Book Review: Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945 by David Hebditch

BOOK REVIEW

Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945 by David Hebditch

Reviewed by Philip Cala-Lazar, K9PL

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following book has been suggested as interesting reading or as a useful resource. The following review does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by RCA. We welcome suggestions and recommendations from RCA’s members regarding books to share with RCA’s membership. The scope can include technical, regulatory, or other subjects. We encourage you to send your suggestions to David Bart at jbart1964@gmail.com for publication in a future issue of the Proceedings.

David Hebditch’s Covert Radio Agents, 19391945: Signals From Behind Enemy Lines, enthralls with its account of the men and women who, while deployed behind enemy lines, daily risked their lives to collect enemy intelligence. That intelligence played an essential role in formulating Allied tactical and strategic war plans. Comprised of civilian volunteers and active military, covert radio agents served under the aegis of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Special Operations Executive (SOE), and America’s Office of Security Services (OSS). The agents were of many nationalities, British, American, Norwegian, Australian, French and more, united in common cause, they gave themselves to great acts of bravery and selflessness, often unto torture and death. Postwar, their undercover operations remained largely unknown owing to stringent secrecy acts that outlasted the war and the lives of many agents by decades. Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945 is a riveting, informative and engaging book. It is profusely illustrated with photographs, maps, original documents, diagrams and the author’s drawings. Hebditch covers the panoply of covert radio agents from their recruitment, to their training, deployment in enemy territory and, notably, detailed descriptions of the radio gear supplied. Those radios ranged from Britain’s tiny, “cigarette case-size” Biscuit radio receiver and the Soviet’s compact, modular Tensor/Tenzor, to Norway’s home brew Olga, through the Paraset(s) and various Type A & B sets, to Australia’s Coastwatchers’ AWA 3BZ Teleradio, that “weighed 168 kg (379 lbs) including generator and batteries that required 12 to 16 porters to transport.” Of especial interest is 56-page Chapter 8, “Technical Briefings.” The chapter comprises four “tutorials”: “...radios and how they worked; ...how enemy radio intelligence could monitor and locate transmissions; ...the use of Morse code and the format of messages and ...how messages were encrypted by the agent and the home station to make them difficult as possible for the enemy to read.” Armchair adventurers will also find in this chapter a diagram for clandestinely setting up a SOE Type A Mark I radio, indoor antenna and counterpoise, and vicariously experience parachuting behind enemy lines aboard a specially equipped bomber or STOL Westland Lysander aircraft. The author suggests some readers may want to first read Chapter 8 to bolster their knowledge of the book’s subject matter. Truly, the chapter’s radio and Morse code tutorials would have made a robust Novice Class study guide with its inclusion of radio theory, antennas, propagation, Morse technique and history, and procedural- and Q-codes. SOE agents trained at schools located in Great Britain and Canada. The SOE and sister agencies sought candidates possessing special abilities, particularly valued were amateur radio operators with 20-wpm, or better, Morse skills and fluency in a foreign language. “Twenty words per minute was the minimum expected of a specialist W/T [wireless telegraphy] operator, and most could achieve 25 wpm.” Following deployment, agents were required to locate as secure a base of operations as possible; erect an antenna; meet receiving and transmission schedules; encrypt and decrypt messages; contact, when necessary, other agents; recruit and train trustworthy locals as agents; all the while trying to evade capture, interrogation, torture, imprisonment and death by keeping a low profile and transmissions brief and few as possible. Once settled they frequently moved at a moment’s notice when neighbors or the authorities became too curious. Then repeat the process of locating and setting up a new base. This peripatetic lifestyle was common to both urban and sparsely populated areas where agents shifted position when

enemy patrols came too close and/or D/F (direction finding) teams sighted. From Scandinavia’s frigid fjords to lush islands in the southwestern Pacific, to the heart of the Axis in Europe, the author devotes five chapters to covert intelligence gathering and radio operation.

SIS IN NORWAY

Stationed in caves and on rocky precipices located on fjords and isolated islands, Norwegian operators’ observations assisted in air and sea attacks on the German Kriegsmarine heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck. SIS officer Torstein Raaby, who spied on a number of German warships including the battleship Tirpitz, appears in this chapter. In 1947, Raaby, operating as LI2B, would serve as one of two radio operators, with Knut Haugland, aboard Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki.

SOLOMON ISLANDS OPERATION FERDINAND

The brave and lonely exploits of coast-watchers based on Japanese occupied or soon to be occupied islands in the southwestern Pacific. Manned primarily by Australians, as the war progressed, they were joined by New Zealanders, Pacific Islanders and other Allied personnel. Named for the bull in the eponymous children’s book, “...Ferdinand ...who did not fight but sat under a tree and just smelled the flowers.” Coast-watchers were expected to sit “...circumspectly and unobtrusively, gathering information,” but were ferocious and effective fighters when need be.

THE RED ORCHESTRA: NAZIS VERSUS SOVIETS

The Soviet’s Red Orchestra, “...a remarkable network of spies, couriers and radio operators...” was spread across Europe, from Belgium to Switzerland and included operatives in at least 10 other countries. The German Central Security Office (RSHA) coined the name Die Rote Kapelle/The Red Orchestra: espionage reports via radio, music; radio operators, pianists; the Grand Chef, its maestro “in the field”; and its director, located in Moscow, conductor.

SOE AND OSS IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY

Objective: Sabotage Norway’s Nordland Railway to delay 150,000 German troops and their armaments’ movement south following the “...liberation of France and the Low Countries.” A young Major William Colby of the OSS (later director of the CIA), after cutting his teeth in France during Operation JEDBURGH, plays a prominent role in this chapter. One hiccup in this chapter is located on page 163 where the Continental Morse code letter “P” sent by “torch (flashlight),” to aircraft overhead is stated to consist of “...two long, one short...” rather than the correct “one short, two long, one short.”

FRANCE: “VOTRE PLACE NÈST PAS ICI!”

The home of some original, perhaps eccentric, but definitely effective and courageous agents including Virginia Hall (subject of Jeffrey W. Bass’s painting, Les Marguerites Fleuriront ce Soir on the book’s cover), the daring Nancy Wake and Georges Bégué. Bégué is best remembered for suggesting the now legendary and highly successful idea to pass messages to field agents via the BBC’s–Messages Personnels.

OVERALL RECOMMENDATION

Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945, Signals From Behind Enemy Lines is a treasure of a book, part narrative, part tutorial and, throughout, an authentic adventure saga. Ultimately, it is a very human story generously seasoned with ingenuity, technology and hardy individualism. See Casemate publishers to order at https://www.casematepublishers.com/covertradio-agents-1939-1945.html. Reprinted with permission of the K9YA Telegraph (http://www.k9ya.org).

Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945: Signals From Behind Enemy Lines, David Hebditch, Pen & Sword Military, Yorkshire-Philadelphia, 2021, ISBN 978 1 52679 494 9, 301 pages including notes, bibliography and further reading, and index.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Philip Cala-Lazar, K9PL, is the CoFounder and Editor of the Robert F. Heytow Memorial Radio Club and its publication the K9YA Telegraph. He is a member of multiple radio organizations and the recipient of multiple awards, including: A-1 Operator Club, FISTS, SKCC, NAQCC, CWops, CTC, FPQC, JA A-1, DXCC, WAC, WAS, and ARRL VEC.