Intelligence is never too dear.
Francis Walsingham
Responsibility for Imperial military activity throughout the Far East and South East Asia lay with GHQ India, until August 1940 when Borneo and Burma, both with important oil reserves, and Malaya were absorbed into GHQ Malaya with its Headquarters in Singapore. The strategic consensus was that while Hong Kong was largely indefensible and Burma was a backwater, except for its Arakan airfields, no-one could possibly overcome the power of the Royal Navy, land in Malaya, fight their way through the jungle, cross the Johore Causeway and land in Singapore. But, by the summer of 1940, this optimism was not reflected by the War Cabinet, who expressed concern, in the most secret Far Eastern Appreciation, that Malaya could be defended. Unfortunately, the assessment and a mass of other information were captured in November when the SS Automedon was intercepted by Germany’s most successful surface raider, the Atlantis. The Japanese Intelligence Service had developed very effective espionage throughout Malaya that included recruitment of an Indian Army captain who had detailed knowledge of airfields. Unfortunately, the Far East Command Bureau, tasked to co-ordinate military intelligence and counter-intelligence, was ineffective, indeed, GHQ India had failed to raise an Intelligence Corps, as had GHQ Malaya. .
The brutality of the 1936 Japanese invasion of China and warnings in 1941 from Colonel George Wards, a former Military Attaché in Tokyo and later a Cabinet Office historian, that the combination of Japanese espionage and subversion in Malaya and Singapore and the combat efficiency and experience of the Imperial Japanese Army posed a major threat to British interests, went unheeded. Indeed, General Lionel Bond, General Officer Commanding, Malaya, censured him, ‘We don’t want to dismay the chaps; we must keep their spirits up’. Nevertheless, in August 1941, Major Anthony Charmier OBE formed HQ Intelligence Corps in Singapore to support HQ III Indian Corps, but he found that the lack of Photographic Intelligence and a Y Service meant that credible intelligence assessments were difficult to develop. With time very short, he formed the Command Intelligence Section that included a Cipher Section, and was sent interpreters and interrogators with experience of Japan, some arriving from the UK and others married to Japanese partners. Counter-intelligence was initially entrusted to 351, 352 and 353 FSS that were locally raised in Singapore. Meanwhile, 78 FSS, which had been formed in November 1941 from French, German and Arabic linguists in Winchester expecting to be deployed in North Africa, and which was commanded by Captain Lemin, arrived in the Dutch East Indies in December.
The years of complacency were shattered on 7 December, the day that Pearl Harbour was bombed, when the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army landed at Kota Bahru in north-east Malaya and advanced south against thinly spread defenders. Ten days later, the Twenty-Third Army poured into Hong Kong from China, smashed the defensive Gin Drinkers’ Line stretching across the New Territories, and forced the British and Canadian troops and Hong Kong Volunteers to surrender on 25 December. Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Ride (Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps), who had fought with the Australians in the Great War, was captured but escaped to China, where he established the MI9 British Army Aid Group to help prisoners escaping from Hong Kong. One with post-war connections to the Intelligence Corps was William Cheong Gun. Escaping in 1942, as Agent 50 he established a network that ran Red Cross supplies between Macau and Guilin and helped downed aircrew to evade capture.
By February 1942, the Twenty-Fifth Army, pushing their bicycles along jungle tracks, had forced III Indian Corps and an Australian Division across Johore Causeway to join the recently-arrived 18th British Division with its 15 FSS in the chaotic jewel of Singapore. When, on 13 February, the Royal Navy decided that several vessels should be denied to the Japanese and then allocated 3,000 berths to civilian government and Armed Forces for evacuation, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, the General Officer Commanding Malaya Command, instructed that specialists surplus to operational requirements should be evacuated. As HQ 18th Division reviewed its allocation, Major General Merton Beckwith-Smith instructed Captain Lemin to transfer 15 FSS to CSM John Wright and for him and his four most proficient linguists to be evacuated. But Lemin, in the chaos, could not find the four he had selected and missed the disaster that befell the convoy when it was intercepted by Japanese aircraft. Among the missing was Lieutenant Laurence Hamilton, who had been employed by the Japanese Government to teach English, and his Japanese wife, who had translated documents for Major Charmier. Lemin and his party arrived at the docks on 15 February, the day that Singapore surrendered, and joined several gunners and two Royal Signals searching for a suitable vessel. They selected the elderly launch, Siong Aik and, as they scrambled on board during an air raid, Lemin was wounded in the thigh. A former heating engineer coaxed the launch’s engine into life and thirty-six hours later the vessel made landfall on the east coast of Sumatra. Ferried by Royal Navy landing craft and lorries to Padang, the group boarded the destroyer HMS Tenedos on 1 March, transferred to HMAS Hobart and reached Colombo, Ceylon four days later.
The linguists, Lieutenants Brown, Storry and Tait, were on a ship sheltering near an island en route to Sumatra when it was sunk by aircraft. Joining about seventy other military personnel in a launch and landing in Sumatra, they also reached Ceylon. Lieutenant G.A.T. Shaw was an expatriate who had helped round up Japanese residents and was attached to an Australian battalion retreating from Johore when he and two other Intelligence Corps lieutenants were instructed to escort thirteen prisoners to Java. They reached Padang by gunboat and junk and transferred them to the Dutch. Of the three, Shaw and Clark reached Ceylon, but Lieutenant G. Rawkings was captured and sent to Changi prison camp as an interpreter. Of the Intelligence Corps in Singapore, 351 FSS lost two killed in action. The fate of 353 FSS is not known but 78 FSS, with no particular role in Java, assisted the military police until the Dutch East Indies surrendered on 8 March. Several members were transferred to Changi prison camp before being sent to Batu Lintang camp in Borneo. Originally a British barracks, the camp held 3,000 Allied prisoners and civilian detainees in cramped conditions. Life was harsh with about two-thirds of the British prisoners dying during or as a result of their captivity. Captain Lemin later wrote to Mrs Wright:
I am not going to pretend that the prisoners of war will have a wonderful time. They will not, but I can say on good authority that the Japs are keen on making Singapore a star piece for the prisoners, to counter the Hong Kong stories.
In 1939, the Imperial Japanese Army proposed building a railway from Siam (now Thailand) through Burma to support an invasion of India using local labour. When Singapore surrendered, the Japanese had cheap labourers – 130,000 Allied prisoners of war. Working under the direction of railway engineers, more than 60,000 prisoners and thousands of forced labourers built the 415km railway from to Nong Pladuk in Thailand to Thanbyuzyat (Three Pagodas Pass) in Burma. But in July 1943 Japanese engineers were instructed to finish on time ready to support operations in Burma and for the next four months the prisoners worked relentlessly in the ‘Speedo Period’, until both ends met in October. Despite the appalling brutality of the Japanese and Korean guards, disease, starvation, overwork and inadequate accommodation and sanitation, building the Burma Railway was a remarkable feat of discipline and engineering, but it cost 16,000 Allied prisoners and 100,000 labourers their lives, many during the Speedo Period. Ten Intelligence Corps died, six during the Speedo Period.
HQ Burma Army in Rangoon had no active counter-intelligence support until Captain Mains arrived as GSO2 Intelligence (B) in December 1941 from Iraq. Eight Indians provided the desert-trained 17th Indian Division FS section but it was attached to the Divisional Employment Platoon. In a city awash with rumour, disinformation, espionage, subversion and sabotage from agents, nationalist monks and Japanese expatriates, and soldiers with Burmese features sabotaging dock facilities, the port was a focal point for a constant stream of lorries carrying 30,000 tons of military equipment to supply the Chinese Nationalist armies fighting the Japanese 700 miles to the north. Using his experiences from Iraq, Mains formed No. 1 (Burma) Composite FSS from Burmese soldiers, the 1 Glosters boxing team then guarding Army Headquarters, four British Garrison Military Police and eight Indians. When the Japanese Fifteenth Army landed in southern Burma at the beginning of February, the collapse of infrastructure and the demoralization of the Burma Police led to Mains deploying the Section to support the railway authorities transporting refugees north toward Myitkyina. By early March, it was clear that Rangoon could not be held and No. 1 (Burma) FSS formed part of the 1 Glosters rearguard, which reached Maymo after narrowly avoiding capture when the Japanese cut the road at the Taukkyan Bend. Forming three more FS sections, Mains kept No. 1 (Burma) FSS with Army HQ, attached No. 2 (Burma) FSS to the 1st Burma Division, sent No. 3 (Burma) FSS to the Burma Frontier Force garrison at the Lashio rail head and despatched No. 4 (Burma) FSS to Myitkyina. All were on lines of communications security and expected to be self sufficient. By the end of April, Burma Army had abandoned Maymo and conducted a 1,000 miles fighting retreat along jungle tracks and across rivers to the Indian border province of Assam that would last until mid-May. Mains, in controversial circumstances, was instructed to destroy a petrol dump near Mandalay that would have been useful for the 7 Armoured Brigade tanks. General Sir William Slim, who commanded Burma Army, later wrote,
Our intelligence was extremely bad. We were like a blind boxer trying to strike an unseen opponent and to parry blows we did not know were coming until they hit us. We never made up for the lack of methodically collecting intelligence or the intelligence organisation which should have been available to us when the war began.
The War Office admitted the weakness in response to his Despatches on the Burma Campaign,
This lack was not peculiar to Burma. It is fair to say that throughout the British Empire the necessity for an Intelligence system was realised by the Service Headquarters but the various Governments concerned were not prepared to spend the money to make it effective (PRO WO/166 266):
The four Field Security sections reached sanctuary but their contribution was not listed in the Official History of the War in the Far East. Mains:
The cool courage and good discipline of the four Field Security Sections was beyond praise during the whole of the campaign. In spite of the rigours, both mental and physical, of the period of policing Rangoon, when a crate of beer was always available in the Field Security billet for any man to help himself, no case of drunkenness and indiscipline occurred.
Meanwhile, IV Corps arrived from Basrah to guard Assam, the lines of communication to India being devolved to Eastern Army. With the Japanese lurking across the border, Lieutenant General Sir Neil Irwin, commanding IV Corps, issued orders to ‘retain the services of certain officers and other ranks forming part of the Corps and Army troops assisting in the reorganising of the divisions’. But the health of Major Mains had collapsed. Although he lost the opportunity of being either Chief Instructor, Field Security Wing at Karachi or second-in-command of his battalion, he returned to organize IV Corps rear area security and found that Captain Peter Leefe, who had been a FS sergeant in France, was his GS0 3 Intelligence (B). Their counter-intelligence resources had been reinforced by 25 (HQ IV Corps) FSS and the poorly-trained, all-Indian section supporting the 26th Indian Division at Manipur, minus its FSO who had become a psychiatric casualty. Still using the structure developed in Iraq, Mains combined Nos. 2 and 4 (Burma) FSS and the British sections into two Composite sections and provided lines of communications security at Dibrugarh, which is north of Kohima, and at Silchar, west of Imphal. In depth, he formed the semi-independent Gauhati Intelligence Detachment to co-ordinate intelligence emerging from the refugee camps, ensured that GHQ India provided interrogators and assisted the military police in counter-intelligence arrests. A persistent problem affecting lines of communication security in India was a nationalist unrest sponsored by Japanese agents that included sabotage and subversion against Indian units.
With the Royal Navy largely driven from the Indian Ocean and Allied sea lines of communications around the Cape of Good Hope under threat from German proposals to occupy Vichy-occupied Madagascar, on 5 May 1942 in Operation Ironclad, Force 121, which was built around the British 5th Infantry Division, landed west of Diego Suarez at the northern tip of the island. It was a significant operation for the Corps because, for the first time, an Intelligence Corps unit took part in an amphibious assault. In March 1940 29 (HQ Combined Operations) FSS, commanded by the Portuguese-speaking Captain Annis, was formed for lines of communication duties at St Malo. In May 1941 it joined Combined Operations at Dumfries and was attached to 102 Royal Marines Brigade for amphibious operations on the Azores and Canary Islands should Hitler move against Spain. The section then joined 29 Assault Brigade for further training in Scotland and, during Operation Ironclad, landed with the main assault force and had established a Field Security office before the senior intelligence officer arrived. The landings had been supported by SOE operations tying down the defenders. Meanwhile, Captain R.E. Colby distributed leaflets inviting the garrison to surrender and ran a psychological warfare wireless service to counter Vichy broadcasting. After the garrison had surrendered, the section helped separate Vichy from Free French and undertook port and airport security duties, during which they detained the crew of a German ship suspected of passing intelligence. Sergeant Rupert Croft-Cooke (the novelist and playwright) later wrote an account of the Section’s activities in The Blood-Red Island. Several Field Security sections deployed to Madagascar, including 9 and 6 (East African) Coast Security Sections, with specific responsibility for passport control, border controls, shipping intelligence and interrogation of enemy aliens. In Mozambique, Captain Malcolm Muggeridge, now attached to MI6, engineered the capture of one of the U-Boats that was regularly resupplied by a ship in the Mozambique Channel.
As preparations for a counter-attack through Burma developed, a proposal in September 1942 to raise the Burma Regiment of six battalions failed within six months with only 750 applicants of mainly expatriate government officials, oil men and businessmen of a mix of Anglo-Burmese and Indians and from the Chin, Kachin and Karen hill clans. The applicants were assembled into sixteen forty-strong platoons of the new Burma Intelligence Corps with the intention that every Corps, Divisional and Brigade headquarters would be supported by interpreters and guides with good local knowledge of Burma. Having lost its guns during the Retreat, 3 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment was transferred en bloc. The Corps depot at Mhow in the United Provinces in India was part of HQ Burma Auxiliary Forces.
Major John de Vine arrived in India in mid-June 1942 with orders to establish the Field Security Depot at Karachi. Formerly an Indian Police officer who had served in Burma and had then returned to Great Britain in 1936, he enlisted in the FSP as a Private in September 1939 and was then Adjutant/Mobilization Officer at Mytchett. In October, de Vine, now promoted to lieutenant colonel, formed the Intelligence Corps (India) with Field Security HQ, Training Depot and Centre and was appointed Commandant, a post that he retained until 1945. A very high percentage of recruits were inducted from South-East Asia Command, which had been created in September 1943, and India Command. Major Mains would later write that while the original British FS other ranks consisted of men of ‘high mental and social category’, some of whom would be commissioned to command the new sections, the locally-recruited other ranks were of inferior quality but once the unsuitable had been weeded out at the Depot, ‘the remainder gave good service’. Divided into the British and Indian Wings, the Depot followed the curricula at Winchester, ran cadre and language courses and was organized to represent the dialects of India, in addition to the ubiquitous Urdu. Among his instructors was Captain Philip Wright, who had enlisted into the Intelligence Corps in 1939, had been on lines of communications security in France in 1940, and had been with 609 (39th Light Indian Division) FSS. About 300 US Counter Intelligence Corps attended Orientation Courses. Double the size of British FS sections, the Composites were divided into identical British and Indian detachments commanded by a British FSO. The British consisted of a company sergeant major, two sergeants and three corporals while the Indian element comprised a Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer, three havildars (sergeants), three naiks (corporals), two lance naiks and either a British or Indian batman. It was equipped with two 15cwt trucks, usually two Jeeps, eight motor cycles and five bicycles. Generally, the divisional FS sections devolved a FS detachment of minimum of a British and an Indian NCO to the brigades within the division. Close relationships developed between the Field Security sections and the Burma Intelligence Corps to the extent of joint detachments from Division and Brigade headquarters patrolling villages behind British lines to identify collaborators, recommend security measures to prevent pilfering from supply dumps, search captured Japanese for documents and prevent infiltration. They also infiltrated behind Japanese lines to meet agents and collect information. By 1945, the Depot had turned out 118 FS Composite sections, of which only seven were all-British. Thirty-nine of the 500 Series FS sections served in the Middle and Far East while the 600 Series served exclusively in the Far East. The four Burma Composite FS sections were retitled with No. 4 Section, for instance, becoming 565 (5th Indian Division) FSS. Concerns that the perceived difficulties of Japanese and lack of linguists hindering code-breaking, interrogation and translation were eased by the careful selection of individuals with a proven record of languages, such as classical Greek, and intense courses that confounded the doubters. Nevertheless, some found the speed with which Japanese prisoners spoke a temporary difficulty.
In 1943, Colonel Wards was appointed Commandant of the Intelligence School (India) where Indian Viceroy’s Commissioned officers destined for intelligence and security appointments attended six week courses. Interestingly, its General Intelligence course later formed the basis for the Advanced Intelligence Course at Maresfield. Major General Walter Cawthorn, who held senior intelligence staff appointments throughout the war, was Director Military Intelligence, GHQ India in New Delhi. During the year he instructed that all Intelligence staff officers were to be attached to, but not badged as, the Intelligence Corps (India), a ruling that also applied to commissioned British FS NCOs, who were badged as Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence School (India) and the Depot remained separate functions until June 1945 when they were amalgamated into the Intelligence Corps Training Centre in Karachi, with the Depot forming the Security Wing. Both were commanded by Colonel Wards until 1947 when he handed over to an Indian officer, however within the year of Partition, the Centre was closed so that the newly-formed Pakistan Government could take over its offices.
While several Port Security sections were formed locally, such as in Colombo, the bulk of the Field Security sections in India provided lines of communications security on roads, rivers and railways and at ports, airports and border crossing points in a vast country that was politically unstable because of the ‘Quit India’ politics of the Indian National Congress Party generated by Mahatma Gandhi. In April 1943, 82 FSS and 567 FSS on Port Security in Bombay checked ships transporting enthusiastic Italians and sullen Germans captured in North Africa to prison camps. Having been fed the idea that India was seething with hatred against the British, eight Germans dived over the side of one ship hoping to join the rebellion and surrendered three days later, thoroughly disillusioned by diffident Indians. In April 1943, 567 and 613 FSS reformed from 82 FSS with the former becoming the Bombay Town section while the latter was port security. It lost Sergeant Sam Touche, killed on 14 April 1944 in the Bombay Explosion, when cargo on the SS Fort Stikine of ‘just about everything that will either burn or blow up’ (high explosive, bales of cotton, timber, Spitfires) exploded killing 740 people, including 476 servicemen, injuring 1,800, sinking eight merchantmen and damaging five warships. Some of the £2 million in gold bullion is still being recovered. Meanwhile, 600 (United Provinces) FSS in Lucknow covered an area the size of the UK with the internal security of the hill stations complicated by the combination of nationalism, refugees from Singapore and Burma, the risk of Japanese infiltration and American missionaries attempting to subvert British and Indian soldiers to their creeds. In Lucknow, a communist organization harbouring British deserters was unearthed. One of the few Intelligence Corps units with a woman soldier under command was 619 (Delhi) FSS, which employed the Anglo-Indian Sergeant Mavis Comerford-Bailey, of the Women’s Army Corps (India), as a Confidential Clerk. On security duties were 629, 630 and 631 FSS, who were deployed at several airfields in Assam to protect the security of the precarious airlift of supplies over the Himalayas to Chinese nationalist forces, known to Allied aircrew as the Hump.
In September 1943, General Wavell, now Commander in Chief India, instructed Eastern Army to take advantage of the dry monsoon and attack Japanese positions in Arakan and capture the airfields on Akyab island but the offensive ran into stubborn defence and, crippled by exhaustion and lack of confidence of fighting in the jungle, it was driven back to its start point. HQ 6 Brigade was overrun by the Tanahashi Group and Brigadier Cavendish killed. The Brigade was supported by the Composite Field Security section to pass out from Karachi, 607 FSS; it is thought that one of its NCOs was killed in the attack. The section received this accolade from Director of Military Intelligence, India:
Complete and vitally interesting reports have been regularly sent to the Depot from this section notwithstanding the difficulties of operations. These reports have been of great assistance to training new sections.
Following the first Arakan campaign, Fourteenth Army was formed as part of Eleventh Army Group to control operations in Burma with rear area security remaining with Eastern Command reporting to GHQ India. Later dubbed ‘The Forgotten Army’, it was commanded by the charismatic Lieutenant General William Slim, whose experiences in the Burma Retreat and lessons learnt in Europe ensured that intelligence became a high priority.
Air photographic interpretation in the Far East had not existed until early February 1942 when four officers destined to form the APIS, Singapore where diverted to Delhi and Calcutta. Eleven more interpreters, including Major Stuart Piggot, established a joint Army/RAF photographic unit which, by October 1943, was providing Army Headquarters with photographic interpretation. The three Corps of Fourteenth Army each had a detachment followed a month later by photographic interpreters supporting the divisions. The climate caused considerable difficulties, not the least of which was photographic reconnaissance sorties in the monsoon, and the jungle environment limited exploitation. However, imagery contributed to surveying unmapped areas.
By the time that Major P.W. Murray-Thriepland arrived from the Mediterranean in mid-1944, the situation had improved markedly with analysis divided between the strategic Central Photographic Interpretation Section (South-East Asia) at New Delhi and tactical tasks undertaken by the Photographic Interpretation Department in a luxurious house not far from Allipore airfield near Calcutta. South-East Asia Command in Ceylon and, later, Headquarters Twelfth Army in Calcutta also had photographic interpreters. Captain John Noel used his experiences as the photographer for the 1922 and 1924 Everest expeditions to search for the best routes to supply Fourteenth Army from India.
The Far East Combined Bureau had been formed as a Government Cipher & Code School outpost on Stonecutters Island, Hong Kong by the Royal Navy and RAF to intercept Japanese, Chinese and Soviet communications. In August 1939, it transferred to Singapore but the detachment left in Hong Kong was captured. Shortly, before Singapore surrendered, the Army and RAF codebreakers were transferred to the Wireless Experimental School in Delhi while the naval contingent first went to Colombo. The School was a fifth the size of Bletchley Park and was lodged in part of Delhi University, with the ‘secure’ element on an isolated hill named Anand Parbat (‘Hill of Happiness’). Its two sub-stations supported Western Wireless at Bangalore in southern India and Eastern Wireless at Barrackpore, near Delhi, feeding from about eighty static intercept stations and several mobile Y Service units targeting Japanese communications. Among the 1,000 staff were Intelligence Corps. In the spring of 1943, Alan Stripp, a Cambridge classics undergraduate, attended a Japanese language course and, after being commissioned into the Corps, was posted to Bletchley Park, where he was one of the very few officers analyzing Japanese Air Force signal traffic in Burma. After about five months, he was posted to the School where he continued his work on the Air Force and concluded that Fourteenth Army Intelligence had a clearer knowledge of Japanese strengths, positions and intentions than Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo. Stripp later wrote a novel, The Code Snatch, about an Allied plan to snatch the only two codebooks of a new issue by convincing a Japanese intelligence officer to hand them to a ‘general’, in fact a Nisei officer flying into a Japanese air base in a captured aircraft. It is speculative that this stranger than fact operation took place except that Stripp once revealed to his wife that he had flown behind Japanese lines. He later co-wrote Codebreakers: The Inside Story. Nisei were Japanese-Americans and Japanese–Canadians; hundreds had been detained as enemy aliens before their value was realized.
In February 1943, 24 (Type-A) Wireless Intelligence Section had arrived from England with twenty-seven Intelligence Corps. ‘A’ Special Wireless Group was formed in Barrackpore from elements of 1 Wireless Company Group and 1 (UK), 3 (Middle East) and C Special Wireless Groups to support Fourteenth Army operations with tactical intercepts. During the Arakan offensive, it had been based in Chittagong and intercepted communications of the Tanahashi Group (in fact 112 Infantry Regiment), and passed it to the Wireless Experimental School, where it became evident that Japanese regiments and battalions were named after their commanders. This practice caused difficulties in tracking identifying units when commanders became casualties or were transferred, and in estimating unit sizes. With the Intelligence Section sub-divided into five sections, Sergeant W.C. Smith, in Section B, compiled a list of units in every Burmese town and village and tracked the building of the Burma Railway. By late 1943 intelligence, including Signals Intelligence, was suggesting the Japanese were massing east of Assam but their intentions were unclear.
Formed in late 1940, SOE India Mission, which was based in Ceylon, controlled clandestine operations throughout South-East Asia Command until it reformed as Force 136 in 1944. As in Europe, its role was to support resistance movements, such as the communist Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) led by Chin Peng, and V and Z Forces deeper in Burma. Attempts to form the Singapore Mission by GHQ Malaya had been foiled by official opposition. Conducting guerrilla warfare in Borneo was first proposed by Second Lieutenant P.M. Synge, an Intelligence Corps officer then serving at Headquarters Intelligence Corps in Oxford. Benefiting from his experience of the 1932 Oxford Sarawak Expedition, he proposed that about 500 men raised from the interior longhouses could form effective guerrilla forces but acknowledged that they would have difficulty in denying an enemy the use of the oilfields in Brunei. Synge was interviewed at the Directorate of Military Intelligence and although a good type, he was not regarded as the right type and his scheme was rejected. His ideas were identified as practical and were passed to Services Reconnaissance Department, the Australian equivalent of the Executive, then under US command. One of those selected for guerrilla operations was another member of the expedition, Captain Tom Harrisson (Reconnaisance Corps), one of the founders of Mass Observation.
Captain Rupert Mayne twice dropped into Burma, each time being recovered by submarine. In 1944, when an Indian paid by the Japanese attempted to murder him in Calcutta, his Indian bodyguard hit the assassin with a heavy torch. Mayne maintained that his most alarming mission was to collect a suitcase of lewd photographs from a Calcutta address that would be dropped from aircraft, as part of a subversive programme, and organized in sets to encourage Japanese soldiers to swap them and read the propaganda. Mayne collected the suitcase but when his driver failed to turn up, he trudged through hostile suburbs wondering what Mrs Mayne, who knew nothing of his activities, would conclude if he was found with his throat cut and in possession of a suitcase full of pornography. Later, Mayne joined G Intelligence at Headquarters Fourteenth Army as a lieutenant colonel and liaised with the Chinese nationalist forces under General Chiang Kai-shek.
Colonel Orde Wingate’s first Chindit operation in February and March 1943, when the largely regular 77 Indian Infantry Brigade had penetrated into central Burma through terrain believed impassable, had deeply impressed Lieutenant General Mutaguchi, the Burma Area Army commander, even though about a third were lost from clashes, sickness and fatigue. He therefore decided to pre-empt an Allied offensive by attacking XV Corps in northern Arakan in Operation Ha Go and force Slim to send reserves from IV Corps in Assam and then open up a route across the border, in Operation U Go, by attacking Imphal and Kohima. His forces would march with the minimum of equipment and therefore a major objective would be to plunder the logistic depot at Dimapur, west of Kohima before marching into India. The offensives would include the Indian National Army Division of mainly former prisoners of war who had surrendered at Singapore and had been released on the Japanese promise of Indian independence.
On 4 February 1944, Mutaguchi launched Operation Ha Go and, although HQ 7th Indian Division was overrun, Slim insisted that his men would not retreat. XV Corps rallied as intense fighting focused on the Divisional ‘Admin Box’ in a jungle clearing that measured 1,200yds in diameter at the eastern end of Ngakyedauk Pass. Corporal Richard Kerr and the Section VCO of 565 (5 and 14 Indian Divisions) FSS, both attached to 9 Indian Infantry Brigade, were cut off inside. The defence was strengthened by the novelty of Dakotas dropping supplies and anger when the Main Dressing Station was overrun, with the attendant slaughter of patients and medical staff, as the Japanese had done in Hong Kong and Singapore. Three times, ‘dud’ mortar bombs landed very near Kerr. After three weeks of savage fighting, the battered Japanese withdrew. For the first time, Allied troops, mostly logistic units, had defeated the Japanese; 115 Special Wireless Group/54 Wireless Intelligence Section was crucial in providing intelligence to XV Corps Headquarters. When Kerr rejoined 565 FSS, all the British, except for the FSO, Captain Reginald Isaacs, had returned to England to train for D-Day.
Intelligence indications identified that the Japanese were preparing to cross the Chindwin and predicted the offensive would begin on 18 March. On 1 October 1943, 5 Special Wireless Section/25 Wireless Intelligence Section of four officers and twenty other ranks took over from 201 Special Wireless Section in IV Corps at Imphal. The Intelligence Section had previously been in Barrackpore in West Bengal where Lieutenant D.L. Snellgrove had become expert on the Japanese Air Force. Prisoners of war became important. A Human Intelligence screen had been developed to monitor the 800-mile mountain and jungle border, in particular preparations to cross the River Chindwin. The greatest danger was the Kempei Tei, which had been formed in 1881 as military police and had evolved into an organization encompassing internal security, counter intelligence and Special Branch. Japanese-sponsored organizations, such as the Chin and Arakan Defence Forces, were also a problem. In 1942 V Force was formed from European former planters and policemen, and jungle clans inhabiting the borders. Valuable intelligence was gained from Nagas infiltrating towns occupied by the Japanese. Divided into six independent sectors, their information was cross-checked to prevent the Japanese spreading disinformation. One leader was Ursula Graham-Bower, a statuesque former Roedean School debutante, who had been so enthralled by a pre-war trip to the Naga Hills that she became an anthropologist. She had formed the North Cachar Watch and Ward to collect intelligence. In addition, Burma Intelligence Corps and shallow Field Security patrols slipped into Burma to contact V and Z Forces and identify collaborators. The MI6-controlled Inter-Services Liaison Department and Z Force were raised from ex-Burmese Army and forestry officials also to provide intelligence. To strengthen counter-intelligence operations, 574 (Chittagong Port) FSS was transferred from Arakan with 576, 584 (20th Indian Division) and 612 (Calcutta) FSS formed a FS Group based in Silchar to prevent infiltration by Indian National Army and other subversives entering India. Several were captured and sent to No. 1 Field Interrogation Centre at Gauhati.
Meanwhile, Brigadier Wingate had launched his second Chindit operation, Operation Thursday. Successfully lobbying Prime Minister Churchill to form HQ Special Force for a second operation, he was given the 70th Division, which had recently arrived from the Middle East. Operational security responsibility fell on 298 (70th Division) FSS commanded by Captain Stewart-Parker, one measure being to rename Special Force the 3rd Indian Division. Other counter-intelligence operations included checking local contractors near training and concentration areas, giving security awareness lectures and searching the men for incriminating documents immediately before deployment. On 5 March, three brigades were waiting to be flown by glider to establish strongholds in Burma when a US Army Air Force Air aircraft landed at Lalaghat airfield and the group of senior Chindit commanders was shown an air photograph depicting that the ‘Piccadilly’ landing zone stronghold had recently been blocked by trees. Although Wingate had ordered no flights over the objectives, the US Army Air Force commander, Colonel Cochrane, had ignored him and saved 77 Brigade from a potentially disastrous fly-in. A fourth column marched. When ‘Aberdeen’ was occupied, Stewart-Parker and Sergeants Andrews and Standlake arrived to supervise counter-intelligence operations. Although no Intelligence Corps were attached to the columns, former Sergeant Michael MacGillicuddy, who had been awarded the Military Medal in 1940 while serving with 1 (2nd Division) FSS for blowing up the oil refineries at Willems, was the 3/4 Gurkha Rifles officer with responsibility for the 30 Column mules in 111 Brigade. Sadly, he was killed shortly after winning the Military Cross during a supply drop. Captain Guy Turrell initially served as second-in-command of ‘Bladet’ of Royal Engineers trained in demolition before being transferred as an Operations Officer, Headquarters Special Force. The Burma Intelligence Corps played a crucial role in both Chindit operations by supplying the four brigade headquarters with a third intelligence officer, who doubled as the Column Intelligence Officer, and an Intelligence Section, which also ran psychological warfare of distributing propaganda, hiring guides and running agents. In the 4/9 Gurkha Rifles Intelligence Section was former Gunner Maximo Cheng of Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. Released by the Japanese from Sham Shui Po prison camp, he escaped from the Colony with the help of the British Army Aid Group and enlisted into 1 Glosters in India and volunteered to take in Operation Thursday. He was later commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and was an instructor at the Chinese Wing at the School of Military Intelligence (India).
On 8 March, Mutaguchi launched Operation U Go, a week earlier than expected. The Japanese Fifteenth Army, reinforced by the Indian National Army Division, crossed the River Chindwin, an advance reported from intercepts and observations from the intelligence screen; however, operating procedures in HQ IV Corps meant that some information was lost. During the four day Battle at Sangshak, roughly midway between Kohima and Imphal, that started on 22 March, the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade recovered a dispatch case containing current maps, orders of battle and plans from a dead Japanese officer after a night attack. It was priceless Document Intelligence. The Brigade Intelligence Officer, Captain Lester Allen, and a member of the Intelligence Section took it through enemy lines to HQ IV Corps where the documents were translated by Lieutenants Stanley Charles and George Kay, both pushed forward from the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (South-East Asia Command) as interrogator and translator. Their interpretations confirmed the assessment by the Parachute Brigade HQ that two Japanese divisions seemed most likely to attack Imphal and Kohima respectively, as opposed to the projected one division and a regiment believed by HQ Fourteenth Army. But, it does seem that the satchel did not reach Army HQ. Allen made two further visits to Corps Headquarters with captured documents, both of which were recorded, but not the first.
During an urgent search for the enemy regiment believed to be making for Kohima, on 28 March Sergeant Fred Garrod, one of two FS sergeants sent to collect information from Ursula Graham-Bower, learned that one of her patrols had seen a Japanese column marching west through the Naga Hills. A week later the Japanese 31st Division attacked Kohima Garrison, which held out for the next fortnight in grim fighting, the defence of India hinging on the defence of the District Commissioner’s tennis court. Throughout the savage fighting around Imphal and Kohima, 5 Special Wireless Section/25 Wireless Intelligence supported 20th Indian Division but were withdrawn when rations ran short. D Force was an intelligence deception unit formed into two British and six Indian companies of about sixty men commanded by Major Patrick Turnbull. Adapting fireworks, fire crackers, flares and explosives jammed into bamboo sleeves and sometimes supported by artillery and mortar fire, it could simulate attacks on a 600yd frontage for about thirty minutes, often to relieve the pressure of units under attack or to cover a withdrawal.
On 20 April, the 2nd British Division relieved the exhausted Kohima Garrison. When 579 FSS had joined IV Corps from XV Corps in March, Sergeant Arthur Smith was attached to 4 Infantry Brigade, which was part of the Division, and was on Hospital Ridge during the second battle for Kohima. In April, a patrol led by Sergeant R.F. Warren of 601 (Lines of Communication) FSS, to recover an important notebook detailing the 5th Indian Division ration strength from an ambushed vehicle was unsuccessful; however, he reported that an important bridge had been prepared for demolition. This was important because the monsoon was unloading torrential rain. During the fighting, 1st Battalion, 1st Guerrilla Regiment, Indian National Army clashed with the understrength 81st West African Division and briefly crossed the Burma-India border near Chittagong. Part of the Allied policy to subvert their loyalty was to deploy Indian Field Broadcasting Units under the control of Major Steer, who used his Ethiopian psychological warfare experiences and distributed leaflets using 2in mortars, for instance.
On 6 June, as the shattered Japanese 31st Division withdrew from Kohima and precipitated the collapse of Operation U Go, General Slim ordered Fourteenth Army to fight through the monsoon, its exposed left flank protected by 23 (Chindit) Infantry Brigade and Force 136. The Japanese retreat to the River Chindwin became known as the Road of Bones, as soldiers died from starvation, disease and exhaustion and numbers of prisoners increased. Sergeant Smith accompanied Gurkha patrols distributing blocks of salt to villagers who had supplied information and searching for stray Japanese. Meanwhile, 5th Division cleared the Tiddim Road south from Imphal. One routine task of its 565 FSS was to interview village headmen for intelligence. On one occasion, Corporal Kerr drove into a village believed to be free of the Japanese, only to see a patrol sent to contact him attack a platoon concealed in some houses. Captain Isaacs was awarded the Military Cross for personally accounting for nine Japanese, including shooting one in an encounter in a dry stream bed. Meanwhile, 603 FSS accompanied the 19th Indian Division on its long jungle march over the Chin Hills and, crossing the Chindwin and mighty Irrawaddy, covered 140 miles in a month. But little intelligence was gathered from the frequent skirmishes. An Indian Field Security naik recovered a set of maps dropped by a British brigade major. On reaching Mandalay in March 1945, Sergeant Michael Wood was among the first to enter the Japanese-occupied Fort and returned to Divisional Headquarters with a detailed sketch of its defences. Commanded by Captain R.W.R. Ogden, 604 FSS was supporting 20th Indian Division when, in early February 1945, after several months of investigation, it seized U Nandiya, a slippery Burmese agent employed by the Japanese. Operating on a freelance basis with the Division, 589 FSS ran agents and line-crossers into Japanese-held territory, which included an elderly woman reliant upon opium who regularly returned with detailed observations of Japanese morale and activities. A successful source handler was Sergeant Nick Roberts, who had once held a commission in the Nizam of Hyderbad’s Light Horse until he was cashiered after being found in bed with the wife of one of its senior officers. Sergeant Reg Denny was escorting a suspect when he flagged down a jeep, which contained Major General Douglas Gracey, commanding the Division. He took Denny and the suspect to the interrogation centre.
Meanwhile XV Corps was advancing south through Arakan. Attached to HQ 81st West African Division on its march through the malaria-ridden Kaladan Valley was Captain ‘Hank’ Roy followed by three porters, one carrying his Photographic Interpretation equipment and the other two taking his material for sketching. On the Corps right flank, commandos annoyed the Japanese.
Thomas Frost was born in Poona and after being commissioned in England, he joined the Royal Garwhal Rifles guarding the Kyhber Pass in April 1942 and a year later, after transferring to the Intelligence Corps, had joined 574 FSS in Karachi, which was attached to the Royal Indian Army Service Corps on lines of communications security. The all-volunteer 3 Special Service Brigade arrived from England in 1943 and when four FS sections were earmarked to support it, Lieutenant Colonel de Vine gave the NCOs the option of not volunteering. No-one stepped forward. This is thought to be the first time that the Intelligence Corps provided a detachment to Commando Forces. During one night landing exercise on an island near Bombay in mid-November 1943, 574 FSS was in a landing craft some distance from the shore when Sergeant Eddie Redding asked who the ‘enemy’ were and was silenced by a whispered snarl from an officer. The section practised using a dhow to collect agents and raiding parties, slept on its deck under canvas sails, messed on tinned bacon heated over a charcoal fire on a slab of rock, tolerated cockroaches, used a precarious ‘head’ (toilet) of a rope and two planks thrust over the sea, and moaned about missing the fighting in Italy. On 29 December, when the section was sent to the large transit camp at Kedgodan in southern India, Sergeants Redding and Lawrence were riding their motor cycles when Lawrence collided with a bullock that wrote off his machine and badly injured his knee, to the extent he was nearly medically discharged. On 7 February 1944, the Section rejoined 3 Special Service Brigade on the auxiliary cruiser, HMS Keren, and ten days later joined an assault convoy heading east across the Bay of Bengal towards Arakan. At a planning meeting, Captain Frost gave his NCOs Arrest Lists of collaborators living in ‘Millionaires’ Square’ on Akyab Island supplied by Lieutenant Colonel Mains at Army HQ. In the event, the landings never took place because air photography of Akyab showed the Japanese strength to be greater than expected. A few weeks earlier Frost’s brother had been killed during Operation U Go.
On 4 March, 574 FSS landed with 3 Special Service Brigade at Cox’s Bazaar and reached the village of Nihila on the Teknaf Peninsula in a landing craft. Going ashore meant a crawl on stomachs across mud flats at low tide. Frost once tested swimming ashore during a rip tide and dived fully clothed into the maelstrom and vanished. The NCOs were less convinced and made a brew until, an hour later, a bedraggled, muddy Frost hauled himself into the landing craft. While the commandos attacked the Japanese, the section cultivated informers and sources. Redding infiltrated occupied Maungdaw and Buthidaung. Boatmen poled Lawrence and Redding along watercourses to villages and hamlets where they formally met headmen at a table under the village mango tree and were offered a powerful alcoholic brew of uncertain origin. Following up a report that a member of V Force was suspected of being a double agent, Frost and Lawrence entered Maungdaw, where they met Sergeant Johnny Harrison, a Latin-speaking classmate of Lawrence, and then tracked the agent down and told him that he was required for a special briefing at HQ XV Corps. However, he managed to escape after they had delivered him.
As Fourteenth Army advanced in the early dry months of 1945 intending to reach Rangoon before the monsoon broke, 573 and 589 FSS, both attached to HQ IV Corps, distinguished themselves in the Pegu area by clearing the lines of communications of subversives but at the cost of Sergeant Ronnie Caldecott, of 589 FSS, killed in an accidental discharge on 16 April 1945 when a headman handed him a loaded Mauser. Shortly before the landings on Akyab Island on 3 January 1945, when a report was received suggesting the Japanese had left, a FS NCO and his agents landed from a sampan on the north-west corner of the island. He spent several hours hiding in a mosquito-ridden mangrove swamp until the agents returned with the news that the Japanese had indeed left. In spite of an enthusiastic welcome from a village, he was quickly involved in communal violence generated by the Japanese policy of divide and rule and was forced to shoot an escaping murderer. He then rounded up known security suspects and organized reliable contractors to help the Army and RAF when they landed.
A factor during the advance was the increasing number of prisoners, many sick and exhausted. Although the Japanese martial culture of bushido rejected their status, those that were captured were automatically conditioned for interrogation, which had allowed the IV Corps Detailed Interrogation Centre, commanded by Major Richard Storry, a Japanologist, for instance, to disseminate a constant flow of prisoner information. Nisei interrogators proved useful. Indian and Burmese prisoners were usually interrogated at Forward Interrogation Units by Indian officers and the Burma Intelligence Corps respectively. Important ones were sent to Corps Interrogation Centres where further selection saw some flown to the Headquarters South East Asia Command Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre at the formidable Red Fort in Delhi. This was staffed by expatriates with experience of Japan and several Intelligence Corps officers who had completed a crash language course at the University of London, such as Major Peter Parker (later Sir Peter, Chairman of British Rail). Linked to the Centre was the South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Centre, which ran two types of courses, one for students with an aptitude for languages, who were taught how to handle documents and overlays and low level tactical questioning, while the second course taught Japanese. One document gave the complete breakdown of the Japanese Fifteenth Army.
Photographic Intelligence had improved immeasurably with the formation of an Army Photographic Interpretation Section commanded by Major John Reid-Dick supporting IV Corps, but the field conditions under which the interpreters worked was often basic. When the war in Europe ended on 8 May, photographic interpreters arrived in India and the Far East and found the conditions very different. Major Neil Simon discovered that Lieutenant General Geoffrey Scoones, commanding XXXIII Corps, was fanatical about imagery. In India, intelligence was being collected for the proposed combined land and amphibious assault on Rangoon of Operation Dracula, and then, on 30 April, pilots flying over the city reported ‘Extract digit. Japs gone’ scrawled in white on the Jail roof. In the belief that it might be a hoax, Wing Commander Saunders, of 110 Squadron, carried out a low level air photo reconnaissance sortie on 2 May, from which Major F. Roope confirmed the message. Saunders then landed his Mosquito on a bomb crater-strewn airfield and he and his co-pilot walked to the Jail to find it crowded with Allied prisoners.
Shock then reverberated throughout Fourteenth Army when Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese arrived from Italy to take command of Eleventh Army Group. His Chief of Intelligence in Italy was Brigadier Donald Prater, who had joined the Intelligence Corps as a lieutenant in 1941, surely one of the quicker promotions and a notable feature of the Intelligence Corps promotions during the Second World War compared to the stagnation of the First World War. Under controversial circumstances, Leese sacked General Slim in May just as the occupation of Rangoon was being consolidated but such was the political furore that Slim was reinstated as Commander Allied Forces, South East Asia within six weeks.
By the time the monsoon broke, the Japanese Fifteenth and Thirty-Third Armies had been destroyed and the weakened Twenty-Eighth Army was trapped west of the Irrawaddy and cut off from Burma Area Army to the east by the flooded River Sittang. By Christmas Day 1944, 6 Special Wireless Section/6 Wireless Intelligence Section had advanced to Imphal and by the end of April had crossed the Irrawaddy to find that the increasing difficulties of Japanese command and control had led to commanders of the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army sending messages in clear. The decoding of Japanese Army water returns had led to the devastating ambush of a battalion. Captain Frost, now commanding 636 FSS supporting 19th Indian Division, had reached Toungoo in May and within a month had assembled an intelligence network of villagers spread across a wide area, most connected by field telephones supported by several ex-Burma Rifles left behind during the 1942 Retreat, a Burma Rifles platoon and two Chindits. Sources of information included an inscribed flag used to wrap the decapitated head of a 55 Division Japanese officer, several prisoners and a comfort girl.
The intelligence was tentatively suggesting that the Twenty-Eighth Army intended to join the remnants of Burma Area Army and then, on 2 July, a 1/7 Gurkha Rifles company ambushed a Japanese patrol and recovered a rain-and blood-soaked despatch bag containing documents, paybooks, photographs and letters from the body of an officer. Within a few hours the contents were being examined at HQ 17th Indian Division at Pedwegon by Lieutenant Lionel Levy and US Nisei Sergeant Katsu Tabata from a mobile Detailed Interrogation Centre. Both had spent several days interrogating a few exhausted and ill prisoners. Deciphering their paybook entries was a welcome distraction. Watched by Captains Charles and Kay, Levy gingerly opened the bag and removed several documents, including fragile overlays laid over a captured British map and a diary, which he translated. One document was an operation order dated 14 June detailing the break-out of the 55th Division Infantry Group over the Rangoon-Mandalay road and across the Sittang River, and listed routes, stream and river crossing points and road and railways bridges to be prepared for demolition. Communications was to be by couriers and visual, such as flags. Patrols were to check the state of the Sittang’s banks and approach and exit routes, speed of the current and identify landmarks as navigation markers. Stores and casualties had priority and horses and oxen were to be taken. No weapons were to be abandoned. In Levy’s words ‘It was a peach of a document from the intelligence point of view.’ Reports from 6 Wireless Intelligence Section, V Force and prisoners provided co-lateral to the intelligence. The satchel was sent to IV Corps at Pegu and then flown to South-East Asia Command Rear Headquarters in Delhi where its integrity was confirmed. Only the date was missing; however, the prediction it would be 20 July was confirmed by the interrogation of an officer and a Kempei Tei sergeant. Two weeks later, in pouring rain and unaware that their plan had been compromised, the Twenty-Eighth Army broke out but ran into ambushes and blocked escape routes. Captain Frost witnessed the results helped in interrogations of captured officers and soldiers. Over the next three months, the Japanese suffered 15,000 casualties.
During the day of 8 August, CSM Harold Cavers and an Indian NCO of 574 FSS and a Burma Intelligence Corps, searching for Japanese infiltrators and fifth columnists north-east of Pegu on the eastern bank of the Sittang, had set up for the night in a damaged village courthouse. During the night there was a barrage of flares and, expecting an attack, Cavers and the local police took up defensive positions. Next morning, he and the Indian crossed the river and learnt at section HQ that ‘they’ve dropped a new sort of bomb on Japan and the Japs are going to surrender’. Collecting a bottle of whisky, he returned to the village and finished it with the local police inspector and the village doctor.
The dropping of the Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese capitulation on 15 August led to formal negotiations at diplomatic level, one result being HQ South-East Asia Command ordering no contact with the enemy until Japan had formally surrendered to US General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo, as had been agreed by the Allies.