Now that Churchill’s Spy School is finished, it’s full steam ahead on our next two projects.  I am very very eager to find as many veterans of Gulf War I as I possibly can.  I’d really love to hear any memories, experiences and thoughts and to see any photos or videos taken at the time.  Please get in touch with me by email or use our contact form if you can help.  Thank you …

We recently went to London Television Centre to present an evening about our latest documentary ‘Churchill’s Spy School’ (to be shown next on 10th and 11th July on History, History HD and Virgin TV).  We had a great team of speakers – Richard Melman, Channels Director from BSkyB, Adam Ford from POV (our cameraman on the film), Brian Fraser-Smith (whose father designed the Q gadgets used by WWII secret agents) and Susan Tomkins from Beaulieu (the ‘Spy School’).  We showed a number of clips from the programme and there was a stimulating Q&A session afterwards and a good time seemed to be had by all!  Below is the lovely letter I received afterwards from the organizer of the event … and a very big thank you to all my speakers

RTS LONDON CENTRE

 Dear Emma 

Thank you (and Mike) for bringing the story of Churchill’s Spy School to our screens, and then to orchestrating and leading the Production Focus for RTS London last night.  Not only did you bring and so eloquently explain why and how you made it, but your supporting cast of Susan, Brian and Elspeth so explained the story and gave so much more information to us in the audience.  Our great thanks to them for giving up their time and sharing their knowledge and experiences. Adam’s camera work and eye for good images also came through very strongly – and I wish that we could have looked at this and how POV Production company operates in more detail. It was such a great evening for all who were there – And exceeded my expectations for the event.  You entranced a very diverse audience – programme makers across a few genres, cameramen, and “technical” as well as HR/Legal.  I have emails popping in thanking me and wanting to pass on thanks to all of you.   Many also wished you to pass on our deep appreciation to  Noreen, Bob, Henri, Joachim and others for what they did 65 year ago, and that they have told  us, and the world, so that we can remember them – and those that did not survive. It was a very high note on which to end our 2009/10 session and a very high standard to which to aspire in 2011. We are so Indebted to you all for coming, informing and educating us all and being so free with your time and knowledge – and making such a great programme.  

Peter Weitzel, RTS London

Screening from 17th May 2010
History, History HD and Virgin TV

I was very very sad to hear that one of our interviewees, former radio operator Henry Diacono, passed away on the 19th March.  He had been ill for some time.  His very good friend and another star of our film, Noreen Riols, saw him just before he died and was able to say her goodbyes.  He was a very brave man and one of life’s true heroes.  Rest in peace Henry …

We have a new title for our documentary.  ‘Churchill’s Spy School’.  And a transmission date – Monday 17th May.  We’re pretty much on target I think, just a few black holes where the archive will go, but not as many as there were a couple of weeks ago, thankfully!  We’re getting the archive from Footage Farm, who have been brilliant, so helpful and very reasonable rates too.  Our main interviewee, Noreen Riols, came over from France last week to visit her wartime home at Beaulieu.  It was a real trip down memory lane for her, especially walking around the ruins of the old abbey and reading the plaque honouring all the SOE agents who lost their lives.  She also had some very sad news for us, that another of our interviewees, Henry Diacomo, is very very ill and has been moved into a hospice.  I would like to dedicate the film to Henry, a former radio operator and very brave, yet extremely modest man.  On a happier note, we have had the go-ahead to research and develop a series of programmes about military music and have lined up some experts in the field to pick their brains!  It is a fascinating area of history and one that hasn’t really been explored before on tv (to the best of my knowledge), so we’re very much looking forward to putting that together.  Ken Hames, who presented our ‘Soldiers’ Stories: Northern Ireland’ doco, will present, as he is quite an authority on military music himself and it will be great to work with Ken again.

The ‘Spy School‘ documentary is coming along very nicely.  All eight parts are now assembled with interviews in place and commentary written – and it’s more or less the right length, which is a big relief!  Next for me  is the fun part, adding pictures and music.  Next for our film crew is a trip to Jersey to interview the daughter of legendary secret agent Violette Szabo.   Tania Szabo was very young when her mother was captured by the Germans, tortured and later executed at Ravensbruck.  But she has built up a vivid picture of her mother’s life through talking to some of Violette’s fellow agents, such as Bob Maloubier who was with her on her final mission and is also interviewed for ‘Churchill’s Spy School‘.  Tania has wonderful stories to tell, including the one about the dress her mother brought back from France for her and which she wore to accept her mother’s posthumous George Cross. We’ve been asked if the finished film can be shown at a special screening in Paris at an SOE and Resistance conference in November.  I think the answer will be a very definite ’yes’, as long as I deliver it personally!  I’m having a day off from editing today and writing a proposal for another possible documentary.  We have just been entrusted with a diary, never published or publicised before, written by a young girl during a very famous battle in WWII.  I can’t say too much more about it right now, but having read the diary today, it provides an incredibly personal, moving and unique insight into the horrors of life in a small village under daily attack  and describes the special relationship that developed between the local people and the elite British airborne division which was fighting there.  I think we have something very special here and a fabulous story to tell.

Very exciting news for us!  POV has been invited to do a  presentation for the Royal Television Society in London about our documentary currently in production for History ‘Churchill’s Spy School‘.   This is the first time we’ll have done something like this, so I am hoping to assemble an A-Team of people to speak!  I am hoping our commissioner at History, Richard Melman, will be able to talk about the commissioning process, from the idea first landing on his desk, through the various discussions about content and style.  I have also approached our young and enthusiastic SOE historian Dr Roderick Bailey, as he would be able to give a fascinating insight into the background and historic context of SOE.  The RTS are very interested to hear more about the interviewees, for obvious reasons – they are former WWII SOE operatives, including Joachim Ronneberg, Bob Maloubier, Henri Diacomo and Noreen Riols, who have led incredible lives and are now in their 80s and 90s.  As the event organizer says, “this may be one of the last times we can hear some of these gallant people speaking for themselves, something that makes this programme compelling”.  Our cameraman Adam Ford will be able to give a very interesting insight into what these people were actually like, as he travelled with the director, Mike Ford, to Norway, across France and around the UK to capture the interviews.  The organizer also said he would like us to talk about our new website and blog (designed by john-chadwick.com), which he liked very much  and said that the audience would be interested to hear how this is working for us, which I guess is ‘very well’ since this is how the RTS came across news of our documentary in the first place!  The event is being held in May, so I’ll let you know how it goes, wish us luck!

So now Christmas is over, it’s down to business – making a 2 hour film about WWII secret agents for History.  I’ve got a deadline looming which is always good for focusing the mind!  The crew are still mopping up a few loose ends – in fact they are filming 1940s recons around Bournemouth at the moment – and I  have shut myself away in the edit suite – actually the top floor of our house, so no excuses for me not to get to work – and this is where I’ll be for the foreseeable future!  And I’ve made a start, which always feels good.  The first two parts have gone together pretty well.  Mainly because we have a wonderful woman, now in her 80s,  called Noreen Riols as our central interviewee.  Noreen is immensely engaging and has a great way of telling a story – I’ll bet she was quite a heart-breaker in her day.  She was just 18 when war broke out and left the Lycee Francais in London, where she was studying because of her natural ability to pick up languages, and thought she would join the Wrens – mainly because she like their hats!  But instead, she was cherry-picked and taken to a secret location (which turned out to be the SOE headquarters in Baker Street), for interviews and vetting, before being recruited into Churchill’s new ‘Secret Army’.  The SOE was basically formed to train up agents to be dropped behind enemy lines and cause as much disruption to Hitler’s plans as possible].   Anyway, Noreen passed with flying colours and after a spell working at HQ, she was transferred to the SOE ‘Finishing School’ at Beaulieu in the New Forest, the basis of our film, where she worked as a decoy.  She talks about going to Bournemouth on very ‘James Bond’ style operations to train the agents in surveillance, counter-surveillance and she has some extremely amusing anecdotes about luring male agents into lingerie departments to see if she could embarrass them.  Because of her looks, she was also used as a ‘honeytrap’ – I think is the best way to describe it.  The idea was to test the security sense of the trainee agent when he’d had a few drinks and was in the company of a beautiful young woman.  If she could catch him out and get him to tell her about his training or perhaps even the plans for his drop, Noreen’s job was done and  the agent would be in serious trouble the next day with the senior officers at Beaulieu.  I think she found this deception quite hard sometimes, especially if she was actually fond of the young man in question.  She mentioned one Danish student in particular who was ‘an Adonis’ (her description!) and they were getting on extremely well.  Not surprisingly, he told Noreen everything.  When he had his debrief at Beaulieu the following day and he found out that Noreen had ‘betrayed’ him, he was so angry and hurt and turned on her.  She was very upset by this at the time.  But as she says now, loose talk could kill and it was better to find out over here, rather than once he was operating in occupied France, where it wouldn’t just be his life on the line.  Interesting stuff.  I had to stop early today to deal with my frozen pipes but tomorrow I’ll be tackling a sequence about safe-blowing and a famous Glaswegian career criminal and safe-blower called Johnny Ramensky … in case you’re wondering, he was let out of prison early to go down to Beaulieu and teach the trainee agents all he knew!  Quite a character. 

When we started looking for an expert to interview about techniques for surviving in the wild, we never expected to find someone quite so perfectly qualified as Jonny Crockett, who runs Survival School, one of the top wilderness bushcraft schools in the UK.   Not only is he rugged, handsome and a thoroughly engaging interviewee (which always makes the job easier!) –  he also knows his stuff.  By the end of the day, we would have learnt the basic principles of survival and wilderness bushcraft – navigation, fire making, shelter building, and food and water preparation and collection.  He also told us about traps and snares, natural navigation, knife sharpening, compass navigation, edible plants, fire lighting by friction, cooking techniques, tree identification and uses for different woods, camp craft, water sourcing, collection, filtration and purification, game preparation (fish, mammal and bird) and more.

Jonny passion for bushcraft came from his grandmother, who introduced him to edible plants in the hedgerows near her home.  He then went on his first survival course when he was 14, so his knowledge comes from a genuine long-term enthusiasm for the subject.   After a career in the military, where he specialised in survival, he has continued to work with the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force, as well as civilians,  teaching survival skills.  This he does with common sense, logic and in a totally down to earth style.  And as we were to find out, he certainly isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty when it comes to demonstrations.  Many of the techniques he showed us were learnt from around the world where these skills are still used as a way of life.

We arranged to meet Jonny in one of his training centres near Exeter in Devon and the idea was for him to show us ways in which WWII agents would have survived in the wild when dropped behind enemy lines in France and what kind of natural materials they could have used.  The agents would have had four basic priorities – fire, food, water and shelter.  We spent a fascinating day with Jonny demonstating ways in which these needs could be achieved.  He showed us how the agents would have been taught to light a near-smokeless fire and how they would have filtered water.   When it comes to building shelters and hides, Jonny has had years of experience and explained how important it would have been to select the location – they would have needed to see the enemy approaching,  but at the same time they needed to avoid detection.  The hides would have been very simple, low to the ground and affording natural cover, for example tucked away under a bush or tree.  In a woodland, there would have been an abundance of food, but it is critical to avoid accidental poisoning – poison hemlock has killed people who mistook it for its relations – wild carrots or parsnips.  Agents would  have been taught to look out for chestnuts, sorrel, edible roots, nuts and berries.   In one of the most graphic demonstrations, Jonny showed us how agents would have been taught to make simple traps to catch rabbits, squirrels and perhaps pigeons and then prepare them without using a knife.  Jonny expertly skinned a rabbit using  just a small piece of flint, before cooking it on a smokeless fire.

This course teaches you the fundamental principles of survival and wilderness bushcraft including navigation, fire making, shelter building, and food and water preparation and collection. You will also cover the following subjects: traps and snares, natural navigation, knife sharpening, compass navigation, edible plants, fire lighting by friction, cooking techniques, tree identification and uses for different woods, camp craft, water sourcing, collection, filtration and purification, game preparation (usually fish, mammal and bird) and more.

If an agent had to move from the woodland into a town or village to carry out a mission, it was important to be able to clean-up after a week of living in the woods.  Jonny showed us simple methods they could have employed, for instance, using a thistle-like plant that looked like a small hedgehog to comb unruly hair, chewing on hazel sticks to clean teeth (a method still used in Africa),  and washing with horsechestnut leaves, which contain a natural soapy substance.   By the end of our day with Jonny, we were beginning to understand the fundamental principles of survival and wilderness bushcraft - so remember, if you go down to the woods today – take Jonny Crockett with you!

www.survivalschool.co.uk

We interview a lot of people in our line of work.  Some of them you’d never get to meet normally, but because you’re making a programme about a certain subject, you have the good fortune to be given an insight into other people’s worlds and experiences.  We have just met someone with a unique skill.  A very rare and unique skill.   Paul Childs teaches this skill, but only to very few people and they have to be vetted before they even get through the door.  Paul has to be very careful who he teaches and why they want to learn.  What he teaches is silent killing – WWII style, as developed originally by the masters of silent killing, Fairbairn and Sykes.    So, as you can imagine, this interview was a real eye-opener.  In essence,  silent killing is close combat but mostly without weapons – your hands, your feet, your body become weapons.  When properly trained, obviously!  Paul runs CODA [Combative Oriental and Defendu Arts], a closed shop group that aims to keep alive the orignal WWII system of silent killing.

William Ewart Fairbairn was a soldier, police officer, and exponent of hand-to-hand combat  for the Shanghai municipal police between the World Wars.  Widely believed to be the inspiration for James Bond, he was like an early Bruce Lee, in that he and his colleague Eric Anthony Sykes, developed a new cross-training martial arts fighting system, based on jujutsu, known as Defendu.   This became the basis for the training system taught to SOE agents during WWII, which is why we were initially interested.   SOE agents, who were operating behind enemy lines in occupied Europe, needed, above all else, to be inconspicuous.  They needed to blend in.  Very often, weapons were not an option.  So they had to be taught to rely on the power of their body.  Their hands and feet became their impromptu weapons.  The techniques they were taught were designed to kill – to eliminate any opposition quickly, effectively and above all, silently.  Hard to describe the methods here, but they were demonstrated for us very well by instructors at Paul’s school and will feature in our Churchill’s Spy School documentary next Spring on History.    In practice, silent killing was  used to dispatch Nazi sentries and other German troops and these quick, lethal techniques were so effective that the German Army Command was forced to develop counter measures to what they termed English Gangster Methods.   A manual was printed in 1942 for German troops called ‘Silent Killing – Nazi Counters to Fairbairn-Sykes Techniques’ and issued to all German soldiers.

Fairbairn also taught his system to the commandos and it was in a top secret location that Colonel Rex Applegate of the US Army studied.  Applegate would later go on to teach the US Marines and Rangers, as well as OSS [the American counterpart of the SOE] operatives, and later the FBI and CIA.  It became the foundation of their basic training.

I was interested to know whether male or female SOE agents were more effective at silent killing.  Paul didn’t hesitate in his answer.  Female agents made the most lethal silent killers.  They were better at getting in closer proximity to male German sentries, for obvious reasons.  But also they were mentally stronger when it came to using the techniques they’d been taught.  According to Paul, male agents preferred playing with guns than dispatching Germans with their bare hands!

Paul also showed us a valuable piece in his collection – the forerunner of the Commando knife, which was also developed by Fairbairn and Sykes.  One of the most famous military fighting knives, the Fairbairn-Sykes knife, which is still used by Royal Marine commandos today,  is a double-edged weapon with a distinctive ‘vase’ grip.  The beauty of this knife was that is was more versatile than more traditional weapons and was nicely weighted for throwing, but could also be used to slash or stab.  Its design made it perfect for slipping between the ribs and into vital organs or up through the base of the skull and into the brain in a rear attack, a method which could silence a German sentry very effectively.

Before we finished the interview, we were curious to know why Paul and his team of instructors were so determined to keep alive the tradition of the Fairnairn-Sykes method of silent killing.  Simple.  Paul said not only is it part of our heritage, but that it was also out of respect to all the operatives who used it during WWII and for the part it had played in keeping so many of them alive during dangerous missions.  But finally he said, you never know when it may need to be taken off the shelf, dusted down and used again … and when that day comes, Paul and his team will be ready …