SECRET WAR OF CHARLES FRASER-SMITH

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For maps hidden inside gadgets - we had to think of something else. A pure silk fabric and a non-rustling rag tissue of the finest paper imaginable were obviously suitable materials. The latter, especially made for the job, was magnificent. Nylon came along in the latter stages of the war, with the entry of the Americans. Then all we needed to do was to secrete these flimsy, beautifully printed little miniature works of art inside the minute space where the graphite lead should be". NARRATOR: Guerrilla warfare isn’t cheap. Agents need to be able to pay their way through enemy territory. But again, SOE and Fraser-Smith have a solution: Once this temporary appointment was completed, Charles and Blanche decided they too would like a holiday before returning to their home, Khemisset, in 1939. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Harmless fun I suppose. But is there really a call for quite so many superficial sex encounters? NARRATOR: You can find out more about the life of Charles Fraser-Smith in his autobiography The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith, and his biography The Man Who Was Q - The Life of Charles Fraser-Smith. We also made extensive use of Lysander Pilot by James Atterby McCairns and Surgeon At Arms by Lipmann Kessel - both superb memoirs of the war. Antony Beevor’s D-Day: The Battle For Normandy was one of our main sources for the description of the announcement of D-Day.

It was at an Open Brethren meeting in Leeds when Charles was giving a talk on his experiences in Morocco, that the director of the Ministry of Supplies (MOS) in Leeds, G. Ritchie Rice, was in the audience as well as Sir George Oliver, Director General of MOS in London. A meeting was immediately set up with Ritchie Rice and after much discussion Charles was offered a job with the MOS in Leeds. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Blanche and I had been in North Africa for years and expected to stay. We did missionary work as well as running two farms and an orphanage. I enjoyed it, the problem-solving element of farming. At one point, I even worked for the Moroccan Royal Family. NARRATOR: The British law that binds all who sign it to 30 years of silence about government work, on pain of imprisonment, a pre-condition of spycraft.This ingenious way of disguising maps, film for cameras, compasses, as well as dozens of everyday items, in hairbrushes, shaving brushes, pencils, golf balls and several other personal objects would find Charles having to approach many companies to produce and manufacture them in their hundreds whilst unknown to the daily staff. On many occasions the actual bosses or managers would make these gadgets for Charles overnight and the normal daily staff remained completely unaware of this. For example, an ingenious set of Derwent pencils were created by the Cumberland Pencil Company between 1942 -1945 for Charles Fraser-Smith to assist R.A.F. pilots should they be shot down over enemy territory. Once the factory had closed for the night the managers secretly assembled the pencil kits painted green, labelled 101-104 and made to look old. Each coded pencil contained a silk rolled map of Germany or its neighbouring countries in the hollowed centre. Many of these gadgets would be sent in Red Cross parcels to aid escaping prisoners of war or to agents who potentially could be facing capture. Fraser-Smith’s parents died when he was a child. He was brought up by a missionary family and became a Brethren missionary to Morocco. His ministry was what we’d call a “tent-maker” type today, a phrase coined from when the apostle Paul made tents to support himself for a while. Fraser-Smith directed a large farm for which he hired local workers. He was able to have conversations with them about the Lord while working side by side.

Ian Fleming’s characters were often given names of people he had known and like many authors he was known to base them on amalgams of his own associates, colleagues and family. Secret Warriors – MI6, OSS, MI9, SOE & SAS, by Charles Fraser-Smith (Paternoster Press, ISBN 0-85364-393-8) After his wife died of cancer, Charles was involved in a number of ministry enterprises. One was funding a Bible translated into Arabic. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: There was no way we could guarantee the safety or success of our brave agents - particularly not their safety. But I like to think that my more unorthodox devices may have tipped the balance ever so slightly in their favor, given them - let’s say - an edge. In most cases I was forced to go well outside the normal channels to get anything done. Knowing when something of mine went well - a gadget really worked and out-foxed the enemy, perhaps helping to save a valuable life - was all that I needed by way of inspiration.

Careful How You Tie Your Shoelaces

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: He said he was impressed by my initiative and inventiveness, and he was looking for someone with those qualities to work in his department. Torches used for landing lights to assist small aircraft having to land in the countryside in occupied countries. Official secret: The remarkable story of escape aids, their invention, production, and the sequel, by Clayton Hutton (Crown Publishers, 1961, ASIN: B0007DU032). CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: One of the chaps who would occasionally call me on the red phone with a secret request or a gadget instruction. Very able and highly inventive certainly, as you can see in the James Bond books he wrote after the war.