The most extensive array of aerial sites set up by MI6 from its HQ at Whaddon was the Bicester Group. This spread across five different parishes in the low hills that form the county boundary between Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. The reason why Bicester had so many sites was that Whaddon, having first constructed there to support British operations, later added similar sites nearby for our American allies.
These were the communication sites that talked with our saboteurs (as opposed to our spies, who I wrote about in a previous blog). The saboteurs of The Special Operations Executive (SOE – British and French sections) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) were the people who were landed by moonlight or parachuted into the occupied countries to destroy things – factories, railways, docks, power stations, anything to hurt the German war machine. But don’t forget that I’m only talking about communications sites here; the ones with aerial masts. SOE had over a hundred sites in Britain - including several weapon-producing factories and training sites strung out along the Great North Road (the A1), primarily in Hertfordshire.
I have seen and walked by many such sites across the Intelligence Zone; and dug out their stories; secret for many years after the war and now all-but forgotten. They are where my two books grew from. And what stories!
Back to The Bicester Group…. those sabotage networks in Occupied Europe (and even Africa) which were supplied and trained from Britain were controlled from here. These operations, although they started small, became very big business employing thousands of (mainly French, Norwegian and Dutch) saboteurs, in fear of their lives as they struck at the Nazi infrastructure. These operations were of enormous significance. Although the American-run operations started several years later than the British ones (Britain had already been at war with Nazi Germany for two years before Germany declared war on Uncle Sam in December 1941), I will start with them. The Bicester Group was a key point in the development of America’s clandestine operations; which are, today, the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) grew out of the Office of Strategic Studies(OSS), which in turn can be said to be the child of Britain’s SOE; having, for example, its first communication sites at Bicester. Some of this was courtesy of Ian Fleming, the author of James Bond; proving that although the history of World War Two can sometimes seem to be alphabet soup; there is much that is rich and nourishing under the surface.
The story of the birth of the American intelligence service is a complex tale which I trace in A New World After Pearl (the sequel to The Intelligence Zone). That complexity should not mask the human aspect; and in the story of Virginia Hall the links between the British and American services are crystal clear.
Virginia, a blue-blooded Virginian, was based in Nazi-controlled – and later occupied - France; always waiting the knock at the door. Her radio training was done at Thame and when she needed resupply and instructions, she talked to England via the Bicester sites.
Virginia organised supply drops, sabotage operations, safe houses for escaped Allied prisoners of war (one was in a nunnery another in a brothel); even a general uprising. She, like Marie Fourcade, was licensed to kill; and used that license. The adventures of this one-legged (!) American socialite (including her escape over the Pyrenees!) who worked for SOE and then became OSS’s first recruit are astonishing, humbling and completely absorbing. For example, during her flight on foot over the Pyrenees into Spain she radioed back to England to say that ‘Cuthbert’ was giving her trouble. SOE’s response was terse: ‘eliminate Cuthbert’. As Cuthbert was Virginia’s pet name for her wooden leg, that could have been rather problematical.
I, and many others, think she should have been the first director of the CIA – she had more service, experience and plain guts than anyone else. That she was not given the job was purely down to her sex. Thank God such times have changed.
Virginia Hall
It was, as I’ve said, in the Bicester Group - at Twyford and Poundon - that the first American intelligence communications – which now span the world – were born. That such an amazing tale is little more than a footnote in the story of the Whaddon Web shows, perhaps, the key importance of this skein of aerial sites in the running of the war.
And what of the older and larger British operation? This was controlled from Grendon Underwood Hall (now a prison). Here many of the radio operators who were to work in occupied Europe were trained in coding. Here, too, was based a small army of women (women were best at the job) who coded and decoded messages to and from the agents in the field. That this was a dangerous job is shown by the fact that Leo Marks – who was the boss there – called his book about his work ‘Between Silk and Cyanide.’
Silk? The agents were issued with unique codes printed on silk. After using a code once, it would be destroyed. The messages were often sent when the agents were tired, terrified, or in poor light; and always in a hurry. If the message they sent using the unique code could not be decoded by the teams of girls (average age about 20) who worked 24-7 shift systems at Grendon, the agent would be forced to retransmit. If that happened, the likelihood of their capture grew alarmingly, which is where the cyanide capsule they were issued with came in.
Initially the messages were based on coded references to poems. Some of the poems were chosen by the agents, but many of them were ditties written by Marks himself. Often these were witty, sometimes they were obscene, sometimes very moving, as was the one he wrote for the twenty-two year old Violette Szabo.
Violette Szabo (Nee Bushell) was, as were many of SOE’s agents, a child of British and French parents. Her father was a Londoner, her mother French. Her husband, Étienne Szabo, was an Hungarian in the French Foreign Legion who had died fighting the Nazis in North Africa. It was to avenge his death that Violette volunteered to serve as an agent behind the lines in occupied France. She had an infant daughter called Tania. Whether SOE should have accepted her is a moot point, but they did.
Violette was trained by Leo Marks. The poem he wrote for her was:
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours
Violette Szabo c. 1944
Violette Szabo was not fated to sleep in long green grass. She was shot dead in the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbruck along with two other SOE agents, Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch. Leo Marks tells us that they held hands as they were shot. Then their bodies were flung in a furnace.
Forty-one female Section F SOE agents served in France, some for more than two years, most for only a few months. Fourteen died in Nazi prisons, twelve of whom were executed. Female agents ranged in age from 20 to 53 years.
Both Violette and Étienne Szabo were awarded the French Croix de Guerre for their bravery in the field. Violette was also awarded the British George Cross – the highest British award for civilian bravery. On 28 January 1947, her four-year-old daughter Tania was presented with the George Cross by King George VI on behalf of her late mother.
This was not Allo Allo.
We should neither trivialise, nor forget, the depth of evil of the Nazi regime. Or the cost of opposing them.
In my next article, I shall tell a little of the central role played by the wartime sites in Leighton Buzzard.
©Alan Biggins October 2023
The Intelligence Zone is available here from Amazon.
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