In many respects Intelligence is more dependent than any other Arm on the quality of its personnel.
Brigadier E. Mockler-Ferryman
The Intelligence Corps has experienced a 70-year, largely unrecognized, journey from the dark days of 1940 through the uncertainty of the Cold War and withdrawal from Empire to its burgeoning existence in today’s conflicts during which it evolved from single service provision to Army to Joint Service and to the complexities of diplomacy and understanding in the international arena. Had the Corps been amalgamated with another Corps, it is conceivable that the quality of British military intelligence and security would have been eroded. The Corps has firm Regimental Alliances with the Australian Intelligence Corps and the Canadian Intelligence Corps/Intelligence Branch of the Canadian Armed Forces and Bonds of Friendship with the Malaysian Intelligence Corps and United States Army Intelligence Corps and with HMS Leeds Castle from 1985 and since 2007 with HMS Talent from 2007.
The Corps has always maintained that its role is to provide a critical operational resource, and yet, it is only in recent history that commanders, at all levels, have recognised before defeats that good intelligence and security wins conflicts and reduces casualties. Too often after 1945, the Armed Forces deployed to operational zones with little or no knowledge about the threat, notably Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, the Falklands and the Gulf War. In spite of these intelligence failures, the Corps proved flexible enough to supply units and individuals at short notice and rose to the challenge of repairing the damage. The Corps involvement in recent international operations has seen a steep learning curve in its development of using a sizeable array of collection resources ranging from the ancient art of Human Intelligence to drones. The growth of intelligence as a resource has grown to roughly twice the size that it was in 1969, at the beginning of the 37-year Operation Banner in Northern Ireland.
The second capability that first emerged in the First World War, was evident during the Second World War and continued through the Cold War into the modern era is security and counter-intelligence. The Corps has been in the forefront of protecting the Army, in peace and war, and its secrets, technology and equipment and strength and weaknesses espionage from sabotage, subversion and terrorism and then squared up to interferences from hostile intelligence services and radicalization in paramilitary-type organisations. Rightly or wrongly, this presence has allowed the Corps to claim that it is on permanent active service.
An underlying theme of the success of the Corps is exemplified by Brigadier Springfield’s comment in the early 1990s that he was the only Director in the Army able to send a soldier, of any rank, Regular or Reservist, anywhere in the world at short notice, sometimes alone, often in civilian clothes, and for that soldier to use his initiative and experience to achieve the given objectives. Apart from providing officers to the Field Army, officers have always been found at senior government levels ranging from advisers to the Cabinet Office to senior positions in international military organizations. The arrival of the First 100 was significant in developing professional intelligence and security officers.
Key requirements remain keen and enquiring minds, which are perquisite for intelligencers anyway, excellent military skills and the ability and willingness to manage and learn from other ranks, many of whom have similar backgrounds in upbringing, education and academic qualifications. As officers began attending Staff College, the quality of the Corps developed, slowly at first. Throughout its existence, the Intelligence Corps has relied upon its other ranks to employ their knowledge of the Intelligence Cycle, expertise, professionalism and initiative, not infrequently onto a clean page and not infrequently having to convince skeptical commanders holding contrary views based on opinion, as opposed to intelligence. There are few Corps in which a corporal is expected to give an intelligence briefing to a commander planning a military operation in which lives are at stake.
The Corps has an esprit de corps that other parts of the Armed Forces sometimes find difficult to understand and sometimes disrespectful to accepted military etiquette. This culture is perhaps reflected not only in the color of its beret but Brown’s Recess, which broke the tradition of not rising until the end of formal dinners by Intelligence Corps taking a break for no more than ten minutes; utterly sensible and hygienic. The success of the Intelligence Corps Association and www.greenslime has kept colleagues connected. For nearly twenty-five years, the Intelligence Corps was unable to collate and interpret its history and heritage, even though as early as 1943, members were recording their experiences. The early development of the Museum was typically unobtrusive but it took until the turn of the twenty-first century for a transferee to highlight the importance of heritage. In his Farewell Message as he handed over the Directorship to Brigadier Everson, Brigadier Chris Holtom, formerly Royal Tank Regiment, wrote in the 2001 The Rose and The Laurel:
The temperature of the Intelligence Corps Association is an indicator of the enduring ethos and the Museum fundamental to Corps history … we are fools if we do not listen and absorb the experiences of our seniors. They have done the Kosovo and Afghanistan thing before and little has changed …. ICA members know this and have much to tell. I commend the next generation to listen to the last and get involved with the Museum.
The growing interest within the Corps of its history has seen The Rose and The Laurel grow from eighty-three pages in 1967 to 112 in 1997 to 200 in 2007. While obituaries hint at history, it is formal visits by serving soldiers in the War Graves Project and research, such as by former Sergeant John Condon’s In the Name of the Rose and Honours and Awards projects that is opening the box. The world class display of SOE equipment generously donated by the Bedfordshire businessman, Mr Julian Barnard, now a Trustee of the Museum, and its Special Relationship with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps), is a reminder of the role that the Corps has played in special duties from its early years. Add to this, researched articles by former Captain Fred Judge into Field Security and Protective Security, the former National Service Corporal Paul Croxson into Signals Intelligence and the late Lieutenant Colonel Tony Williams into the Corps’ wartime association with SOE, MI5 and MI6 is unearthing an astonishing, but largely unknown, history.
If there is one area where the Corps has made slow headway, it is convincing industry, commerce and business in the public and private sector that former members have security skills and abilities to manipulate, interpret and convert raw information into intelligence that could be beneficial to their operation. There is a glass ceiling to be broken, but that can only happen once employers recognize the skills the Intelligence Corps has to offer. This can only happen if the Corps raises its head above the parapet.
As for the future, it seems bright.