Orders, Decorations and Medals

‘Thursday 1st March [1945]

Went with Their Majesties to see Top Selbourne’s secret exhibition of S.O.E. appliances in the South Kensington Natural History Museum; this was so interesting that the visit, estimated at forty-five minutes, lasted one and a half hours. We saw a great diversity of death-dealing devices, as used by the Maquis, paratroops, commandos, etc., and some very ingenious methods of communication. I had a special interest in it all, as I saw the birth of S.O.E. from MI (R), the department of the War Office in which I was a voluntary worker during the summer of 1940.’

From King’s Counsellor - Abdication and War: the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (edited by Duff Hart-Davis, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006)

An important wartime visitor’s book from the secret exhibition of Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) weapons and appliances held at the Natural History Museum in 1945, an exhibition visited by the Royal Family and hundreds of personalities from the world of clandestine warfare

dark green leather binding with gilt decoration to cover and page ends, 195mm. by 250mm., 28pp. of the book bearing a total of several hundred visitor signatures from the period March to December 1945, the majority of them - Their Majesties visit aside - under the page headings ‘Date’, ‘Name (Block Letters)’, ‘Station’ and ‘Signature’.

Accordingly a document with considerable “cloak and dagger” personality and unit research potential, with representatives from wide variety of clandestine departments, including:

Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.)

Inter-Services Research Bureau (I.S.R.B.); Military Operations 1, Special Plans (M.O. 1 (S.P.)); Stations VII, IX, XII and XV, the latter being the Thatched Barn at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, a camouflage centre where agents often received their final equipment before going into the Field; Training School S.T.S. 41 (at Gumley Hall, Market Harborough); Special Operations, Mediterranean (S.O. (M.)); and Far East, Force 136




Military Intelligence

M.I. 2, M.I. 3, M.I. 5 and M.I. 6, the former two covering the U.S.S.R., Baltic States and Scandinavia

And representatives from the:

Admiralty
Air Ministry
Cabinet War Room
Foreign Office
Political Intelligence Department (P.I.D.)
American Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.)

the first page signed and dated by the King and Queen, ‘George R.I., March 1st 1945’ and ‘Elizabeth R., March 1st 1945’, as per the visit described by Sir Alan Lascelles, together with a further 44 signatures from the same occasion, among them those of “Top” Selbourne, the Minister of Economic Warfare; Major-General Colin Gubbins, D.S.O., M.C., Chief of S.O.E.; H. N. Sporborg, Vice-Chief of S.O.E.; M. P. Murray, Deputy Chief of S.O.E.; Air Commodore A. R. Boyle, C.M.G., O.B.E., M.C., Assistant Chief S.O.E.; Rear-Admiral A. H. Taylor, C.B., O.B.E., ex-officio S.O.E. Naval Director; further senior officers and a dozen or so Army N.C.Os and F.A.N.Ys, most probably ex-instructors with knowledge of the weapons and appliances on display

The next entry, dated 23 April, for another part of V.I.Ps, the 10 signatures including those of General H. “Pug” Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff and Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee

Thereafter, as evidenced by the following 26pp. of signatures, a constant flow of S.O.E. and other clandestine personnel of all ranks visited the exhibition, right up until the last day of December when M. P. Murray, Deputy Chief of S.O.E., made the final entry in the book; so, too, another royal party:

this page signed and dated by Queen Mary, ‘Mary R., 16th Novr. 1945’, and by the Princesses ‘Elizabeth, 16th Nov. 1945’ and ‘Margaret, 16th Nov. 1945’

A random selection from the remaining hundreds of signatories reveals such personalities as Sir George Binney of S.O.E’s Scandinavian section, together with the scientist R. K. Callow (2 May); Ian Pirie, an S.O.E. officer who had escaped from Greece and Crete in 1941 (26 May); S.O.E. agents Max Mikkelsen, Knud Pedersen and Hans Hansen, who were captured in Denmark in 1942 (1 June - having been recently liberated from a concentration camp); Commander G. A. Holdsworth, D.S.O., O.B.E., a long-served S.O.E. officer recently returned from Italy (29 June); Lieutenant-Colonel G. R. Musgrave, who commanded the “Jedburgh” Traning School at S.O.E’s Milton Hall (4 July); deputations from the Admiralty and Air Ministry, the latter including fighter ace Wing Commander George Burges, D.F.C., O.B.E. (10 -11 July); the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Colonel Sir Maurice Drummond (18 July); a deputation from M.I. 5 (23 July), including Chief Superintendent Leonard Burt, who had been commissioned in the Intelligence Corps in 1940, and became a highly successful interrogator of, among others, the spies Jose Key and Alan Nunn May - the latter was hanged at Wandsworth Prison in July 1942; Lieutenant-Colonel J. Freeman Lincoln of the O.S.S., a Harvard graduate who later became a novelist and short story writer (7 August); Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary (27 August); Claude “Z” Dansey of the S.I.S., with a deputation of his personnel (3 September); large deputations from S.O.E’s Watford and Wembley establishments (10-11 September), thus those involved in wireless research, production and packing; an Air Ministry party headed by Group Captain F. C. Beresford-Peirse, including Squadron Leader H. Stiles, a veteran of S.O.E. agent and supply missions (18 September); Vera Atkins, Buckmaster’s principal assistant in ‘F’ Section, S.O.E. (7 November); and Commandant Marion Gamwell of the F.A.N.Y. (4 December): a quite unique and fascinating record representative of “The Secret War” 1939-45 £1500-2000

Between 1942-45 Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) had use of several sealed off galleries in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, where numerous gadgets and weapons were conceived and developed. The Museum’s basement is also said to have housed a room known as “The Toyshop”, while a lecture and exhibition room was established by Station IX staff on the 1st floor.

In 2004, a plaque dedicated to the men and women of S.O.E. was unveiled at the entrance to the Mammals Gallery.