Bailey - Forgotten voices of the secret war an inside history of special operations during the Second World War

The Imperial War Museum has long been concerned with preserving therecords and memories of men and women with experience of recent war andconflict. Forgotten Voices of the Secret War draws on hundreds of hours ofinterviews in the museum's sound archive that tell of the exploits of theSpecial Operations Executive, a secret British organisation set up early in theSecond World War to encourage subversion and carry out sabotage in enemyoccupiedterritory.

During its short, six-year existence, SOE helped channel vast amounts ofarms and supplies to tens of thousands of resistance workers and guerrillas. Itdispatched hundreds of its own agents, men and women, to provide trainingand encouragement, destroy key installations and harass enemy forces. InEurope, SOE was the principal Allied force engaged in stimulating andsupporting resistance movements. By the end of the war, its reach was globaland its deeds ranked among some of the most daring and dramatic carried outby Allied forces.

What follows is a narrative history of SOE told through personaltestimonies: snapshots of life in SOE and of the cloak-and-dagger work inwhich agents engaged. With official permission, almost two hundred survivorstell their stories here, speaking freely about their experiences and bringingfresh perspectives to bear on this remarkable organisation. The popular imageof SOE may remain dominated by the efforts and sacrifices of its agents inoccupied France, but the museum's oral history recordings, hitherto barelytapped, reflect very fully the spread and diversity of SOE's activities and thevariety of personnel involved. Interviewees include Britons and foreignnationals; civilians and servicemen; officers and other ranks; instructors whotaught agents specialist skills; technicians who developed specialist weaponsand equipment; staff at secret headquarters as far apart as London, Cairo andColombo; aircrew and naval personnel who transported agents and stores intooccupied territory; agents who were dispatched to attack specific targets, fromvital enemy lines of supply to Germany's atomic bomb plans; agents who weresent out to arm, train and fight alongside groups as different as the Frenchresistance, partisans in Yugoslavia and tribes in the Burmese jungle; andagents who survived brutal treatment after falling into enemy hands. Indeed,this book seeks to underline both the complexities of SOE and the realities ofbehind-the-lines work, from the terrible risks run to the appalling reprisals onoccupied populations which agents' actions could precipitate. There arestories here of treachery and tragedy and of some of SOE's greatest disasters.There are tales, too, of the dilemmas encountered as SOE sought to work withindividuals and groups focused as much on civil war and revolution as onfighting the Axis.

Roderick Bailey