How one of us first heard of the other is best explained from War Office files:
Room 900
london
7th November, 1944.
Dear Jimmy,
We have just had a visit from Brigadier Foot, who has been to Brittany to explore the possibilities of exchanging a German P/W for his son, Captain Michael Foot, who has been very helpful to us in the past and whom SAS are very anxious to recover.
Captain Foot is, as far as we know, in prison together with a Warrant Officer Hill, R.A.F., an American 2nd Lieut, and a French Dr. in some building on the East side of the Transatlantic dockyard at St. Nazaire. Captain Foot has, we understand, already made four unsuccessful attempts to escape.
Would it be possible for one of your officers to reconnoitre the position with a view to freeing these P/Ws, and possibly infiltrating some Frenchman into St. Nazaire to help them to escape?
Brigadier Foot says that Mr. Haegler, the Civil Affairs Officer at Nantes, situated in Place Louis XVI, has dealt with all the French personnel evacuated from Nantes and would be able to give first hand information as to the situation and he would probably be able to indicate one or two people who xwould know exactly where the P/Ws are and what the best chances are of securing their release.
Yours ever,
John Bankes
Lt. Col. J. M. Langley, m.b.e., m.c.,
I.S.9 (wea)
G-2 s.h.a.e.f.
Nearly a fortnight later, this reply was sent to Langley’s superior:
secret
IS9WEA/B/2/I1408
From: Lt. Col. J. M. Langley
I.S.9 (WEA)
c/o G.S.I. (x)
H.Q. 21 Army Group
20 November, 1944
My dear Cecil,
As I am at the moment in Brussels, I have instructed Major MacCALLUM to arrange with the Americans to despatch an officer in an endeavour to rescue Captain M. R. D. FOOT. He will keep you informed as to the progress, if any, of this operation. I am rather dubious as to the possibilities of success, and also whether we are justified in making special efforts to rescue one officer.
Yours sincerely,
Jimmy
Lt. Col. C. M. Rait, m.c.1
xiOn the day when this second letter was written Foot was taken to a German hospital at La Baule, unconscious after the treatment he had received from the peasant inhabitants of a farm chosen, deep in the previous night, on what he had believed to be Langley’s instructions for a sound refuge during an escape, as he had picked them up at a lecture a year before.
We are glad to say that we have since got on to less distant terms. Of our personal adventures we do not propose to say much more in these pages, for, working on the real giants of secret staff work and the real heroes of clandestine escape and evasion, we know that our own careers are by comparison small beer.
This book is in no sense definitive. It simply serves to illuminate a hitherto obscure corner of the world war effort against the Axis powers, and to show various directions in which further effort, by younger and brighter historians, may illuminate a perpetually interesting subject: courage in adversity.
There are several people and authorities to whom we are glad to express our thanks. We owe a large debt of gratitude to Sir Martin Lindsay of Dowhill, whose pertinacity led him and us to the rediscovery of MI 9’s main archive. Each of us had been positively assured that these files had been destroyed. In fact they had been put away so safely that their existence had been all but forgotten.
We are indebted to the Keeper of the Public Record Office for leave to quote extensively from British official files, which remain Crown copyright. A detailed note on our sources will be found at the end of the book, since references page by page are no longer feasible.
We have had a great deal of help from Gordon Lee of The Economist, who brought us together, sharpened our style, sorted out some of our muddles, and has been a staunch friend throughout. We are grateful also to Leslie Atkinson, Andrew Boyd, Richard Broad, Susan Broomhall, John Buist, George C. Chalou, Dick Crockatt, the late Donald Darling, Sam Derry, xiiDonald E. Emerson, ‘Pat’ Guérisse, Gerald E. Hasselwander, Mabel Howat, W. Stull Holt, Sir Ian Jacob, Joey Jackman, Charles Lamb, Jock McKee, Ron Mogg, Richard Natkiel (who drew the maps and diagrams), Airey Neave, Cecil Rait, the late Sir Leslie Ride, Grismond Davies-Scourfield, Charles Shaughnessy, Bill Kennedy Shaw, Tony Simonds, Michael Sissons, Leslie Veress, Dr A. Selby Wright and many other friends and acquaintances who have shared recollections and information with us. The staffs of the British Library, the Ministry of Defence and the Public Record Office in England, and of the National Archives and the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center in the United States, have gone out of their way to help us, though we owe it to all of them to emphasise that this book is in no way officially sponsored or subvented. Unattributed translations are our own. The usual caveat applies: any errors that remain are the responsibility of our two selves alone.
Our greatest debt, which we owe jointly with the rest of the free world, is almost too large to fit into print. It is owed not only to those who attempted escapes and evasions, and thus made the Axis powers’ attempt to control the world more troublesome to the Axis; but also to those uncounted thousands of people, ordinary in appearance, extraordinary in courage and devotion, who made the work of the escape networks feasible. They were of many nationalities, of all ages; of both sexes, of all classes; rich and poor, learned and plain, Christian and Jew, Marxist and mystic. Without the work they did, for which a large proportion of them paid with their lives, the world today would be a meaner place; and we write this book lest they be quite forgotten.
MRDF
JML
28 July 1978
1Both letters are in the Public Record Office, War Office papers (hereafter simply WO), WO 208/3422, escapers and evaders in hiding; items 116D and 55A.