Review: MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two – by Helen Fry

I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of this home, in his back garden, where he had erected a wigwam, at the top of his garden, lay a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. The lost fascinating of items to me as a kid were all his ‘secret’ gadgets. He had all these sort of special James Bond Q-like military aids, secret maps, secret compartments. The most fascinating of all his possessions for me was his ‘trick’ compass which was a normal RAF uniform button, which unscrewed to reveal a miniature, fully-working compass. Whenever I visited him I forced him to show me it God knows how many times – with the full story of how, if he was shot down by the Luftwaffe, behind enemy lines, this little compass would help him to escape and evade capture and get home safe and sound. Of course, he was lucky and although he saw a lot of action, he never got downed in Nazi Occupied Europe or in the later stages of the war in Japanese held South East Asia. He always mentioned this secret intelligence service MI9 which was much more powerful and effective and secret than MI5 or MI6 or any others and was the ‘real’ secret’ service but that you wouldn’t read about them in any newspapers etc. I didn’t really pay much attention, just enjoyed the idea of British ingenuity and secret gadgets. Old Gaga retained a fascinat6ion with all gadgets for the rest of his life, and any Xmas or Birthday presents usually involved some sort of novelty gadget style fun toy that would keep him amused for a bit.

Fast forward to the actual book review now. I have read this and appreciate that MI9 did exist ad that everything he said was basically completely true and indeed the book documents the full lists of gadgets handed out to RAF pilots and others who faced the potential of capture on foreign shores. Indeed James Bond, creator Sir Ian Fleming was connected to MI9 along other (less fêted) famous espionage figures such as Kim Philby. MI9 were the par excellence intelligence service of World War 2 for Britain – It encompassed Room 900 and also IS9. Their mission was focussed on ‘Escape and Evasion’. Whereas services such as SOE, MI6 and GCHQ (Bletchley Park – Alan Turing, Enigma Code, computers etc) did exist and indeed were often established due to WW2, MI9 was so clandestine that very little information has ever been released and much is still locked away in the archives. This book therefore was well-researched. It does tell the most remarkable tales, one of the most exciting collection of narratives I have encountered in studying WW2 history.

MI9 did indeed liaise and work with the collaboration of the other intelligence agencies, although frictions andEscape andEvasion, rivalries did exist. We look at its formation at the start of the book.

It was created specifically to deal with the issue of servicemen who were ‘behind enemy lines’. In addition to ‘Escape and Evasion ‘ which was the main goal, it also was a direct intelligence-gathering operation with any repatriated personnel being debriefed for vital intelligence about enemy movements and other critical information related to the enemy and the situation of other allies in hostile territory. They set up training programmes for all personnel such as RAF pilots, and D-Day Landing soldiers, who were at risk of enemy capture.

The book contains lots of detail of the escape routes set up, often run by families of resistance Europeans, many young women, who were dissatisfied with Nazi occupation and felt compelled to actively engage the enemy by assisting allied servicemen in any way possible, often very much putting their own lives and the lives of their families and loved ones directly on the line. Indeed if an allied soldier was caught by the Nazis he would often be interred in a POW camp but as unpleasant as the experience was, he would survive. The brave European citizens risking all for the ‘rat-lines’ would have no such luxury. If they were betrayed or captured by the Nazis they were simply shot – Indeed for every successful repatriation, there was an estimated one dead European civilian in the analysis of post war statistics. These people often did it all at their own expense and it is to the credit of I9 that as the war ended and in the aftermath one of the main mission focuses was to provide good financial renumeration for these European heroes and heroines..  The Comet Line was probably the most famous of the escape routes and an obvious lead character was the remarkable young Dédée. Rat Lines were operational in Paris, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy and indeed in Germany itself and also in South East Asia, in the jungles where the attitude to prisoners by Japanese soldiers was entirely different and Pyrenees and Alpine mountain passes were replaced by tropical rainforest jungle. We hear of the Naga Queen in the Naga Hills of Burma.

Famous stories such as ‘Escape from Colditz’ were based on reality as indeed was ‘Escape to Victory’. I was amazed at the ingenuity of prisoner escapes and just how well organized and versatile and creative the allied POWs were. They used to get smuggled board games from home sent in, secretly containing all the necessary gadgets and escape materials.

MI9 was disbanded after World War 2 and to my knowledge doesn’t exist today. It makes James Bond even look dull. It is such an exciting really war time adventure story and the truth is we are probably only just scraping the surface of the reality of what actually happened in MI9. It’s like ‘Allo Allo’ just without the faux-pas comedy and some real bravery and action. In an age of #brexit it is worth noting just how much the Europeans put on the line for our troops and the real heros of the story are not the POWs or the MI9 officers, but the simple young women and families who went that extra mile to defeat Nazism and win World War 2 for the allied cause.

#centuryofgaga My grandad was Flight Lieutenant William Gordon Gerrard (26.05.1923-14.02.2015). sadly he didn’t make it to celebrate his 100^th Birthday (today: 26.05.2023) but I’m most certainly raising a glass to him up in the surly bonds, and this book review is part of the tribute I pay to him to continue his legacy and that of his fellow patriotic countrymen who served us so well during World War 2 and who must be pretty thin on the ground nowadays as we lose aa wise generation who understood what a a genuine global conflagration consisted of.  In this tense hostile global atmosphere where it’s pretty much boiling over militarily into World War 3, it makes the study of the history of the previous world wars that much a critical pursuit or paramount importance and therefore I’d encourage you to go out and read Helen Fry’s book on MI9, perhaps.