• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2651 0

on secret service matters, though it was not until 1942 that this produced significant returns; and, second, Turkish acquiescence in the establishment of an SIS sub-station at Smyrna (İzmir) on the Aegean coast of mainland Turkey, to which the Athens station could relocate if forced to withdraw from Greece.7 After the German occupation of Greece, in fact, the Smyrna station, along with Cairo, became the main bases for the repenetration of the Greek islands and mainland. Headed by Lieutenant Commander Noel Rees, an Old Harrovian whose family had longstanding business interests in the region, and with a ready supply of patriotic Greeks willing to serve as agents, Smyrna was ideally placed for clandestine sea operations, though missions were also launched from harbours further south, such as Bodrum, more conveniently placed for targeting Rhodes, headquarters of the enemy’s Dodecanese Command, and Leros, where the Italians had an important naval base. In this part of the world classical names for operations and agents were clearly irresistible. When Harold Gibson and Cuthbert Bowlby went on a tour of inspection in June 1942, they noted the ‘Dido plan’ for a coast-watching service around Marmaris and an organisation at Mytilene (Mitilini), run by agent ‘Agamemnon’, who made a fortnightly motor-boat run to a sub-agent on the island of Khios.

In January 1941 Menzies posted the very experienced Harold Gibson to take charge of operations in the region. Within six months, as SIS representatives withdrew from the Balkans in the face of Axis advance and relocated in Istanbul, Gibson found himself responsible not only for Turkey, but also for ‘stations-in-exile’ from Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade and Athens. He had furthermore to liaise with the Turkish authorities, as well as local Polish, Czechoslovak and Yugoslav intelligence organisations, and maintain good relations with a British embassy unsettled (as was so often the case) by the growing number of SIS, SOE and other analogous personnel, working none too clandestinely in a country whose continued neutrality in these early years of the war was essential to the British. Much of SOE’s Balkan work was run from Turkey and Gibson, too, was worried about the dangers of SOE activities being exposed, as the otherwise accommodating Turks could not be expected to discriminate between different British secret services. Yet he was not against SOE per se, and could only recommend (as he did in November 1941) that increased security measures be adopted by all concerned.

Early in 1942 Menzies told Gibson that he was seriously concerned about the lack of armed forces information from the Balkans and was sending Frank Foley (whom he used during the war as a kind of roving troubleshooter) to review the position. Foley’s report of 28 March 1942 usefully provides a snapshot of SIS’s work in Turkey approximately halfway through the war. Overall, he thought that the situation with Romania was good, and for Turkey reasonably satisfactory. Intelligence from Bulgaria was mainly provided by the Turks. He was optimistic about Greece, notably a promising scheme for penetrating the Dodecanese Islands, but intelligence from both Yugoslavia and Hungary was poor, though in the case of the latter some lines were opening up through Romania. Foley reported that Gibson had established extremely cordial relations with the British ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who himself spoke of Foley ‘in the warmest terms’. Hugessen’s attitude towards SIS, nevertheless, was one of ‘pained tolerance’. This clearly irked Foley, who told Menzies: ‘I consider your service here is contributing at least as much to war effort as Y.P.’s [the ambassador].’ He also suggested (though this was not likely to cut much ice among some diplomats) that the Foreign Office ‘be pressed to instruct their Y.P.s to provide your representatives with proper status, accommodation etc. as an integral part of their staff’. The ‘provision of facilities for our success here’, he added, ‘should be regarded as important index of strength’ of