Immediately opposite Michael House, Norgeby House at No. 83 was home to the European country sections.

In many ways, Norgeby House lay at the heart of SOE operations for it was here that Brigadier Colin Gubbins, Head of Operations and Training, set up his offices and established a huge, sealed-off operations room on the first floor. It was here, too, that he organised SOE into independent country sections and decided to recruit women to the ‘firm’, as it became known to its staff and agents. In the words of his PA, Margaret Jackson, Gubbins ‘didn’t have any discrimination against women’.10

A plaque outside SOE’s headquarters at 64 Baker Street, London, describes SOE’s raison d’être as ‘a secret service which supported resistance in all enemy-occupied countries’.

In light of SOE’s Baker Street centricity, the undercover service soon earned its popular nickname ‘Baker Street Irregular’, playing on the link with the fictional Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes, who ran his investigations from 221B Baker Street. In his fight against crime, Holmes recruited a band of smart-thinking, street-savvy intelligence scouts, an ‘unofficial force’ of ‘Baker Street Irregulars’, who could ‘go everywhere’ and ‘see everything’.11 In similar vein, SOE’s agents represented an unofficial force that could get close to the enemy on its own turf.

As the headquarters of a secret service, No. 64 Baker Street remained out of bounds to all but authorised SOE staff. For interviews, briefings and debriefings with agents, SOE relied on a network of nearby ‘safe houses’ at local hotels and mansion-block apartments, clustered in Marylebone, Kensington, Westminster and Belgravia, as mapped out by Derwin Gregory’s recent research.12

Rooms in some thirty-two London hotels served as safe quarters for meetings between agents and staff.13 Most venues were assigned to specific country sections, enabling conferences with nearby governments-in-exile. The Dutch, for example, operated from rooms at the aptly named Vanderbilt Hotel, as well as at the Averard and Crofton Hotels. For the Norwegians, five London hotels provided safe quarters, among them the Broadway, Bailey’s and Brook Green Hotels. SOE’s French Section conducted affairs on an ad hoc basis at the Cadogan, Norfolk and Stanhope Court Hotels, while the German country section ran operations from the Alwin and Tudor Court Hotels. The Belgians were unique in utilising no fewer than eleven different London hotels during the war, among them the Dominion and Embassy Hotels. Other London hotels were earmarked as reserve safe quarters, extra offices or alternative interview venues. At the Victoria Hotel, for instance, a room on the third floor served as SOE’s consulting rooms where some prospective agents were interviewed (object 6).

Apart from hiring hotel rooms for meetings, briefings and debriefings, SOE also requisitioned a long chain of smart London mansion-block apartments for subsidiary command-and-control centres. Bryanston Court, for example, famously hosted a meeting between SOE and the Soviets, who had protested over SOE’s efforts to recruit Russians to the cause.14 Chiltern Court, the 1929 home of London’s leading literati, such as H.G. Wells, provided modernist offices for SOE’s Scandinavian Section. SOE’s Free French Section (RF) operated from No. 72 Berkeley Court, with its headquarters at No. 1 Dorset Square, where the energetic RF agent Wing Commander Forest ‘Tommy’ Yeo-Thomas was stationed. SOE’s independent French Section (F) conducted many of its briefings and some of its interviews at Orchard Court.

Further afield, up and down the breadth of Britain, Baker Street developed a countrywide web of some 176 dedicated facilities for varied purposes, including sixty-seven Special Training Schools (STSs), such as the Beaulieu Estate in the New Forest (object 8); sixty-two command-and-control centres, such as London’s Chiltern Court; twenty-two supply centres; eleven transport outfits; seven specialist research and development stations; and seven communications centres, such as Grendon Hall in Buckinghamshire (object 17).15

To provide sites for its varied facilities, SOE acquired an extensive property portfolio of large private houses and stately homes, such as Arisaig House in Scotland and Audley End in Essex (objects 8 and 18).16 The many grand houses occupied by SOE’s staff and students prompted its tongue-in-cheek nickname, ‘Stately ’Omes of England’. Baker Street’s witty cryptographer, Leo Marks, preferred to describe SOE as an ‘open house for misfits’.17

3. ‘L’APPEL DU 18 JUIN’

‘Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on the radio from London.’18 The ringing tones of General Charles de Gaulle’s now legendary appeal to resist the Nazi invasion of France came at the end of his first BBC broadcast on 18 June 1941. On the day before, France’s new prime minister, Philippe Pétain, had publicly pledged to negotiate armistice terms with Hitler and would soon head up the collaborationist Vichy regime in the so-called Unoccupied Zone of France.

Appalled by the prospect of an armistice with the Nazis, de Gaulle fled to England on 17 June and beseeched Churchill to help him ‘hoist his colours’ over the BBC’s airwaves.19 After some opposition from the War Cabinet, de Gaulle was granted airspace. On 18 June, he sat down at a small table in Studio 4B at BBC Broadcasting House, London, and broadcast ‘L’Appel du 18 Juin’. Clutching a typescript, de Gaulle intoned at a solemn pace in a deep, resonant voice. Alongside him, the young BBC studio assistant Elisabeth Barker later recalled, ‘He seemed very calm but quite tense, as if he was concentrating all his strength in one moment.’20

De Gaulle’s clarion call was bold and revolutionary, marking a break with the appeasement policy of Pétain. Behind the defiant rhetoric, though, de Gaulle’s rationale was clear, logical and – as it turned out – prophetic. He spelled out the reasons and the solutions for France’s predicament. To paraphrase: French forces had been overcome by superior mechanised force and tactics rather than by numbers. But France was not alone – she could align with the British Empire, which still controlled the seas. In time, both France and Britain could tap the immense industrial resources of the USA. The Battle of France was part of a worldwide war and, ultimately, only superior technology would end the war. De Gaulle closed his seminal broadcast by calling on all French soldiers and civilians to rally to him and promised to speak again.21

Although de Gaulle’s first appeal of 18 June would later acquire mythical status as the founding moment of the French Résistance, few heard his night-time broadcast. Many more would hear his subsequent appeal of 22 June, on the day that France signed an armistice with Germany at Compiègne in France. De Gaulle’s second broadcast was another impassioned plea to resist but now he adopted a more political stance, taking on the ‘national task’ of resistance as leader of the Free French: ‘I call upon all the French who want to remain free to listen to me and to follow me […] Long live a free and independent France!’22

The much-publicised photo of General Charles de Gaulle, ostensibly broadcasting his ‘L’Appel du 18 Juin’, was in fact taken during a subsequent broadcast, as evidenced by the Cross of Lorraine on his jacket, which was not in circulation until several weeks later.

De Gaulle’s rousing appeals paved the way for a Free French movement-in-exile. His next step, on 23 June, was to propose the formation of the Comité National Français (French National Committee) ‘to maintain the independence of France, to honour her alliances and to contribute to the war effort of the Allies’.23 By the end of the month, on 28 June, the Allies had recognised de Gaulle as ‘Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the Allied Cause’.24

To maintain momentum on the airwaves, de Gaulle pressed for regular airtime. In December 1940, he was granted a daily five-minute slot on the BBC’s Radio Londres, which would prove a crucial platform for mobilising the emerging French Résistance. Other governments-in-exile similarly led their people via the BBC airwaves, such as Radio Oranje and Radio Belgique.

The exiled Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands rallied her people via Radio Oranje, aired by the BBC European Services. Other leaders-in-exile similarly led their people over the BBC’s airwaves. Among them were the Belgian Government via Radio Belgique, King Haakon of Norway and King Paul of the Hellenes.

By 1942, the number of listeners tuning in to de Gaulle on the noon news had reached some 3 million.25 The Nazis tried to muffle de Gaulle’s appeals by jamming broadcasts and banning the radio, but people still tuned in, even at the risk of arrest. De Gaulle’s boldness, despite his lack of political status, was a measure of his force of will and his powerful sense of destiny.

Despite his drive, however, de Gaulle’s Free French movement-in-exile remained small until 1942, when the grass roots of an independent underground resistance started to flourish across France, often via the clandestine press, which challenged the ideology of Nazism and Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. With the hope of drawing all resisters under his banner, de Gaulle renamed his Free French movement Forces Françaises Combattantes (Fighting French Forces) and later, Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (French Forces of the Interior, FFI).

To unite the independent resistance factions in France, de Gaulle despatched as his emissary, the charismatic Jean Moulin, a leading light of the French Résistance. Moulin successfully laid the groundwork of a united resistance with the formation of the Conseil Nationale de la Résistance (National Council of the Resistance) in May 1943, shortly before he was arrested in June and subsequently tortured to death by the Gestapo on 8 July 1943.

Over the course of the war, de Gaulle went on to broadcast seventy times, mainly with the BBC’s Radio Londres.26 Among de Gaulle’s 3 million listeners, some future SOE agents, such as Flight Officer Yvonne Baseden, were inspired to volunteer for his campaign (object 87). Another SOE agent, Wing Commander Tommy Yeo-Thomas, would team up with Jean Moulin in 1943 to co-ordinate resistant forces under the Gaullist banner (object 44).

04. ‘V’ POSTCARD

The vibrant V-sign was one of the most pervasive and potent symbols of resistance during the Second World War. It started without any fanfare as a seemingly simple but remarkably prescient news headline in May 1939: ‘V pour Victoire’ (‘V for Victory’). By the close of hostilities, the V-sign had evolved into one of the Allies’ most widespread, cross-cultural and cross-media rallying calls, expressed in graffiti, on posters and postcards, in Morse code (…–) and, perhaps, most memorably of all, in music – in the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth (Vth) symphony, echoing the Morse code for ‘V’ (‘di, di, di, dah’).

The V-campaign started quietly and quite by chance on the eve of war. When the editor of Le Monde Quotidien ran the headline, ‘V pour Victoire’ on 18 May 1939, he little realised what he had set in motion. In less than a year, another editor, the Belgian Victor de Laveleye, had picked up the ‘V’ theme and run with it on the BBC’s Radio Belgique on 14 January 1941.27 Speaking directly to his Belgian and Dutch listeners, he highlighted the connection between ‘V’ in the French word for victory (victoire) and ‘V’ in the Dutch word for freedom (vrijheid).28 He went on to call on all listeners to spread symbolic V-signs everywhere, surrounding the enemy with disconcerting Vs.

Victor could not have anticipated the impact of his broadcast. Within months, V-signs had flooded the communities of Belgium, northern France and Holland, before spreading further afield to Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Norway. Vs proliferated everywhere, chalked on walls, daubed on doors, stitched on garments and carved on tree trunks. In the words of one eyewitness in Czechoslovakia, ‘At the moment all over the Protectorate there is a flood of V-symbols, on clothes and ribbons, painted in white on house doors, monuments, on street asphalt in all localities up and down the land, everywhere.’29

The international V-sign was also combined with national emblems of resistance, expressing the shared goal of defeating a common foe. In Norway, for example, the Resistance cipher H7, symbolising King Haakon VII, was sometimes displayed within a broad ‘V’. Equally, in France, the French Cross of Lorraine appeared within a ‘V’.

Not content with just visual graffiti, the resisters played around with resonant V-words and V-phrases and came up with some ringing V-slogans, such as the Czechoslovakian tongue-twister, ‘Věřit ve vítězství velkého vůdce je velká volovina’ (‘To believe in the victory of the great Führer is absolute rubbish’), or the punchy Scandinavian ‘Vi vil vinde’ (‘We will win’).30 Even when some countries, such as Poland, lacked a V-word for victory or freedom, they still took part in the V-campaign, surrounding themselves with V-signs.

V-sign postcards illustrating the first four notes of Beethoven’s Vth Symphony could be posted or displayed in a window as part of the V-campaign.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, soon became alarmed by the proliferating Vs and tried to snatch the symbol for the German god Viktoria. He orchestrated the showy display of giant Vs on white flags and red posters, though with little impact on the prevailing Allied Vs. Another Nazi tactic was to scrub out or cover up the insurgent Vs dabbed on cobbled courtyards or carved on trees, but the masking effects often just highlighted the underlying Vs.

Back at Broadcasting House, the BBC felt emboldened by the enthusiastic uptake of Vs and proposed a radio V-campaign that would encourage listeners to carry out gentle acts of passive resistance, such as travelling more to disrupt public transport. In developing the campaign, the BBC’s Assistant News Editor Douglas Ritchie came up with the bright idea of relaying the rallying V-call audibly by Morse code (…–). Once the Morse was heard, it didn’t take long for someone in the sound studio to join up the Morse dots with the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (‘di, di, di, dah’). The dramatic notes were tailor-made for a clarion call. On 27 June 1941, ‘V’ was broadcast in Morse followed by the solemn opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. From the next day onwards, throughout the war, the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth were tapped out on drums as the call sign and interval signal for the BBC’s European Services. An appreciative listener in occupied France recalled, ‘From now on those four notes, those four beats, will be the rallying sign of hope in the prison of Europe … A rhythm is contagious in a way that an inscription is not.’31

Listeners across the BBC’s European Services were encouraged to play the Morse code at every opportunity. Trains hooted, church bells pealed and teachers clapped the V-notes.

Churchill, too, joined in the V-campaign, highlighting the value of the V-sign in his speech of 19 July 1941, when he raised his hand in a V-sign: ‘The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories and a portent of the fate awaiting Nazi tyranny.’32

Other leaders, such as the US President Franklin Roosevelt, followed suit. The V-sign became the universal sign, signal and sound of the Allied war effort. Vs had gone Viral.

5. WEISSE ROSE PLAQUE

Time slowed as the meticulously crafted leaflets slid off the balustrade and floated through space, taking an eternity to fall onto the marble floor below. At that moment, everything unravelled. A university janitor, who was a Nazi sympathiser, saw the cascade of leaflets and the rebel students. He quickly informed the Nazi authorities. The students, Sophie and Hans Scholl, leading lights of the Weiße Rose (White Rose) anti-Nazi movement, were arrested on the university steps.

The free-thinking, idealistic Weiße Rose campaign developed organically in the liberal hub of Munich University, where dissident students bonded with kindred spirits who vehemently rejected Nazi tyranny and racism. Outrage at the Third Reich’s ‘abominable crimes’ and suppression of freewill masquerading as ‘conformity’ or ‘co-ordination’ (Gleichschaltung) sparked an intellectual, non-violent, free-spirited crusade that coalesced into the Weiße Rose in June 1942.33

The co-founders – fellow medical students Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell – teamed up with an initial core of three other students and a professor at Munich University: Sophie Scholl (Hans’ sister), Willi Graf, Christoph Probst and Professor Kurt Huber. Wielding the power of the pen in a direct and outspoken way, the Weiße Rose conducted a concerted campaign of dissent with pamphlets that called for active opposition to Nazi oppression. In their second leaflet, for example, the group condemned the persecution not only of Jews, but also of the Polish nobility.34 The content, though bold and forthright, was filled with philosophical quotes – from Aristotle and Novalis to Goethe and Schiller – intended to appeal to the German intelligentsia. The students themselves explored diverse faiths and wide-ranging philosophies, such as Etienne Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937).

In total, six pamphlets were produced and mimeographed, with some 15,000 copies distributed. The first copies were circulated among fellow students. To reach a wider audience, the group left leaflets in phone kiosks and scoured address books for receptive readers. As the campaign gathered momentum, it spread beyond Munich, reaching southern cities, such as Hamburg and Ulm.

Encouraged by their growing support, the group decided in January 1943 to push their activism to the next stage and reached out to sister networks, such as the Kreisau Circle and Red Orchestra. A turning point came in February 1943 with Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad, emboldening the Weiße Rose to adopt even more daring tactics. They widened their sphere of activity to stencil public walls with bold slogans, such as ‘Down with Hitler’ and ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom’.

Bronze replicas of the scattered Weiße Rose leaflets lie embedded in the cobbled stones fronting Munich University, where the founding members were arrested.

In the group’s sixth pamphlet, they bravely decried the bloodshed unleashed on Europe by the Nazis and called on fellow students to act. In their eagerness to spread the message, Sophie, Hans and some fellow students took the risky step of distributing leaflets personally. Hurrying through the university corridors on 18 February, Sophie and Hans scattered leaflets for students to find on their way to lectures. As the siblings raced away, Sophie reached out to a stack of pamphlets left on a stone balustrade and, perhaps in a bid to scatter them more widely, pushed them off the balustrade into the central hall below. As though frozen in freefall, the leaflets seemed to hang in mid-air until the silence was shattered by shouts from the janitor, who’d seen it all and immediately alerted the authorities. Both Sophie and Hans were arrested, swiftly followed by Christoph Probst.

After challenging interrogations, the three students sat through half-day show trials led by the notorious Roland Freisler, President of the Volksgerichtshof (Nazi People’s Court), which was bound by Nazi ideology rather than by law. All three students were found guilty of treason, sentenced to death and executed by guillotine on 22 February 1943.35

On the day before her execution, Sophie had resolutely scrawled ‘Freiheit’ (freedom) on the back of her court indictment, while her brother Hans reportedly cried, ‘Es lebe die Freiheit!’ (‘Long live freedom!’) beneath the guillotine.36

The Weiße Rose were not alone in their defiance of the Nazis on their home turf. Thousands of like-minded resisters – whether communists, churchmen, social democrats, or independent humanitarians – had already been rounded up and incarcerated in the late 1930s (objects 87–91), while others gathered in isolated clusters, such as the Kreisau Circle and 20 July plotters (object 26), but the totalitarian tactics of the Third Reich stunted the growth of any unified resistance movement. In light of the Gestapo’s iron grip in its own homeland – coupled with the alienation of a people exposed to Allied bombs – the story of SOE in the Third Reich was one of ‘low priorities and hope deferred’.37

SOE’s X Section took the long view, scheduling the bulk of its missions to coincide with the anticipated turning point of 1944, when it launched a mix of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sabotage. Sporadic hard sabotage on, for example, railway lines could tie up enemy resources, while soft sabotage included forged ration cards to disrupt the economy, itching powder to distress troops and black propaganda to weaken resolve (object 63).38 Among the more successful missions launched in the last year of the war, SOE’s Operation Ebensburg played a key role in mobilising local resisters while also safeguarding a priceless trove of international treasures from Hitler’s Nero Decree (object 85).

Turning back to the crusading Weiße Rose, their voices were not silenced by their executions. In July 1943, Allied aeroplanes dropped the group’s final leaflet over Germany with the banner, ‘The Manifesto of the Students of Munich’. Although at the time, the students’ impassioned leaflets mostly fell on stony ground in the Nazi stronghold at Munich, the Weiße Rose today stands as a symbol of the ‘spirit of resistance’ in wartime Germany.39

Schools for Saboteurs

6. HOTEL VICTORIA CARD

The bright, breezy watercolour of the Hotel Victoria captures the bustle and buoyancy of the interwar years. The palatial, 500-room Victorian hotel on Northumberland Avenue was originally designed as a prestigious hospitality venue with extensive banqueting halls adorned with coffered ceilings and marbled walls. With the outbreak of war, however, the hotel was requisitioned by the War Office, its windows taped against bomb blast, its purpose shrouded in mystery and its once welcoming corridors barred to all but War Office officials.

Tucked away on the third floor, one of the hotel’s converted bedrooms served as an office for SOE’s initial interviews with candidates. Little of the hotel’s original luxury and elegance was experienced by the recruits summoned to the mysterious room. The bleak and functional quarters, spotlit by a single naked light bulb, were furnished with a kitchen table and two upright chairs, one in a state of near collapse.

Before turning up at the Hotel Victoria, interviewees would have been invited by letter to attend the War Office. None had any inkling why, though some would be clearer by the end of their interview. Candidates varied widely in age, background and profession, ranging from their early twenties to mid-forties, from career soldiers and engineers to teachers, journalists and housewives. All had in common varying degrees of linguistic fluency and relevant experience of living in an occupied country.

Interviews for SOE’s French (F) Section were initially conducted by the novelist Major Lewis Gielgud (brother of the actor John Gielgud). Later, from 1942 onwards, the mystery writer Selwyn Jepson also carried out many of F Section’s interviews. Reputedly something of a talent spotter, Jepson astutely judged the prospective agent Odette Sansom as a ‘shrewd cookie’. Although he feared that her personality might be too ‘big’ to pass unnoticed, he added on her form, ‘God help the Germans if we can ever get her near them!’1 (object 86). Jepson appreciated the particular qualities that women could contribute behind the lines and promoted the recruitment of women who, in his view, ‘have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men’.2

A lively watercolour of the Hotel Victoria on Northumberland Avenue, London, brightens the hotel’s guest stationery of the late 1930s.

The local map on the rear of the Hotel Victoria’s stationery pinpoints the hotel’s prime position, surrounded by the capital’s landmarks ‘at the very heart of London’.

Both Gielgud and Jepson were skilled recruiters who assessed candidates for specific qualifications and qualities. An essential attribute was the ability to ‘pass as a native’, blending seamlessly with the local culture and people of an occupied country. Passing as a native implied, at the very least, linguistic fluency, but also the typical appearance, demeanour and instinctive habits and gestures of anyone who’d been raised, schooled or employed in an occupied country.3 The future agent Nancy Wake, for instance, though born in New Zealand, had married a Frenchman and lived in Marseilles for a decade, becoming thoroughly immersed in the culture, fashions, postures and daily habits of the Marseillais (object 93). By contrast, the English schoolmaster Captain Harry Rée had only spent his school vacations in France and, by his own account, spoke a schoolmaster’s French. When he went behind the lines, he was usually fortunate in having a French courier by his side, who would cover some of the necessary communication for him, especially in towns where Nazi patrols prevailed (object 78).

To assess a candidate’s linguistic fluency and ability to pass as a native, the interview was conducted in the interviewee’s mother tongue and in any other relevant language, sometimes switching swiftly from one language to another. Throughout the conversational session, the assessor gently probed the candidate’s character, motivation and loyalties. The ideal agent would be single-minded and independent but also able to act as part of a team and establish a rapport with fellow agents and resisters.

When assessing motivation, SOE was looking for someone who believed that working for SOE was the best way to help the war effort, who ‘felt that only in this or similar work could they achieve their maximum contribution to the war effort’.4 The recruiters steered clear of drifters, dreamers and adventure seekers, who would soon put the mission and their colleagues at risk. Whoever went behind the lines shouldn’t go to escape a dull job or a failed marriage, but because they were wholly committed to what the SOE agent Major Francis Cammaerts called ‘a just war’ and were determined to do whatever it took to free occupied countries from tyranny (object 95).5 While patriotism to an individual’s motherland might be a motivating factor, loyalty to Britain’s war effort should be paramount.

During the initial interview, the recruiter tested the candidate’s attitude to dropping behind the lines by casually asking, ‘How would you feel about returning to France … or Greece?’ The recruiters also impressed on candidates that they were volunteers who could withdraw at any stage. Crucially, it was also underlined that the mission would be dangerous, and if caught, agents would not be protected by the Geneva Convention as regular prisoners of war (POWs) but could expect to be tortured and executed as spies.

The Hotel Victoria was not the only venue for F Section interviews, which were also conducted at Horse Guards, Whitehall, where the candidates Harry Peulevé and Tony Brooks were both assessed by Lewis Gielgud. Some country sections held interviews at their various safe houses and command centres. The German Section (X), for example, interviewed candidates at No. 1 Queen’s Gate Gardens, Kensington. Wherever the interview took place, it was just the first step in a lengthy programme of sequential courses and assessments at SOE’s Special Training Schools (objects 8–18).

7. FANY BERET

The distinctive khaki beret here decorated with the brass badge of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) belonged to a staff officer at SOE’s Baker Street headquarters in London (object 2).

The close collaboration between FANY and SOE started early in 1940 and quite by chance when SOE’s Head of Operations and Training Brigadier Colin Gubbins asked his FANY friend Phyllis Bingham for help with some confidential work. The two services went on to forge a close working relationship that endured throughout the war.

In many ways, FANY and SOE seemed well matched since both enjoyed a semi-unofficial status with relative independence from the regular armed forces. By contrast with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) or Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, for example, FANY was an independent registered charity, although it was subject to military law. Formed in 1907, FANY originally provided a first aid link between field hospitals and the front line during the First World War, when FANYs rode onto the battlefield as mounted paramedics.

Of the 6,000 FANYs active in the Second World War, around 2,000 served in SOE, across most theatres of the war, from Europe to the Mediterranean and South East Asia.6 They covered a broad range of roles within SOE, both on staff and in the field. The FANYs’ ability to bear small arms was an essential asset for SOE’s undercover operations. FANY also provided SOE agents with a respectable military cover, rank and uniform.

A wartime beret of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), which was originally worn by an SOE staff officer at the RF Section in London.

About fifty of the 2,000 FANYs in SOE trained as field agents. The majority of FANYs, however, did not operate behind the lines. Instead, they played crucial roles on the home front or at home bases abroad, particularly in manning SOE’s wireless communications as signallers, coders and decoders, a contribution now widely regarded as incalculable (object 17). In the words of Gubbins, ‘Wireless [was] the most valuable link in the whole of our chain of operations. Without those links we would have been groping in the dark.’7 Other FANYs served in SOE’s specialist stations and Special Training Schools (STSs), providing a broad network of technical and administrative support, ranging from analysts, accountants and clerks to technicians, forgers and parachute packers, as well as map readers and despatch riders (object 58).

Whatever a FANY’s eventual role, her training for SOE would always be top secret and intensive. Potential radio operators, for example, underwent four months’ wireless training at one of SOE’s dedicated wireless schools, such as Fawley Court in Herefordshire or Thame Park in Oxfordshire (object 17). On completion of their course, some wireless operators served behind the lines as field agents but many more manned SOE’s home stations at Grendon Hall in Buckinghamshire and Poundon House in Oxfordshire, where they listened for coded messages from agents in the field.

Conditions were challenging at Grendon Hall, where operators lived in poorly heated Nissen huts or attics. The FANYs at Grendon worked six-hour ‘skeds’ (schedules) in shifts around the clock.8 Each operator was allotted her own agent, or ‘Joe’, enabling her to recognise their unique touch on the Morse key. Recognition of an agent’s touch or ‘fist’ was one way of checking that the line had not been intercepted by an enemy operator, although a fist, just like any signature, could be faked (objects 17 and 63). Coded messages arrived in seemingly random five-letter groups. Due to the dangers of transmitting from behind enemy lines, messages could seem garbled (‘indecipherable’), but it was a point of honour among decoders and SOE’s innovative Head of Signals, Leo Marks, to persevere, even through the night, rather than expect an agent to risk capture by transmitting again (object 48).

Behind the lines, conditions were even more pressurised with Abwehr radio direction-finders tracking hapless operators (objects 17 and 62). FANYs destined for fieldwork undertook an intensive, staged programme of lessons at SOE’s Special Training Schools (objects 8–18). Of the fifty FANYs trained as agents, some thirty-nine went into the field.9

Another quintessentially FANY role connected with field agents was that of a conducting officer, who accompanied potential field agents during their training and reported on their progress, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Later, in the pre-flight despatch centres, such as Gibraltar Farm Barn at the secret Tempsford Airfield, conducting officers checked that agents were ready for take-off and often gave them a small memento, such as a handkerchief, along with a last-resort cyanide capsule in case of unendurable duress (object 37).

Much of the wartime service of SOE FANYs was necessarily secret and, for the most part, remains understated and unsung. Just a handful of FANY field agents have become household names, all highly decorated beacons of courage, including most famously, Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan, Lieutenant Odette Sansom, Ensigns Violette Szabo and Nancy Wake and Flight Officer Christine Granville (aka Countess Krystyna Skarbek), as well as lesser known but no less productive and courageous agents, such as Section Officers Lilian Rolfe and Cecily Lefort, Flight Officers Yvonne Cormeau and Yvonne Baseden, and Ensigns Eileen ‘Didi’ Nearne, Yvonne Rudellat and Denise Bloch (objects 10, 86, 87 and 95).

Other FANY field agents remain largely in the shadows, only emerging slowly with the gradual investigation of SOE’s surviving files. The same holds true for the 1,950 or so SOE FANYs who manned the 24/7 wireless lifeline, packed the parachutes, checked the forgeries and provided round-the-clock support for SOE’s network of specialist stations and STSs (objects 8, 15, 22 and 17). The lesser-known FANY operatives might well seem less glamourous than field agents, but their contribution to the overall success of SOE missions was immeasurable. In the words of the SOE field commander Colonel Douglas Dodds-Parker, ‘Scores of books have been written about the many brave men and women who carried out the real work of resistance, in the field […] Few have told of the minute application, the meticulous attention to detail, needed to put these […] ideas into action.’10

8. ARISAIG SCHOOLS

Overlooking the emerald waters of Loch nan Ceall, the Arisaig Estate in Scotland seems surprisingly scenic for a gruelling commando course, but the remote hillside location was shielded from prying eyes and the trackless terrain was ideal for lessons in survival.

The Arisaig Estate was requisitioned by SOE in 1941 to provide a base for paramilitary training – the second stage of a student’s schooling, after preliminary assessments, often at a country house such as Wanborough Manor in Surrey. While ideally remote and rugged, Arisaig was still accessible by railway and coastal boat. At the centre of the estate, the handsome granite country manor Arisaig House served as the headquarters for staff and tutors. Scattered around Arisaig House, at least ten small shooting lodges functioned as separate ‘A’ schools for different nationalities, who were usually kept apart to minimise mixing and maximise security.

The commando-style paramilitary course at Arisaig was designed to toughen and test recruits both physically and mentally. The course initially ran for three weeks but by 1943 had been extended to five weeks. The curriculum covered physical fitness, self-defence and demolitions, as well as map reading and basic Morse code, boat work and ropework.11

The craggy slopes overlooking Loch Morar provided extensive hiking and hunting grounds for SOE recruits during their paramilitary training at the Arisaig ‘A’ schools.

Arisaig House, HQ for SOE’s paramilitary course in Scotland, was built in 1939 to replace the original Victorian house that had burnt down four years earlier. The 1939 replica faithfully restored the original Arts and Crafts design by Philip Webb.

Fitness training helped to prepare recruits for the rigours of undercover life, when some might be forced to lie low in barns, bogs or caverns and many would eventually be compelled to escape over the snowbound Pyrenees (object 92). Daily physical drills started in the morning mist with long hikes across mountainous terrain and peaty marshes. After crawling through mud, scrambling over rocks and dodging clouds of midges, both men and women ended the day equally bruised and bitten.

While some recruits thrived on the physical challenges, not all appreciated the tough training. One student, Gaston Cohen, recalled, ‘Forced marches, 40 miles in the Highlands, in the mist with a minimum of food. Boat training in the loch, very cold, had to swim in the blasted loch.’12

The coastal shores and inland lochs around Arisaig offered ample opportunities for students to hone their fishing and boating skills.

For self-defence, students learnt the arts of unarmed combat. Their tutors, dubbed the ‘heavenly twins’, were two former municipal policemen, Major William Ewart ‘Dan’ Fairbairn and Captain Eric Anthony ‘Bill’ Sykes, who’d together countered crime on the rough streets of Shanghai with their personal brand of karate and close combat. Students learnt, for example, how to deliver blows with open hands, using the base of their palm, rather than a fistful of fragile bones.13 Novice fighters practised their martial holds, throws and blows in the flowering gardens behind Arisaig House. The heavenly duo had also designed the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife for silent killing, a technique honed on the sweeping lawns of the estate (object 9).

All around the estate, the craggy hills and trackless slopes and shores provided extensive hunting and fishing grounds where trainees learnt to catch their meals and survive in the wild. Their fieldcraft instructors included local poachers, gamekeepers and deerstalkers, who taught trainees how to stalk their prey silently and invisibly. One of the many memorable instructors was the former army sniper Gavin Maxwell, who showed his students how to scoop mussels off rocks, how to catch, kill and eat birds, to drain seal oil and carve up game.14

As any saboteur might, on occasion, need to break into or out of a building, recruits were treated to masterclasses in lock-picking and safe-cracking by a convicted safebreaker who had been temporarily released from prison to share his skills. Another reputedly dodgy instructor, dubbed the Forger, demonstrated to a rapt class how to fake signatures, dates and figures and, even more remarkably, how to extract and replace a letter from a sealed envelope without breaking the seal.15

Lessons in weapons handling covered various small arms and rifles, as well as SOE’s staple Sten and Bren guns (objects 11 and 12). Students practised with a variety of handguns, such as the Webley and Colt, alongside foreign models that they might capture in the field (object 10). Arisaig’s veteran sniper, Gavin Maxwell, demonstrated how to strip, reassemble, load, maintain and shoot firearms in all light and weather. For effective gunfighting, or ‘shooting to live’, Fairbairn taught students his innovative and instinctive ‘double tap’ technique, now common among modern fighting forces (object 10).

To learn how to sabotage enemy infrastructure, students practised demolition skills with a range of dummy explosives. The local West Highland line helpfully supplied a stretch of practice railway on which trainee saboteurs could lay dummy charges. For SOE’s other common sabotage target, shipping, recruits mastered amphibious landings and boat mining at Swordland Lodge (STS 23b), overlooking the white sands of Loch Morar.

As a final test at the end of the course, trainees could expect a spell in solitary confinement in a bleak brick cell, followed by a mock interrogation to test their reactions under stress. For a quick getaway, recruits learnt to board and roll off a speeding train without mishap.16

Confronted with such a challenging course, it’s not surprising that only about 30 per cent of recruits passed out of Arisaig. The successful ones could look forward to an advanced course in fieldcraft at SOE’s finishing schools on the Beaulieu Estate (object 15).

9. FAIRBAIRN–SYKES FIGHTING KNIFE

The razor-sharp Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife has come to symbolise the special forces of the twentieth century. Other equally legendary blades, such as the Viking sword, Greek xiphos and Saracen scimitar, similarly conjure up a historic era and corresponding class of champion warrior. What’s less well known is the knife’s central role in the training and arming of SOE agents.

The prototype for the Fairbairn–Sykes (F–S) blade was forged in the 1930s on the violent streets of Shanghai, China, where the police officers Major William Ewart ‘Dan’ Fairbairn and Captain Eric Anthony ‘Bill’ Sykes daily countered the prevailing street crime of ‘the most dangerous city in the world’.17

After joining the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) in 1907, Fairbairn rose from sergeant major in 1917 to assistant commissioner in 1935, at which rank he retired, shortly before returning to Britain in 1940.18 During more than thirty years with the SMP, Fairbairn had engaged in numberless street fights with knives, sticks, bare hands and small firearms. A keen student of irregular warfare, he trained in the martial arts of Korea, Japan and China and was one of the first Westerners to reach black belt rank in jiu-jitsu. Drawing on his extensive martial experience, Fairbairn developed what would become a world-renowned defence-tactics system, as outlined in his Shanghai Municipal Police Manual of Self-Defense (1915). His mastery of close combat and silent killing would prove invaluable at SOE’s Special Training Schools (object 8).

A Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife and scabbard, 1941, 1st Pattern. The flat ricasso is etched with ‘The F–S Fighting Knife’ on one side and ‘Wilkinson Sword’ on the reverse.

Fairbairn’s colleague, Sykes, an experienced shooter, was more of a firearms specialist, as well as a firearms representative in China. As an MI6 agent too, Sykes provided an entrée for both himself and Fairbairn into the wartime intelligence services. When the pair returned to Britain in 1940, they took up teaching assignments with the commandos, SOE and, in Fairbairn’s case, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Today, both Fairbairn and Sykes are regarded as pioneers of close combat.

Prototypes of the F–S knife were first developed by Fairbairn in Shanghai when he had access to the SMP armoury. Once back in Britain, Fairbairn and Sykes approached Wilkinson Sword Ltd in November 1940 with a view to producing a fighting knife based on their Shanghai model.19 After designs were agreed, the War Office ordered some 6,000 F–S daggers for the commandos, while a further 1,000 or so were commissioned by Captain Leslie Wood on behalf of SOE and other special units.20

The American OSS version of the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife was designed with a distinctive spatula scabbard that could, in theory, be worn high or low.

The 1st Pattern of some 7,000 knives, produced between November 1940 and August 1941, was designed with a 17cm drop-forged, carbon-steel blade and a flat ricasso beneath an S-shaped cross guard, as seen here. The ricasso