The Autobiography of Devon Miles

Special Operations Executive (SOE)

Part 1:

I jumped at the chance to join the SOE. Our headquarters were in London and amongst ourselves we were called "The Baker Street Irregulars", "Churchill's Secret Army" and "the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". Publicly, we were known under a variety of names and I told my family that I had been recruited into the "Inter-Service Research Bureau". While my brothers eventually learned what I was really doing, and I think Father suspected, Mother went to her death never knowing the grave danger I was in.

When I was inducted into SOE in mid-summer of 1941, I must say that it was in quite a bit of flux, both in terms of senior leadership and in its missions. When I first went down to London, the Chief Executive was Sir Charles Hambros, director of Hambros Bank and an old friend of Father's. Although he was tasked with leading the organization, he never completely gave up his interests in the bank or a railroad he was involved with, and this led to some difficult situations. Eventually, he left in September 1943, to be replaced by Major General Colin McVean Gubbins. Of course, by that point, my story went in a totally different direction.

However, while I was in London, there were three primary SOE bureaus; SO1, which dealt with propaganda; SO2 (operations); and SO3 (research). I hoped and prayed fervently that I would be chosen for SO2, and I was. We were assigned to enemy or neutral territory by country. Naturally, with my strong background in German and French, once I was assigned to SO2, it was almost a foregone conclusion that I would be sent to Algiers or even France. Looking back, I know I should have been completely frightened by the prospect, but I wasn't. To this day, I don't know if that was sheer stupidity or reckless bravado on my part.

I was sent up to Arisaig in Scotland for commando training ,which was conducted by William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, who developed hand-to-hand combat methods and also trained us in pistol shooting and knife-fighting. They had both developed their techniques while working for the Shanghai Police Department and their philosophy was that any method of fighting was fair. Fairbairn taught that the only rule was "kill or be killed". It was an ideology that I learned well.

Next my fellow students and I received parachute training at Altrincham, followed by security and other spy craft training and then we were sent for specialized training depending on what our assignments would be. I went to an enormous country home to learn Morse Code, wireless radio operation and some basic code breaking. Just as importantly, I brought lessons in diplomatic relationships learned at my father's side, not only from our summer in Germany and Austria, but just by observing his work with his banking associates and clients.

The Special Operations Executive recruited from all classes and types of people; the high-born, the factory worker, the well-educated and the street tough. Not only were people from the Home Countries and the Commonwealth utilized, but virtually anyone who wanted to work for the Allied cause. Women were deeply woven into the fabric of the organization, both in support positions and as agents. Even criminals, known homosexuals and anti-British agitators were accepted.

The SOE quickly developed into a first-class organization, although throughout the war we were hampered by a lack of our own air transport. Starting in 1942 when the United States formed their Office of Special Services, brother to our organization, we benefited greatly from their assistance, including air drops provided by their Army Air Corps. Before that, however, I was smuggled into Algiers as part of the station known as "Massingham". From there we would operate into southern France.

Before we got into France, however, we needed to develop our contacts in Algeria and other parts of northern Africa to eventually defeat the Nazi advances in that part of the world. I was assigned to the Algerian capital of Algiers and because of my light complexion, I passed myself off as a young French newspaper photographer from Alsace-Lorraine, near the border of the Rhine Valley. During the day, I was known as "Jacques Deauville", a supporter of Vichy France, and I carried a boxy press camera, supposedly taking pictures of the populace and asking "human interest" questions. In reality, the questions were leading and were meant to stir up hatred between the Germans and their Italian allies and the locals. Any pictures of military interest I might stumble upon were icing on the cake. It was a time when the Germans and their Italian friends were trying to consolidate their hold on the northern part of Africa and the Levant. Fighting was fierce at times in countries to the east of us, but life was generally untouched in Algiers and the populace went about their business in an ordinary, everyday manner.

At night, I was a radio operator code named "Roadway" (given to me, I suppose because of the link suggested by my family name of "Miles"). In those early days we used a large, clumsy, and short-ranged radio. Getting a message to anyone required sending it through many multiple operators, which of course, increased the potential for discovery. Soon, however, we were given the small BMK II, also known as the "B2" which fit into an attaché case and had a range of 500 miles. Still not enough to reach Headquarters in London, but significantly better than previously. However, the most secure method of passing information was by courier.

Besides the radios, we had been sent into the field with cheap Sten guns or any foreign pistols that had been captured or obtain through "other" means. We also had the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife for close combat, and let me tell you, it is a lethal weapon when combined with the training we received in street fighting. You could cut a man open and gullet him in a matter of just a few moments if you were good.

The work in Algiers was interesting. "Jacques" made many friends among the shopkeepers and tavern owners and I was always able to acquire bits of information to pass along. I also fell in love for the first time with a lovely French-Algerian girl by the name of Manette. Her father, Henri, was an artist and architect and her mother was from a local family, and a wonderful cook. When "Jacques" didn't have to rush back to headquarters and become "Roadway" for the night, I spent many happy hours with Manette and her family. Her mother's cooking put a little meat on my still scrawny teen-aged bones and often after we would walk through the town, like other young people the world over.

I don't know if they suspected I was not who I said I was or not. Everything seemed quite normal to me, but while I was stationed in Algiers, a knot continued to grow in my stomach each day that I hid my true self from them. That was part of the reason that I took the opportunity when it came, to be smuggled into southern France. However, I would be lying if I did not say that I also wanted to be involved in a more direct way in the war. There were many other things that the SOE had trained me to do besides stir up the locals and spend my nights translating reports into cypher and keying them into my radio set. I wanted very badly, with the bravado of youth, to have a more direct hand in defeating the Axis powers. My great regret, however, was that I had been transported out of Algeria a week before the beginning of Operation Torch, at the end of 1942, which finished off the Fascists hold of the Near East. It took until July of 1943 before all of North Africa was liberated, and I couldn't even hint at the coming invasion to Manette's family. In point of fact, I left the city without even saying goodbye.

With the fighting in Africa coming to a close, the Allies were preparing to establish a beachhead in Europe. It was to be in Corsica and from there the soldiers would attack the Italian mainland. While there were SOE operatives in Italy aiding the partisans, I was sent to be part of laying the groundwork for the step after; the liberation of France.

I now became Jacques Alain, another young supporter of the Vichy government living in Marseilles. I was able to find employment surprisingly easily as a secretary and translator to an importer/exporter, Jean Louis Marché. Monsieur Marché naturally did a significant amount of business with the Third Reich, primarily in fertilizer derived from fish bones and entrails that were abundant in the port city. From his wife's family he had inherited two relatively small cargo vessels to hall the carefully packaged fertilizer around the whole of Italy to Trieste, where it was then sent on to the German heartland by train. When the Allied effort to liberate Italy began in September of 1943, that route became more and more dangerous and difficult. Naturally, Monsieur Marché needed to send many letters back and forth to his German buyers and the military in regard to the situation. And I, consequently, was privy to a stream of excellent information about the Nazi's need for this fertilizer in explosives-making and transportation options to bring this material to their factories.

Getting this information out by radio was incredibly dangerous. Marseilles is France's second-largest city and the life-blood of the Vichy government flowed through it, even if it was not it's capitol. The Wehrmacht, the SS and the Gestapo presence was everywhere, and the city was swept repeatedly for illicit short-wave transmissions. I had two contacts that I could use to get the information out; Guillaume, a clandestine member of the Free French forces who also worked for Monsieur Marché as a crew member on one of the ships (it was he who was responsible for my position with the company) and a partisan who I would meet on weekend tramps through the countryside, a woman known to me as Camille.

Camille was in her thirties and I think was a prostitute. In any event she had a hard, brittle way about her and obviously had lived a difficult life. She was never without a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her darkly rouged mouth, her bleached hair dry, whipping around in the wind like dried up grass and her dress and shoes worn and tight. We were supposed to look like lovers taking a stroll when we met up, but the first time Camille met me, she rolled her eyes, sighed, and just said, "Well, get on with it!" as if I were a customer who wasn't sure if he really wanted to bed her or not. We didn't stroll, we marched. I'm sure we looked more like two people conducting some minor business transaction, especially since Camille had the habit of looking about furtively, as if some gendarme was going to pop out of the field of salt grass we were walking by. It was difficult to share "sweet nothings" in this manner, of course, but being the youth I was, I made a game of it. I would grab the woman's bony elbow and pull her close to me while whispering about how many tons of fertilizer were going to be shipped this week and what transport options were being made for the delivery. I always did this in the most romantic of voices, in the most flowery French I could devise. Camille never once smiled, much less look at me tenderly, as a lover would. Her typical reaction was to throw the end of her cigarette on the dirt and grind it out angrily with the sole of her shoe, all the while blowing out a long stream of smoke. Then she would hack a bit and then spit. She could spit a good meter and a half, which was better, much better, than I could do. In fact, the only time she did not scowl angrily at me was when I was able to bring her a pack of good cigarettes. I later learned that Camille was indeed a prostitute and since the fall of France had been handed around by the Vichy and German paper-pushers. In the eventual German retreat, they packed her up with other women they had used and sent them in a cattle car to their fate at the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Guillaume was another matter altogether. He was a junior officer, although also not very young. He was not native to the south of France, which made me slightly suspicious of him, but explained his somewhat odd accent. It was usually he who would come to the office to pick up the Bills of Lading for his ship, typically every other week. We had our own code so when we spoke, we could exchange some information quickly before anyone else would come through the busy office. If more details needed to be exchanged, we would meet for a glass of beer in the evening. I had less contact with Guillaume than with Camille; certainly, I could not count on seeing him with the regularity that I saw her. Then, in about November of 1943, Guillaume left Marseille. The Italian campaign had started in September and the Marché ships could no longer be used for transport around Italy. The trip around Spain and up through the English Channel was too long, too hard for the old ships and too exposed to the Allies. Monsieur Marché was instructed to ship entirely by rail and his fertilizer was given high priority by the Vichy and Nazi governments. The ships were requisitioned by the local naval authority and the crews dispersed.

With transporting by train, an entirely different set of papers needed to be managed, giving me more valuable information on train transports. Even though the Marché fertilizer was a top priority, it was not always possible for the trains carrying it to make the trip east and back in a timely and efficient manner. I was puzzled by the delays, when "our" cargo shipments would be sidetracked to allow other traffic to pass it. Years later I would learn that even higher priority on the rails was given to the cattle car transports, bringing their human cargo to the death camps as part of Hitler's "Final Solution" to cleanse the world of Jews.

It was a cold evening two months after the switch to train transport. I had just gotten to my small apartment and I was tired after a day spent alternately translating, typing, and yelling into the telephone about delays on the rails. I thought I would lie down for a few minutes before I went out again for my supper, when there came a knock on my door. Instantly, my blood ran cold; the only person who had ever come up to see me was my landlord asking for his rent, and I had just wished him a good evening downstairs a few minutes before. I opened the door to two men in heavy woolen coats and fedoras. In German-accented English they informed me that I was under arrest. Behind them, a third man came up the stairs, whom they addressed as "Wilhelm". I knew him as my colleague, "Guillaume".

There was no official charge, no trial, just a shove into a cattle car with others who had been caught working for the enemies of the Fascists, along with a few French dissidents and the occasional POW. That first night and day, I was numb with fear. The SOE had taught us how to fight, not what to do when captured, and here I was, not yet 21 years old and on my way probably to be hanged.

First we were brought to a "Dulag", a collection-point camp where we stayed for about ten hours. Then we were loaded onto another transport train with even more men and sent on to Military District IV, based in Dresden, to Stalag IV-E (later to be renamed "Stalag 384"), near Altenburg in Thuringia, 25 miles south of Leipzig. It had been opened the year before for POWs from the Battle of France. I was completely surprised to be assigned to an "Arbeitskommando" unit. These were work-camps for captured military below the grade of sergeant, and since I theoretically, at least, held the rank of corporal, I was sent to work instead of being summarily executed.

Now, of course, Leipzig is known for Porsche cars, but back then it also had quite a lot of agricultural activity. Being winter, the farms didn't need any manpower, but there were hog farms about that always needed labor. I know that Winston Churchill liked pigs very much. I, however, never particularly cared for them. They are smart animals and supposedly the little ones make good pets, but I found them to sneaky and not always mild-mannered. Or at least the German ones weren't. Still, I was rather more happy to be around them rather than German soldiers and there was the added benefit that it was warm in their indoor styes, unlike our barracks. My job was to bring the slops delivered to the farm and the water inside to their feeding and drinking troughs. I was in and out of their enclosure all day long and I was easily able to memorize the land and landmarks around the farm and on the twice daily trips to and from the Arbeitskommando camp. I also knew quite a bit about the area from the summer Father and I had spent hiking. Walking away from the farm wasn't the least bit difficult. The young German soldiers who were supposed to guard those of us working the farm tried to spend as much time both indoors and away from the pigs as they could. I gathered up the best of the pig's slop into a small can I lined with burlap and simply walked off into a grove of trees and continued walking, mostly at night.

My immediate problem was finding a way to meet up with friendly forces. I was hiking through greater Germany which was surrounded by a variety of protectorates, civil administrative zones, and fascist allies. I also needed to find food and shelter in the cold middle European winter, and this is where Hans' example of years before saved my life. I had incredible luck in stumbling across a small knife one night in a field I was crossing and also found a stone that served to sharpen it. With it I was able to sharpen sticks to set traps with and with dried vines and a longer tree branch I made a bow and then some arrows. I knew where to look for caves and slept during the days covered by leaves and branches. And so I was able to survive long enough to stumble onto a band of Czechoslovakian partisans in the forest. It was a little touchy at first, since from my looks they assumed that I was German, but my detailed descriptions of the life of an English schoolboy eventually convinced them I was who I said I was.

They passed me to another group of partisans, who passed my along again, and so after a few weeks of going from one group to another, I finally found myself in Italy at the beginning of February, to be repatriated home through the good offices of the British V Army.