LITMIR.BIZ

       Brigadier Norman Crockatt in the MI9 headquarters at Wilton Park near Beaconsfield in 1944.

      The initial budget given to Crockatt to set up the entire section was £2,000. In present day terms, this equates to a sum of approximately £90,000. He embarked on a recruitment campaign and, by the end of July 1940, the complement of officers in the whole of the MI9 organization had risen to fifty. By that time, Crockatt was looking to move his organization out of London and by September 1940, he had selected Wilton Park, near Beaconsfield, as an appropriate location. After necessary refurbishment and the installation of telephones, most of the MI9 staff moved there on 14–18 October and occupied No. 20 Camp at Wilton Park.

      ORGANIZATION

      The section was initially organized into two parts: MI9a was responsible for matters relating to enemy prisoners of war and MI9b was responsible for British prisoners of war. The former subsequently became a separate department, MI19, to facilitate the handling and distribution of the intelligence information emanating from the two groups. On separation, the remaining MI9b was re-organized into separate sections and the staff complement was significantly increased:

       Section D was responsible for training, including the Training School which was established at the Highgate School in north London, from which the staff and pupils had been evacuated. It was subsequently designated the Intelligence School (IS9) in January 1942.

       Section W was responsible for the interrogation of returning escapers and evaders, including the initial preparation of the questionnaires which the interviewees were required to complete. The principal aim of the questionnaires was to identify information for use in the lectures and the Bulletin. The section was also responsible for the preparation and distribution of reports and for writing the daily, later to become monthly, War Diary entry.

       Section X was responsible for the planning and organization of escapes, including the selection, research, coordination and despatch of escape and evasion materials. Because of the small numbers of staff, the section was unable to spend much time on this activity until January 1942 when its establishment was boosted. At that point, they were also able to increase the volume of information to Section Y for transmission to the camps.

       Section Y was responsible for codes and secret communication with the camps. The development of letter codes as a means of communication with the camps was regarded as a priority from the start and the role which coded communication played in the escape programme is discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

       Section Z was responsible for the production and supply of escape tools, including all related experimental work.

      It is primarily these last three sections whose activities largely, but not exclusively, form the focus of this book.

      KEY STAFF

       Christopher Clayton Hutton

      Christopher William Clayton Hutton (1893–1965), known as ‘Clutty’ by all who worked with him, was appointed on 22 February 1940 as the Technical Officer to lead Section Z. He was the boffin, the inventor of gadgetry. His fascination for show business, particularly magicians, was apparently regarded as sufficient qualification for the post he was given as the escape aids expert in MI9. It was his innate interest in escapology and illusion which was to prove the source of his imagination and ingenuity. Whilst working in his uncle’s timber business in Park Saw Mills, Birmingham prior to World War I, he had challenged Harry Houdini to escape from a packing case constructed on the stage of the Birmingham Empire Theatre. Houdini escaped, for, unbeknown to Hutton, he had bribed the carpenter. In the inter-war years, he worked as a journalist and later in publicity for the film industry.

       Christopher Clayton Hutton, who led MI9’s Section Z from 1940 to 1943, where he developed many ingenious escape aids and initiated the escape and evasion mapping programme.

      Hutton had served in the Yeomanry, the Yorkshire Regiment and as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. Realizing that another war with Germany was imminent, he tried to volunteer for the Royal Air Force and, subsequently, for the Army. When these approaches did not receive the encouragement he sought, he wrote a number of times to the War Office seeking an opening in an Intelligence Branch, an approach which eventually resulted in his appointment to the newly formed MI9 under Crockatt’s leadership.

      ‘Clutty’ was regarded as both enthusiastic and original in his approach to the task to which he was appointed. He is variously described by his contemporaries as ‘eccentric’, ‘a genius’ and by Foot and Langley as ‘wayward and original’. He wrote an account of his time in MI9, which ended during 1943 as a result of illness, under the title Official Secret (1960), but the publication of the book was not straightforward (see Chapter 9)

      Crockatt very quickly recognized the value of having those who had experienced the reality of escape and was also conscious of the need to have representatives of all three Services in his organization. To this end, he appointed two Liaison Officers from the Royal Navy and the RAF.

       Johnny Evans

      From the RAF he appointed Squadron Leader A. J. Evans, MC (1889–1960). Johnny Evans, as he was always called, was an inspired choice. Appointed in January 1940, Evans very rapidly became a most valuable member of the MI9 team, becoming one of the star performers as a lecturer at the Training School. He had been an Intelligence Officer on the Western Front in World War I and had then been commissioned as a Major into the fledgling Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Shot down behind German lines over the Somme in 1916 and captured, he was eventually sent to the prisoner of war camp at Clausthal in the Harz Mountains.

      For Evans, remaining in captivity was apparently never an option. Whether this in any way reflected his upbringing and public school education at Winchester is unclear but it certainly did not reflect military training at the time. He escaped, only to be recaptured. On recapture he was sent to the infamous Fort 9 at Ingolstadt, north of Nuremburg, the World War I equivalent of Colditz in World War II. It was the camp to which all prisoners of war who had attempted to escape were sent and was located over 160 kilometres (100 miles) from the Swiss frontier. Evans described in considerable detail both his failed escape and his eventual successful escape in his best-selling book, The Escaping Club, published in August 1921, and reprinted five times by the end of that year. It took him and his companion almost three weeks to walk, largely at night, to the Swiss frontier which they crossed at Schaffhausen, west of Lake Constance.

      Johnny Evans, from his classic book, The Escaping Club, published in 1921.

      Evans described the attitude of the men in Fort 9 and the extent to which they spent their time in the all-consuming occupation of plotting to escape. It really was a veritable ‘Escaping Club’ where failed escapers were only too ready to share the knowledge of their experiences outside the camp with their fellow inmates. Evans described the receipt of clothes and food parcels from family and friends in which maps and compasses were also

Скачать книгу