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kilometres southwest Bizerta-Mateur-Ferryville railways junction’. Jones himself is credited with having first reported by wireless the arrival of the monster fifty-six-ton German Tiger tanks later the same month, and his was the most productive of five groups operating in Tunisia (involving in all some fifty men and women). Their peak period was the first and second weeks of January 1943, when their reporting ‘embraced practically every branch of enemy activity, including enemy intentions and French political tendencies. Military, air and shipping intelligence supplied was voluminous - indeed, for reasons of security,’ reported Morris afterwards, ‘it was necessary to curb the almost continuous flow of messages.’ At one stage, in fact, the Malta station was decoding up to thirty reports a day. The productivity of these Tunis agents helped to raise SIS’s reputation with the military. ‘After a very cold initial reception,’ one officer told Kenneth Cohen in February 1944, ‘the information from our Tunis groups became so operationally valuable that First Army were literally hanging on our daily signals to them.’

The extent and enthusiasm of the Jones network led to security lapses, which were exploited by Inspector Marty, a Gestapo collaborator in the French police. A series of arrests in January 1943 led the police to Jean Coggia, a twenty-five-year-old former medical student who had been part of André Mounier’s network and subsequently worked alongside Jones. Arrested in Bizerta, Coggia was taken to Tunis for interrogation. Here, ‘while awaiting the arrival of the notorious Marty’, though still hand-cuffed, he managed to escape and rejoin Jones. The following month, as they endeavoured to cross over to Allied-occupied territory, Jones and Coggia, both disguised as Arabs, were caught by enemy soldiers after an exchange of fire which left Coggia with a bad wound in his shoulder. The prisoners were brought to Tunis on 23 February ‘and Coggia was hurried to Marty’s office, first-aid for his wound being refused’. An Italian officer, who was described as being attached to the SS, recounted to a Gaullist policeman what happened then: ‘although exhausted and suffering from loss of blood, Coggia maintained a complete sangfroid, and during a long night of interrogation and torture, resolutely refused to reveal anything. Indeed, he so taunted Marty and his fellow inspectors, that the blackguardly Marty finally lost all control and finished him off by shooting him in the neck with a revolver.’ The Italian said that a German SS officer present ‘was unable to stomach the scene and finally left, declaring that these were “Russian methods”!’. Jones, who managed to persuade his captors that he was in fact a British officer, was taken to Germany where, with the help of a sympathetic Abwehr major, he eventually gained formal prisoner-of-war status. After spending some time in a prison cell next to the celebrated anti-Nazi Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he ended up at the famous Colditz Castle.13

The group survived and reorganised after the loss of Jones and Coggia. Despite further arrests in March 1943, they continued to supply Malta with vital military information until ‘Allen’, an Englishman who had taken over the leadership, was himself caught on 15 April. He had been denounced by an Italian who lived in the flat below, and when the police came to arrest him, Allen jumped out of a second-floor window, but broke his leg and was quickly stopped. As reported afterwards, ‘at the time of his arrest, his real identity was unknown, and he might have got away with his story of being a Spanish petty thief, had it not been for a slight carelessness in his disguise’. He had dyed his hair black, but the dye had not been renewed, ‘with the result that the roots disclosed the natural red shade, while the ends remained jet black’. Following the Axis surrender in Tunisia in May 1943, Morris summed up the performance of the Dick Jones team as displaying ‘high grade “morale”’ but ‘low grade security’. The ‘whole “esprit”’ of the group was ‘based on great daring