ABSTRACT
The advance guard of SOE’s MASSINGHAM mission, which was to set up a base in Algeria to mount operations to Sardinia, Corsica, Italy and southern France, began to arrive at Algiers on 17 November 1942, as BRANDON and its recruits were moving up into Tunisia. Holdsworth and Laming, who were, with their crews, to provide MASSINGHAM with a naval component, sailed on 30 November from Helford for the Scillies in Mutin and Serenini. There they took on additional fuel and water before heading south under sail and power straight across the Bay of Biscay without escort. They reached Gibraltar in six and a half days-about the same time as was taken by convoys, which, of course, had to be routed far further out into the Atlantic because of the U-boat menace. After refuelling, they went straight on to Algiers, where they arrived, at the earliest, on 9 or 10 December. Neither of the ships was intended for operational use in the Mediterranean, but they provided accommodation for crews, transport for stores and personnel, as well as mobile base facilities from which operations could be organised, making use of such naval and local craft as might be available. SOE was concerned that SIS, in the shape of NID (C), should not be in a position to veto their use of clandestine sea transport in the new western Mediterranean theatre, which is what it had recently done with regard to the west coast of France.
