The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [290]
North Africa
Reflecting on the performance of SIS during 1942, F. H. Hinsley noted the Service’s marked improvement across the board, but especially so in the Middle East and Mediterranean. By the end of the year, he wrote, ‘the SIS was at last accepted as “a serious intelligence agency”’ in this theatre.12 Cuthbert Bowlby and John Teague were always invited by General Sir Harold Alexander (C-in-C Middle East) to his very exclusive morning meetings and they were granted ready access to the Cabinet-level Minister of State in the Middle East, the Australian R. G. Casey. SIS’s position was certainly boosted by the increasing volume of signals intelligence which it was able to supply, but this was reinforced by valuable human intelligence, especially from Tunisia, which became the last bastion of the Axis forces in North Africa, as Anglo-American forces advanced from the west following the Operation Torch landings in November 1942, and British Commonwealth forces approached from the east through Libya.
From November 1942 the Dick Jones network in Tunisia supplied a mass of intelligence. Jones, who had begun to organise among fellow prisoners in the Tunis Civil Prison, was able to start almost immediately following his release on 14 November. Using an existing SIS radio which had been kept hidden in Tunis, he made contact with Tony Morris, SIS head of station in Malta. On 20 November Morris reported to London that Jones had ‘organized group of about 20 (repeat 20) de Gaullists who left prison with him’. His ‘gang’ consisted of ‘determined men’ who had arms and sabotage material ‘and can assure results on receipt of prompt reply. Many others’, he added, ‘ready to join.’ Within three hours London had replied: ‘Under no circumstances’ was Jones to ‘participate in sabotage . . . Please impress upon 78 [Jones] that he must confine himself to his duty of producing information which is of vital importance at the present juncture.’ But they also asked if the ‘gang’ might be taken under SOE’s wing, so long as Jones himself was not involved or compromised in any way. When Morris reported that there was no SOE organisation in Tunis, London softened its position. ‘Notwithstanding vital importance of maintaining intelligence work’, it directed, sabotage ‘by persons disassociated from our own activities’ would ‘certainly be welcome’. In this instance, moreover, it was prepared to leave the initiative to Jones and his colleagues in Tunisia: ‘While active operations are in progress, we appreciate here that in last resort men on the spot must be best judge of how to assist in defeating enemy.’
Reviewing the work of the Jones group, one agent summarised their activity as providing ‘general information’ on the strength, organisation, armament and location of enemy troops and supply dumps; sea and air traffic, including ‘tonnage and nature of cargoes landed’; and the ‘results of bombing, damage and effect on the morale of the native population in particular’. The detail provided can be illustrated by a report sent through the newly established SIS station at Algiers in late November 1942: ‘Petrol dumps as follows: on quay opposite maritime station clock tower Bizerta, also in wood at road Ernk to Fishery and Sidi Ahmed Road at end Sebra Bay, also at road junction two (rpt. two)