Sharing the Secret

The History of the Intelligence Corps 1940–2010

Nicholas van der Bijl

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781526774958
• eBook ISBN: 9781473831766
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

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

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 ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Maps
• Chapter 1 – The Formation of the BEF Intelligence Corps
• Chapter 2 – The BEF Intelligence Corps: September 1939 to July 1940
• Chapter 3 – The Formation of the Intelligence Corps
• Chapter 4 – The Middle East: 1940–1943
• Chapter 5 – Iraq, Syria, Persia, Malta, Gibralter and West Africa: 1940–1943
• Chapter 6 – The Central Mediterranean: 1943–1945
• Chapter 7 – The Far East: 1942–1945
• Chapter 8 – The Special Operations Executive
• Chapter 9 – Great Britain: 1940–1945
• Chapter 10 – North-West Europe: 1944–1945
• Chapter 11 – Occupied Trieste, Germany and Austria
• Chapter 12 – Victory in the Far East
• Chapter 13 – The National Service Years
• Chapter 14 – The National Service Years: The 1950s
• Chapter 15 – The Regular Years: The 1960s
• Chapter 16 – The Regular Years: The 1970s
• Chapter 17 – The Regular Years: The 1980s
• Chapter 18 – The Coalition Years: The 1990s
• Chapter 19 – Coalition Operations: 2000–2010
• Chapter 20 – Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Glossary
• Bibliography