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03:42The Churchill also believed that encouraging widespread revolt in the occupied countries
03:47would play a vital part in the defeat of Nazism.
03:55An organisation was needed to build and coordinate this.
04:04In July 1940, the departments in military intelligence and the War Office, which looked after clandestine warfare, were combined to
04:13become the Special Operations Executive, or SOE.
04:16Churchill instructed it to set Europe ablaze, but this was not popular with its former masters.
04:24They didn't like it. We had been told to set Europe ablaze.
04:30And, of course, what they wanted was complete peace and quiet in the areas where their agents were at work
04:37collecting information.
04:39The last thing they wanted in any given area was sabotage and something being blown up and tremendous reaction from
04:47the Gestapo.
04:49SOE's headquarters was set up in an anonymous building in London's Baker Street, and its first battle was to survive
04:56the bureaucratic infighting in Whitehall.
05:00SOE was basically organised into operations and support departments.
05:04The former controlled agents through individual country or region desks, while the latter provided the necessary weapons and equipment.
05:15The support department developed its own catalogue, in addition to weapons and explosives, items such as exploding cigarettes, itching powder
05:27for German underwear, and even exploding rats could be supplied.
05:34The support department was also responsible for forging all the identity cards, passes, ration cards, and other documents without which
05:43no one could survive in occupied Europe.
05:56At first, agents were given clothing taken from refugees who reached Britain.
06:01But soon the support department had to develop its own camouflage section.
06:05This specialised in producing clothing to continental patterns.
06:14Every detail, such as the alignment of a collar stud hole, had to be correct.
06:19Nothing which might betray the origin of an agent could be overlooked.
06:24Every article of clothing had to have all English marks removed, including zip fasteners on the flies,
06:34because they used to have lightning zip on nearly all of them.
06:44Well, all that had to be taken out with a dentist drill, because that would have been a giveaway straight
06:49away if an agent was captured.
06:53So it was a very, very thorough job, because a man's life depended on it.
06:58The men and women whose lives would depend on it were SOE's principal asset, the agents who would be sent
07:04into the depths of enemy-held territory.
07:15The essential requirement for SOE's agents was obviously that they should be fluent in the language of the country in
07:20which they were to work,
07:21and have a good knowledge of its ways.
07:25But beyond that, the selection procedure was surprisingly relaxed and informal,
07:29as Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, who ran F Section, which covered France, explains.
07:34Obviously, you put them through a fairly detailed examination of their lives,
07:42what they'd done and why they'd done it, and their motivations.
07:46Then you had to judge on your own.
07:48You had to say, I think this chap would do it, or I don't think this chap would do it.
07:54To do it, the recruiters were looking for a special type of courage,
07:59as Vera Atkins, who worked for F Section, later described.
08:02Surviving agents often played down their role.
08:06What was very brave and particular to them was to go behind enemy lines,
08:13in civilian clothes, without any backup, and absolutely on their own.
08:20And that is where that particular bravery comes in.
08:24I never thought of myself as brave particularly.
08:28But looking back, I'm amazed at the things I did or lived through.
08:35I shouldn't have liked myself if I hadn't done it, I think.
08:40It was the only way to get our country liberated.
08:44We were all very young, you see, all around about 20 to 30, and full of ideals.
08:53That's what kept us going. We had ideals.
08:57After selection, agents were trained at a number of secret centres,
09:01usually requisitioned country houses.
09:08They were put through a strenuous course of fitness training and unarmed combat.
09:13They had to master a variety of weapons.
09:18And had to become experts in handling explosives.
09:30Then agents were given their cover story and new identity,
09:34briefed on Axis security methods,
09:36and taught how to live and survive in a largely hostile environment.
09:40Even the most careful training did not always prepare them fully.
09:45I went to Orléans with my reception committee,
09:47and that's when I saw my first Germans.
09:50I turned round to look at them, and they told me,
09:53never, ever do that. Never.
09:57If the worst happened, agents were trained how to react.
10:02If you were caught and being tortured,
10:05play for time was the motto.
10:08And therefore, using your imagination about what you knew about your circuit,
10:14and what they were likely to know about your movements,
10:18you would try and get 24 hours or longer
10:22before they really started bringing the broilamp to bear on your privates or whatever.
10:29With this chilling reminder of the dangers they faced,
10:32the agents were then committed to the field.
10:47Agents were trained to be parachuted into Nazi-occupied territories.
10:52Or they could be landed at secret airstrips by aircraft
10:55flown by the RAF's special duties squadrons.
11:04Once landed, the job of the agents was to establish and coordinate resistance networks.
11:10Francis Canerts, a former schoolteacher who established a major network in southern France,
11:16described what was needed.
11:18The network was going to operate against limited objectives,
11:25industrial sabotage, attacks on railways, telephone communication,
11:30things of this kind, and guerrilla warfare.
11:33That meant you had to find your local leader, who was trusted by his people.
11:38He had to have a team of 15 to 20, perhaps a few more, a few less.
11:44He had to have his own power-shoots ground.
11:52He had to have his own means of hiding arms and equipment that were received
11:57and of distributing it on a local level.
12:01As far as possible, he was kept apart, certainly from an operational point of view,
12:06from other cells, so that the contact between the cells was very largely myself
12:12or one or two people in whom I particularly trusted.
12:17The circuit organiser was usually supported by a radio operator
12:22and a courier.
12:26Women were often chosen as couriers since they were reckoned less likely to attract suspicion.
12:35The key element in SOE operations was the use of the BBC Overseas Service.
12:40This broadcast to every country under Axis occupation,
12:44enabling coded messages to be sent to the resistance.
12:48The searcher d'or will be at the same time.
12:55SOE was at its most active in Europe, where it experienced many successes,
12:59but also some tragic failures.
13:15Because of its distance from Britain, Eastern Europe was difficult to support.
13:23The free Polish government was eager to do what it could to foster resistance to the Germans.
13:28SOE trained agents were inserted to help the Polish Home Army,
13:32as the resistance was called, and some weapons were dropped.
13:38But when the Home Army rose against its German oppressors in Warsaw in August 1944,
13:43it was crushed after a bitter six-week battle.
13:47SOE's Polish section did manage to organise some supply drops,
13:51but was largely frustrated by Moscow's unwillingness to allow these to be mounted from Soviet territory.
13:58In Czechoslovakia, SOE did score one significant success.
14:06In September 1941, the ruthless Reinhard Heydrich became governor of Bohemia,
14:12as the Germans called the rump of the country.
14:16His cruelty convinced the Czech government in exile that he must be assassinated, whatever the cost.
14:22The following spring, two SOE-trained agents were dropped into Czechoslovakia.
14:28On the morning of the 27th of May 1942, they ambushed Heydrich while he was being driven to work.
14:37After their submachine gun had jammed, the agents managed to wound him with a grenade.
14:49The two men were eventually trapped in a church and, after a fierce gun battle, took their own lives,
14:55rather than allow themselves to be captured.
14:58In the meantime, Heydrich had died of his wounds.
15:05The Nazi retribution was horrific.
15:09More than 5,000 people were killed, including the inhabitants of two villages,
15:13Lesaki and Ledici, which were razed to the ground.
15:20The slaughter of innocent civilians in revenge for resistance activity was common throughout German-occupied countries.
15:27It was a terrible price which often had to be paid if SOE were to set Europe ablaze.
15:36In those parts of Europe closer to Britain, SOE could be more active.
15:40Small and relatively crowded, Denmark was difficult to penetrate,
15:44but from 1943 onwards resistance became increasingly effective.
15:49SOE organised widespread industrial strikes and sabotage,
15:53forcing the Germans to keep five army divisions in the country to maintain order.
15:58These could have been of better use elsewhere.
16:02SOE intelligence also enabled RAF mosquito bombers to make pinpoint raids in support of the Danish resistance.
16:11One of their notable successes was an attack on the Gestapo headquarters in the centre of Copenhagen.
16:17Not only were its records destroyed, but several imprisoned Danish resistance members were able to escape.
16:28The most decisive blow struck by the SOE in Norway was also mounted from the air.
16:35The Norsk hydro plant in Telemark produced deuterium oxide, otherwise known as heavy water,
16:42which was vital for Nazi Germany's atomic bomb programme.
16:48After an attempt to sabotage the plant had failed, a group of SOE agents parachuted into Norway.
16:54And on the night of the 27th of February 1943, they got into the plant unobserved by the German guards.
17:05They made their way to the condenser room and placed their charges.
17:19The fuses were lit and the raiders made good their escape.
17:33Heavy water production was halted for two months.
17:42The SOE raiders withdrew into the wilds.
17:51Although pursued by German ski troops, they got clean away.
17:55Two of the agents remained in Norway to monitor German activity.
18:01That November, after a US air attack on the plant,
18:05the Germans decided to cease heavy water production and take the remaining stocks to Germany.
18:11The first stage of the journey involved transporting the heavy water by rail to a nearby lake.
18:20The wagons were loaded on board a ferry to take them across the lake.
18:33But during the previous night, one of the SOE saboteurs who had remained behind
18:38managed to place charges aboard the ferry.
18:43Even though civilian casualties were likely when they exploded,
18:47the Norwegian government in exile had decided that the attack must go ahead.
18:52Once the ferry reached the centre of the lake, the charges detonated.
19:02The railway wagons containing the heavy water sank to the bottom of the lake
19:06and put a virtual end to Hitler's hopes of building an atomic bomb.
19:11The telemark attacks were arguably SOE's most important successes of the war.
19:19In stark contrast, its activities in Holland led to its greatest disaster.
19:30This began in the late summer of 1941, when an agent was arrested and a large number of SOE cipher
19:36messages seized.
19:38The Germans were able to begin breaking the SOE codes.
19:43Then a double agent helped the Germans to penetrate the network in the Hague.
19:53In March 1942, Herbert Lowers, a recently arrived radio operator, was arrested.
20:01His captor, German counter-intelligence officer Major Hermann Giskus,
20:05forced him to transmit messages to SOE London.
20:11Even though Lowers deliberately left out his security code to show that he had been captured,
20:16and this was noted in London,
20:18the SOE's Dutch section inexplicably decided that this must just be an oversight.
20:29They continued to send out further agents and announce where these would be landed.
20:37The Gestapo were waiting for them.
20:40The Gestapo were waiting for them.
20:42Giskus couldn't believe his luck.
20:48The Englandspiel, or England game as he called his operation,
20:52continued for 20 months.
20:5461 agents were caught, most of whom were shot.
20:59It was not until November 1943 that London finally realised what was happening.
21:06And this was only after two of the arrested agents,
21:09Ben Ubink and Peter Dueline, managed to escape and get to neutral Switzerland.
21:18Once there, they went to the British Embassy and revealed the whole disastrous story.
21:24Although SOE did send further agents to Holland,
21:27its relations with the Dutch Resistance had been badly damaged.
21:31No convincing explanation for this tragic lapse in security has ever been put forward.
21:43Of all the occupied countries of Western Europe, France was always the most important.
21:48For it was here that the Allies planned to begin the liberation of Europe.
21:57Ever stronger German defences meant that this would be an enormously risky task.
22:02One in which the French Resistance could play a vital role.
22:11After her defeat in 1940, France was split into two.
22:15The North and West were occupied by the Germans and placed under their military rule.
22:25The remainder of the country had a degree of autonomy under the Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain.
22:31It was somewhat easier for SOE to operate here.
22:36Even so, double agents and the hated Vichy police force, the Milice, were a very real threat.
22:43The latter had no compunction in arresting fellow countrymen suspected of resistance activity.
22:50All over France, industry was devoted to the Nazi war effort.
22:54And this gave SOE one of its greatest opportunities.
22:58Attacks on industrial targets by RAF Bomber Command were proving disastrously inaccurate,
23:03and causing widespread civilian casualties.
23:09SOE suggested a coordinated campaign of sabotage against specific targets.
23:14The typical case was the great Le Creusot weapons factory in eastern France near the Swiss border.
23:20In the summer of 1943, two agents, Raymond Basset and André Jarot, who had been recruited locally,
23:27were parachuted back.
23:29Jarot later explained their aim.
23:33I wanted to attack factories, but not to destroy the factory or its workers.
23:38I wanted to destroy the factory's means of production.
23:41Electric transformers, turbines, motors.
23:44They would repair them, and I would destroy them again.
23:47I was pleased to do my duty.
23:54SOE had been able to identify the main electrical lines and transformers, which powered what had been called the Krups
24:01of France.
24:04These would be the pinpoint targets.
24:13On the night of the 31st of August 1943, Basset and Jarot moved into action.
24:19The transformers, several in remote areas, were unguarded.
24:23Magnet bombs with time fuses were put in position.
24:33Ten transformers were wrecked, and Le Creusot put out of action for weeks.
24:45A similar operation was suggested by Harry Ray, after he watched the Peugeot vehicle factory being bombed unsuccessfully.
24:57So, I then went to Peugeot's, got in touch with Rodolf Peugeot, and said,
25:03look, wouldn't it be much more sensible if we did the sabotage on the ground and arrange for the RAF
25:10not to come again?
25:10He said, fine, yes.
25:12I said, I'll put you in touch with somebody who will put you in touch with somebody who will get
25:16you into the factory to see about the possibility of sabotage.
25:20And after that, I never went in again.
25:21There was a small team that organized itself of perhaps half a dozen people.
25:26And I provided them with the explosives, mainly the magnet bombs that you could just put onto a machine,
25:34and then with a time fuse, arrange for it to go off half an hour, an hour, two hours later.
25:42Similar action could be taken to disrupt the transport system.
26:02But it didn't always have to involve explosives.
26:06Pegleg used to change the waivers on these wagons.
26:10And so, a chap who was hoping to get his sulfuric acid, say, to Lorient for submarine batteries,
26:17it might turn up in Amiens to fight her aerodrome, where they were expecting variable pitch propellers or something, you
26:25see?
26:26Or carburettor parts, or God knows what.
26:29And the buggeration of that and the frustration is monumental.
26:35And how to trace it is very, very difficult.
26:38Oh, Pegleg never got caught.
26:40The growing number of SOE networks all over France provided valuable intelligence about the position of German units,
26:46and kept watch on the building of German coastal defences, Hitler's much vaunted Atlantic War.
26:53For ultimately, all resistance activity was directed towards preparing for the liberation of France and Europe.
27:04Typical of the SOE agents operating in France was Odette Sanson, a French girl married to an Englishman.
27:12Although she had three young daughters, Odette had been appalled by the defeat of her country, and volunteered for SOE.
27:20She was taken by boat from Gibraltar to the French Riviera, which was then under Vichy control, and landed there
27:27at the end of October 1942.
27:34Odette met up with Peter Churchill, the SOE leader in the area, and became his courier.
27:41Their primary task was to help organize an underground army of 20,000 men, which the local resistance claimed they
27:48could raise.
27:49But this became much riskier, when, a few weeks later, the Germans took over all Vichy areas following the Allied
27:55landings in French North Africa.
28:04Hugo Bleicher, a German counterintelligence officer, was able to infiltrate the local resistance network.
28:12He took advantage of loose talk to locate and arrest Churchill and Odette in spring 1943.
28:21The two SOE agents were taken to Paris, where Odette survived months of excruciating torture at the hands of the
28:27Gestapo, without revealing anything of importance.
28:30After the war, she spoke of her experiences.
28:33In those places, the only thing one could try to keep was a certain dignity.
28:39There was nothing else, and one could just have a little dignity and try to prove that one had a
28:50little spirit, and I suppose that kept one going.
28:56And when everything was really too difficult, too bad, then one was inspired by so many things.
29:04People, perhaps a phrase that one would remember, that one had heard a long time before, or even a piece
29:16of poetry, or a piece of music.
29:21Odette was then sent, under sentence of death, to Ravensbrück concentration camp north of Berlin, together with other female SOE
29:29agents.
29:33Amazingly, Odette survived further horrors, and was eventually liberated.
29:40But one third of the women agents sent to France were tortured and killed after capture.
29:45But none ever betrayed anything vital.
29:53During the second half of 1943, with preparations for the invasion of Normandy underway, SOE support for the French resistance
30:01became even more important.
30:07Networks and plans were prepared so that once invasion came, German road and rail communications running into Normandy from the
30:14rest of France would be severely disrupted.
30:19The Maquis, a secret army of young Frenchmen, many of whom had taken to the hills of rural France to
30:26avoid being sent to work in Germany, was being armed and trained to operate in the German rear and pin
30:31down reinforcements.
30:33The number of SOE flights to drop weapons and other supplies to the networks increased steadily.
30:44But as more and more people became involved in gathering and hiding the supplies, so the opportunities for the Germans
30:50to penetrate the resistance grew.
30:55By early 1944, many of the key resistance figures in northern France were imprisoned in a jail at Amiens.
31:02Unless they could escape, the resistance in the region would be fatally crippled.
31:13SOE passed the details of the jail wing in which prisoners were housed to the RAF.
31:21On the morning of the 18th of February, 1944, mosquitoes made a daring low-level attack on the prison.
31:33Its walls were breached, enabling 250 prisoners to escape. The resistance networks were functional again by D-Day.
31:47During the evening of the 5th of June, as the Allied invasion force approached the Normandy coast, the resistance networks
31:54established by SOE were called to arms.
31:57Long-awaited messages were heard on the BBC.
32:00I was in the hay of a loft, and I really didn't even bother to go down the ladder, but
32:08jumped down so as to tell everybody about it, because this was the culminating moment, really, of our mission.
32:17They went round, got all their material out of the hiding places, cleaned the weapons, stuck the ammunition, and then
32:27they were ready to move the next day, because the message came so quickly.
32:34A carefully planned campaign of sabotage on the routes leading into Normandy from the south began.
33:02This film, secretly taken by the resistance, shows a German troop train derailed a Champigny near Paris, and blocking a
33:10munitions train in a siding.
33:16One example of a resistance operation to slow down German reinforcements was that against the Das Reich, Waffen-SS Division.
33:23This started with tracking down the wagons on which its panzers should have been transported from southern France.
33:30These wagons were very, very important, because they were putting three or four in one little station on the siding,
33:38three or four in another, they were dispersed everywhere.
33:41They hardly stayed more than a day or two days in Mont-de-Barre-Marsling Hill.
33:47To deal with this, Tony Brook's network came up with a novel and effective method of attack.
33:57Old Michel converted some grease guns, flattened and made a fish tail at the end, and we mixed salvaged grease
34:06with carborundum powder in the garage and masses of it.
34:09And then this was handed out to various young people, including one of his daughters, to go round and vaccinate
34:17these wagons.
34:18The vaccinations proved totally effective. The bearings on the wagons soon seized up, and the Das Reich was obliged to
34:26set off for Normandy by road. Other parts of the resistance now went into action.
34:30The Maquis, the Maquis, and the Corrèze and the Creuse delayed it. Then they got, then they had the massacre
34:37of Oradour-sur-Glane, and then they got delayed north of Limoges, and then they got delayed when they got
34:44to the Loire.
34:45They had planned to get to Normandy to Caen in four days. They took 16.
34:51SOE also coordinated similar operations to coincide with the successful Allied landings in the south of France in August 1944.
35:02During the rapid drive north of American and French forces, the resistance acted as guides and provided information about the
35:10position of German formations.
35:15SOE was also deeply involved elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
35:19In 1941, it set up a separate headquarters in Cairo to cover the Middle East and the Balkans.
35:25This took over some of the special forces tasks of Headquarters Middle East.
35:31The main project that SOE inherited was to help in the liberation of Italian-held Abyssinia.
35:39Playing a major role was Colonel Ord Wingate, who later founded the Chindits.
35:44Accompanied by exiled Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie, he led a force of Abyssinians and Sudanese in a highly successful thrust
35:51into Abyssinia from Sudan.
35:55The crowning moment came on the 5th of May 1941, when Wingate and his men escorted the Emperor into his
36:02capital, Addis Ababa.
36:08SOE could take some credit for this success, but its reputation in Cairo did not benefit.
36:17From the start, its headquarters was notoriously inefficient and lacked security.
36:23Every Egyptian cab driver appeared to know where it was.
36:30SOE's main problem was that it lacked good intelligence,
36:33largely because the British Secret Intelligence Service was unwilling to pass on any information.
36:38What intelligence SOE did gain was not trusted by London.
36:43Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Balkans.
36:48Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia, two distinct resistance groups formed.
36:54One, known as the Chetniks, was led by Royalist Colonel Draza Mihailovic.
37:01The other was under the iron grip of Communist Josip Tito.
37:06Initially, the British government supported Mihailovic.
37:09But after a series of SOE-arranged missions,
37:12culminating with a visit by Churchill's Special Representative, Fitzroy MacLean,
37:16support was transferred to Tito and his partisans.
37:20As Churchill put it, they seemed to be killing more Germans.
37:36In Greece, too, resistance was fractured, with the Communist-backed ELAS movement,
37:42being rivalled by the anti-monarchist but democratic EDES.
37:48SOE in Cairo had little knowledge of this,
37:51as became clear during the mounting of one of its most successful operations in Greece.
37:56In September 1942, SOE were asked to cut the railway line which ran down through Greece to the port of
38:03Piraeus,
38:03to support the planned offensive by the 8th Army at El Alamein.
38:08This had been identified as one of the most important supply routes for Erwin Rommel's Africa Corps.
38:20SOE selected Eddie Myers, a regular engineer officer with little experience of clandestine operations, to lead the party.
38:29His second-in-command was Chris Woodhouse, a classical scholar who had already operated in Greece.
38:37The team was given hasty parachute training, and after one abortive attempt,
38:42its members parachuted into Greece in the early hours of the 1st of October.
38:50Their target was one of three railway bridges,
38:53Papadia,
38:56Asapos,
38:57and Gorgopotamos.
38:59But they knew little about them.
39:02Myers and his men were beset by problems from the moment they landed.
39:08First, they were supposed to meet an EDES leader called Napoleon Zervas,
39:12but he was not there to receive them.
39:15They had been dropped in the wrong place.
39:19Then, one of Myers' three four-man teams could not locate the dropping zone and return to Egypt.
39:26Myers sent Woodhouse to find Zervas, giving him 14 days to do so,
39:31but this meant passing through territory controlled by Elas.
39:35Given the nature of the terrain, Woodhouse's mission seemed almost impossible.
39:41Woodhouse later described the confusions with which he was faced as a result of inadequate intelligence.
39:47Zervas was nowhere near the area mentioned in my orders.
39:51And more serious still, I was told nothing by SOE or anybody else
39:56about the complex political relations and rivalries of the Greek guerrillas,
40:02nor even their names, which later were to become so familiar to us.
40:07Nevertheless, he found Zervas and brought both his men and the rival local Elas group back to the base camp.
40:15The missing SOE team, which had successfully dropped three days later, was also located.
40:25In the meantime, Myers had carried out a reconnaissance.
40:28He decided that the team would attack the precipitous Gorgopotamus Bridge.
40:39The SOE team and its Greek resistance supporters moved into position at the Gorgopotamus Bridge on the evening of the
40:4525th of November.
40:46Local villages helped them transport the necessary explosives to their target,
40:51and supply trains chugged overhead as these were put in position.
41:00The ANDATES, as the Greek resistance fighters were called, engaged the Italian guard posts covering the bridge.
41:11Then came the signal that the bridge was about to be blown.
41:24The destruction of the Gorgopotamus Bridge was an SOE triumph, not least in getting the rival resistance factions to cooperate.
41:33Unfortunately, by then, Rommel had already been driven back from El Alamein.
41:40Another blow was that the submarine that was supposed to take Myers and his men back to Egypt did not
41:45appear.
41:46They were therefore ordered to remain in Greece to provide training for the ANDATES.
41:52In the meantime, Axis reprisals against the local population deterred the ANDATES from further action against the Germans and Italians.
42:03Despite this, in June 1943, the SOE agents did attack another of the railway bridges.
42:12This was Asopos, whose position on the side of a steep gorge made it a much more difficult target than
42:18the Gorgopotamus Bridge.
42:21Luckily, scaffolding had been erected to enable repairs to be carried out, and this enabled the agents to place their
42:27charges.
42:30Once again, the SOE's target was destroyed.
42:34But after this second success, the ANDATES became increasingly involved in fighting among themselves.
42:40This eventually degenerated into civil war at the end of 1944, after Greece had been liberated.
42:51SOE was also active in the Far East from a base in Australia, after Japanese forces had overrun British, Dutch
42:57and American possessions in the area.
43:00The problems which it faced there were very different from those in Europe.
43:05The often inaccessible jungle, which covered so much of the region, made it difficult to maintain agents.
43:17While in the towns and cities, a Western agent stood out like a sore thumb.
43:26One very successful operation against Singapore Harbour was led by Captain Ivan Lyon.
43:35His group of saboteurs set sail from Australia on Operation Jaywick in a captured Japanese fishing boat in August 1943.
43:47After an epic three week voyage across 2,000 miles of Japanese controlled seas, they were able to reach an
43:54island off Singapore undetected.
44:03There they set up camp, and unloaded the kayaks which they had brought with them.
44:15They were able to reach an island off the coast of the coast of the coast of the coast of
44:15the coast of the coast of the coast of the coast of the coast of the coast of the coast
44:15of the coast.
44:15On the evening of the 26th of September 1943, three kayaks slipped across the channel to the port.
44:25They attached limpet mines to the hulls of a number of merchant vessels and got away undetected.
44:4050,000 tons of enemy shipping had been sunk.
44:43But a second attempt a year later was a disaster, with Lyon and all his party either killed or captured
44:49by the Japanese and later executed.
44:55In Malaya, SOE agent Freddy Spencer Chapman, who knew the country well, was able to set up a resistance network.
45:04This was made up of indigenous Chinese, who were keen to avenge the atrocities being perpetrated by the Japanese in
45:10China.
45:13Spencer Chapman and his men waged a lengthy campaign against Japanese communications in Malaya.
45:20Bridges were blown, convoys were ambushed, and large numbers of Japanese troops tied down far from the fighting fronts.
45:29In Burma, SOE and its American equivalent, the Office of Strategic Services, made much use of the hill tribes in
45:37the north of the country.
45:39During the latter stages of the Burma campaign, the tribesmen mounted numerous attacks and ambushes on the withdrawing Japanese, killing
45:47some 14,000 of them.
45:54During World War II, SOE operated throughout the world.
45:59Its efforts with the various resistance movements played a vital part in bringing about ultimate victory over the Axis powers.
46:07But many SOE agents lost their lives.
46:10Of more than 400 sent to France alone, one quarter did not return.
46:16Others suffered severe torture.
46:20Their contribution was recognised by numerous awards for bravery.
46:25Among these was a George Cross, Britain's highest civilian decoration for gallantry, given to Odette Sansom for her exemplary conduct
46:34in captivity under extreme duress.
46:40The life of the SOE agent was a lonely one, lived amid constant danger.
46:45They required a different form of courage from that of the soldier on the battlefield.
46:50Nonetheless, they were true gladiators.
46:55Interest of all of them was a few years.
46:57I'm a journalist.
47:11I'm a journalist.
47:14I'm a journalist.
47:15I'm a journalist.
47:22I'm a journalist.
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