SOE in 100 Objects

Schools for Saboteurs

6. HOTEL VICTORIA CARD

The bright, breezy watercolour of the Hotel Victoria captures the bustle and buoyancy of the interwar years. The palatial, 500-room Victorian hotel on Northumberland Avenue was originally designed as a prestigious hospitality venue with extensive banqueting halls adorned with coffered ceilings and marbled walls. With the outbreak of war, however, the hotel was requisitioned by the War Office, its windows taped against bomb blast, its purpose shrouded in mystery and its once welcoming corridors barred to all but War Office officials.

Tucked away on the third floor, one of the hotel's converted bedrooms served as an office for SOE's initial interviews with candidates. Little of the hotel's original luxury and elegance was experienced by the recruits summoned to the mysterious room. The bleak and functional quarters, spotlit by a single naked light bulb, were furnished with a kitchen table and two upright chairs, one in a state of near collapse.

Before turning up at the Hotel Victoria, interviewees would have been invited by letter to attend the War Office. None had any inkling why, though some would be clearer by the end of their interview. Candidates varied widely in age, background and profession, ranging from their early twenties to mid-forties, from career soldiers and engineers to teachers, journalists and housewives. All had in common varying degrees of linguistic fluency and relevant experience of living in an occupied country.

Interviews for SOE's French (F) Section were initially conducted by the novelist Major Lewis Gielgud (brother of the actor John Gielgud). Later, from 1942 onwards, the mystery writer Selwyn Jepson also carried out many of F Section's interviews. Reputedly something of a talent spotter, Jepson astutely judged the prospective agent Odette Sansom as a 'shrewd cookie'. Although he feared that her personality might be too 'big' to pass unnoticed, he added on her form, 'God help the Germans if we can ever get her near them!'1 (object 86). Jepson appreciated the particular qualities that women could contribute behind the lines and promoted the recruitment of women who, in his view, 'have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men'.2

A lively watercolour of the Hotel Victoria on Northumberland Avenue, London, brightens the hotel's guest stationery of the late 1930s.

The local map on the rear of the Hotel Victoria's stationery pinpoints the hotel's prime position, surrounded by the capital's landmarks 'at the very heart of London'.

Both Gielgud and Jepson were skilled recruiters who assessed candidates for specific qualifications and qualities. An essential attribute was the ability to 'pass as a native', blending seamlessly with the local culture and people of an occupied country. Passing as a native implied, at the very least, linguistic fluency, but also the typical appearance, demeanour and instinctive habits and gestures of anyone who'd been raised, schooled or employed in an occupied country.3 The future agent Nancy Wake, for instance, though born in New Zealand, had married a Frenchman and lived in Marseilles for a decade, becoming thoroughly immersed in the culture, fashions, postures and daily habits of the Marseillais (object 93). By contrast, the English schoolmaster Captain Harry Rée had only spent his school vacations in France and, by his own account, spoke a schoolmaster's French. When he went behind the lines, he was usually fortunate in having a French courier by his side, who would cover some of the necessary communication for him, especially in towns where Nazi patrols prevailed (object 78).

To assess a candidate's linguistic fluency and ability to pass as a native, the interview was conducted in the interviewee's mother tongue and in any other relevant language, sometimes switching swiftly from one language to another. Throughout the conversational session, the assessor gently probed the candidate's character, motivation and loyalties. The ideal agent would be single-minded and independent but also able to act as part of a team and establish a rapport with fellow agents and resisters.

When assessing motivation, SOE was looking for someone who believed that working for SOE was the best way to help the war effort, who 'felt that only in this or similar work could they achieve their maximum contribution to the war effort'.4 The recruiters steered clear of drifters, dreamers and adventure seekers, who would soon put the mission and their colleagues at risk. Whoever went behind the lines shouldn't go to escape a dull job or a failed marriage, but because they were wholly committed to what the SOE agent Major Francis Cammaerts called 'a just war' and were determined to do whatever it took to free occupied countries from tyranny (object 95).5 While patriotism to an individual's motherland might be a motivating factor, loyalty to Britain's war effort should be paramount.

During the initial interview, the recruiter tested the candidate's attitude to dropping behind the lines by casually asking, 'How would you feel about returning to France . or Greece?' The recruiters also impressed on candidates that they were volunteers who could withdraw at any stage. Crucially, it was also underlined that the mission would be dangerous, and if caught, agents would not be protected by the Geneva Convention as regular prisoners of war (POWs) but could expect to be tortured and executed as spies.

The Hotel Victoria was not the only venue for F Section interviews, which were also conducted at Horse Guards, Whitehall, where the candidates Harry Peulevé and Tony Brooks were both assessed by Lewis Gielgud. Some country sections held interviews at their various safe houses and command centres. The German Section (X), for example, interviewed candidates at No. 1 Queen's Gate Gardens, Kensington. Wherever the interview took place, it was just the first step in a lengthy programme of sequential courses and assessments at SOE's Special Training Schools (objects 8-18).

7. FANY BERET

The distinctive khaki beret here decorated with the brass badge of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) belonged to a staff officer at SOE's Baker Street headquarters in London (object 2).

The close collaboration between FANY and SOE started early in 1940 and quite by chance when SOE's Head of Operations and Training Brigadier Colin Gubbins asked his FANY friend Phyllis Bingham for help with some confidential work. The two services went on to forge a close working relationship that endured throughout the war.

In many ways, FANY and SOE seemed well matched since both enjoyed a semi-unofficial status with relative independence from the regular armed forces. By contrast with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) or Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, for example, FANY was an independent registered charity, although it was subject to military law. Formed in 1907, FANY originally provided a first aid link between field hospitals and the front line during the First World War, when FANYs rode onto the battlefield as mounted paramedics.

Of the 6,000 FANYs active in the Second World War, around 2,000 served in SOE, across most theatres of the war, from Europe to the Mediterranean and South East Asia.6 They covered a broad range of roles within SOE, both on staff and in the field. The FANYs' ability to bear small arms was an essential asset for SOE's undercover operations. FANY also provided SOE agents with a respectable military cover, rank and uniform.

A wartime beret of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), which was originally worn by an SOE staff officer at the RF Section in London.

About fifty of the 2,000 FANYs in SOE trained as field agents. The majority of FANYs, however, did not operate behind the lines. Instead, they played crucial roles on the home front or at home bases abroad, particularly in manning SOE's wireless communications as signallers, coders and decoders, a contribution now widely regarded as incalculable (object 17). In the words of Gubbins, 'Wireless [was] the most valuable link in the whole of our chain of operations. Without those links we would have been groping in the dark.'7 Other FANYs served in SOE's specialist stations and Special Training Schools (STSs), providing a broad network of technical and administrative support, ranging from analysts, accountants and clerks to technicians, forgers and parachute packers, as well as map readers and despatch riders (object 58).

Whatever a FANY's eventual role, her training for SOE would always be top secret and intensive. Potential radio operators, for example, underwent four months' wireless training at one of SOE's dedicated wireless schools, such as Fawley Court in Herefordshire or Thame Park in Oxfordshire (object 17). On completion of their course, some wireless operators served behind the lines as field agents but many more manned SOE's home stations at Grendon Hall in Buckinghamshire and Poundon House in Oxfordshire, where they listened for coded messages from agents in the field.

Conditions were challenging at Grendon Hall, where operators lived in poorly heated Nissen huts or attics. The FANYs at Grendon worked six-hour 'skeds' (schedules) in shifts around the clock.8 Each operator was allotted her own agent, or 'Joe', enabling...