Security is rarely as expensive as insecurity
When, in November 1945, the Labour Government ignored its long-standing policy to create a Jewish state, militants escalated their operations by attacking troops and installations in pursuit for a home state in Palestine. The Army found itself on unfamiliar ground from the previous five years against extremists, many of whom had served in the Armed Forces and exploited their knowledge of military procedures to steal vehicles, weapons and equipment.
The counter-intelligence structure developed by the Palestine Police Special Branch during the Mandate remained; however, the Army was hampered by a police culture of sharing information only when military assistance was sought, a practice that was common in post-1945 operations. The Intelligence Corps had been represented in Palestine when 257 FSS was raised in Cairo in late 1940 and then based in a house on Mount Carmel with responsibility for Haifa and the Galilee area. After 252 FSS was evacuated from Greece in September 1941, it took responsibility for Gaza and south to the Egyptian border. Also formed in Cairo, in May 1940, 272 FSS took part in the later stages of the North African campaign before arriving in 1944 to cover Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A divisive character throughout the war had been Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, an ambitious Arab nationalist who had been the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937 and who opposed the British during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Promoting Arab nationalism against Zionism, he found refuge in Italy and Germany and had been a collaborator during the war and was an opponent of the UN 1947 Partition Plan.
In 1945, the 1st Infantry Division and its 3 FSS was recuperating after the Italian campaign while 6th Airborne Division, with its 317 (Airborne) FSS, was the Middle East Strategic Reserve. Although little is known about its activties, 292 FSS was also in Palestine. As the concentration camps emptied in Europe and Jews began making for Palestine, intelligence from European Port Security sections gave advanced warning of the departure of refugee ships. The counter-intelligence role of Field Security had not changed, however, practices were being adapted to meet internal security needs. This included the carrying of ‘Green Card’ authorization and adopting the longstanding practice of going anywhere at any time in or out of uniform and collecting information in areas where military patrols had no reason to go. They continued to test security. Three 257 FSS NCOs entered the 1 Royal Horse Artillery camp on motor cycles and, copying an officer’s signature, used it to requisition a Jeep and two Sten guns from the armoury. But when they returned to the camp to report their findings, the commanding officer had them strip-searched and thrown into the Guardroom until they were released - as heroes to 257 FSS.
By the end of the year, 3rd Infantry Division, based in Egypt, had exchanged places with 1st Division. After the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem had been raided by the security forces and members of leadership were detained, on 22 July, Irgun Zwai Leumi, literally National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, retaliated by blowing up the headquarters of British Troops Palestine and Transjordan in the King David Hotel, Tel Aviv, killing more than 100 people. HQ 6th Airborne Division cordoned the city to screen all 170,000 inhabitants. Commanded by Captain Eric Linklater, 317 (Airborne) FSS was heavily involved in identifying hardliners and sympathizers. In early August the British Government started interning immigrants on their way by ship in Cyprus. The bombing of the British Embassy in Rome by Irgun hardened the military response and former commandos and Special Air Service were assembled into Special Squad patrols, their killing of a teenager saw an escalation in mutual retaliation. The appeal, in April 1947, by the Opposition leader, Winston Churchill, that the Mandate should be referred to the United Nations led to clashes between Jews and Arabs. After three Irgun had been arrested and sentenced to death for their part in the escape of several prisoners from Acre Prison, Irgun was determined to kidnap hostages to be exchanged.
On 12 July, Sergeants Clifford Martin and Meryn Paice, of 252 FSS, were both off duty in Nathanya with a Jewish clerk when they were abducted shortly after leaving a café. They were imprisoned in a well-camouflaged, largely airless cellar in a factory on the outskirts of the town and were given two oxygen cylinders for air. Searches by the Security Forces were fruitless. When the three Irgun were hanged on 29 July, Martin and Paice, after eighteen days of dark incarceration, were garroted and hung from two eucalyptus trees in an orchard near Umm Ulexga. The hooded bodies were found two days later but a bomb placed inside one of the bodies exploded, wounding a Royal Engineer captain. As the body fell to the ground, it detonated a mine. Irgun then claimed that the two sergeants had been convicted by a tribunal on five counts, including illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland, spying in civil clothing and membership of the ‘British Army of Occupation’. Their incarceration and the activities of 317 FSS were dramatised in Peter Kominsky’s TV drama The Promise. Martin’s mother was Jewish.
The situation deteriorated when the freighter Exodus was forced to return to its French port of origin where the passengers refused to disembark for several weeks. The ship then proceeded to Hamburg and the refugees were confined to displaced persons camps. As casualties increased and the British public showed their revulsion at the murders of the two Intelligence Corps, sympathy for the plight of the Jews during the war turned to distaste. In September, when Great Britain advised the United Nations that it was concluding the Mandate in 1948 and would not interfere in the future of Palestine, London was accused of desertion by the Jews. Nevertheless, violence continued. On 1 May 1948, Sergeant John Woozley, of 317 (Airborne) FSS, was shot by Arab gunmen in Haifa. Four days later, an invasion by the Arab Liberation Army was stopped by the Transjordan Frontier Force, operating under command of 6th Airborne Division, shortly before it returned to Transjordan, now on the threshold of independence as Jordan. Attached to the Force was WO2 Colin Barnes, Intelligence Corps. Amid a deteriorating internal security situation, during the spring of 1948 the British began withdrawing with 1st Infantry Division and its 3 FSS transferring to Libya. Meanwhile, 257 FSS had several motor cycle accidents, one of which resulted in Corporal Alec Hemenway losing his leg when he was hit by a car. Matters were not helped when the ambulance broke down and had to be towed to hospital. He later became Treasurer of the ICA Yorkshire Region. By 30 June the British had left but at the cost of 233 killed since 1945, seven of them were Intelligence Corps, four killed in action.
While 272 FSS was disbanded, 252 and 257 FSS were posted to the Suez Canal Zone. After being refitted, 257 FSS drove overland to Mogadishu, Somaliland, where several Stern Gang were in prison camps until they were transferred by the United Nations to Italy. In many respects, Palestine gave the Corps skills which were later applied, wholly or in part, in other terrorist trouble-spots, in particular the collection, analysis and dissemination of information on personalities, organizations, tactics and equipment in an internal security situation.
In Germany in July 1946, as the British Military Government transferred control of the British Zone to the Control Commission for Germany (British Element), HQ Intelligence Corps (Field) transferred its responsibilities to the 2,500-strong Intelligence Division in Herford and disbanded. A last act of its Commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Hockliffe, was to move the School of Military Intelligence to Wentworth Barracks, Herford where it became the Intelligence School (Germany). The administration and training of Intelligence Corps in Germany and Berlin devolved to 273 FSS.
Previously, 273 FSS had targeted communists and was surprised when scores surrendered, as opposed to waiting for their Soviet sponsors. Suspect defectors were rejected, even in the knowledge that their futures lay in gulags or worse. A major security task was covering the troop trains travelling to and from the Hook of Holland. Two ‘safe houses’ in a barracks in Minden and in a residential area of Bünde were administered by a Russian-speaking German couple who had fled from the Soviet zone and were supplied weekly by NCOs using a German registered VW Beetle. Another role was surveillance of the Soviet Military Mission in the British sector.
In 1946 the section arrested SS-Lieutenant Colonel August Moritz, a member of the Nazi Central Security Office and SD, and on the Black List for several murders in Marseille. Captured by the Americans in Milan in 1945, he had escaped from an internment camp. Two years after being arrested by 273 FSS, he escaped from Fallingbostel internment camp and was recaptured in Hamburg, where he then claimed that he had offered his services to the German Communist Party in the city. Several years after the French dropped their extradition demand, West German government documents discovered in his house led to suspicions that the embryonic Federal Government had been penetrated by the Russian Intelligence Service, until Moritz was exposed for peddling publicly available information and forging documents to appear official. In 1956 he was sentenced to four years imprisonment for war crimes.
Through the Regional Commissioners and the Political Division, the Intelligence Division analyzed resurgent West German politics, economics and research as the country evolved from a totalitarian state to a democracy and then, in 1949, it oversaw the election of officials. Inevitably, there were clashes of opinion and it was not unusual for Intelligence Corps officers to rectify disagreements, an example being Lieutenant Colonel Noel Annan (later Lord Annan) smoothing troubled waters in 1946 after Konrad Adenauer had been dismissed as Mayor of Cologne by General Templer for incompetence when he was Deputy Chief of Staff for the British Element of the Allied Control Commission. Adenauer had previously been interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Grierson and Major Pertwee who both recognized his political astuteness. Four years later, he was appointed Chancellor. Annan also monitored the formation of the embryonic Social Democratic Party to counter the aspirations of the communists favouring a one party state.
Reporting to the Regional Commissioners were Regional Intelligence Officers, usually lieutenant colonels, initially based at Dusseldorf, Munster, Hannover, Hamburg, Kiel, and Berlin, each with a staff of about 300 that included naval, army and air force intelligence officers, Intelligence Corps, signals and intercept specialists, administration staff, logisticians, and specialists on call, such as Royal Engineers. Regional Intelligence Office 16 (Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein) was first commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Peter Ramsbotham (later Sir Peter and Ambassador to the USA and Governor of Bermuda). A Regional Intelligence Officer 11 (Rhine Westphalia) at Dusseldorf was Lieutenant Colonel Leo Long, who was later alleged to be a Soviet agent recruited by Anthony Blunt. The Regional Officers each managed several Area Intelligence Offices and Area Security Officers at bezirk (county) level. An Area Intelligence Officer in Arnsberg was Lieutenant Colonel John Killick, later Sir John, who had been captured at Arnhem.
While Area Security Offices used Field Security on counter-intelligence activities, the Area Intelligence Officers concentrated on collecting political, military and social intelligence, and used Intelligence Teams to collect information. An undamaged, three-storey doctor’s house in Moenchen-gladbach was requisitioned by 44 Intelligence Team, but when a sign writer drew the two ‘4s’ in the old German style, it was almost identical to the SS insignia and the local Germans referred to the unit as the ‘English SS Team.’ It included a female German interpreter, a Dutchman, a Russian girl named Mary and a resident uniformed policeman; 100 Intelligence Team used a large villa standing in its own grounds in Kiel.
From a notebook compiled by a member of 275 FSS in Schleswig-Holstein, there is evidence that, in spite of recommendations from Field Security, the Control Commission had accepted that if West Germany was to survive as a democracy in the international tension in Central Europe, it was essential that former Nazi functionaries, with their experience and in spite of the De-nazification Policy, should be reintroduced into civil administrations down to parish level and in schools, courts and business at the expense of anti-Nazis, some lacking experience because they had been political prisoners. Reliable police were already enforcing law and order. As part of the vetting process, Intelligence Team dispersed throughout the British Zone and used pre-1933 census records to gauge opinion and interview applicants using the daunting Commission 130-question Fragebogen questionnaire, their tactful diplomacy legacy of goodwill in the British sector, from which the British profited for many years. Elections to the Bundestag in 1949 saw the Western Allies transferring political decision-making to West German politicians and converting their role from occupier to partner. Among the memoranda of understanding that emerged was one governing Federal and Allied intelligence and security co-operation.
In early 1947 a scandal that ruffled No. 74 Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (Western European Area) in Bad Nenndorf still reverberates today. It was still managed by Colonel Stevens with his customary efficiency, except that the inmates were not spies and saboteurs but some of Hitler’s more notorious henchmen, including Walter Schellenburg and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Nazi State Security Agency, who had been transferred by the US authorities. But Intelligence Division economies in 1946 that saw its original 700 staff reduced to about 350 had serious implications during the harsh winter of 1946/47, when deteriorating conditions led to prisoners alleging abuse. Two died within twenty-four hours of being admitted to hospital. Courts-martial led to the conviction of the chief medical officer for professional misconduct. Colonel Stevens was cleared because he proved that his appeals for funding had gone unanswered and that the regime at Bad Nenndorf was the same as at Camp 020, about which there had been no complaint.
With little warning in late 1946/early 1947, the Soviets started freeing Austrian and German prisoners of war and deporting unwanted scientific workers in a process that lasted until 1961 with the release of the last of the SS, Waffen-SS and senior Nazi functionaries. A section in Dortmund awoke one morning in 1947 to find the grounds of their villa crowded with prisoners, some in very poor condition. While many of these Heimkehrers (homecomers) had harrowing tales about their treatment as prisoners and lives working in coal mines, factories and isolated work camps on the bleak Siberian steppes, most proved to be valuable sources of information, such as the Austrian who swept the road outside the Niznhy Novgorod factory manufacturing the T-34 medium tank. All were debriefed by Field Security in Austria and Intelligence Teams in Germany before proceeding with resettlement. The collated information was sent to the Joint Intelligence Bureau in London. Some admitted to being offered freedom in exchange for spying or becoming ‘sleeper’ agents. Sergeant Donald Witt of 263 FSS in Austria became expert at debriefing the prisoners and differentiating between fact and fiction. Corporal Lionel Walsh serving with 91/410 FSS in Essenkappell, also in Austria, interviewed a former prisoner who gave him a lighter that he had made while in captivity. Evidently, the lighter attracted considerable interest in Technical Intelligence at HQ Supreme Allied Headquarters in Brussels and he was required to return several times to the prisoner’s home, a farm, with questions. Some former prisoners were already employed by the Division. Otto ‘Laufenberg’ was a former paratroop sergeant captured in France, who had escaped from a prison camp near Rheims and reached his hometown of Düsseldorf. His debriefers were so impressed with his initiative that he was recruited as an investigator in November 1949. As the communist threat escalated over the next thirty years, his talents were increasingly directed against the German Communist Party and the remnants of the ‘Red Orchestra’ espionage network, until he retired in 1990. The debriefing of resettlers and refugees from the East also became an important Intelligence Division commitment and would later form the basis of the Western tripartite debriefing offices.
Economic necessity saw the British Army of the Rhine reduced to two Corps and the Berlin Brigade in 1946. However, Soviet posturing and their blockade of Berlin between June 1948 and May 1949 being neutralized by the counter-stroke of the Western Allies delivering supplies in the Berlin Airlift led to the Allied Command Europe being formed in April and then the Western Defence Union. A month later, Germany was formally divided into the Soviet-sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) then evolved as the bulwark against the Soviet and its Warsaw Pact alliance in an ideological confrontation known as the Cold War. HQ BAOR remained in control of British military operations through 1st (British) Corps. Meanwhile, the Marshall Plan was stimulating economic growth throughout Western Europe.
Negotiations at the Potsdam Agreement had resulted in a commission of British and Soviet officers ‘beating’ the demarcation between their two zones to agree the border and road, rail and water traffic crossing points. However, the pencilled markings on their small scale maps frequently representing several hundred metres on the ground gave innumerable opportunities for disputes. FS sections and Intelligence Teams at Lübeck, Uelzen, Wolfenbüttel and their detachments at Helmstedt, Bad Harzburg, Göttingen, Bad Sachsa and Braunlage initially providing a limited tripwire along the border and astride the road and rail corridor running from Helmstedt to West Berlin, monitored Soviet military activities for indications of an attack.
In 1947, the German Border Customs Service was formed under control of the Intelligence Division Boundary Security Control Office to patrol the border and intercept smugglers. In August 1948, 304 to 307 Boundary Intelligence Teams were formed from 133 and 134 Intelligence Teams in Wolfenbuttel and 135 and 136 in Gottingen, each consisting of Intelligence Corps and civilian intelligence officers reporting to the Field Security Control in Gifhorn that collated intelligence on conditions up to thirty kilometres east of the border. Most of this was achieved by debriefing about the 250 refugees who nightly crossed between Helmstedt north to Lübeck and Friedland unchallenged by the embryonic West German authorities on the principle that Germany was a single state. Formed from 325 FSS, 130 and 131 Intelligence Teams at Uelzen specialized in debriefing anyone expelled from the Soviet Union for information relating to the relocation of German factories to Siberia, the mining of uranium for use in nuclear weapons and conditions in prison camps east of the Ural Mountains. An unusual investigation was the disappearance of a railway engine to the Soviet zone. In 1950, management of the Boundary Intelligence Teams passed to the Regional Intelligence Office, Hannover. In the same year, the East German Ministry of Interior Frontier Police began patrolling the border but were not permitted to man border checkpoints, which remained a Soviet responsibility. The following May the British Frontier Service emerged. Creating a formidable system of field defences that included watchtowers, mines, barbed wire, dogs and patrols along a strip of land that was variously known as the Inner German Border and Demilitarized Zone, by 1952 the East Germans had so tightened the border that the refugee flow dropped to about thirty a day, with the consequent loss of human intelligence. British troops visiting the border area were forbidden to approach nearer than one kilometre because it was not unknown for individuals to be ‘snatched’ by East German patrols operating in East German territory west of the demarcation fence. Training and educational patrols for regimental intelligence sections was supervised by the Intelligence Corps. The tightening of border controls was compensated by Operation Monkey Nut mobile patrols regularly watching the Letzlinger Heath training area and aircraft fitted with cameras monitoring activity astride the Helmstedt Corridor.
The Labour Party that ousted Churchill in 1945 did not favour conscription. However, unrest throughout the Armed Forces criticizing the slow rate of demobilization, the Spartan wartime conditions in which units were expected to serve, demands for overseas military commitments, the reformatting of the BAOR and the loss of the Indian Army led, in March 1947, to the National Service Bill, in which every male citizen was liable for compulsory military service. Nevertheless, the Adjutant-General still stuck to the 1939 Manual of Military Intelligence and predicted in its paper The Intelligence Reserve that:
By about 1952 Intelligence commitments of the Active Army are likely to be too small to justify the retention of an Intelligence Corps for officers, for the principal reason that it would not be possible to guarantee a normal Army career for more than a very few officers. It is probable that a very small Intelligence Corps, for other ranks only, would be retained permanently.
Essentially, once the occupation of Germany, Austria and Japan was complete, probably within ten years, there was no need for an Intelligence Corps and intelligence appointments would be filled by regular and short service commissioned officers commanding other ranks transferred from within the Army. By October 1946, the hints of retaining the Corps as part of the Reserve Army bore fruit, with 320 officers and 260 other ranks of the proposed Intelligence Corps (Territorial Army) to be found from within the Army. A non-operational Reserve of 1,900 officers and 2,150 other ranks would be formed in the event of mobilization, with agreement that the officers should receive periodic training. Even before terms and conditions had been published, out of 2,700 people contacted, 400 had volunteered. By early 1947 about 680 Field Security and 405 Signals Intelligence had been talent-spotted, with 1,160 former officers under consideration. In March the formation of the Intelligence Corps (TA) was confirmed. For the first time, the Army had a trained intelligence structure available for immediate deployment. Within nine months 3,000 men had been enlisted, with the Field Security sections of two officers and eighteen other ranks supported by Regular Intelligence Corps training teams of two officers and two NCO instructors administering recruitment and providing training embedded in the Home Commands. In Hounslow, 5 Intelligence Team was heavily oversubscribed but still kept to the seventy per cent War Establishment and supplied complete Field Security and intelligence staff to the three TA divisions in Eastern Command. Meanwhile, the new 16 Airborne Division received a parachute-trained section, albeit also oversubscribed. In May 1949 the two-week annual camp, spent by 135 FSS (TA) with the Hamburg District FSS, established the practice of TA units training in West Germany. Colonel H.F. Hinchley-Cook formed the Port and Travel Control Group under the operational control of MI 5 of about ninety former Corps, their targets being Warsaw Pact ships and lorries arriving at Dover and other ports. Initially located at the Duke of York’s Barracks, Chelsea, the Group later moved to the sumptuous accommodation of the former Turkish Embassy at 18, Cadogan Gardens. All City of London units were adopted by several City Companies and Guilds. 101 Army Photographic Interpretation Section was closely associated with the Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers as was Intelligence & Security Group (TA), and now 3 (Volunteer) Military Intelligence Battalion.
The first reference to the Guild of Painters was in 1283 as artisans who applied colour to solid materials, such as stone. Amalgamated with the Stainers, who applied colour to woven materials such as canvas, the Company received several Royal Charters beginning with Elizabeth I in 1589 and most recently Elizabeth II in 1981. It has become involved with Fine Art whilst still carrying out decorative work to buildings and ceremonial flags and banners. Winners of the annual TA military and intelligence skills in the Master’s Competition are awarded a silver rose bowl and known as the Master’s Company for the next twelve months. The Company annually presents a piece of silver to a member of the Corps, who has shown enterprise not directly associated with intelligence and security but which adds esteem to public relations to the Corps. On all formal occasions, an engraved sword presented to the Company in 2001 by Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely MC, the Colonel Commandant, is placed in front of the Master.
The decision of the Adjutant-General not to support a regular Intelligence Corps began to unravel with tension in Europe, the Berlin Blockade, and the first stirrings of the Malayan Emergency. In June 1948 the Standing Committee on Army Post-War Problems accepted that ‘there was a need for a permanent Intelligence Corps in the Regular Army’ but that its strength would be confined to two Quartermasters, 161 officers holding short service commissions and 270 other ranks, but officers were not permitted to attend Staff College and therefore the Corps seniority ceiling was likely to be Major. Intelligence staff appointments would continue to be filled by officers on two year postings. In effect, intelligence was not seen as a career path and therefore it remained an unattractive prospect, a lean approach that meant that the Army was, not infrequently, committed to operations lacking adequate intelligence, such as Korea, Cyprus, Suez, the Falklands and Northern Ireland.
Oudenarde Barracks, which now forms part of the Aldershot Military Museum, proved unsuitable and, in 1948, HQ Intelligence Corps and Depot moved to a sprawling First World War camp of single storey brick and Nissan huts linked by a network of paths on gently sloping grounds south of Maresfield, near Uckfield, Sussex. Bounded by the A272 to the west, there was a large sports field but no drill square, so parades were usually held on the MT Park. Music for ceremonials was relayed on loudspeakers. Other ranks accommodation blocks focused on eight-man rooms, each with a coke-burning stove fed from a bin holding sufficient fuel for a week. Toilets, washrooms and bathrooms were in a separate block. For National Servicemen trained in smart Depots, the contrast with Maresfield was stark. Corporal Bill Rolfe transferring from the Royal Army Service Corps in 1948 found that ‘the Other Ranks Mess was dark and dismal’ and the ‘tops of two cupboards in the eight-man rooms were precarious ironing boards’. One young officer remembers the evil smell of the plate-washing grease traps outside the Cookhouse. The impact of the Adjutant General’s decision meant that, by 1949, few of the Permanent Staff officers and other ranks at Maresfield were badged Intelligence Corps, indeed, Officer Cadet Anthony Clayton can only remember two Intelligence Corps officers, both National Service, being involved with military training. Trade training had not changed markedly from Mytchett. Soldiers awaiting postings undertook a variety of tasks that included clerical duties at the Directorate of Military Intelligence at the War Office. The HQ and Depot were joined by the School of Military Intelligence, which included the FS Wing, an Interrogation block in the Joint Services School of Psychological Wing and the ‘Ling Wing’ which contained the Study Wing. Among those who trained at Maresfield were Intelligence Corps attending intensive Russian courses at the Joint Services School for Linguists at RAF Crail in Fife, and Cambridge and London Universities, christened by the Soviets to be the ‘Spy School’. Those who passed translated Soviet communications in cold, cramped ‘Gin Palace’ box-bodied vehicles near the German Border, translated Russian newspapers and acted as interpreters. Most were a cross-section of talented and politically aware young men fitting the requirements of the 1922 Manual of Military Intelligence, including the playwrights Alan Bennett and Dennis Potter, who dramatized his experiences as an analyst at the MI3 at the War Office in his play Lipstick on Your Collar, and Sir Edward Georges, a future governor of the Bank of England. In order to engender an esprit de corps, the first Corps Day held on 19 July 1949 at Maresfield was attended by Major General A.C. Shortt CB OBE, the Director of Military Intelligence designate.
In Austria, the Soviet Union dropped its support for Yugoslavian claims to Carinthia in 1948, which gave the Occupying Powers room to give Austria permission to hold a general election and then withdraw. In preparation, the FSOs were instructed to send the Allied Military Government samples of posters, in particular those produced by the Communist Party. Sergeant Bob Steers commanded the 68 FSS Spital detachment from a requisitioned traditional Austrian house on the outskirts of the town in picturesque countryside, not far from a lake and Mallnitz ski resort. It happened that Steers used the same gasthof as the local communist candidate and readily obtained examples of posters, hand-outs, lecture and speech notes and meeting schedules. The elections saw Renner elected as President and Austria adopting democracy and, much to the discomfort of Moscow, neutrality.
When the MI6 Head of Station, Vienna learnt from an Austrian official that cables linking the Red Army to Soviet forces in Prague, Budapest, Sofia and Bucharest ran through the British and French sectors, an opportunity was presented to tap them in Operation Conflict. Captain John Ham-Longman, then commanding 291 FSS, was instructed to run the operation. A terrace of single storey warehouses opposite Aspang railway station were requisitioned, ostensibly for use by the Railway Transport Officer, and then six Royal Engineers commanded by an officer dug a tunnel to the telephone cable passing through a cellar into which the tap was inserted. The sandy soil was deposited in the back garden of the house occupied by 20 FSS. When they finished, the sappers were sent to the desirable posting of Singapore to reduce the possibility of compromise. The cellar was divided into four compartments demarcated by layers of packing cases, which helped to deaden noise. The entrance to the listening post was through a strong door to a space that was defended by three soldiers armed with Sten guns. An inner door led to a rest area and the tap behind yet another door. When the technicians arriving from London by train with the interception equipment inadvertently alighted at a station in the Soviet sector, their phone call to 291 FSS saw Staff Sergeant Bob Steer and Sergeant Stan Enright rushing to extract them from a group of curious Soviet soldiers. The technicians inserted the tap and set up voice recordings that were transferred to wax cylinders. For the next two years, 291 FSS provided six men working three hours on duty and three off duty to monitor the intercepts and take the cylinders to HQ Intelligence Organisation (Austria) every day for interpretation. During the weekend, because traffic decreased, the roster was two hours and fours hours off duty. Smoking was then acceptable and since extractor fans were a rarity, the thick fug created in the cellar from Woodbines and Players led to the operation being known as ‘Smokey Joe’s’. The intercept was lifted in June 1951 when the Soviets re-routed their military telephone calls; nevertheless, a substantial quantity of intelligence was collected during the three years of Operation Conflict. It is a little known outstanding success that outshone a similar attempt in Berlin that was compromised by the spy George Blake.
When political power was transferred to the Austrians in early 1950, the Vienna Field Security sections were disbanded and counter-intelligence and protective security handed over to detachments reporting to the Field Security headquarters in Carinthia and Styria. The restoration of Austrian sovereignty in 1955 led to the withdrawal of 40,000 Soviet troops and the few remaining Western troops, but there was still intelligence to collect. Officials of the Austrian State Railways had been reporting Soviet troop movements to 291 FSS since the spring of 1951. The Section was attending a British Embassy function when an official reported increased Soviet rail activity. The section immediately went to Aspang railway station and counted the Soviet troop trains heading east, verified equipment by lifting tarpaulins on flatbed wagons and collected serial numbers from vehicles that helped identify units.