ABSTRACT
This brief sketch of the nature, purposes, and organization of SOE must begin with a blinding glimpse of the obvious: special operations have to be wrapped in secrecy. A dense veil of secrecy was indispensable for SOE, a body for mounting surprise attacks in unexpected places: no secrecy, no surprise. The fact that the body existed at all was for long a closely guarded secret. Even within the other armed services, numerous people who dealt with the Inter-Services Research Bureau, or the Joint Technical Board, or Special Training Schools Headquarters, or the Admiralty’s NID (Q), or MO I (SP) at the War Office, or AI IO at the Air Ministry – some of SOE’s cover descriptions – had no inkling of the real name and nature of their correspondents. Some people in high places in other departments knew a lot about SOE; most of them were more or less co-operative, though a few were determined to wreck it. Less dangerous than these, but equally tiresome, were the officials who knew a little about SOE, neither liked nor trusted what they knew, and so were jealous. For example, as late as the winter of 1943-44 administrators at the War Office sought to hinder travel abroad – even on operations into France – by army officers employed by SOE, on the ground that the security of the impending invasion would be compromised unless the director of staff duties could first be personally satisfied that every journey was necessary.1 Petty obstructionists of this kind lay about SOE’s path all its life, and some have pursued it since its winding-up; they were intrigued by the cloak of secrecy, did not understand its importance, and wanted to pry beneath it. Most were simply self-important busybodies; all were a nuisance.
