Behind the Lines
AUTHORISED in 1960, completed in 1962, scru- tinised by various authorities, re-authorised in 1964 and then revised, amended and expanded in the light of informed comment, the Stationery Office's first thriller has not been impulsively launched upon the world. Its publication marks a new departure in—almost indeed a reversal of —official policy in this field : for two reasons. First. because it contains a good deal of infor- mation which would be of value to a potential enemy; second, because it is bound to distress a certain number of individuals or families.
Since it is an extremely good book, which places vividly in perspective a major Allied con- tribution towards victory in Europe and in the process does honour to many unsung heroes and heroines, I am glad that neither of these objec- tions was allowed in Whitehall to prevail; but it seems right to point out that they exist. Although the tools with which SOE worked are
almost as obsolete as the arquebus, the principles SOE worked on and the methods they evolved still enshrine a lot of useful lessons; most of these tricks of the trade have, ad- mittedly, already been described in the often highly coloured reminiscences of individual agents, but the compendious and authoritative guide to British war-time practices which S.O.E. in France provides offers a fruitful field for study to any state—particularly an emergent one —wishing to improve or overhaul its clandestine arrangements.
As for the other objection, the story of SOE's operations in the field is largely a story of indi- viduals. All volunteered for exceptionally hazardous duties; some failed in them. If he were describing conventional operations of war his censure would be conventionally veiled, but euphemism is seldom possible in the world of cloak and dagger.
Moreover, as we have seen in the last few days, this book's appearance has let loose the dogs of controversy. From his own account of them the restrictions under which Mr Foot was obliged to work seem absurd—so absurd that one wonders why he did not either appeal against them to higher authority (in this case, I imagine, to the Secretary to the Cabinet) or just ignore them. Whitehall's control over his access to documents was of course absolute, but White- hall's ruling that he might consult the memories of A and B, but not those of C, D and E. was in practice unenforceable: though, as Mr Foot has pointed out, further research would have further delayed, and might have jeopardised, publication.
Mr Foot traces the growth of the Special Operations Executive from its vestigial begin- nings—as `G.S. (R)': one staff officer and one typist—in 1938 through its fissiparous expansion during the Phoney War to its establishment in July 1940 as a basically Churchillian device for prosecuting the war; and the most notable of the early pioneers—Colonel Joe Holland, 'bril- liant, practical, quite unselfish'—at last receives the credit he deserves. Before the war ended SOE (of which only one 'country section' is dealt with here) attained a strength of some 10,000 men and 3,200 women, numerically equivalent to one weak division. The organisa- tion's severest critics can hardly dispute Mr Foot's claim that `no single division exercised a tenth of SOE's influence on the course of the war'; and from a table showing its 'principal confirmed industrial sabotage achievements in France it emerges that the amount of high ex- plosive used in them was only 3,000 lb., or about one-eighth of the weight of one of the RAF's largest bombs.
When the invasion started, the results pro- duced by precision attacks on communications had cumulative and often locally decisive results. One German division, for instance, 'got from the Russian front to Strasbourg in a week and a day, and then took twenty-three days more to fight its way through to the formal battle- front at Caen'; another, urgently summoned from Toulouse on D+1, was seventeen days on the road to Normandy. There is no reason to suspect Eisenhower of hyperbole when he wrote: 'I consider that the disruption . . . the harassing . . . and the continual and increasing strain- [imposed on the enemy] played a very considerable part in our complete and final vic- tory.'
Mr Foot deals, as succinctly as possible, with the intrigues and jealousies which bedevil the fortunes of all clandestine organisations and to which in London Gaullist politics and per- sonalities added both impetus and complexity. But much of his book is taken up with the ex- ploits of agents in the field and these he recon- structs with a skill and assurance which may derive in part from his own active service behind the lines with the Special Air Service Regiment. They make thrilling, often tragic reading; the main operational lesson that emerges from them is the danger of neglecting security precautions.
This seems to have been Baker Street's worst failing. In London an elaborate facade of security was maintained; much of it struck the service ministries and other agencies who had dealings with SOE as pretentious mumbo- jumbo. But where security really mattered it was often lax. In Holland no fewer than fourteen SOE transmitters came under German control, and as a result many brave men were sent to death and torture; but the different sections of SOE were—by security of the mumbo-jumbo type —so hermetically insulated from each other that, when the disasters in Holland were at length apprehended, the staff dealing with France were not warned about them. Here, surely, is a failure more culpable than any that occurred in the field.
PETER FLEMING
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