Before he got himself arrested in Madrid, Dudley Clarke’s
Visit to London had set in motion the formation of a controlling section for deception. Although caught up in Clarke’s enthusiasm for deception, no one in London was quite sure how to make such a section work, least of all the man who was put in charge of it.
Colonel Oliver Stanley was instructed to form a staff of three officers, each representing one of the armed services. To represent the army, the War Office sent Lieutenant Colonel Fritz Lumley, a one-legged veteran of World War I. With the air war and the battle of the Atlantic in full swing, the RAF and Royal Navy were less enthused about losing senior officers. While the navy dragged its feet finding a candidate, the RAF sent a civilian to the post rather than losing a group captain.
The well-known author Dennis Wheatley had served as a gunner on the Western Front during World War I and had been injured in a German gas attack. Invalided from the Army, he took over his father’s wine-making business in 1926, but was later forced to sell it during the economic slump of the 1930s. It was then that he turned to writing the occult thrillers for which he was best known. At the beginning ofWorld War II his second wife Joan joined MI5 and, at her suggestion, Wheatley was commissioned to write a number of papers on subjects relating to invasion defences and the conduct of the war.1 These papers were widely read by members of the Joint Planning Staff (JPS) and the Chiefs of Staff Committee and, in some cases, were even passed to the King.
In November 1941, when looking for a recruit to send to the deception section, the Director of Plans (Air), Group Captain William Dickson, invited Wheatley to lunch and introduced him to Stanley as a possible candidate to represent the Air Force. A formal interview took place shortly afterwards and Wheatley was accepted into the deception planning fraternity.2
According to Wheatley’s memoir The Deception Planners, the first months in the controlling section were frustratingly dull. The department occupied two offices on the third floor of the War Office overlooking St James’s Park.
Although the offices were grand in design, the real business of running the war went on in the basement of the building. Secluded in its upper-storey offices, the deception section struggled to be noticed. Oliver Stanley did not help matters. He was so obsessed with secrecy that he appeared unwilling to let anyone know that his department existed. Wheatley very correctly suggested that Stanley ought to hold weekly meetings with all the parties interested in deception, namely ISSB, PWE, MI5, SIS, MEW, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and so on, but the Controlling Officer declined the idea. By doing so, he condemned the department to a slow and lingering death.
In defence of Stanley, during that dark part of the war things appeared to be going badly on every front. With no offensive operations planned, there was little scope or requirement for cover plans to be developed by his organization. At this early stage there was still some confusion between the new section and the ISSB, the body responsible for operational security. The controlling section’s sole success in this period was in the development of Operation Hardboiled, a notional assault against Stavanger in Norway. This was the first of many successful attempts to pin down frontline German forces in Norway and it played on a very real concern Hitler had for this northernmost of his conquests. Although Hardboiled was never intended to go ahead, the operation was planned as meticulously as if it had been real and actual troops were assigned to it. Although the Germans appeared to take the bait and strengthened their Norwegian garrisons, Hardboiled died a death after the troops earmarked for it were transferred to an operation against Madagascar.
This setback caused a loss of impetus and by May 1942 the department had more or less fallen apart. Lumley spent most of his day on TheTimes crossword, dreaming of postings elsewhere. When he eventually secured a posting to SOE in West Africa he was ecstatic. At the time of Lumley’s departure, Stanley’s wife fell terminally ill and he went on leave to care for her. Increasingly frustrated at his inability to make inroads of any kind, Stanley asked Churchill for permission to be released so that he could re-enter politics.
At this make or break point in the development of organized deception, the creating force behind A Force again played a leading hand. GeneralWavell arrived in India in July 1941 and by the spring of 1942 was heavily engaged against the Japanese. He decided to set up a deception organization for the Far East on very similar lines to A Force. This organization was initially known by the designation GSI(d), but later came to be better known as D Division.
In the Dudley Clarke role was Lieutenant Colonel Peter Fleming, elder brother of Ian Fleming who then worked for Naval Intelligence and would
Only later rise to public celebrity for writing the James Bond novels. Before the war Peter Fleming was an acclaimed travel author and had been a special correspondent for The Times and the literary editor of The Spectator. At the beginning of the war Fleming had been instrumental in setting up the first of the so-called Auxiliary units in Kent during the 1940 invasion scare. The Auxiliaries were a prototype resistance guerrilla force, trained to allow the German Army to roll over their positions and then come out of hiding to attack their supply lines from the rear. According to Wheatley, Fleming taught the men unarmed combat and was well suited to the role, the novelist likening his appearance to that of a jaguar.
At the beginning of 1941 Fleming was asked to go to Egypt by Colonel George Pollock, the head of SOE in Cairo. The plan was for Fleming to make a tour of Italian POW cages and to recruit potential resistance agents from among anti-fascist prisoners. These would then be dropped into Italy by SOE to bring about an uprising in Italy. When this plan failed to develop, Fleming was charged with raising the ‘Garibaldi Legion’. This would be a force at least a thousand strong that would accompany the Allies when they landed in Italy. Despite great willingness on Fleming’s part, the Garibaldi Legion failed to attract recruits and the plan collapsed. Fleming spent the next few months in Cairo doing very little and growing increasingly frustrated. The time would have been entirely fruitless had he not become acquainted with A Force and Wavell, who had read his travel books and was very taken by him.3
When it became clear that the Germans were on the verge of invading Greece, Wavell agreed to let Fleming travel there with a team to organize a post-invasion resistance, much the same as he had done in Kent in 1940. Despite a complete lack of local knowledge and having no one in his party of desperadoes who could speak Greek, Fleming travelled to the Monastir Gap, one of the expected invasion routes. Unfortunately Fleming arrived too late to carry out his mission and instead spent his time blowing bridges and railway locomotives during the retreat, before returning to London.
Despite his lack of success he was not forgotten by Wavell, who requested that he join him in India. Fleming had to wait until February 1942 before he could leave the United Kingdom, travelling from Glasgow to Freetown in Africa on the aircraft carrier Formidable. From there he made his way to Cairo and reacquainted himself with A Force, spending time reading through the records of their operations, learning how the art of deception had been successfully employed to date. He arrived at Wavell’s HQ in Delhi in March 1942 and took over GSI(d) just at the point when Imperial Japanese forces appeared poised to strike into India.
One evening after dinner Wavell explained to Fleming the principles of the Meinzerhagen haversack ruse used in Allenby’s 1917 campaign against the Turks. Taking note of the lesson, towards the end of April Fleming abandoned a car near the advancing Japanese position, in which some documents were deliberately left behind. Among the letters were some false reports indicating that a strong reinforcement of two armies was expected in India and that a secret weapon had been developed for use against the Japanese. There was also a letter to Wavell from his ITiend Joan Bright in the Cabinet Office in London deliberately filled with all manner of indiscreet tittle-tattle on military matters.4
Whether the documents were ever found by the advancing Japanese and if the ruse actually came to anything was never established by its creators, but it did spur Wavell into writing to London on the subject of deception. On 3 May he wrote to Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) describing the ploy and then again, on 21 May, he wrote to Churchill urging him to ensure deception was taken seriously in London.
This intervention was later described by Masterman as the ‘real turning point’ in the campaign to implement an energetic, globally linked deception plan.5 To what extent Wavell’s letter was provoked by observations made by Fleming on the state of deception in London following Dudley Clarke’s mission the previous October is uncertain. However, the timing ofWavell’s letter does indicate that Fleming passed on some information about the malaise surrounding Oliver Stanley’s small team. In his letter, therefore, Wavell told the Prime Minister that deception in the Far and Middle Eastern theatres would be effective only if it was part of a widespread deception plan worked out in advance by London and Washington together.
The letter was spectacularly well timed because at that moment the British and Americans were making their first plans for offensive action. In a ‘knocking heads together’ exercise, Churchill circulated Wavell’s letter to the Defence Committee of the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff, who referred it to the Joint Planning Staff.
The same day the letter was written, Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Bevan was appointed as the successor to Lumley. At the age of 46, Bevan was perhaps best known as a stockbroker and the son of a chairman of the Stock Exchange. A veteran of World War I, Bevan had served as an infantry subaltern on the Western Front where he gained a Military Cross. In 1918 he was given a rare opportunity to make his mark. Summoned toVersailles, he was asked to make an appreciation of the German order of battle, taking into account the German forces freed up by Russia’s exit from the war following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Given access to secret intelligence and allowed as much Clerical assistance as he required, Bevan delivered his appraisal before an assembly of top Allied politicians and ‘brass’. Seated before him at his presentation was the Prime Minister Lloyd George, Churchill, Haig, Clemenceau, Foch, Pershing and all the various Allied army commanders. As it turned out, Bevan’s predictions were accurate to within three divisions and his forecast for the point of attack was good to within ten miles. Churchill was suitably impressed and summoned Bevan to his quarters at the Paris Ritz to discuss his views in more detail.
With this past link to Churchill and with the coincidental arrival ofWavell’s letter on deception, it should come as no surprise that by the time Johnny Bevan arrived at the War Office on 1 June to replace Lumley, he was instead given the top job, Churchill having accepted Stanley’s request to go back into politics. Arriving at what became officially known as the London Controlling Section (LCS), Bevan invigorated it. The name of the department was deliberately vague and it was mostly referred to by the initials LCS. Even if someone had worked out what the initials stood for, they would still have little idea what this London section actually controlled. As the new Controlling Officer of Deception Bevan acted as a stimulus to the department, which began to develop very rapidly, moving from secluded isolation to a post of paramount importance in the Allied war effort.
The advancement of the department was built on ‘old school tie’-style networking and informal chats with the right people over agreeable dinners. Here Wheatley excelled in promoting the interests of the department. Relatively low in rank, Wheatley would enter a superior officer’s office very formally, stand smartly to attention and observe all protocols. Once the officer asked Wheatley to sit down, things would become much less formal. Wheatley was the same age as many senior military figures and a lot of them had read his books. With the ice broken, Wheatley would somewhat impertinently offer to take them out for lunch. If that went well, he would invite them to dinner at his home. Because most officers had sent their wives out of London to escape the bombing, the domestic setting with Wheatley and his wife was all the more attractive to them — and Wheatley was well-known for providing a good table.
By the time of Bevan’s arrival, Wheatley’s unofficial dining club consisted of top generals, admirals and air commodores. Wheatley naturally introduced Bevan into these circles and the new Controlling Officer made his own invitations for them to dine at his expense. Thus between the two deception officers and their dinner services, they had access to some of the highest authorities in the land.
149
Bevan was also keen on country pursuits, much more so than Wheatley, and found that Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, shared his interest in bird watching. This gave Bevan an excuse for lunch with Sir Alan two or three times a month. Through his sister, Bevan was also brother-in-law to General Sir Harold Alexander, who would become Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East and an important player in the war. According to his secretary from February 1944, Lady Jane Pleydell-Bouverie, Bevan became great friends with Churchill’s Chief of Staff, General ‘Pug’ Ismay and ‘C’, the head of MI6. On a periodic basis Bevan was also sent for by Churchill to discuss deception plans in person, the Prime Minister retaining a strong interest in the subject throughout the war.
This intensive social networking was what made the difference between the Stanley era and the new one under Bevan. Later in 1942 the opportunities to network were greatly increased by the recruitment of Ronald Wingate as Army representative. Ronald Wingate was the son of the noted Sir Reginald ‘Wingate of the Sudan’ and cousin to Major General Orde Wingate, the legendary Chindit commander in the Far East. Like his predecessor Lumley, Wingate had made his career in India. However, where Lumley had remained a relatively obscure figure, Wingate had risen to some significance, becoming the governor of Baluchistan, a rank equivalent to lieutenant general and entitling him to an escort of lancers. Wingate had also negotiated British protectorates with a number of oil sheikhs in the Persian Gulf.
To compensate for his service overseas in all manner of ‘lice-ridden hovels’ in the king’s service, Wingate took an extended leave every two years.6 He would return to Europe and motor round the major resorts on the Continent, becoming an expert on hotels and fine dining. With extensive social networks and certain monarchs numbered among his friends, Wingate was naturally in good stead with his new colleagues in deception. His knowledge of politics was unbridled and his negotiating skills and cunning made him perfect for weaving his way through the cluttered halls and offices of the War Office.
The other key members of the team who joined in 1942 were Major Harold Peteval and Commander James Arbuthnott RN. Peteval was also a World War I veteran and had gone on to manage a soap factory. At the start of the war he had enlisted and had been at Dunkirk, where he was known for his calmness under shellfire. Despite this Wheatley remembered Peteval as being shy and extremely reluctant to leave the office to attend conferences. Instead he was studious and, like Bevan, worked extremely long hours, while Wheatley and the others would generally knock off at 6pm.
150
Arbuthnott was another veteran from the Great War and had since gone on to become a tea planter in Ceylon. Before joining the deception section Arbuthnott spent a year in GHQ Cairo. When in London, he was quizzed about what he knew of Dudley Clarke and A Force from his time in Cairo. Such was the security surrounding Dudley Clarke’s outfit that Arbuthnott confessed that although he had heard the organization mentioned he had absolutely no idea what it did.
One of Bevan’s first acts was to move the section’s offices from the third floor of the War Office to the overcrowded basement where the planning staffs were located. Amid the noise of air conditioning and the glare of electric lights, the basement was like a dungeon. Wheatley tried to brighten the place up by pinning giant maps to the wall and bringing some of his own furniture into the office, including some Persian rugs and a boardroom table complete with a Graeco—Roman-style statuette in the centre. By planting himself in the middle of a rabbit warren of decision-making, Bevan ensured the LCS would not be overlooked or forgotten.
Bevan’s next move was to draft a directive for the section, giving it a purpose and a goal. On 21 June the directive was endorsed by the Joint Planning Staff, formally setting out Bevan’s mission:7
1. Prepare deception plans on a world-wide basis with the object of causing the enemy to waste his military resources.
2. Coordinate deception plans prepared by Commands at home and abroad.
3. Ensure that ‘cover’ plans prepared by the ISSB fit into the general framework of strategic deception.
4. Watch over the execution by the Service Ministries, Commands and other organizations and departments, of approved deception plans which you have prepared.
5. Control the support of deception schemes originated by Commanders in Chief, by such means as leakage, propaganda.
In addition, the directive confirmed that the LCS was not to limit itself to strategic deception, but to include anything ‘calculated to mislead the enemy wherever military advantage may be gained’. This was perhaps an open invitation for Bevan to concern himself with intelligence-led plans rather than just operational ones. To that end, the LCS was to open and maintain links with JIC, PWE, SOE, SIS and other government organizations and departments, one of which, although not mentioned in name, would be the Twenty Committee.
World History
