SECRET WAR OF CHARLES FRASER-SMITH

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Interestingly, during these times with the threat of an invasion by the German army and the on-going bombing of towns and cities, people were cautioned not to discuss aspects of their daily lives. After the war, Fraser-Smith bought a rundown dairy farm in Bratton Fleming, in southwest England. It became a profitable business. In the late 1970s, his family persuaded him to seek permission to write a book about his wartime exploits. With clearance under the Official Secrets Act he wrote several, donating the royalties to charity.

Montagu and Cholmondeley had a specific target in mind for their elaborate deception: Adolf Clauss, a German spy operating in the port of Huelva on Spain's south coast. He was known to be efficient, ruthless and extremely gullible.

Itching Powder

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: He said he was looking for someone who wasn’t an insider, someone with the kind of brain that could cut corners. The civil servants in his office were too hidebound and inflexible for a time of national crisis. Well, I jumped at the chance.

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Our POWs were entitled to receive carefully vetted gifts from home. And so, we had a means of getting my little gadgets into the prisons so long as they could be adequately disguised. The two masterminds of the operation were Charles Cholmondeley and Ewan Montagu, two men with what Churchill called "corkscrew minds". 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. This intelligence coup for the Nazi spy network allowed Adolf Hitler to transfer German troops from France to Greece ahead of what was believed to be a massive enemy invasion. NARRATOR: In Bond films, the hero is always shown an array of gadgets and secret weapons by an avuncular and slightly irate intelligence office known as ‘Q’. Pay attention 007.

Careful How You Tie Your Shoelaces

Fraser-Smith was not the only gadget-master working for British intelligence during World War II. The SOE had various secret research and development laboratories including Station IX at the Natural History Museum and Station XII at the Frythe Hotel. Christopher Clayton Hutton of MI9, a clandestine unit within A-Force which specialised in escape and evasion, was also an inventor and deception-theorist. Major Jasper Maskelyne, a stage magician, also developed secret sabotage and subterfuge devices for MI-9.

David Porter wrote a full biography of Fraser-Smith in The Man Who Was Q: The True Story of Charles Fraser-Smith, the “Q” Wizard of WWII. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: There’s an RAF saying: ‘Birds and fools fly by day, but only fools by night.’ Both friends soon married, Bryce Nairn in 1928 and Charles in 1930 to Blanche Ellis in her home town Leeds,Yorkshire. NARRATOR: Benzedrine - amphetamines, speed, basically - to reduce the need for sleep. You might be buzzing, but you would still be one step ahead of the Wehrmacht. It was while working with the latter on Operation Mincemeat that Fleming met Charles Fraser Smith. The man whose work would form the basis of Q Branch’s relationship with James Bond in the author’s novels.Hitler transferred German troops from France to Greece, believing they had achieved an intelligence coup. However, it was all a hoax. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I’ll be honest. I loved my work. It was based on secrecy and deception, yes. But secrecy and deception in fighting the greatest evil the world had known in a generation. No shame in that. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Ian Fleming certainly had charm and an ability to get things done. At that time, he was personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence. Sadly, Edwin died in 1909 and his four children were raised by their Aunt Edith (Edwin’s sister) and Uncle Frank Piper. Edith married Frank Piper in 1910. Uncle Frank was a solicitor whilst Aunt Edith had spent many years as a young girl involved with missionary work. In the early 1900s she was drawn to working with the Children's Special Service Mission in Spain, later to become the Scripture Union. Two of her sisters, also missionaries, had served in North Africa, both dying young in their mid twenties. My piece of the war had been, I suppose, more unorthodox than that of almost anyone alive. I supplied equipment and gadgets to secret agents in the field or to prisoners of war trying to escape. Because I worked completely underground using as a cover the 'Ministry of Supply Clothing & Textile Department', my methods were certainly individual.