However soundly based one’s training may be, improvisation will be necessary in practice
Paul Crick
With Italy pursuing aspirations of a Roman Empire in North and East Africa, Great Britain’s greatest fear was the seizure of the Egypt and the Suez Canal which would severely restrict all communications with India.
Since 1937 British counter-intelligence provision in the region had been unofficially organized through Security Intelligence Middle East under command of GHQ Middle East. Security Intelligence largely fulfilled the role of MI5 and was located with the GHQ Middle East Forces Directorate of Intelligence. Using the same principles developed at Mytchett, two FSP sections were raised in Egypt. While forming sections overseas experienced the disadvantage of a small recruiting pool, it had the advantage of attracting soldiers with knowledge of local customs and languages.
The entry of Italy on the side of Germany in June 1940 saw intrigue in the cosmopolitan city of Cairo rise to fever pitch as Italian agents, nationalist Egyptian officers, who included a certain Captain Gamel Nasser, competed with Allied counter-intelligence. Several Germans were arrested. In late 1939 Lieutenant Robin Wordsworth, a former colonial administrator in Sudan now farming in Dorset, agreed to a War Office request to fly to Cairo and work with the Egyptian Police to develop counter-intelligence and security. After attending the FSP course in Mytchett, in January 1940 he arrived in Cairo and found the two FSPs consisted of former military police but they had not been trained in Field Security.
When, in the autumn of 1939, the insurance agent Jake Jacobs learnt that the Army were looking for French speakers, he passed a short test in an office on Seven Sisters Road, London and was literally given a King’s Shilling and also a rail warrant to Mytchett. Several days after the New Year, having passed the course during the hard winter of November and December, in which learning to ride motor-cycles on ice and snow-covered roads and tracks proved hazardous, he joined the first FSP earmarked to be sent overseas. Travelling by troop train to Marseille and embarking on the troopship Lancashire, which was en route to India, the section was the only unit to disembark at Port Said on 29 January. They caught the train to Cairo where they were welcomed by Wordsworth, now promoted to major, as the first trained section in the Middle East. Sent to Suez and accommodated in a bar owned by a Maltese and frequented by soldiers and merchant seamen, Jacobs, now promoted to Sergeant, bought a suit and began collecting information from the brothels and the sophisticated French Club at Port Tewfik and monitored the morale of British troops. He periodically checked coal sacks being tipped into ships’ bunkers for bombs, not that he had seen any improvised devices. Meanwhile, Wordsworth established FS HQ in the former Anglican Archbishop’s Palace in Cairo’s garden city.
When Captain Gerald Robinson arrived in May, Wordsworth was developing an experimental composite British/Indian FSP section commanded by a British FSO to support the 4th Indian Divisions and was planning to train the Australians and New Zealanders. In July, Robinson, assisted by Lieutenants Francis Astley and ‘Sammy’ Sansom, both Arab linguists and recruited locally, organized the first overseas FS course. Three more sections arrived from Sheerness. Authority was given to form ten in Cairo to cover Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus and Sudan. The establishment of the Intelligence Corps on 19 July led, next month, to the two original Middle East sections being formed into 251 FSS under command of the first trained FSO in theatre, Lieutenant Derek Baker, who had arrived during the month as a sergeant. It deployed to Port Said and, reporting to the MI5 Defence Security Officer (Egypt), was engaged on border, port security and airport security at El Gamil and conducted counter-intelligence investigations into the Greek, French and Syrian communities. A naval officer later attached to the Section monitored Royal Navy ships passing through the Suez Canal. Jacob’s section was named 252 FSS. Meanwhile, 253 FSS was to be the Suez Canal Base FS (Town) Section.
The third FS course was underway in September when Wordsworth was authorized to establish HQ FS Wing, Middle East supported by two depot sections. After GHQ requisitioned the former Archbishop’s Palace, he moved into the Hotel Semiramis with himself as Commandant, an appointment he held until May 1944, and Robinson as Adjutant and Chief Instructor. By the end of 1940, 160 Dominion FS NCOs had been trained. Several months later the Wing was enlarged to the Intelligence Corps Depot and FS Training Centre. The combination of administering locally-trained Dominion FS sections and those arriving from Winchester and providing FS sections to support British Troops Egypt then necessitated the Depot and Centre moving to Helwan, opposite the ruins of Memphis on the River Nile. Although GHQ had been formed during the summer of 1939, it was not until mid-1940 that the pivot for counter-intelligence operations, General Staff Intelligence (Counter Intelligence) was formed, one desk officer being Lieutenant David Petrie.
To exploit weak Italian ciphers, Y Service operations had been merged into a single Service organization. In August 1939, No. 2 Wireless Regiment moved a detachment west from Sarafand to Mersa Matruh to reinforce information collection on the Italian Army and Navy for the Western Desert Force. In June 1940, No. 2 Special Wireless Group was formed at Heliopolis in the Cairo suburbs and became the parent organisation for Army Y Service operations in the Middle East. Field units were Special Wireless Sections that ranged in size from Type-A to Type-C. Type-B, for instance, consisted of about forty Royal Signals commanded by an officer and its attendant Wireless Intelligence Section of an Intelligence Corps officer, a sergeant and four NCO linguists. It was not unknown for the two officers to debate who was in command.
The three years of fighting in North Africa began on 10 June 1940 when Benito Mussolini declared war on Great Britain. Three days later Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, commander of the 180,000-strong Italian 10th Army, conducted a leisurely advance to within forty miles of the border with Egypt not far from Sidi Barrani on the Egyptian border. The delay gave General Archibald Wavell, who was commanding the Western Desert Force, the breathing space that he needed. He had been an intelligence officer during the First World War. With a No. 2 Wireless Company detachment providing intercept information, on 5 December Wavell launched Operation Compass and quickly forced the Italians to retreat. Lieutenant ‘Busty’ Peel, who had arrived as a lance corporal in the same Section as Jacobs, commanded 256 (Western Desert Force) FSS, which was reinforced by 252 FSS. Generally working in pairs, the FS NCOs searched abandoned Italian positions for intelligence and documents of interest, such as daily casualty ration, water and unit returns, and forwarded their findings to Force HQ. During the advance to Bardia, Peel, Jacobs and two New Zealand privates were given annotated air photographs of Sollum showing military HQs and civil administrative offices and instructed to seize documents of intelligence value. On 3 January 1941, the four were watching 7 Armoured Brigade attack the town when they noted a desert track leading to the harbour. Piling into their 15cwt truck, they headed across broken country and were within a mile of the town when they ran into an Italian infantry company dug in on both sides of the track. Jacobs was armed with a revolver that he had never fired:
Instead of opening fire on us, they waved white handkerchiefs and indicated their lack of interest in following Mussolini’s dictum of preferring to be like lions for a day rather than as lambs for a century. We called their officers down and formally took possession of their pistols. The occasion became quite emotional with the officers in tears and one of them producing his wallet and the inevitable family pictures. We told them to stack their arms and proceeded with our more urgent task.
On 10 January, the Western Desert Force, now reinforced by No. 101 Special Wireless Section/4 Wireless Intelligence Section, was renamed XIII Corps and by the end of the month had driven the shattered 10th Army west to El Agheila, capturing 130,000 prisoners and masses of equipment. When the 4th Indian Division was diverted to eject the Italians from East Africa, it was replaced by the 6th Australian Division.
In Cairo, when Major Ralph Bagnold (Royal Signals), a desert explorer who had served in the Royal Engineers during the First World War, persuaded Wavell to allow him to form a scouting force to collect intelligence and commit acts of ‘piracy’, he invited two Intelligence Corps officers, Captain Patrick Clayton, a former member of the Egyptian Survey Department aged nearly 50 years, and Captain Bill Kennedy Shaw to join him as, respectively, his Intelligence officer and Chief Navigation officer. The unit became known as the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and, because of their tradition of self reliance, was initially assembled from former New Zealand farmers serving with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Captain Michael Crichton Stuart (Scots Guards), who later formed G (Guards) Patrol from 2 Scots Guards and 3 Coldstreams, described Clayton as ‘a grey-haired Englishman in a rather dishevelled fore-and-aft cap’. In his first patrol with two cars, Clayton mapped an unmarked sand sea and then in early September, he joined Bagnold with his six trucks to gather intelligence on the garrison at Al-Kufra, about 600 miles to the south-west of Cairo in Libya. While Bagnold attacked two Italian airfields, Clayton contacted the Free French desert outpost at Tekro 500 miles to the south. The next target was Murzuk about 900 miles west of Cairo and 300 miles south of Tripoli. While Bagnold flew to meet the Free French in Chad, on 26 December Major Clayton led both patrols across the Great Sand Sea and collected several Free French officers and native troops arranged by Bagnold. But during the attack on the garrison on 11 January, the senior French officer and a New Zealander were killed. Captain Shaw sifted for intelligence in the reams of paper. Heading south, Clayton met Colonel Jacques Leclerc and a French Camel Corps patrol and learnt that they were intending to attack Al-Kufra in their first foray against the enemy. Joining the attack, T (New Zealand) Patrol was providing the advance guard when, on 31 January, it was spotted in a narrow defile by an aircraft about sixty miles south of Al-Kufra and then attacked by the Italian Auto-Saharan Company and three aircraft, and lost four trucks. Clayton, who had been wounded, and two others were captured. Four reported missing reached Sarra ten days later with no food and little water after the first of several epic walks that punctured the desert campaign; however, one soon died from his exertions. Kennedy Shaw remained with the LRDG until he joined the HQ Special Air Service in England in 1944 as the GSO 2 (Intelligence). His book Long Range Desert Group was one of the earliest to be subjected to changes before approval by the War Office for publication. General Erwin Rommel, who commanded the the German Afrika Korps, would claim that ‘The Long Range Desert Group caused us more damage than any other unit of their size.’
While the fighting was underway in North Africa, General Wavell assembled a corps to reduce the threat from the south to the Suez Canal by ejecting the Italians from East Africa. In January 1941, in a three-pronged attack, the 4th and 5th Indian Divisions, supported by 255 and 269 FSS, advanced from Sudan and by early April had driven the Italians from the craggy mountains and valleys of Eritrea. Major George Steer, a prominent journalist, used psychological warfare skills to drop propaganda pamphlets on the Italians and used traders to distribute pamphlets encouraging their askaris to desert. Steer was instrumental in restoring Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne. Accompanying the irregular Gideon Force led by Major Orde Wingate distracting Italian forces in Ethiopia were two Intelligence Corps officers seconded to the Sudan Defence Force. Lieutenant Guy Turrell, a highly regarded member of the Royal Geographical Society and ebullient former Royal Engineer aged 47 years, was rarely seen without his pyjamas and an enamel washing bowl. Wounded in the head during the fighting, he was awarded the Military Cross while serving as a mortar officer. Major L.F. Sheppard was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for leading a 5,000-strong guerrilla force. The 1st South African Division and troops from Rhodesia, East Africa and the Gold Coast (Ghana) advancing from Kenya routed the Italians near Mogadishu and forced them to surrender at Addis Ababa in May. Appointed as the Military Liaison Officer to Emperor Haile Selassie, Captain Ted Allbeury, the author, investigated Japanese business activities and uncovered stay-behind parties among Italian expatriates. He later moved to Mogadishu and found more stay-behind groups.
The occupation of Italian East Africa saw 260 and 261 FSS arrive from Sudan and pass under command of HQ 19 (Eritrea) Area in East Africa Command. Between January and October 1942, they conducted port security at Asmara and Massawa and intercepted agents disguised as crew or pilgrims, gathered information from dhow skippers and their crews, and inspected cargos and fishing hauls, tasks that the askaris relished more than their European counterparts. When 269 FSS was sent to the Somali border with Kenya, during a counter-intelligence investigation, a Swiss businessman was found to be recording in his sales ledger full details of the units with whom he traded, which included guard forces of prison camps holding Italians. Measures were immediately enforced to prevent military information being passed to businesses. In 1942, the Section crossed the Red Sea for Port Security duties in Aden
In Addis Ababa the section rounded up 20,000 Italian soldiers avoiding internment by donning civilian clothes by co-ordinating an operation in which the NCOs led detachments of the King’s African Rifles, military and Ethiopian police by driving in army lorries along streets leading to the city centre and arresting every male for screening.
The East African Intelligence Corps played an important role in the campaign by attaching 1 and 2 (East African) FSS to the 11th and 12th East African Divisions and organizing a network of informers among pro-Fascist Italian and local expatriates in Addis Ababa. Both Sections were formed in 1939 from European and African soldiers in Kenya and were later reinforced by 92 FSS and 294 FSS, retitled as 3 and 5 East African FSS respectively. Both were originally formed in the UK and had worked with the British South African Police before being posted to the East African Intelligence Corps Security Training Centre at Mombasa for Swahili language training. Nine Coast Security Sections were trained at the Coast Security Training School and Depot in Mombasa to cover the Indian Ocean on coast watching and port security operations from Kenya to Madagascar and manage the Shipping Intelligence Bureau and the Military Security Office at Zanzibar. The Mauritius section included a Royal Navy officer, a European NCO and six African soldiers. In 1943 the East Africa Intelligence Corps was centralized as the Security Training School and Depot, East African Intelligence Corps and directly subordinated to East Africa Command.
Also in the region was Lieutenant Colonal John Todd who was Head of SOE (East Africa Mission) between 1941 and late 1942, screening his operations by conducting market research as leader of the ‘East Africa Trade Mission’. Much of his activity focused on encouraging the Vichy authorities in the French colonies of Madagascar and Réunion to adopt a pro-Allied stance. Other officers were in Beira, Lourenco Marques, Mauritius, Dar-es-Salaam, Cape Town and Nairobi. A wireless operator on Madagascar aided the interception of Vichy shipping, the kidnapping of German agents, the capture of diamonds from the German Consulate at Lourenco Marques and the expulsion of Dr Wertz, the leading Nazi official in Portuguese East Africa.
Great Britain had no ability to conduct clandestine operations to degrade enemy economic performance until 1938 when the Foreign Office formed ‘EH’ at its offices in Electra House in London. In March 1939 the combination of ‘EH’, the knowledge of Major Lawrence Grand, a Royal Engineer loaned to MI6 to develop sabotage plans, and research by Major J.C.F. Holland into covert operations were amalgamated into Military Operations 1 (Special Project) or Special Operations Executive (SOE). When war broke out, its Headquarters at 64, Baker Street, London reported to the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was supported by subsidiary headquarters attached to overseas military Commands. After Prime Minister Churchill charged SOE to ‘set Europe ablaze’ in 1940 by co-ordinating resistance groups to sabotage, assassinate and promote industrial disruption, the Executive formed Country Sections to conduct operations using methods modelled on those used by the IRA against the Army between 1920-1921. A number of SOE officers, often masquerading as businessmen and shipping agents, were spread across the world looking for opportunities to attack the economies of Germany, Italy and, later, Japan. The pseudonym the ‘Inter Service Research Bureau’ gave the Executive some anonymity.
Within a month of the Italian 9th Army attacking Greek forces in Albania on 9 March 1941, with the intention of using Greece and its islands as bases for Axis aspirations in the Mediterranean, A British Military Mission and several RAF squadrons also arrived in Athens. Providing counter-intelligence cover was a composite FS section commanded by Captain Geoffrey Household.
When, in 1939, MI6 planned to sabotage German access to Romanian oil by blocking the River Danube at the steep-sided Iron Gates on the border with Yugoslavia, the scheme was placed in the hands of Julius Hanau, an agent working in Romania and barred from military service by rheumatic fever. Among those helping MI6 to select targets was the Honourable Anthony Samuel, who had been specially commissioned into the Intelligence Corps because of his links with the family who had founded Shell Oil. In addition to acting as a courier for clandestine operation in the Balkans, he also organized the smuggling of explosives into Romania. Meanwhile, a group of saboteurs selected from the three Services, incongruously disguised in tweed jackets and flannel trousers, took the train from Dieppe bound for Budapest. Among them was Household, who had received demolition training from the Royal Engineers. But when, in early July 1940, Romania joined the Axis, the vigilance of the local police led to the saboteurs disposing of the explosives and leaving. Household was one of those who reached Cairo.
Aged nearly 40 years old, Household was seeking something exciting to do when he learnt from a colleague that FS sections were being formed. He met with Major Wordsworth in October and while waiting for the next FS course, he overheard Wordsworth and Captain Robinson discussing the need for an officer to lead the British Military Mission FS Section to Athens. On the basis that he could read a Greek menu, Household volunteered and joined B FSS in the desert near Alexandria, then being commanded by a genial Cornish former military police sergeant major. Other Intelligence Corps in the Mission included Captain Nicholas Hammond, a Cambridge University lecturer on Greece and Albania, who had previously been sent by the Special Operations Executive into Albania to encourage resistance against the Italians. Returning to Athens in March 1941, Hammond trained a disparate group of Greek liberals, democrats and communists as wireless operators and saboteurs as the nucleus for resistance. During the voyage to Piraeus on the cruiser HMAS Sydney, Household, as Officer Commanding Troops, was allocated a large comfortable cabin. For the next four months, life in Athens was welcoming. Household made some interesting observations that most Intelligence Corps will recognize:
We were never too military and discipline was informal. When we did go through the traditional motions of parades and inspection, we performed them in a spirit of a holiday – for the close mutual trust between the section and its officer made the continual practice of obedience obviously unnecessary. Daily relations in a crack section between the Field Security Officer and his NCOs much resembled those between a fatherly sales manager and his salesmen. But each section had its own individual character. In some, the smartness of the men – when they were in uniform – and the atmosphere of the section officer were reasonably regimental; in others the place looked and sounded like the salesman’s office in Soho. And these were sometimes the best when it came to the real job of detecting enemy agents.
Nevertheless, his counter-intelligence inexperience surfaced when he disapproved when an NCO dressed in civilian clothes had tested Mission security by removing classified documents left on its Commander’s desk. When he insisted that an NCO detailed to follow the German Minister on his motor cycle should wear uniform, the German counter-intelligence spotting the tail generated a diplomatic spat.
On 6 April, Germany, determined to secure its southern flank before its invasion of Russia, and embarrassed by the strength of Greek resistance, transferred troops through the Balkans to help Italy. This move effectively forced Turkey onto the Axis side as Syria was being governed by Vichy France and there was a coup in Iraq. Prime Minister Churchill, again believing that Egypt was under a major threat, instructed Wavell to send four divisions from XIII Corps to Greece, even though the men in the Corp were exhausted. But the division had little time to prepare. Intelligence was largely confined to intercepts collected by No. 101 (B-Type) Special Wireless Section and its Italian-speaking 4 Wireless Intelligence Section detachment.
However, powerful German forces drove the Allies south through Greece and, once again, Allied troops were evacuated from beaches. The three FSS that accompanied XIII Corps, namely 252 (Suez), 263 and 279 (GHQ Greece) FSS, had little time to develop counter-intelligence and as their predecessors had done at Dunkirk, they checked withdrawal routes and, looking for spies, vetted civilians seeking evacuation. The transport of a 279 FSS detachment was stolen in Athens, nevertheless it rejoined the section on a Peloponnesian beach and, after four days, was evacuated to Crete with the two other sections by a destroyer. Near Kalamai, B FSS and an Australian FSS persuaded a tug boat captain to sail to Egypt, where Household was tasked to use Greek speakers from the FS Depot and sections in Egypt to screen refugees for agents and infiltrators from the wide cross-section of Greek society packed into the stalls of the Cairo Agricultural Hall.
Of the 27,000 Allied troops commanded by the charismatic New Zealander, Major General Bernard Freyberg VC, in Crete, many had been evacuated from Greece and lacked essential equipment. Given access to Enigma intercepts, Freyberg knew of the date and time of the German attack, but, controversially, he had been told by General Wavell that the Ultra high quality intelligence was not to be exploited in isolation in case it alerted the Germans that their codes had been cracked. While No.101 Special Wireless Section was evacuated to Egypt, No. 4 Wireless Intelligence Section was supported by No. 4 (Australian) Special Wireless Section in a large empty water tank overlooking Suda Bay. To replace equipment abandoned in Greece, the sections recovered Direction Finding equipment from damaged warships and kept Freyburg supplied with information. During the German 7th Parachute Division assault on Crete that began on 20 May, both Sections reverted to infantry and attacked several gliders but lost an Australian, killed, and three wounded, one being hospitalized and later captured. Seized codebooks and a complete set of a signals plan sent to Cairo led to the Royal Navy intercepting a convoy. When Maleme airfield was overrun and German transport aircraft flew in reinforcements, the balance tipped against the Allies and the Intelligence Section joined hundreds of soldiers plodding along fifty miles of mountainous tracks and was evacuated from Sphakia.
On 12 February, No. 4 Wireless Intelligence Section had intercepted signals about the arrival of Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel and elements of the German Afrika Korps. The first contact was an armoured car Troop commanded by Lieutenant Edgar (Bill) Williams of the King’s Dragoon Guards sighting German armoured cars ten days later.
The fighting in North Africa was governed by the single coast road and the railway connecting strategically important towns, forcing the opposing armies to fight in the desert to the south. With armoured cars providing advanced guards and flank protection, the novelty of co-ordinating tanks, artillery, infantry and supply convoys spread over the vast, empty desert required extensive use of tactical radios. The streams of casualty, vehicle and logistic demands and returns transmitted at all command levels meant that masses of information was vulnerable to interception and interference. German reliance on laying telephone lines was considerably curtailed by distances. To meet the increased intercept requirement, the establishment of No. 5 Intelligence School at Heliopolis in December 1940, supported by reinforcements from No. 4 Intelligence School, laid the foundations for intercept but it was not until the arrival of crypto-analysts that Signals Intelligence took root. The arrival of No. 7 Intelligence School saw traffic being fed to Bletchley Park from Wireless Intelligence Sections in the field by landline and teleprinter links to GHQ and MI8.
The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (Middle East) at Ma’adi, near Cairo, used the same eavesdropping techniques developed in England and hosted a dozen officers, mainly Intelligence Corps, and about 160 all ranks, including the guard force. But such had been the shortage of Italian linguists during Operation Compass that about seventy Maltese and British residents of Malta – mainly teachers, civil servants and police officers – were recruited to fill the interrogation void. In addition to providing collateral to other intelligence agencies, several collation desks specialized in studying particular units from documents, pay books and personal information, such as letters. Mobile interrogation detachments sent forward were self-reliant with vehicles, guard forces and technical support sections and were usually sited alongside prisoner of war cages on main supply routes so that trucks bringing supplies returned with prisoners, documents and equipment of technical intelligence interest. Some interrogators entered cages as stool pigeons. Important prisoners were transferred to England.
Rommel quickly drove the weakened XIII Corps eastwards, trapping a division in Tobruk, but by the time it reached the Egyptian border, the Afrika Korps lines of communications were severely stretched. At the insistence of Churchill, Wavell launched Operation Battleaxe to lift the siege of Tobruk but within three days the operation had been defeated in the scenes of confusion of the ‘Benghazi Handicap’ as units raced to the perceived safety of Tobruk. Wavell, who had been fighting on five fronts – North Africa, East Africa, Iraq, Greece and Crete – was sacked and replaced by General Sir Claude Auchinleck in the autumn of 1941. He created Eighth Army from XIII and XXX Corps and began planning Operation Crusader to relieve Tobruk and destroy the Afrika Korps, but Berlin knew about virtually everything that he did because Italian Military Intelligence had broken the US State Department diplomatic code. They were intercepting telegrams sent to Washington by the US Military Attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Fellers, an Anglophobe, who regularly attended Auchinleck’s conferences and then sent despatches to Washington. Hitler regarded him highly, ‘It is only to be hoped that the American in Cairo continues to inform us so well over the English military planning through his badly enciphered cables.’
‘The history of photographic interpretation is inextricably woven with military aviation’. So wrote Captain Hamish Eaton in his history APIS; Soldiers with Stereo. In April 1941, the Army Air Photographic Interpretation Unit (Middle East), which included several Intelligence Corps officers, was formed at Heliopolis by Lieutenant S.J. Phillips (Royal Artillery) and had photographic interpreters attached to Army, Corps and divisions. In July, the Western Desert Section joined 285 Wing of the Desert Air Force, whose air photographic elements included 2 Squadron RAF, 60 Survey Squadron and 1437 Flight Baltimores flying long-range strategic missions. Generally, the summer cloudless skies and the absence of ground features exposed ground defences, however, low level sorties were at high risk from air defence having plenty of time to see aircraft. But convincing senior officers remained an uphill task. While preparing for Operation Crusader, Captain Ralph Dalton (Royal Engineers) visited GHQ with enemy defences annotated onto specially printed maps:
I shall never forget General Auchinleck with a magnifying glass in his hand get down on his hands and knees of the War Room and gaze earnestly in the best Sherlock Holmes tradition at the mosaics spread in front of him, asking searching questions as to how we knew that this was an 88mm and that was a minefield and so on. After spending some time with the General, I think he was partly convinced that air photos had their uses, even if they had their limitations (Robson)
Dalton designed offices to be fitted in 3-ton lorries, which permitted first phase interpretation immediately after the aircraft had landed, a concept that had been pioneered during the First World War but which had been allowed to lapse. Detailed interpretation then followed at Divisional level from which maps and overlays were drawn.
Auchinleck launched Operation Crusader on 18 November but soon ran into trouble when a copy of the Operations orders was captured and XXX Corps suffered badly; nevertheless, he drove Rommel back to El Agheila and relieved Tobruk. In the meantime, Malta had been under siege since June 1940 with the frequent air raids hindering convoys delivering equipment and supplies to Egypt.
Early on 29 November, Lieutenant General Johann von Ravenstein, the Afrika Korps deputy commander, was captured by the 21 (New Zealand) Battalion Intelligence Section in confused fighting near Sidi Rezegh and a map showing Axis positions and a collection of papers, including daily cipher changes for 21st Panzer Division, were found in his car. Posing as ’Colonel Schmidt’, the general was escorted to the New Zealand Divisional Headquarters but Prussian military etiquette prevailed and he introduced himself to Major General Freyberg using his correct name. Sent to a cage, von Ravenstein masquaraded as a sergeant during an escape attempt but was recognized by Captain Donald Prater, an Intelligence Corps officer, shortly before he was wounded. Captain Eric Peters, of 22 (44th (Home Counties) Division) FSS, escorted von Ravenstein to Alexandria by destroyer and although it was sunk, he delivered his prisoner to the Detailed Interrogation Centre.
In spite of inadequate resources and lack of transport, Eighth Army was supported with the fullest Y Service able to be mustered and set the benchmark for other Theatres. Mobile Direction Finding stations supported the static intercept stations and, as an experiment, 101 Special Wireless Section/40 Wireless Intelligence Section joined 7th Armoured Division in XXX Corps; however, its mobility proved impractical. Major John Makower was awarded the Military Cross for intercepting messages under fire and Sergeant W.T. Swain the Military Medal for delivering decrypted messages to HQ 4th Indian Division. A Terence Cuneo painting of their activities hanging in the Chicksands Officers Mess has the Cuneo deliberate error trademark – the steering wheel of the US jeep driven by Swain is on the right. In Tobruk, the credibility of the Polish 1st Carpathian Brigade interception of German communications doubted by HQ Eighth Army was proven during interrogations of prisoners. On one occasion, a Pole instructed a flight of German aircraft to divert to Crete, which they did.
In February 1942, had Rommel learnt from his Signals Intercept Company 621 that the British had a strong defensive position, the Gazala Line, stretching from the coast south to the fort and oasis at Bir Hacheim. When Colonel Fellers speculated to Washington that the British would take advantage of a brief superiority in tanks, on 26 May Rommel launched a spoiling attack from the south and, in spite of the gallant Free French at Bir Hacheim, forced Eighth Army to retreat in considerable confusion as the opposing forces again mingled.
Lieutenant General Ludwig Crüwell, who had been commanding the Afrika Korps since July 1940 after Rommel was appointed to command Panzer Army, Africa, was captured three days later when the pilot of the aircraft he was using to visit troops mistook a British position for an Italian one and landed. Cruewell was sent back to a Combined Detailed Interrogation Centre in England where his conversations proved to be most interesting. As Eighth Army retreated, the FS sections investigated reports of stay-behind parties threatening British lines of communication, rounded up stray prisoners of war and searched abandoned enemy bunkers and vehicles for items of intelligence interest.
The 2nd South African Division and three British brigades were stranded when Tobruk surrendered on 20 June, much to the fury of Churchill. Among those who escaped was 271 (Lines of Communications) FSS, which had arrived in Benghazi in January during Operation Crusader and had then withdrawn to Tobruk with 1 (South African) FSS. It was evacuated by ‘Derna’s Gate’, the euphemism for ‘by sea’ and joined 263 (HQ Eighth Army) FSS in Sidi Barrani.
The newly-arrived X Corps at Mersa Matruh meant that Eighth Army now had three Corps, each with a Special Wireless Sections and supported by two in reserve and training. Commanded by Captain J.R.B. Mellor (Royal Signals), its 105 Special Wireless Section disembarked on 27 January and, a month later, was joined by 44 Wireless Intelligence Section led by Captain Horsfield, leading to the usual disagreements as to who was in command. When the 7th Armoured Division experimental Special Wireless Section was terminated, 40 Wireless Intelligence joined the section. The fluidity of the fighting meant that a 12ft truck-mounted antenna was generally used in favour of the less flexible 30ft ground mast. Intercepts included 5 Tank Regiment Workshops/21st Panzer Division reporting battle damage; 8 Tank Regiment/15th Panzer Division reporting vehicle returns; strength and weapon returns of several units; and details of Axis forces reporting the locations of British units. Intercepts on 28 June included Rommel giving orders and communications of Reconnaissance Battalions 3 and 33 so that, on three occasions, operation orders issued by him were intercepted sufficiently early for counter-measures
As, on 14 June, Eighth Army began retreating to the El Alamein Line that stretched from a small railway station to the impassible Qattarra Depression. X and XIII Corps ordered to withdraw to the Fuka Escarpment, but so poor was the co-ordination between the two Corps that X Corps spent another day under increasing pressure. By the early evening Corps HQ was in danger of being overrun and 105 Special Wireless Section/44 Wireless Intelligence Section was instructed to destroy classified documents. Captain Mellor split 105 Special Wireless Section into Parties A and B and assigned 44 Wireless Intelligence to the latter. By 9pm, 50th (Northumberland) Division had secured an escape route from its defensive boxes at El Adem. As two of its brigades picked up the north-south Siwa Track, nicknamed the ‘Road to Rome’, headed south for twenty miles and then swung east towards the escarpment, the columns broke through the Italian X Corps and some a battle group headquarters of the German 90th Light Division heading north to Mersa Matruh. Those that breached the enemy motored along the track and, dropping onto the desert floor, headed east, passing several German armoured cars and a workshop on the side of a track and headed for a defile. When Party A regrouped, it was missing a radio van that had slipped its tow. British lorries towing four 25-pounder guns seen in the misty desert dawn on top of Fuka Escarpment turned out to be full of German soldiers using captured equipment. Nevertheless, as Party B broke through, the Germans appreciated their tactical advantage and collected about 1,600 prisoners, including all Party A, except three Royal Signals, and a large number of vehicles, guns and equipment to add to the material captured in Tobruk.
Meanwhile, the US State Department had unwittingly plugged its diplomatic leaks by changing ciphers, thereby depriving Rommel of a reliable source of good intelligence. Although quickly compromised, Fellers returned to Washington to be awarded a medal in recognition of his reports described as ‘models of clarity and accuracy’. In one of his last messages, when he described ‘considerable British panic’ in Cairo, he refers to the Big Smoke. By the beginning of July, Eighth Army was in defensive positions stretching west of the railway halt at El Alamein south to the impassable Qattara Depression. However, the close proximity of the fighting to Cairo led to GHQ issuing orders for classified information to be destroyed, an event supervised by 36 (GHQ – Military Security) FSS, but such was the chaos that some staff officers, including some from the G Intelligence, burnt documents inside the headquarters and documents fluttered across Cairo, an event that became known as ‘Ash Wednesday’.
The section had been formed at Mytchett in April 1940 and had served in the Norwegian Campaign before arriving in the Middle East in support of 8th Armoured Division. Typical investigations included tracking pay books deposited with prostitutes by servicemen as security of payment; recapturing Italian prisoners who had bribed guards to turn a blind eye so that they could visit girlfriends; and trapping a gang stealing weapons and ammunition from the Tura Caves Ordnance Depot.
When intercepts fixed the position of Signals Intercept Company 621 and HQ Panzer Army, during the first Battle of El Alamein in the night of 10 July the Australian 9th Division mauled the Italian Sabratha Division at the Tel el Eisa salient. Tasked to attack a ‘battery’, 26 Brigade overran the Company and part of the headquarters and captured about 100 Germans, including the mortally wounded Captain Alfred Seebohm, the Company 621 commander. Although interrogations proved difficult, the mass of captured documents, including seized British material, revealed not only the indiscretions of Fellers but also interrogations of captured Royal Signals and evidence of weak Allied wireless discipline. In quick succession, Rommel had lost two important assets that crippled his intelligence feed. HQ Eighth Army was shocked by the breaches of operational security and the War Office ordered an immediate tightening of adherence to signals procedures throughout the Army. A ‘J’ Service was formed for North Africa from Intelligence Corps and Royal Signals NCOs unfit or unsuitable for field work to monitor Base, Army and Corps communications for breaches of security. Among the Company 621 prisoners were a driver and a wireless operator, who admitted, to surprised interrogators, that they had communicated with two Abwehr agents in Cairo. The surprise was that it had been thought that most agents had been arrested.
Count László Almásy was a Hungarian royalist who had lived in Eastbourne and was a desert explorer alongside Bagnold and Clayton but when Hungary sided with the Axis in 1940, the Abwehr recruited him to provide Rommel with ‘eyes and ears’ and a sabotage platform in Cairo. In May 1942, Almásy guided a convoy of captured lorries through the Qattara Depression and, on 23 May, dropped two agents, Joannes Eppler and Peter Standstede, near Asyut railway station. Although his delivery had been tracked by Bletchley Park, its purpose remained unclear. Reaching Cairo, Standstede, the radio operator posing as a Scandinavian-American, and Eppler, the saboteur masquarading as a Rifle Brigade officer, gained a reputation among Allied officers for hosting wild parties. They used the book Rebecca as a basis of their codes to transmit the information they collected to Signals Intercept Company 621. When it was overrun, the nationalist Free Officers’ Movement appointed the future Egyptian President, Captain Anwar El Sadat, as their liaison officer; he believed they had sabotaged their radio so they could enjoy the delights of Cairo. The pair also hired a houseboat on the River Nile, however, a neighbour was Major Dunstan of Security Intelligence Middle East. When their lifestyle attracted the attention of British counter-intelligence because it did not match a city in panic, 259 (Cairo Base) FSS was tasked to investigate. Co-located with 36 (GHQ – Military Security and 277 (Cairo Special Duties) FSS. An NCO involved was Sergeant Maurice Oldfield, (later ‘C’ – Head of MI6). When the two Germans were seen during a 259 FSS surveillance operation contacting a suspect Austrian employed at the Swedish Legation, both men were arrested on the houseboat on 25 July in a raid led by Sergeant Benjamin. Their interrogations led to the arrests of several pro-German Egyptians and Arabs. Eppler and Stanstede were spared execution. The episode was later dramatised in the film Foxhole in Cairo.
The arrival of Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery to command Eighth Army in August saw an increased number of Intelligence Corps officers filling key intelligence appointments; for instance, 51st (Highland), 4th Indian, 9th Australian, 2nd New Zealand and 1st South African of XXX Corps each had a GSO 2 (Intelligence) major, two GSO 3 (Intelligence) captains and two Intelligence Corps (or Australian Intelligence Corps for the 9th Division) officer linguists in German and Italian as interpreters and translators. Typically at brigade-level was a GSO 3 (Intelligence) and an Intelligence officer. Recognition of the enhanced importance of intelligence was the inclusion of Intelligence 1-ton box-bodied vehicles alongside Operations, Air Support and the commander’s vehicle in command posts, as opposed to being expected to operate from tents packed and unpacked into 3-ton Bedford lorries, a system that had proved awkward in the fluid nature of the fighting. Intelligence summaries were disseminated during the morning and at night, often by motor cycle despatch riders. Summaries read over field telephones were sent in high grade cipher. Montgomery selected Bill Williams, now promoted to major, to be his Chief of Intelligence as a brigadier. In his Memoirs he attributes the success and influence of Williams as ‘possibly helped that he wore a Kings Dragoon Guard insignia in his cap and not that of the Intelligence Corps’. Montgomery also said the best intelligence staff officers were civilians. Williams said of Major Paul Crick (Intelligence Corps):
He served on my staff in 8 Army in 1942 when his personal contribution to unravelling the secrets of the enemy’s defensive layout at El Alamein did most, on the Intelligence side, to enable economy of effort and casualties, which was most remarkable.
Operation Crusader had resulted in a profound influence on the development of Y Service. Wireless Intelligence in A and B-Type Special Wireless Section increased to twelve Intelligence Corps led to the Eighth Army Y Service doubling from 1,300 soldiers in May 1942 to 2,400 in October. John Makower, promoted to lieutenant colonel heading General Staff Intelligence (Signals), reported to Brigadier Williams and worked on the principle that if Bletchley Park told him something he did not already know, Y Service was a failure.
SOE operations in the Middle East, Africa, Greece and the Balkans were controlled by Force 133 from Cairo. However, it suffered a reputation for excessive security, faction fighting and inter-agency conflict. MI6 was wary of Greek resistance in case it affected relations with neutral Turkey and Cretan resistance was governed by its island independence. In Occupied Greece, the vacuum caused by the flight of the monarchy to Cairo, saw the emergence of the communist National People’s Liberation Army and its political wing, the National Liberation Front, and the right-wing National Republican Greek League, but they soon were fighting each other as much as the Italians and Germans.
After being evacuated from Greece, Captain Hammond joined Colonel The Honourable Christopher Woodhouse, (late Royal Artillery), usually known as Monty, and Captain Patrick Leigh Fermor, travel writer, Greek speaker and former Irish Guards. Both were now Intelligence Corps and training Greek exiles at the SOE School in Haifa. Alexander (Xan) Fielding – a classicist who had studied at two German universities, travelled in Greece and who was not an entirely successful bar proprietor in Cyprus – had joined the Cyprus Regiment because British Army regimental traditions horrified him. After supporting clandestine operations in Crete and the Middle East, in December 1941 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and joined Force 133. Landed from a submarine near Rethymnon in Crete during the night of 11/12 February 1942 and disguised as a Greek mountain peasant, he met Leigh Fermor, who had landed in June 1941 and was masquerading as a shepherd, and together they persuaded the feuding resistance groups to co-operate. Initially responsible for the evacuation of Allied servicemen left behind after Crete was overrun and those who had escaped from prison camps, Fielding developed clandestine operations in the north-west and arranged supply deliveries, organized ambushes and sabotage, and distributed propaganda. The Cretans appreciated his bravado, especially when he established his headquarters near the coast road and attended parties given by the Germans for collaborators. When Crete became a transit camp and logistic base for the Afrika Korps, his reports of Luftwaffe departures enabled interception by Middle East Air Force.
By mid-1942 SOE operations were beginning to be shoe-horned into military operations. On 4 September, Captain George Tsoucas, a Greek stockbroker aged 41, was captured with twelve Special Boat Service during a raid on a Rhodes airfield. He made three escape attempts, first by squeezing through a porthole of a ship in Patras harbour, but gave himself up when he heard that anyone helping him would suffer reprisals. He escaped from a prison camp near Modena in Italy but was captured near the Swiss border and, in his third attempt, he escaped from a German camp by exchanging places with an American prisoner, reached France and then was passed along MI9 escape lines until he reached Gibraltar. The raid was dramatized in They Who Dare (1953) starring Dirk Bogarde, with Akim Tamiroff playing Tsoucas. Several weeks before the Battle of El Alamein, Lieutenant Colonel John Haselden, who worked with the LRDG and the desert Arabs, suggested to Raider Headquarters at GHQ that the enemy fuel dump at Tobruk should be raided. Any scheme to deny Rommel fuel was welcomed but a bemused Haselden found himself planning a four phase major operation – Daffodil, Hyacinth, Snowdrop and Tulip – which had ballooned to 700 soldiers, the LRDG, the Special Air Service and a Royal Navy flotilla. But operational security was non-existent. Rehearsals were held near Alexandria Yacht Club and excited staff officers discussed the raid in the clubs of Cairo and on the pillows of girlfriends. On 13 September Force B, of Haselden and ninety ‘prisoners-of-war’, drove into Tobruk from Al-Kufra and was ambushed. The Force C amphibious landing was disastrous and, although two LRDG Patrols successfully attacked Barce airfield, Haselden ordered a withdrawal but was killed. The ships of Force A lost a cruiser, two destroyers and two gunboats; 746 men were killed while German and Italian losses were sixteen.
Three weeks before the Battle of El Alamein opened on 23 October, General Sir Harold Alexander, the new Commander-in-Chief, instructed Force 133 to attack the German rail lines of communication between Salonika and the port of Piraeus in Greece. On 1 October, in poor weather, Harling Force of eight SOE commanded by Brigadier Edward Myers, parachuted to near Delphi and within a week was in contact with the National Republican League. Colonel Woodhouse was deputy to Myers. The remainder of the group jumped three weeks later and, linking up with the communists, were nearly executed as monarchist spies. Deciding to attack the Gorgopotamos viaduct near Thermopylae, Myers persuaded the dysfunctional Resistance to work together and attack the bridge garrison and ambush a trainload of Italian reinforcements during the night of 23 November, while a SOE demolition party collapsed a span into the river, severing the railway for six weeks. Woodhouse said of Operation Harling:
It showed for the first time in occupied Europe that guerrillas, with the support of Allied officers, could carry out a major tactical operation co-ordinated with Allied strategic plans. It stimulated ambitious plans for developing resistance, primarily in Greece, but also elsewhere.
However, that the attack took place after the Battle of El Alamein disappointed General Montgomery and, suspicious of raiding operations anyway, he never directly approached Special Operations Executive for an operational contribution. Harling Force remained in Greece and became embroiled in the bitter civil war in 1943 that saw the communists overwhelm its opponents and the Allies switch their logistic support to the People’s Liberation Army, even though it was clear that their aim was to convert Greece to a communist state.
In the weeks before the second Battle of El Alamein, 263 (HQ Eighth Army) and 278 (X Corps) FSS carried out a wide range of tasks which included seeking Axis orders of battle and paraphernalia during house searches, rounding up security suspects, and providing conference and VIP security, including during the visit of King George VI to Egypt. During the battle a FS Headquarters, established with the GSO 3 Intelligence (b) at Divisional headquarters and detachments devolved to Brigade HQs during advances, set a pattern that was used in other theatres of war. Using Humber Snipe cars or Canadian Ford pick-up trucks, they searched abandoned vehicles, interrogated prisoners and translated documents. When Sergeant A. Potter, of 37 (1st Armoured Division) FSS, found an important map marked with minefields in a knocked-out tank, Major General Briggs authorized the section to wear Royal Tank Regiment black berets. When the FSO, Captain Bill Winlaw, was wounded in a mortar attack and evacuated to Sudan, he was replaced by Captain E.B. Every DSO, who is thought to have won the award during the First World War. On 4 November General Wilhelm von Thoma, who was commanding the Afrika Korps in the absence of Rommel on leave, was captured when his tank was destroyed. That evening, when he was invited to dinner by Montgomery and discussed the battle, he admitted, ‘I was staggered at the exactness of his knowledge… He seemed to know as much about our position as I did myself.’ Before the General was sent to England for detailed interrogation, Captain Wrobel escorted him for a day visit to the Pyramids. Photographic interpretation proved its worth by providing information with minefields and defensive positions annotated onto air photographs and maps. Major General Freyburg, Major General Douglas Wimberley of the 51st (Highland) Division and Major General Francis Tuker of the 4th Indian Division all expressed a high regard for the information that their photographic interpreters supplied. Their comments led to the deployment of specialists operating from a static headquarters studying a specific subject while field force interpreters operated from mobile offices. Most Army photographic interpreters were seconded to the Intelligence Corps for the duration of their tours.
By the time that Panzer Army Afrika gave way after thirteen days of heavy fighting, the Allies had landed in Vichy French North Africa in Operation Torch on 8 November. At Liverpool, Sergeant T.E. Mason of 118 FSS was given eight Intelligence Corps and instructed to provide security for ships involved in the operation docked at Manchester. The ten FS sections landing with First Army had access to the US Army Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects. Meanwhile, 85 (HQ First Army) FSS, landing with US Rangers near Algiers, seized documents and wirelesses in the German Armistice Commission and arrested two German agents three days later. French troops shot the three Arabs who had sheltered them. Several days after the Section had requisitioned a villa previously used by the German consul and his mistress, Lance Corporal John Fraser had organized supplies and beds in exchange for a bottle of Scotch with a US ship’s chief steward. Sergeant Tony Thain was involved in investigations following the assassination of Admiral Darlan on 24 December but found, as did the section, that the Vichy French police were bent on revenge. The investigations by Thain and Fraser into an alleged double agent named Louis Slock, who claimed to have lived in Huddersfield, proved frustratingly fruitless. Two years later, when Slock arrived at Croydon Airport, claiming to be French but lacking papers, his interrogator was none other than Sergeant Fraser, now on airport security control. Lance Corporal Bates of 55 (6th Armoured Division) FSS was captured in an ambush while attached to an infantry unit and Sergeant Hayward was killed in action. Captain A. Lyle-Smith was also captured and twice escaped from prison camps in Tunisia before being transferred to Italy, where he escaped from a camp dressed in an Italian uniform provided by a guard. He was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits.
By mid-November, Eighth Army had advanced to Derna. 278 (X Corps) FSS, well up front, stayed with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps overnight and, entering the town the next day, searched buildings identified as headquarters for documents, contacted locals, flushed out stay-behind parties and stray Axis soldiers, and liberated a prison camp of British wounded. Shortly after an air raid, their spirits rose when the New Zealand and Rhodesian FS arrived; 278 FSS handed over to 263 (Lines of Communications) FSS and rejoining X Corps on Christmas Day entering Benghazi under heavy shelling, helped 263 and 413 FSS, both Lines of Communications, establish a detention centre near the docks. After joining a LRDG patrol and suffering frequent mortar fire, shelling and air raids, 263 FSS reached Tripoli, where it linked up with 22 (44th (Home Counties) Division) FSS. Soon after Captain Winlaw returned from hospital and took over from Captain Peters, a priority task was to vet the separate brothels for officers, warrant officers and other ranks as Montgomery attempted to control the carnal pleasures of his battle-hardened soldiers. Throughout the advance, Ultra information from Bletchley Park played an important role interdicting German supply routes from Italy to the extent that 44 per cent of Axis supplies never reached Libya. However, Rommel was not known as the Desert Fox without good reason and, in February 1943, he ordered radio silence before routing US forces at Kasserine Pass. In early March 1943, as the Allies converged on Tunisia, 278 (X Corps) FSS met General Jacques LeClerc’s Free French nearing the end of their epic desert march from Chad and, when Eighth Army was held up by the formidable Mareth Line, it occupied a Foreign Legion fort used by the LRDG to meet Arab agents.
Meanwhile, the Western Desert Section had moved its Photographic Interpreter base to Tripoli, where Captain Jack Middleton MC undertook an extensive interpretation of the desert and enemy defences in preparation for Montgomery’s left hook that outflanked the Mareth Line. Playing a key role in developing plans at HQ Eighth Army was Lieutenant Colonel James Ewart, previously the Director of Military Intelligence at GHQ. During the night of 27 March, with the desert Kamsin wind whipping up a sandstorm, as 1st Armoured Division swung south to outflank the German defences, 37 FSS was in a convoy of New Zealanders, Maoris, Free French and military police passing through the shambles of recent fighting and long columns of prisoners. An NCO captured an Italian brigadier.
The 51st (Highland) Division was joined by 278 FSS after it had taken a battering breaching the Mareth Line, and 278 FSS was present when Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim surrendered Axis forces in Tunisia on 12 May, with 300,000 prisoners and masses of equipment. The previous day, after Colonel Pfeifer had surrendered his 21st Panzer Division Battle Group to one of its corporals, the section was instrumental in organizing the time and place of the formal surrender of the division. The section later operated with the French Foreign Legion and joined the local authorities and police in the Zahouan area rounding up collaborators and enemy agents, five of whom were executed and fifteen imprisoned. In December 1942, 68 (Combined Operations) FSS was the first of seven FS sections selected by Fifteenth Army Group to enter Tunis with S Force. The group consisted of the British First Army and Fifth (US) Army. An experimental advance guard of Intelligence Corps, Royal Engineers, Royal Signals, linguists, guides and interpreters and other support, such as medical, S Force was tasked to enter a town before the enemy had left, and ‘obtain the maximum intelligence material and equipment and to facilitate the entry in Tunis and Bizerte of those organizations whose duties necessitate their rapid entry into those towns’. Training included learning Italian from an Army Education Officer, booby-trap disposal and opening safes with explosives from Royal Engineers. S Force had teething problems; however, it set the benchmark for future operations in Italy, North-West Europe and the Far East.
Among units pushed forward from Cairo was the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (Cairo) with one intelligence requirement: to identify units that had escaped to Italy. Lieutenant Harold Shergold exploited the desire of bewildered prisoners to stick together by holding formal parades, which then enabled him to identify units down to Company level.