Serious fun and dangerous games
Thomas Blaikie
BEYOND THE FRONT LINE by Tony Geraghty HatperCollins, £20, pp. 355 Beyond the Front Line's sensational sub- title, The untold exploits of Britain's most daring Cold War spy mission', creates false expectations. It is true that this engagingly anecdotal history of the Brixmis Mission, from the author of the hugely successful SAS history, Who Dares Wins, is packed with dramatic accounts of spy-like things such as cars being chased, cars getting stuck in mud or even, on one occasion, sinking through ice. But its fascinating and strangely entertaining revelations have nothing to do with nail-biting spy dramas of the usual kind.
The Brixmis Mission was supposed to be a British military liaison operation. It was established in 1946 under the Robertson- Malinin Agreement with a base at Pots- dam, near Berlin, just behind what was to become the Iron Curtain. There it remained until the late 1980s. Once the Cold War got under way, spying on impor- tant Soviet military targets in East Ger- many was inevitably what the Mission took to, although the 'liaison' idea was never entirely dropped.
It is not just this paradoxical position that gives the book its air of glorious high farce, but it is part of it. While by day Mis- sion members were hiding in ditches spying on Soviet tank convoys or sorting through hospital rubbish, by night they were throw- ing jolly parties for the Russians where uni- forms were swapped and The Sound of Music shown repeatedly.
Beyond this, the spying activities themselves were carried out in a spirit of wonderful amateur derring-do which frequently involved last-minute improvisa- tion. An officer, having left his ruler behind, once had to use his lunchtime apple to make an imprint of, and thereby measure, the bore of a Soviet tank gun.
When the Mission members were `caught', which happened quite often, events might take a surreal turn. Once a brigadier was pleased to observe that the Russian rifle pointing through the window of his car was a new type he had not seen before. He noted down the serial number. Often miscreants were taken to the kommandantura, who was some kind of local military bigwig, where, within a short time, it would be out with the whisky or vodka or both, and on with some Russian singing and dancing. One unfortu- nate was detained in a lavatory for five hours until the Soviets were so desperate to use it themselves that they had to let him go.
The most absurd excuses were apparent- ly believed by the Russians — 'I was only looking at the wildlife', 'I'm so interested in the lovely country'. Trying to penetrate a top-secret base in the middle of winter, under six foot of snow, another Mission member claimed to be sizing the place up as a possible holiday location.
Having said this, it would be quite wrong to overlook the undoubted bravery of Mis- sion members and the usefulness of their work. Nor would it be right to overstress the fact that Brixmis probably got away with so much for 40 years because it suited the Soviets to have the West know the truth about their military capability. It was their idea of deterrence. Neither can the whole adventure be explained away by pointing out that, as often happens in a confrontation, especially one lasting for so long, the opposing sides developed a mutu- al fascination with, and even dependency upon, each other. Towards the end senior Russian officers would send touching eulo- gies to departing Mission chiefs in which the name of James Bond was mentioned without irony. When the Mission was final- ly disbanded, many members found them- selves compelled to take up residence in Moscow.
The point is that nothing can detract from the real purpose of Beyond the Front Line, whether intended or not, which is to celebrate old-fashioned British pluck, ama- teurism, eccentricity and modesty. Its pages are rife with stories of madcap and brilliant ideas for outwitting the 'opposition' as it was called. One officer, when out spying, always carried a supply of wreaths so that, should he need to allay suspicion, he could step out of his car and solemnly lay one of them in a likely or unlikely spot. At parties something ludicrous was bound to happen, perhaps even the planned arrival of some live chickens. And never once is there even a hint of anyone making any pompous or vulgar claims to heroism. Success is invari- ably, and probably wrongly, attributed to luck.
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