The work of Europe's Resistance forces

Supplying Europe's Resistance forces

Special Operations Executive agents in the field.

Resistance escape lines for airmen

That was the instruction to the newly formed and highly secret Special Operations Executive - known as S.O.E. for short - from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

It was in the summer of 1940 that S.O.E. was formed, initially being based at the plush St Ermin's Hotel in Caxton Street off Victoria Street in Westminster, London.

S.O.E.'s first boss was socialist Hugh Dalton, the coalition government's Minister for Economic Warfare. He had a very clear idea of what had to be done: "We must use many different methods, including military sabotage, labour agitations and strikes, continuous propaganda, terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots."

But diplomats and the British establishment did not like the idea of S.O.E. and tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle it at birth. They were suspicious and jealous of S.O.E.’s subversion and sabotage activities. Someone else who was not keen on S.O.E. was the head of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris.

S.O.E. was based in Baker Street in London's Marylebone. 

It had offices at 64 Baker Street from October, 1940.

Then it expanded to 83 Baker Street .... 

and then the top floor of 82 Baker Street across the road.

Many S.O.E. staff - including agents - used the London Underground, known as the tube, and its Baker Street station. 

Many S.O.E. agents made their last underground trips of all via this station before being flown into occupied Europe.

But such was the demand for space from S.O.E. that its Baker Street offices became too small and the organisation had to use properties off Dorset Square - a brisk five minute walk from Baker Street - for its technical and various country sections.

Authentic European clothes needed by S.O.E. agents were manufactured in a tailoring department set up off London's Regent Street. The workroom was in Great Titchfield Street ...

... and the showroom was in Margaret Street. Attention to detail was vital to make sure that the clothes looked completely authentic. For example, the skirts of mainland European ladies were longer than their British counterparts.

Tailors and seamstresses made new clothes, for men and women, that followed the exact style of continental clothes. Items that had to be given particular attention were the style and length of the clothes, as well as the material, the labels and even items like zips and buttons. And to make the clothes look worn and not new, costume people from the film and theatre world would be used to make the clothes look old in a technique known as distressing.

A large country house called Briggens near Roydon in Essex was known as Station XIV and acted as S.O.E.'s vital forgery section.

It produced the many items needed by S.O.E.'s agents and their Resistance colleagues across occupied Europe. 

And returning agents provided the staff at Briggens with the latest security documents produced by the Germans in an effort to outwit S.O.E. agents and the Resistance.

Gaynes Hall near St Neots in Cambridgeshire was S.O.E.'s Norwegian country section.

S.O.E. had its own communications centre for the development and cracking of codes and ciphers at Grendon Hall in Grendon Underwood, north-west of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

Known as Station 53a, the wireless station had Nissen huts in its grounds and was home to 400 signallers and coders, mostly women belonging to FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. 

Grendon Hall is now a prison, with the manor house used for education and administration. But, it's also home to a memorial plaque presented by the Special Forces Club in London in memory of S.O.E.'s agents and the members of FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, who worked in secrecy at Grendon Hall.

Another communications centre for the development and cracking of S.O.E.'s codes and ciphers was at Poundon Hall, not far away from Grendon Hall.

A former roadhouse on the Barnet bypass - now the main A1 road - in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, was used by S.O.E. for the development of such ingenious items as exploding rats and turds. Known as the Thatched Barn, it's now a Moat House hotel.

In one workshop, painted in large letters on the wall, was the message: ‘Silence is of the Gods … only monkeys chatter.’

S.O.E. scientists carried out experiments to develop what were known as 'dirty tricks' items for its agents at a former private hotel between Welwyn Garden City and Old Welling. For example, wireless transmitting sets could be hidden in logs, rubble blocks and even bundles of wood known as faggots.

Now a research centre for pharmaceutical giant Smith Klein Beecham, the country house named the Frythe was codenamed Station IX.

It was at the Frythe that craftspeople, engineers, tailors and the like would be recruited by S.O.E. to use their skills in making all sorts of fake items that could hide items needed to be used by S.O.E. agents. 

Particularly useful were sets and props people from the film and theatre world who developed ways of hiding plastic explosives and hand grenades in all sorts of everyday things – coal and vegetables, and even hiding wireless transmitting sets in plaster logs and blocks of building rubble. Fake logs were perfect for the country while fake building rubble would not be given a second look in a bombed town. 

Agents’ wireless transmitting sets were hidden in portable gramophones, artists’ paint boxes, granite blocks, office equipment such as adding machines and even bathroom scales, paint and oil drums, car batteries, furniture such as armchairs, cement sacks, vacuum cleaners, driftwood, workmen’s tool boxes, electrical testing meter, massage sets and continental wireless sets.

A large mansion known as the Firs, in the village of Whitchurch near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, was a top secret S.O.E. centre for the testing and development of explosives.

Explosives, such as hand grenades and plastic explosives, could be hidden in all sorts of fake items - such as lumps of coal and even vegetables!

On the side of St Paul's Church in London's Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, there is a small memorial to S.O.E. and the women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY for short, which was founded during the First World War.

Many of the FANYs worked as S.O.E. agents in occupied Europe as well as in the Executive's top secret administration and code cracking centres.

The memorial to the work of S.O.E.'s brave agents at St Paul's Church includes a stone in memory of Odette Hallowes, perhaps one of the most well known of former S.O.E. agents.

Of S.O.E.'s agents that worked in occupied Europe, between 60 and 70 per cent survived - better than S.O.E.'s estimate of 50 per cent but little comfort to the families and friends of those brave men and women of the S.O.E. who lost their lives while working in occupied Europe.

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