Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (34 page)

A new station commander arriving at Medmenham in 1943 to take up his post commented:

In view of the Unit’s intelligence function, I was rather surprised at the absence of a perimeter fence and other security measures, other than a main gate on to the Henley to Marlow road, with an RAF Police Guard House. The Officers’ Mess and Quarters together with the other Ranks’ Messes and Quarters were nearby. The whole layout had a somewhat casual appearance, intentional as I afterwards discovered, since this, and the security of the actual operational buildings, was thought to provide better all round security than wire fences, gates, lights and the like. At any rate, I never heard of any case of a breach of security. Bearing in mind the wide variety of occupations and professions from which the interpreters and other experts were drawn, their standard of security consciousness was extremely high.
13

Fine drawing and annotation for map making in ‘W’, the Photogrammetric Section.

However, why was a conspicuously large white mansion standing on a prominent plateau above a noticeable curve in the River Thames chosen as the location of RAF Medmenham and its secret work when it was apparently such an easy target from the air? The answer was that no attempt was made to camouflage it or make it to appear different – it did not arouse suspicion because it looked normal. Danesfield House was but one among hundreds of substantial English country houses across the south of England, many of which were requisitioned by the services during the Second World War. It was normal too to have Nissen huts built in the grounds, filled with servicemen and women and vehicles coming and going. Danesfield House, Nuneham Park and Hughenden Manor were just three of many similar properties and so avoided close attention.

There were, of course, security checks on all staff entering and leaving Medmenham through the main gates, and servicemen and women were apprehended for not having the right pass at the right time – again, it was normal. The Second World War had an impact on the whole population, for they had all faced the threat of invasion and the battles had been conducted in the skies above them. Many had lost relatives and friends, many had been bombed out of their homes, most lives had been disrupted and there was much suffering – it was a personal war. Signing the Official Secrets Act was taken seriously. The PIs worked in their own sections and did not enquire about what others did elsewhere. Day by day they saw the effects of war in the photographs they examined. Many had worked on reconnaissance bases and had been there when a pilot failed to return from a mission. In these cases, they were losing a personal friend whom they might have been talking to the night before.

When the war in Europe ended, the head of the Model-Making Section circulated a letter to all personnel who had worked there. An extract reads:

Your loyalty and devotion to duty has been outstanding. Your sense of responsibility and security has been unsurpassed. The latter has brought forth many expressions of admiration from other members of the Station who have only recently learnt of the true nature of the work upon which you have been engaged for so long.

The making of models for the briefing of vital operations on land, sea and in the air has put you very much ‘in the know’ as to the exact spot where and, to a certain extent, when the next blow at the enemy was to be made. Not once did you break the trust that had been placed upon you.
14

PIs and model makers felt the responsibility they held for the safety and life of each soldier, sailor and airman for whom they provided information. Sophie’s words – ‘You had to get it right; lives depended on what you did’ – echoed the thoughts of everyone at Medmenham.

Notes

  
1
. British Academy, ‘Volume 55 Proceedings’.

  
2
. Rendall (
née
McKnight-Kauffer), Ann, correspondence with Constance Babington Smith, 1956/7 (Medmenham Collection).

  
3
. Spear, Major George, correspondence with the author, 2009.

  
4
. Churchill, Sarah,
Keep on Dancing
,
pp.65–6.

  
5
. Abrams, Leonard,
Our Secret Little War
,
p.36.

  
6
. IWM 11602 01/19/1 The papers of Miss Mary Harrison, held by the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum, and printed by permission of Miss Harrison.

  
7
. Price, Geoffrey, IWM papers.

  
8
. Harrison, Mary, IWM papers.

  
9
. 
More Poems of the Second World War, the Oasis Collection
(Dent, 1989), use of ‘My Hands’ here
by permission of Mary Harrison
.

10
. Wilson, Sophie, letters and documents (Medmenham Collection).

11
. 
www.britain-at-war-magazine.com/news
‘Attack on the Gestapo Headquarters at The Hague’.

12
. Wood, Edward, an account of his wartime service at RAF Medmenham, undated (Medmenham Collection).

13
. Cator, Group Captain Francis, RAF Medmenham, September 1943–June 1945.

14
. Wood, Edward, extract from a letter circulated to all ‘V’ Section personnel, 1945 (Medmenham Collection).

Joan Bawden’s wish to be posted overseas was granted. After six months’ service at Medmenham she was in the first group of WAAF PIs to be posted overseas to RAF Heliopolis, near Cairo. Joan and her four colleagues, Letitia Robinson, Elizabeth Hemeltyk, Diana Orlebar and Margaret Perkins, arrived on 12 March 1942, having sailed from Liverpool two months previously on board the SS
Otranto
. The long voyage in convoy had been enlivened by four days ashore in Durban, frequent parties and dances on deck in the tropics and the presence of an RAF squadron en route to the Middle East. Only sea sickness early on and a German Condor plane following the convoy for some hours off the West African coast gave them cause for concern. The WAAFs joined the newly formed Middle East Interpretation Unit (MEIU) under the command of Squadron Leader Idris Jones. They worked on air photography of North Africa and the Mediterranean taken by No. 2 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (2 PRU), based at Heliopolis.

A further contingent of six WAAFs from Medmenham soon followed, including Honor Clements, who had initially worked at Bomber Command, and Dorothy Colles, one of the first WAAF officers at Wembley. It must have been a strange return for Dorothy, who had spent the first twenty years of her life in Cairo, where her father was a professor at the university before the family had returned to England. She attended Epsom School of Art before joining the WAAF in July 1940 and, after a few months as a clerk, was selected for PI training and worked in the Aircraft Section at Medmenham before her posting to Egypt. On the voyage out, having been forbidden to draw any portion of the ship for security reasons, she turned to portraits instead, hoping to supplement her pay: ‘I have drawn nine portraits as commissions so far but have only been paid for three,’ she recorded in a letter home. ‘Cairo is very much as I remember. Hot and dusty and full of smells and flies’, she wrote in one of her first letters on arrival, followed quickly by a telegram to her mother: ‘Have parted with appendix unexpectedly.’
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No. 2 Photographic Renconnaissance Unit used Beaufighter aircraft to fly daily cover of the Western Desert and the Mediterranean, which were areas of intense military action at that time. Fierce fighting along the North African coast from Benghazi to Tobruk and El Alamein had been shifting backwards and forwards since 1941. Although part of the Italian fleet in the port of Taranto had been destroyed or crippled in a Fleet Air Arm torpedo attack in November 1940, some remaining vessels were still a threat. Malta had fought and survived determined German and Italian attacks. The strategic planning for the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942 was well advanced with air reconnaissance providing information for engagements on land, sea and air. Longer-term planning for the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 was also under way and part of Dorothy’s work was on models for the landings in Sicily.

As the work of the MEIU increased the numbers of PIs grew to a total of 300 men and women.

In June 1942, Field Marshal Rommel started the German breakthrough eastwards from Benghazi along the coast towards Egypt. By 21 June he had taken the Libyan port of Tobruk, capturing tens of thousands of British troops, and reached the Egyptian border. The British forces retreated to El Alamein, only 60 miles from Alexandria, and there was a very real threat that Cairo would be overrun. Evacuation plans for all non-essential personnel at Heliopolis, including the WAAF PIs, were prepared. The PI unit was sited alongside the very busy airfield at Heliopolis, where each day the PR planes returned with film showing the most recent enemy dispositions. The interpretation of these photographs was vital work and provided immediate information for British Eighth Army tactical decisions as well as planning for future operations.

On 19 June, Dorothy had her first flight in a Lysander aircraft taking photographs. She wrote home: ‘I cannot tell you how incredibly, utterly intoxicating flying is.’
Twelve days later Dorothy had her second flight, but this time she was on a stretcher in a Beaufighter, being evacuated to RAF Ramleh, near Jerusalem in Palestine, having been admitted to hospital earlier with an infection.

The British defensive positions at El Alamein successfully halted Rommel on 1 July, the same day that the WAAF PIs made their hurried departure from Heliopolis. Orders that all secret documents that were not required should be destroyed resulted in the air above the various headquarters being full of charred paper. The MEIU worked as usual through the morning, then at midday Joan and the other WAAFs were instructed to return to their quarters to pack up essential personal items hastily and prepare to be flown away to a safer place. Many things had to be left behind as the lorry soon arrived to take them back to the airfield. The PRU Beaufighters, designed to carry a crew of two, were used to fly the WAAFs away a few at a time, to join Dorothy at RAF Ramleh. Joan, Diana Orlebar and Margaret Perkins clambered into one aircraft and somehow squeezed themselves and their luggage into the limited space. Joan wrote:

Warby, the blond, beautiful Unit’s Ace was our pilot. We took off and flew over Ismailia, the (Suez) Canal, the desert and along by the sea to Lydda. It was a wonderful trip. I stood up in the back looking at the beauty of the clouds and thought – this is living.
2

‘Warby’, to whom Joan refers, was Flight Lieutenant (later Wing Commander) Adrian Warburton DSO and Bar, DFC and two Bars – he was later awarded a DFC (USA). A charismatic 24-year-old, ‘Warby’ was a PR pilot who always got his photographs, and had perfected the art of dicing, once returning from a sweep so low over the Italian fleet in the port of Taranto that part of an enemy ship’s radio aerial was caught in the tail wheel of his aircraft. Suzie Morrison, who worked in Italy later on, said of him: ‘He was such a glamorous chap and we all fell for him.’ ‘Warby’ was killed in April 1944 while flying alone over Germany. His body and plane were not located until 2003, when he was buried with full military honours at Durnbach Military Cemetery, near Munich.

Dorothy and Diana had another adventure later on while serving at Heliopolis, this time on a Royal Navy destroyer going on exercise with several WRNS officially on board. The two WAAFs managed to go along too, unofficially, thanks to one of the ship’s officers, Diana’s brother, but their short trip turned into two days spent at sea, as the ship was diverted to search for a bomber crew afloat in a dinghy after ditching their aircraft.

As the WAAFs were unable to do any interpretation work at RAF Ramleh, they swam, socialised and visited Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. Joan met her future husband again and Dorothy recovered enough to visit Transjordan and Amman. After this unexpected, peaceful interlude of three weeks, they returned to normal duties at MEIU providing intelligence for the invasion force in Algeria, and increasingly on Italy. The German advance had been held at El Alamein, although there were still air raids on Cairo and Heliopolis. At the end of October 1942 General Montgomery led the Allied force that defeated the enemy at El Alamein, starting the Axis power’s retreat from North Africa. The North African landings, code-named Operation Torch, began on 8 November.