SECRET WAR OF CHARLES FRASER-SMITH

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NARRATOR: Guerrilla warfare isn’t cheap. Agents need to be able to pay their way through enemy territory. But again, SOE and Fraser-Smith have a solution: NARRATOR: Fraser-Smith’s gadgets don’t just assist you after you have made a break for freedom. They can also help set you free in the first place. Captured British soldiers are expected to form secret groups to plan escapes called ‘escape committees’. The idea is to make breakouts an organized, disciplined process. And there was a way to supply the escape committees. NARRATOR: Diamonds are Forever. Bond goes undercover with a shadowy, all-powerful American organized crime group called the... well it doesn’t really matter. The point is that the group uses hollow golf balls to smuggle diamonds. He had kept examples of most of his gadgets, and an exhibit of his wartime works was presented at the Exmoor Steam Railway, a tourist attraction in Bratton Fleming. Once a year, Fraser-Smith would spend a week explaining their workings to visitors.

There were four different maps used which meant that four differently numbered pencils were made so they could be correctly identified by those in the know. Pencil No 101 contained a general map of Germany, while pencils numbered 102, 103 and 104 contained maps showing more detailed escape routes to the west or south of Germany, such as into Switzerland. Three examples of these maps are shown above (Photograph No 3). CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: If I made any contribution to the war effort it was in assisting the unimaginably brave, largely unsung heroes like that: Resistance fighters, SOE agents, ordinary soldiers behind enemy lines. Mine was a secret war, but not without honor. 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. However, some European countries were now again at war with Germany, and when Italy decided to invade Turkey Charles and Blanche, who now had a young son called Brian, made the decision to return to England as soon as possible. This ingenious way of disguising maps, film for cameras, compasses, as well as dozens of everyday items, in hairbrushes, shaving brushes, pencils, golf balls and several other personal objects would find Charles having to approach many companies to produce and manufacture them in their hundreds whilst unknown to the daily staff. On many occasions the actual bosses or managers would make these gadgets for Charles overnight and the normal daily staff remained completely unaware of this. For example, an ingenious set of Derwent pencils were created by the Cumberland Pencil Company between 1942 -1945 for Charles Fraser-Smith to assist R.A.F. pilots should they be shot down over enemy territory. Once the factory had closed for the night the managers secretly assembled the pencil kits painted green, labelled 101-104 and made to look old. Each coded pencil contained a silk rolled map of Germany or its neighbouring countries in the hollowed centre. Many of these gadgets would be sent in Red Cross parcels to aid escaping prisoners of war or to agents who potentially could be facing capture.

Feeling a bit peckish?

On leaving school he veered from one occupation after another, working as a prep school teacher in Portsmouth, a motorcycle messenger rider, and an aircraft factory worker. Eventually, inspired by his foster family, he went to Morocco as a Christian missionary. Returning to England in 1939, he gave a Sunday sermon at the Open Brethren Evangelical Church in Leeds. In the sermon, Fraser-Smith described his practice of bricolage, and the necessity of procuring supplies from just about any source. In the congregation were two officials of Britain's Ministry of Supply, who were impressed by his adventures. As a result the Director of the Ministry of Supply offered him what he later described as "a funny job in London". Wartime experiences CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: We left everything really, all we’d worked for and built. You could take only very limited funds with you. I remember standing with our son Brian near the quayside, waiting to board, and then the gendarmes began searching everybody. And that’s when I realized that things might not go so well for me. It’s unknown how many are left in the world, due to the fact they were carried in one of the UK’s most recognisable aircraft during World War Two. I’m actually thrilled that there is another pencil in circulation." CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: We made some cursory chit-chat about my talk and the next day I received a message to pop by Rice’s office.

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Then, have the repaired plane take off and join a squadron of real German bombers returning from a raid over southern England. A Trojan bomber if you like. At a certain point, the crew would activate fireworks hidden in the wings to simulate engine trouble, and would then fake a crash landing at sea, somewhere off the coast of France. Charles continued with his Brethren faith and missionary work and after meeting Selina Richardson remarried in 1966. In the 1970's, with the approval of the Ministry and clearance from the Official Secrets Act he wrote several books about his wartime experiences and his personal life before and after the war. He donated the royalties to charity, becoming involved in many including Save the Children Fund and UNICEF. An opportunity arose in 1936 for Charles and Blanche to look after ten boys in an orphanage seven miles outside of Tangier on the coast, for a period of two years. Sunset Farm was left in the hands of a local man acting as manager. For the two years Charles and Blanche taught the boys how to manage the land and grow vegetables that could be sold to the local English and French community. Eventually they had taken on thirty five boys, making the orphanage self- sufficient. Fraser was also involved in the intelligence operation codenamed Operation Mincemeat, which was designed to drop a body, carrying false papers to mislead the Nazis, off the Spanish coast. He was tasked with designing a trunk, 6' 2" long and 3' wide, to carry a "deadweight" of 200 lb that would be preserved in dry ice. When the dry ice evaporated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. The plot that was the basis of the book (and later film) The Man Who Never Was. Later life Secret Warriors – MI6, OSS, MI9, SOE & SAS, by Charles Fraser-Smith (Paternoster Press, ISBN 0-85364-393-8)During their school years living in Croxley Green, the children experienced a rural village life with open countryside and farmland. The Metropolitan Railway was still a long way off in its construction and World War One was on the horizon. Charles would cycle to school with his chum Walter George Calvert Carr who lived at Tweedside on The Green. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Blanche and I spoke long into the night. It wasn’t an easy decision but it was the right one.

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: The church was at the center of our lives and one evening I was asked to give a talk to the congregation about my work in Morocco. I think people wanted some distraction from all they were hearing on the wireless. I gave my usual talk, explaining some of the unusual techniques I had devised for improving agricultural yield and, at the end, two gentlemen approached me.Ian Fleming’s characters were often given names of people he had known and like many authors he was known to base them on amalgams of his own associates, colleagues and family. NARRATOR: What would you do? Stay on and work with those opposed to the Nazis? Or abandon your home and life’s work to try and join the war effort in Britain? 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. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Blanche and I had been in North Africa for years and expected to stay. We did missionary work as well as running two farms and an orphanage. I enjoyed it, the problem-solving element of farming. At one point, I even worked for the Moroccan Royal Family.

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: A ‘floating production and procurement man’. It was well thought out. I was provided with a modest office in Portland House not far from the Houses of Parliament, and next door to MI6, to whom I was ultimately answerable. I had a secretary and three telephones on my desk - one for local calls, one for long distance, and the red one for priority. That’s the one the requests came in on. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I’m pleased to say that even his cycle tires and brakes were provided by me. Very hard to get the materials at that time in France. No need for any cloak and dagger devices though. It was enough we were able to support his very demanding practice rides. The last thing one wanted was for him to take a tumble.Charles kept samples of many of his gadgets which were put on show in many exhibitions. He died in 1992 at his home on the edge of Exmoor. In most cases I was forced to go well outside the normal channels to get anything done. Knowing when something of mine went well - a gadget really worked and out-foxed the enemy, perhaps helping to save a valuable life - was all that I needed by way of inspiration. In an example of lateral thinking, Fraser-Smith used a special left-hand thread for the disguised screw-off top of a hidden-document container; he suggested this would prevent discovery by the "unswerving logic of the German mind", as no German would ever think of trying to unscrew something the wrong way. [4] Charles Fraser-Smith was, to many that knew him in the Second World War, a junior civil servant in the clothing section of the Ministry of Supply in London. In fact this was an elaborate cover for his real task of procuring items for Britain’s intelligence services. He was the James Bond ‘Q’ figure of the Second World War. NARRATOR: Fraser-Smith died in 1992. The following is a recreation based on his memoirs and the writings of those who knew him. His words are spoken by an actor. But the stories contained in them are absolutely real.