The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [319]
Three other types of SIS section served with Allied formations in the field. There were a number of Special Counter-Intelligence Units, attached to major headquarters, which distributed sensitive signals intelligence material from Bletchley Park and were responsible for the security of that material. There were Special Liaison Units which handled Bletchley Park air intelligence and passed it on to theatre air headquarters. Finally, there were the paramilitary Special Communications Units which had been set up by Gambier-Parry to handle all SIS’s field communications.25 No. 2 Intelligence Unit’s role in the provision of tactical battlefield intelligence fell away after the Allies had broken out of the Normandy bridgehead in mid-August and begun rapidly to move eastwards, soon overrunning most of the Sussex teams in the process. Thereafter, it acted as a link for the passing of information from London to 21st Army Group. Following the Allied landings in southern France on 15 August, and the liberation of Paris a week later, by the end of September all but a few parts of eastern France had effectively been liberated. On 23 October the Allies recognised General de Gaulle’s administration as the provisional government of France and for SIS the task now became a combination of closing down wartime French networks, settling remaining obligations to agents (including those who had worked for SIS in preference to de Gaulle), sorting out its future deployment in the country and establishing the basis of postwar liaison with the French intelligence authorities.
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Victory in Europe
D-Day did not by any means mark the end of the war, and SIS could not rest on such intelligence laurels as it had earned by the invasion’s success. Although victory over Germany was increasingly regarded as inevitable, sustained stiff enemy resistance on the Eastern and Western Fronts left the Allied forces (including SIS) with much yet to do. But the process by which legitimate governments would be re-established in formerly occupied countries, and anticipations about the political balance of postwar Europe, began to preoccupy planners in the East and the West. SIS had a part to play in these developments, and especially so with the growing appreciation of the Soviet Union’s intentions to drop even the pretence of Allied co-operation and pursue self-interested (and understandable) ambitions to ensure its security by dominating Eastern and Central Europe.
Belgium and the Netherlands
In the run-up to D-Day, Service Clarence had continued to supply excellent intelligence for SIS, such as a map of the Pas de Calais defences; details of German defence installations at Belgian ports; the numbers of troops and trains passing through Belgium to France and the Netherlands; information on German air force activity across a range of airfields in the region; and news about the gradual arrival in Belgium of the SS Adolf Hitler Division. The network also provided notes from Germany on the jet engine of the Messerschmitt Me-262 fighter and continued to procure information on V-weapons.1 In mid-May 1944, Frederick Jempson, head of the Belgian Section in Broadway, reported that Service Clarence had suggested reorganising their communications in anticipation of the expected invasion. In order to speed up the flow of intelligence they proposed dividing the network into nine sections, each with a wireless or Ascension operator. The sole Ascension operator currently in Belgium, code-named ‘Player’, had been in the field since early 1943, but had fallen ill and been ordered to take ‘a complete rest