38 minute read
BRIEFING
STEREOSCOPIC ANALYSIS JEAN STARLING, WAAF
Flying at high altitude over a remote part of the north German coast in May 1942, the pilot of a lone RAF reconnaissance aircraft spotted a strange cluster of buildings and unusual activity at the mouth of the River Peene. The photographs were duly developed, but their significance was not yet fully appreciated. As wider intelligence was gleaned from other sources, further flights over the area were arranged. By July 1943 photographic interpretation had confirmed the worst suspicions of Allied scientists – that Germany was well on the way to developing long-range missiles. Acting on the accumulated evidence, Bomber Command launched a major air raid in August 1943, with 483 heavy bombers taking part.
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Successful and accurate photographic interpretation lay at the heart of the raid on Peenemünde, just as it did for the countless Allied air attacks on occupied Europe. Some photography, such as that of the proposed Normandy invasion beaches, was undertaken on high-speed, low-level passes over the terrain, using cameras mounted obliquely in the fuselage of an aircraft. But a considerable amount of pre-raid reconnaissance and bomb damage assessment was taken at extremely high altitudes – over 30,000 feet. These were carefully sequenced images which overlapped one another by at least 60 per cent. The images would later be printed side by side and placed underneath a stereoscopic viewer. There the images created the perception of a three-dimensional image in the mind of the viewer. This allowed an examiner to pick out objects that would otherwise have been unremarkable, and to measure things such as building heights, rocket ramps, or whether the span of a bombed bridge was still standing.
Much of the interpretation was undertaken by members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). One of them was Jean Starling. She had arrived in Canberra from Melbourne as a teenager in 1928, later becoming Canberra’s first librarian. In 1938 she travelled to Britain and undertook a librarian’s course at London University College while working at Oxford City Library. When the Second World War broke out, Starling volunteered for the WAAF and trained as a specialist photographic interpreter, serving at the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU). Based at RAF Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, the CIU was the headquarters of photographic intelligence and was involved in the planning stages of practically every operation and aspect of intelligence. Here 1,700 personnel analysed huge numbers of photographs. During the lead-up to the Normandy invasion, for instance, over 7 million prints were being examined each month.
At Medmenham, stereo photographic techniques were used throughout the war by Jean and her colleagues to view enemy activities in three dimensions. The images supported highly detailed
intelligence for commanders and gave Allied forces a huge advantage over German photo interpreters, who worked without the benefits of threedimensional imagery.
After the war Starling returned to Canberra and worked at the National Library before joining the Department of Defence and later the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. She died in 1998.
SHANE CASEY
Senior Curator, Military Heraldry & Technology
Clockwise from top left: Jean Starling P03985.001 A portable Air Ministry stereo-viewer used by Jean Starling REL41691 Stereo viewer of French port of Brest, August 1944 Jean Starling’s stereo viewer REL41691
SECRET AGENTS ACROSS
THE SAMICHON
The Samichon Valley as seen from the Hook. The Samichon can be seen in the top left corner. Photograph: Douglas Bushby, 28 July 1953. AWM P04641.105
Sergeant Jack Harris fought a clandestine war behind enemy lines in the closing months of the Korean War.
BY MICHAEL KELLY
The river crossing had gone smoothly. The dark night and the monsoon-swollen river provided some cover to the clandestine nature of the four agents’ movements. Splitting into pairs, they made their way toward an anti-tank ditch behind enemy lines. As they reached the ditch, enemy machine-gun fire split the night apart. One agent fell dead; the other, wounded, faced being caught and killed as the enemy closed in.
The intelligence war in Korea began during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. With the country divided into north and south zones, each side sought to destabilise the other.
By 1953 agents on both sides of the wire had experienced varying degrees of success. One group in particular, the 1st Commonwealth Division’s Special Agent Detachment, had been very successful.
Operating in the Samichon Valley, the detachment became familiar with Chinese operations and was able to provide intelligence to United Nations Command. In the latter months of the war, the detachment was run by Australian Sergeant Arthur “Jack” Harris, who had become an intelligence operative after being wounded at Chongju in 1950, and whose war behind enemy lines would become the stuff of legend.
Prelude
Harris was born in Mildura, Victoria, in July 1925 and spent his early years across the Murray River at Buronga before moving to the inner Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds. He worked as a labourer, fitter and turner and merchant seaman before joining the Australian Army in early 1946, having seen an advertisement for men to serve in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan.
Arriving in Japan, he joined the 67th Battalion and became a member of its intelligence section. Over the next eight months he was promoted to sergeant and gained a good grasp of the Japanese language through interactions with the locals. Looking to formalise this knowledge, he attended a nine-month Japanese language course before returning to his battalion in July 1950, shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War. By this time his battalion had been renamed the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR). Seeking a more active role, Harris transferred to 9 Platoon, C Company, becoming a platoon sergeant. 3RAR was preparing to return to Australia and was at around halfstrength when it was committed to the Korean War in late July 1950. In August, the K Force recruiting campaign bolstered the ranks by recruiting Second World War veterans into the army for three years, including one year in Korea, minimising the training effort required. By the end of the month, 3RAR was almost back to full strength. The battalion also received a new commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Green, a decorated veteran of the Second World War.
Battle of Chongju
As part of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade, 3RAR was at the forefront of the US-led advance into North Korea in early October 1950. Harris took part in 3RAR’s early actions, including the capture of a North Korean regiment at Sariwon, the battle of the Apple Orchard, the battle of the broken bridge at Kujin, and the battle of Chongju.
The battle of Chongju began on 29 October. After almost two days of fierce fighting, 3RAR had captured its objectives and was in rest positions. Harris was resting in the sun with several of his men when their idyll was broken, as he described it, by a “tall, skinny, highly agitated” American soldier who “had difficulty controlling himself as he told us there was a self-propelled gun being dug in just below our position”. With his platoon commander Lieutenant David Butler away, Harris took several men, including a bazooka team, and headed down the hill to investigate.
As he neared a ruined village at the bottom of the hill, Harris spotted movement. When he turned to shout a warning to his men, he felt a hammer
Left: The PPSh-41 was carried by Harris and his agents while operating behind enemy lines. AWM REL/02688.001 Below: Sergeant Jack Harris (left) takes a break after 3RAR’s first battle at the Apple Orchard near Yongju, North Korea. Photograph: Phillip Hobson, 22 October 1950. AWM HOBJ1588
blow to his left hand: “I lifted my fist and saw I had taken the bullet in the gap between my thumb and the first finger. The entry wound was tiny, but the lead had taken all my knuckles away and the exit, where the smashed bone had been blown out, was huge.” Angry about being wounded in such a manner, Harris was evacuated to the 8063rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) at Anju, where surgeons saved his hand.
Later that day a North Korean self-propelled gun fired into 3RAR’s positions. Five rounds hit the forward slope of the hill occupied by 3RAR; the sixth cleared the hill, hitting a tree and exploding. Around 40 men from the battalion were in the vicinity, but the only one hit was Lieutenant Colonel Green. Wounded by shrapnel from the explosion, he was evacuated to the MASH at Anju, where he died on 1 November.
By January 1951, Harris was in Australia, undergoing intense physiotherapy. Despite the lack of metacarpal bones, he regained movement in his fingers, but his career as an infantryman was over. Having transferred to the intelligence corps, he attended a Chinese language course at the Royal Australian Air Force School of Languages before being seconded to the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
In January 1953 Harris was sent to New Guinea to identify communists among the local Chinese population, but without success. Bored and frustrated, he wrote to the head of Army Intelligence, volunteering for a second tour of duty in Korea, and was soon back in the Land of the Morning Calm.
Seconded to a US-led Interrogation of Prisoners of War Team, Harris found this unit suffering from poor morale and discipline due to a lack of prisoners and direction, so he organised a transfer to the 1st Commonwealth Division’s Special Agent Detachment. Welcoming Harris to his new position was the man he was to replace, Second World War veteran Staff Sergeant Clifford Jackson DCM MM. An original member of the unit when it formed in 1951, Jackson had established safe houses, hired and trained agents – including a good number of former South and North Korean soldiers and civilian refugees – and undertaken patrols and operations with them.
Harris’s new home was in a ruined village near the Imjin River. A sign had
Above: Sergeant Jack Harris (left) ran clandestine intelligence gathering operations behind Chinese lines during the Korean War. Photographer: Claude Holzheimer, Japan, 6 September 1950. AWM 146682
been erected on the road in, warning would-be visitors that the village was the site of a smallpox outbreak. Despite its dilapidated appearance, the village was a hive of activity. Harris and his agents trained with Chinese weapons – particularly the Chinese variant of the Russian PPSh-41 sub-machinegun, grenades and knives – and wore Chinese uniforms. Aside from Harris, they could blend in behind the lines with little effort.
Harris quickly came to rely on two agents: Pak and Lim. Pak had seen his father and sister murdered in front of him by a North Korean political officer and had barely survived after being shot twice and brutally beaten. Retrieved by British troops, he recovered, joined the South Korean army and was wounded in action. While in hospital, he was recruited for the Special Agent Detachment by Lim.
Lim, the detachment’s senior agent, was an older man, thick-set, strong and level-headed. He had served in the Japanese puppet army in Manchuria. After witnessing the torture of a woman by Japanese soldiers, he killed several of them and deserted to the Chinese guerrillas. Captured and tortured by the Japanese, he was released after convincing his captors that he was mute. Returning to Korea after the war, he served in the South Korean army before being wounded and discharged, and then recruited as an agent.
Harris wasn’t going to ask his agents to take risks that he would not take himself, so he accompanied his agents across the Samichon at the start of every operation. He made his first crossing in March 1953 and got to know the landmarks and hazards as he and his agents travelled behind Chinese lines, observing and reporting on troop movements, stores, and weapon emplacements.
The Hook and the rescue
On learning that the safe house operator at Namsong-Dong had vital information to pass on, Pak and Harris travelled by night for three days, coming close to being discovered on several occasions. As they used waterways to sneak into the village, Chinese soldiers passed above them. On reaching the safe house, Pak accompanied its owner to plot Chinese positions and the build-up of stores, which pointed to an impending offensive against the
Hook. Details were plotted onto Harris’s map, and the pair returned and passed the intelligence to Commonwealth Division headquarters.
The Chinese launched one last direct attack on the Hook, which was held after fierce fighting by the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. In April Operation Little Switch, an exchange of sick and injured prisoners, took place at Panmunjom. Intelligence from returned British prisoners revealed the location of Lieutenant Colonel James P. Carne DSO, who had been captured during the battle of the Imjin River. Carne was reportedly being kept in solitary confinement and, like many other prisoners, badly mistreated.
A plan was hatched to effect his rescue, and Harris was tasked with ensuring a route through Chinese lines remained open. Two British operatives arrived from England and Harris spent time training with them and a small team dedicated to the rescue.
On the night of 2 July 1953, Harris journeyed across the Samichon with Pak, Lim and Chet. A fourth agent, Soong, remained on the opposite side of the river to await their return. Once the men had crossed the fast-flowing river, the unit divided into pairs and headed towards a Chinese anti-tank ditch around 1.5 kilometres behind the front line.
As Harris and Pak reached the ditch, Pak whispered an urgent warning – “Machibuse!”, Japanese for “ambush” – and pushed Harris down; it was the last thing he said. Harris barely had time to register it before a machine-gun opened fire. He recalled seeing “bullets come in a circular red pattern and hit
Harris used the No. 36 Mk I Grenade, known as the Mills Bomb, to deadly effect after being ambushed by Chinese troops on 2 July 1953. AWM RELAWM02093
Pak in the chest from a few feet away. I heard him sigh ever so gently. I knew he was dead.” Harris took cover behind Pak’s body as a concussion grenade went off nearby, followed shortly after by a second grenade, whose shrapnel wounded Harris in the right hand and thigh. He responded by throwing two No. 36 Mk I Mills grenades to keep his enemy at bay. Realising the other two agents remained undetected, Harris returned fire with his pistol to keep the enemy focused on him. He released the safety catch on his PPSh machine-gun and threw it towards the Chinese. As it hit the ground, it fired the entire magazine. Facing capture and certain death, Harris withdrew, entered the Samichon, and let its current carry him to safety.
Lim and Chet returned a short time later and reported that the planned route to bring Carne out of North Korea was compromised. The rescue attempt was abandoned. Carne was released in September 1953 and was awarded the Victoria Cross the following month for his courage and leadership during the battle of the Imjin. Harris was awarded a Military Medal for his courage over his 11 trips behind enemy lines.
Final offensive
The intelligence gathered by Harris and his agents pointed to the buildup of a final Chinese offensive, which materialised in the last days of the Korean War. United States Marines adjacent to Australian positions on the Hook bore the brunt, but the men of 2RAR – including Harris’s former platoon commander, Captain David Butler – endured intense bombardments and probing attacks.
The Korean War came to a tenuous halt with the signing of the armistice at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953. When it came into effect, Harris was forced to disband his unit. Having bid farewell to Lim and the other agents, he was briefly posted as a Chinese interpreter to the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom, after which he returned to Australia.
He discharged from the army in May 1954 and taking up an offer from the head of the organisation, went to work for ASIO. One of his first jobs was guarding Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, Soviet defectors who were giving evidence at an Australian Royal Commission into espionage. He worked for ASIO, predominantly in Hong Kong, until 1965 when he took up a senior post with the Australian retail group Myer. While successfully running Myer’s operations in Asia, Harris completed a master’s degree and a doctorate. The Tall Man, a fictitious account of his time with the Special Agent Detachment in Korea, was published in 1958, followed by Grains of Sand, a fictitious account of the rescue of Lieutenant Colonel Carne. He later wrote two autobiographical works: Only One River to Cross and Seize the Day. He returned to Australia in the mid-1980s with his wife, Julie, and children, Stephen and Joanne, and for many years remained active with the Oriental Society of Australia. •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Kelly is a historian and the manager of Wartime, with research interests in the First and Second World Wars and post-1945 Australian conflicts. He is a co-editor of In from the Cold: Reflections on Australia’s Korean War. He thanks Jack Harris and his family for sharing memories of Jack’s time in Korea.
Suspicious Minds
Australian Intelligence Services took a heightened interest in Korean War ex-prisoners of war after their return home.
BY ROBERT WYSE
Private Bob Parker had just finished taking one of the countless telephone calls that he received from friends and acquaintances after his return to Australia from Korea in September 1953. He had again noticed a strange sound on the line. Parker asked his mother if she had heard the same sound; she confirmed she had and explained that it had begun not long before his return. Parker could not shake the strange feeling that, for some months after his return home, someone had been listening to his phone conversations.
Bob Parker was one of 30 Australians held captive by Chinese forces in prisoner-of-war camps along the Yalu River border with China during the Korean War. Captured during the battle of Kapyong in April 1951, for two years he was subjected to a form of captivity not experienced by Australian prisoners of war in previous conflicts. Bob and his fellow prisoners were exposed to a political indoctrination program euphemistically known as the Lenient Policy. Adapted from a program used by Chinese communist forces during the 1927–49 civil war, the Lenient Policy saw extra rations, improved camp conditions and personal liberties offered to prisoners willing to reject their government’s Cold War policies and embrace communism. Those who cooperated were termed “progressive”; those who resisted were “reactionaries”.
Bob Parker had been Mentioned in Despatches for his meritorious conduct in captivity, which included resistance to indoctrination, and perhaps he expected to disappear into civilian life after completing the official discharge formalities for returning servicemen. While the Australians held captive in Korea were publicly deemed to have upheld the image of Anzac stoicism in the face of adversity, Parker and some of his closest comrades from the North Korean prison camps privately recounted a sense of official suspicion towards them on their return to Australia. This echoed the highly publicised treatment of returned US prisoners of war from Korea, which involved FBI surveillance of discharged prisoners and courts martial of former prisoners who were still serving in the military.
Brainwashing
The experiences of American prisoners of war in Korea have always been inextricably linked to the Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism of the 1950s. Deep suspicion of anyone associated with communists or communist organisations, no matter how tenuous the link, was a common feature of this period. American returned prisoners who were identified in post-release interrogations as having failed to resist the Lenient Policy inevitably fell foul of this suspicion. In an effort to explain why no American prisoners had escaped captivity and the perceived
Australian former prisoners of the Chinese were monitored by government agencies for any pro-communist sentiments after returning home. Photograph: Phillip Hobson. AWM HOBJ4557
disproportionate level of cooperation with Chinese prison camp authorities, American authorities theorised that the prisoners had been subject to a dedicated program of mind control.
“Brainwashing”, a term coined by journalist Edward Hunter in 1950 to promote a series of publications about Chinese indoctrination techniques, rapidly caught the attention of the American public. But the theory had no connection with medical science. Moreover, Hunter was a CIA operative, a fact that was revealed in the late 1970s when details of the infamous project MK-ULTRA were made public.
Left: Private Bob Parker, a despatch rider with 3RAR, was wounded and captured during the battle of Kapyong in April 1951. AWM P03874.004
Cold War paranoia
Although not so pronounced as in the US, Cold War paranoia was also a feature of Australian life during the 1950s. Prime Minister Robert Menzies had considerable public and media support for his two attempts to ban the Australian Communist Party as a political organisation during the Korean War. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) operations investigated those thought to be Communist Party members or merely sympathetic to the cause. The operation that established ASIO’s reputation, the defection of Soviet agent Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia, took place in the early 1950s.
ASIO was also the official vetting agency for Commonwealth
government departments and agencies. Due to the Menzies government’s failure to pass legislation to ban the Communist Party, the Department of Defence’s Defence Committee could not authorise the removal of service personnel believed to be members of the party. Instead, it relied on the intelligence directorates of each service and ASIO to deem such personnel as “prejudicial to the security of the Commonwealth”. In the case of the Australian Army, this responsibility fell to the Directorate of Military Intelligence’s Field Security sections, which had a long history of cooperation with ASIO’s various federal precursors and the police special branch in each state. Field Security was tasked with the investigation of any army member’s association with communist organisations or persons of interest to Australian security services. This came to include former prisoners of war.
Below: Private George Smith was investigated after his release for his pro-communist views. His experiences as a prisoner and his socialist upbringing led to him being considered “the worst kind of security risk” by authorities. Photograph: Phillip Hobson. AWM HOBJ4559
Communication channels
Australian authorities had been concerned about Chinese indoctrination. The content of Australian prisoners’ letters to their loved ones, combined with statements attributed to some of the men which were broadcast by the official Chinese radio station, Peking Radio, had raised suspicions. Chinese authorities had denied access to the prison camps to non-communist organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had been the main channel to prisoners of war during previous conflicts. All inbound and outbound communications were tightly controlled; Bob Parker later recalled that prisoners were left in no doubt that letters could not contain anything critical of Chinese authorities if they wanted them to be sent. To compound the problem, no lists of names of prisoners of war were supplied to United Nations officials, only the number of prisoners held.
Mail from British Commonwealth prisoners was examined for intelligence by a dedicated section within the British Repatriated Prisoner of War Interrogation Unit (BRPWIU) in Japan before being sent to its destination. Authenticating the handwriting of a letter’s sender and noting the names and nationalities of other prisoners mentioned went some way to providing an understanding of who was being held captive and where. Letters from prisoners involved with radio broadcasts from the camps were analysed for any further signs of possible collaboration.
Parker’s December 1951 letter home was the first sent by an Australian prisoner of war and was one of the first batch examined under the intelligence policy. All of the letters in this group were dated 24 December 1951, and most followed a similar pattern of details, including mention of the menu for Christmas lunch, theatrical performances, sports activities organised by Chinese authorities, and criticism of the United Nation’s handling of truce talks.
However, what appear to have concerned authorities more during the war were letters directed to official communist organisations or those deemed to be fronts for the party. One Australian prisoner of war raised such suspicions. In early July 1953, Private George Smith penned a letter to the editor of the Daily Worker in London. BRPWIU were immediately curious; this was the first correspondence they had seen from Smith, and its content raised a red flag. Smith referred to the United Nations as “miserable individuals” who were a “minority against a cause championed by people who represent all that is good and true”, and lamented the “unfortunate victims of imperialistic ideas”. BRPWIU couldn’t authenticate Smith’s handwriting at the time, and action regarding the letter was put on hold pending Smith’s repatriation.
Returning to a suspicious world
A trial exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war, known as “Little Switch”, occurred in April 1953. British and American authorities were alarmed by unwounded, physically fit men being repatriated by the Chinese. It was quickly ascertained that a large number of those exchanged had been selected because of their pro-communist views. British Commonwealth and American officials adjusted their screening mechanisms before the major prisoner exchange held after the cessation of hostilities, known as “Big Switch”. All
The content of Australian prisoners’ letters to their loved ones ... had raised suspicions.
Above: (L-R) Privates Bob Parker, Keith Gwyther, Tom Hollis and Corporal Donald Buck survived the harsh conditions of Chinese captivity. All four men were labelled reactionaries for their resistance to Chinese indoctrination attempts. AWM P03874.006
British Commonwealth prisoners were interrogated by the BRPWIU about their behaviour in captivity soon after the exchange at Panmunjom in August and September 1953.
The first Australian prisoner repatriated via Big Switch was Private James McCulloch. Having entered Freedom Village on 5 August 1953, McCulloch’s interrogation two days later confirmed suspicions raised by Smith’s letter to the Daily Worker in July. Smith was repatriated on 6 August, along with Corporal Don Buck and Privates Bob Parker, Vivian O’Brien and Anthony Poole. A cipher message from 28 Commonwealth Brigade in Korea to Headquarters Australian Army Component Japan the next morning stated that Smith’s fellow returnees advised an investigation into his “Communist sympathies” – including his painting a portrait of Joseph Stalin that was hung in the camp library, and urging other prisoners to read Chinese propaganda books – and disclosure of information to the enemy. Other prisoners stated that Smith had been friendly enough with the Chinese instructors to be allowed to stay up after lights out to associate with them, often returning to his barracks with cigarettes and sweets.
The lead officer at Smith’s BRPWIU interrogation, Captain M.P. Stott, allowed Smith to relate the details of his capture and captivity in his own words before challenging him with evidence supplied by other prisoners. Stott noted his use of communist “jargon” and pursued Smith on this subject for some time until “he finally admitted” to being “carefully schooled” in communist theory as a young man by his staunchly socialist father, who had an extensive library of “communist literature”. Stott recommended that Smith be considered a “communist”, be graded as “the worst kind of security risk”, and to have the circumstances of his capture reviewed.
While this evidence was found insufficient to take action, statements provided by his fellow prisoners of war were forwarded to the Director of Military Intelligence for further action on 15 August 1953. Before further investigation could start, however, approval was given for Smith to be “discharged at own request”. His service record was marked “Member not to be re-enlisted in the AMF [Australian Military Forces] in peace or in war ... (alleged Communist sympathies whilst POW Korea)”. The army side-stepped the embarrassment of exposing a serving member as a communist sympathiser; once Smith was discharged, any chance of prosecuting him for the issues raised in his interrogation was lost.
Continued surveillance?
Australian prisoners of war were flown home to Australia shortly after interrogation, where they underwent medical checks and any necessary treatment before returning to their lives. Those who continued in the military went back to work, while those who chose discharge began the transition to civilian life. Recollections by Tom Hollis and Parker raise the prospect that ASIO, or another government intelligence gathering service, took a serious interest in the post-war activities of the former prisoners. Parker’s suspicion that he was under telephone surveillance coincided with an incident that occurred while he was drinking with Buck and Hollis at a Sydney hotel. Hollis, who had served in the NSW Police Force after the Second World War, pointed out a man who he believed had “been following us for days”. He identified the man as “bloody intelligence” and suggested that the man was checking to see if the former prisoners had been “brainwashed”.
At first glance this looks like a fanciful suggestion. These three former prisoners (along with Private Keith Gywther) were the only junior ranked Australians to be Mentioned in Despatches for “outstanding conduct” in captivity; interrogation reports praised their actions and attitude towards their imprisonment. However, they may have been considered suspect through association, being among some of the first prisoners exchanged during Big Switch. British authorities noted that “reactionaries” had been held back for one to two weeks by the Chinese, while “progressives” were readily exchanged. Moreover, they were part of a group of eight Australians – including Smith, who had admitted his “progressive” status – who were released over the first four days of Big Switch. Buck and Hollis were interrogated at least once more while undergoing medical treatment after their return to Australia. Although the reports appear innocuous on the surface, there was specific mention of Buck’s admission of participation in the filmed signing of a petition denouncing the Treaty of Peace with Japan in 1951. As the men had not yet discharged from the army at this point, it is conceivable that the local Directorate of Military Intelligence Field Security section may have conducted its own surveillance
Above: Private Tom Hollis (left) and Private Keith Gwyther after their release from North Korean prisoner of war camps. Photograph: Phillip Hobson, 9 August 1953. AWM HOBJ4570.
or requested assistance from the New South Wales Police Force Special Branch or ASIO.
When Hollis was asked to recall his memory of interrogation in Japan, he stated that, even though the interrogation had been conducted by “Australians”, he had only received a security clearance “years after, from a mate” who worked for ASIO. He continued, “everything was typed down … that’s how, I suppose, it got to ASIO.” Hollis also stated that Buck had been prevented from working at the Woomera Rocket Range because ASIO denied him a security clearance, which had come as a shock to them. Hollis suggested that their time in communist captivity would have been reason enough to deny them any defence establishment employment.
While prisoners of war such as Bob Parker adopted a pragmatic attitude in order to make their lives in captivity more bearable, this left doubt about their motives in the minds of Commonwealth authorities. The heightened level of suspicion regarding the intentions of those who had come into close contact with communists – which peaked around the Korean War – shaped responses to returned prisoners of war. It is now clear that Australian authorities took far more interest in the behaviour of prisoners of war in the camps – and upon their return home – than most of them realised. •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Wyse is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Newcastle, researching the interactions between Commonwealth intelligence services and Korean War ex-prisoners of war during the Cold War.
THE WALLS
Eavesdropping on German prisoners in England provided crucial intelligence.
BY HELEN FRY
Clockwise from left: After the surrender of the Afrikakorps in May 1943, General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim and other senior officers were interned at Trent Park. An RCA microphone, one of many secreted about the grounds of Trent Park. Trent Park, North London. The scene of some of the Allies’ biggest intelligence coups. Images courtesy of author.
HAVE EARS
As German tanks rolled into Poland on 1 September 1939, one of Britain’s most senior MI6 intelligence officers, Thomas Joseph Kendrick, arrived at the Tower of London. Over the centuries, the thousand-year-old fortress had seen many famous prisoners, including British royalty. At the beginning of the Second World War it was about to receive German prisoners of war. Within a special area at the rear of the tower, overlooking Tower Bridge, away from the public eye, Kendrick opened a unit that would bug the conversations of German prisoners in their rooms. After a phoney interrogation, the prisoners returned to their comrades and boasted about what they had not told the interrogators. In these early days, the prisoners were mainly U-boat crews who believed that the British were stupid and incompetent at interrogation. Little did they realise that the light fittings and thick stone fireplaces in the tower had hidden microphones, wired back to an M (meaning ‘miked’) room where secret listeners recorded their conversations.
Left to right: Colonel Thomas Joseph Kendrick headed the eavesdropping operations. Intelligence proved the existence of Hitler’s secret weapon program at Peenemünde. The Naval Intelligence Team outside Latimer House. The female officers became the first known female interrogators of the war.
By the end of September 1939, Kendrick already had 60 German prisoners in the tower. Captured German air force pilots and crews soon began to arrive, and spoke to each other about their war, tactics, new German technology and the unbreakable Enigma codes. As Kendrick’s small team of army, air and naval intelligence officers gathered snippets of information, it became clear that this method of surreptitiously gaining intelligence from German prisoners was remarkably effective.
Kendrick requisitioned the country estate of Trent Park on the northern edge of London at the end of the Piccadilly Line of the Underground. His team moved into the house to wire it for sound and under the auspices of a new branch of military intelligence – MI9 – relocated there by the end of 1939. Kendrick increased his personnel to 500, a third of whom were women.
Trent Park
The house swiftly became a massive intelligence gathering factory that provided information to codebreakers and cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, as well as to MI5, MI6 and military commanders. More than 3,000 German and Italian prisoners of war came through Trent Park between 1940 and 1942. The volume of intelligence that they gave up to the hidden microphones was staggering: information relating
to the upcoming Battle of Britain, new enemy technology, night fighter strategy, new aircraft and fighting capability, U-boat operations and construction, German campaigns on the Russian front, detailed information on coastal defences, enemy operations ahead of D-Day and the Ardennes campaign, and details of mass atrocities and concentration camps.
Within two weeks of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, American intelligence officers from the Office for Strategic Services (OSS) began to arrive at Trent Park. They went on to make a valuable contribution as interrogators and intelligence officers, marking the beginnings of AngloAmerican intelligence cooperation that continues today.
The information amassed was so significant that Kendrick expanded his clandestine unit further in 1941 to cope with an anticipated influx of thousands of prisoners from future campaigns. He requisitioned two country estates about
20 miles from London: Latimer House and Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire. Reserved for lower rank German prisoners of war, these sites went on to process more than 10,000 prisoners of war. In the M rooms, teams of secret listeners recorded their unguarded conversations.
The listeners were German–Jewish refugees who had fled to avoid Nazi concentration camps and arrived in the United Kingdom before the outbreak of war. Working 12-hour shifts, every day of the year, these refugee men serving in British army uniform amassed tons of intelligence for the Allies. Émigré women transcribed and translated conversations which had been recorded on 78 rpm acetate discs. Female officers of the naval intelligence team conducted interrogations – becoming the first known female interrogators of the war – while other women carried out intelligence analysis of the material coming out of the M rooms across the three sites. This hidden workforce of men and women would go on to amass nearly 75,000 transcripts of bugged conversations during the war.
From 1942, Trent Park was reserved for the most prized prisoners of all: Hitler’s captured generals and commanders. The first to be captured was General Crüwell, seized in May 1942, followed by General von Thoma in November. By May 1943 General von Arnim had arrived at Trent Park with an entourage of senior officers and batmen from the battlefields of North Africa. After D-Day, high ranking German commanders – generals and two field marshals – arrived in stages. They were wined and dined, looked after by fake aristocrat “Lord Aberfeldy”, taken on trips to Simpsons on the Strand, and given copious supplies of gin at the Ritz. Kendrick had arranged for the house to be further wired for sound, with microphones embedded in the walls, under floorboards, behind fireplaces, in plant pots and the billiards table. Even the trees in the garden were bugged to record the generals on their walks around the grounds. The Mad Hatter’s tea party of daily life at Trent Park was recorded in weekly intelligence reports and transcribed conversations that preserve rare real conversations about the war and provide a unique snapshot of daily life during the Second World War.
The outlandish and frivolous treatment of the generals had one aim – to win the intelligence war. Giving 59 German generals and nearly 40 senior German officers a life of luxury in the mansion house arguably led to one
of the greatest intelligence coups of the war. From the bugged conversations of Hitler’s most trusted commanders, the Allies gained the first concrete proof of Hitler’s secret weapon program at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast. This led to the bombing of Peenemünde in August 1943.
Intelligence gathered
From air force prisoners came information on the Battle of Britain, night fighter tactics, navigational methods, new kinds of aircraft, bombs and guns, advance information on the bombing of Coventry and Glasgow, and information on night radar appliances. It was estimated that reports from the air intelligence section covered “95 per cent of the whole developed and developing field of German radar and anti-radar devices with accuracy little short of 100 per cent”. This alone made a significant contribution to reducing Allied losses in night attacks over Germany.
Naval intelligence came in the form of information about U-boat types, personnel and tactics, the names of commanders, methods of attack, torpedoes, acoustics, mines (magnetic and acoustic), codes and naval Enigma machine, cyphers, gunnery, human torpedoes and details of the major units of the German navy. Information on the sinking of the fearsome battleships Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz was provided by the survivors, all of whom came through Kendrick’s sites. The importance of this work was underlined by the Director of Naval intelligence, who wrote, “During five years of war, the interrogation of prisoners of war has been developed from an incidental source of intelligence to one of unique value. The Royal Navy and other services have become reliant on it.”
The bugging operation also provided detailed pictures of German tanks (new models and production) and rockets. They also acquired detailed information on the Gestapo, character studies of senior German commanders and their relationships with Hitler, orders of battle, and the state of the German fighting forces.
It was reported that Kendrick’s unit was “one of the most valuable sources of intelligence on [German] rockets, flying bombs, jet propelled aircraft and submarines”. The air intelligence unit working as part of Combined
Fritz Lustig, one of the secret listeners
Services Detailed Interrogation Centre was able to report throughout the war on Germany’s research – chiefly flak rockets and guided projectiles, but also radio, radar and high frequency communications – often before they came into use.
There were dark conversations in which generals and other prisoners admitted to war crimes, atrocities in concentration camps and the murder of millions of Jews. General Choltitz, commander of Paris, confessed to General Thoma, “The worst job I ever carried out – which however I carried out with great consistency – was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this order down to the very last detail.” These unguarded conversations revealed that Germany’s military commanders knew about war crimes, and that some were complicit. These transcripts dispel the long-held view that the Wehrmacht played no part in the Holocaust.
It would be over 65 years before these secrets came out, when the files were released into the National Archives. By then, most of the intelligence officers and secret listeners had died without telling their families about the work they had done. They had signed the Official Secrets Acts and could not breathe a word to anyone. None of the secret eavesdroppers realised how their work had changed the landscape of the intelligence war, saving lives and affecting the outcome of the war.
Forgotten legacy
The theatrical stage set that the generals walked into at Trent Park was one of the greatest deceptions against Nazi Germany of the Second World War. The magnitude of the achievements under Kendrick’s command is underlined in the words of his colleague, Australian-born Lieutenant Colonel Leo St Clare Grondona: “Had it not been for the information obtained at these centres, it could have been London and not Hiroshima which was devastated by the first atomic bomb.”
All this was achieved without thirddegree methods (rough treatment or torture) at the M Room sites. Norman Crockatt, head of MI9 branch of Military Intelligence, wrote to Kendrick:
You have done a Herculean task, and I doubt if anyone else could have carried it through. It would be an impertinence were I to thank you for your contribution to the war effort upto-date: a grateful country ought to do that, but I don’t suppose they will.
The Allied nations could not honour Kendrick publicly; Western Europe had entered a new war, the Cold War, in which similar techniques were being used.
Few people have heard of Thomas Joseph Kendrick, whose clandestine wartime sites provided pivotal intelligence and influenced the course of the war. He took these secrets to the grave, dying in 1972 at the age of 91. In February 2017, Historic England, the foremost national heritage body in the UK, concluded that the wartime work at Kendrick’s three sites was “of considerable national and international historical interest which bears comparison to the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park.” •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Helen Fry is the biographer of Colonel Thomas Joseph Kendrick, and the author of The walls have ears: the greatest intelligence operation of World War Two 2019.
OUR CONTINUING STORY
Patrick Blaik Australian Army, Warrant Officer Class One, Cambodia, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan
Over the past three decades, more than 100,000 Australians have served in war, conflict, peacekeeping, and humanitarian and disaster relief operations.
The expansion and modernisation of the Australian War Memorial will ensure our nation’s continuing story of service and sacrifice is told.
awm.gov.au/ourcontinuingstory
