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Possum

One of the most effective resistance activities during World War II was the establishment of escape and evasion lines (click here to read the blog Escape Lines). These were elaborate, sophisticated, and clandestine routes set-up to guide downed airmen and escaped POWs back to England.

Today’s blog offers you the opportunity to learn about a former British military intelligence agency dedicated to supporting the escape and evasion lines as well as the Possum Line and its Belgian founder, Dominique Edgard Potier.

Edgard Potier. Photo by anonymous (date unknown). PD-Expired copyright. Wikimedia Commons.
Edgard Potier. Photo by anonymous (date unknown). PD-Expired copyright. Wikimedia Commons.

Did You Know?

Did you know that four sitting United States presidents have been assassinated? Robert Todd Lincoln (1843−1926), the eldest son of Abraham Lincoln, was nearby when three of the presidents were assassinated. Lincoln served in the Union army on Gen. U.S. Grant’s staff and he later became secretary of war under presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. One of Lincoln’s last public positions was an appointment by Benjamin Harrison as minister to the Court of St. James’s in the United Kingdom. 

Lincoln was “hanging out at the White House with some friends” (his words) when news arrived that his father had been shot. He went to the house where President Lincoln was taken across the street from the Ford Theater. He stayed with his father until the president died the next morning on 15 April 1865. During the evening of 30 June 1881, Lincoln met with President Garfield and several other cabinet members when the president asked for his recollection of the events of his father’s assassination. Less than forty-eight hours after that discussion took place, President Garfield was shot while Robert Lincoln stood nearby. Three months later, the president died from an infection of his wound. Lincoln went on to become president of the Pullman Car Co. and in 1901, President William McKinley invited Lincoln to join him at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. When Lincoln arrived by train in Buffalo, he was given the telegram informing him that McKinley had been shot. He rushed to the president’s bedside and was encouraged by McKinley’s progress. However, President McKinley succumbed to infection and died on 14 September 1901. He was the third United States president to have been assassinated and Robert Lincoln was a bystander to all three.

After that, Lincoln said, “There is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.” He never accepted five separate invitations to run for president or vice-president.


British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9 (MI9) 

Many of us are aware of two well-known British intelligence organizations: MI5 and MI6. During World War II, the British War Office created the secret MI9 department with its mission of assisting POWs to escape and to help military personnel (primarily downed Allied airmen) evade capture behind enemy lines in Axis-controlled countries. Escape and evasion lines were established in many of the occupied countries, but the best-known lines originated in Belgium and France. As Allied bombing increased in 1942, the evasion lines became an integral part of resistance activities and perhaps, one of the riskiest. MI9’s headquarters was located at the Shean Block within Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire, England. Read More Possum

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Agent Jack, “M” and the Fifth Column

What is the “Fifth Column”? It is a term that originated during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) to describe a group of people who undermine ⏤ from within ⏤ another larger group. Fifth Column activities can be visible to all or covert and clandestine in nature and typically result in sabotage, disinformation, and espionage. In Britain, its Fifth Column problem, in the form of the British Union of Fascists, was well-known to Churchill and others. However, below the surface, ordinary British citizens were willing to sell out their country to Hitler and the Nazis. They shared a common admiration for Hitler and his anti-Semitic philosophy and thought Britain would be better off under German rule.

Eric Arthur Roberts. Photo by anonymous (anonymous). PD-Fair Use. Wikimedia Commons.
Eric Arthur Roberts. Photo by anonymous (anonymous). PD-Fair Use. Wikimedia Commons.

It wouldn’t be until an unassuming low-level London bank clerk took a leave of absence and resurfaced as a Gestapo agent that the intelligence agencies became fully aware of the magnitude of the underground Fifth Column trying to pass secret military intelligence to the Nazis.


Did You Know?

Did you know that John F. Kennedy was not the only United States president to have been saved at sea during World War II? After turning eighteen, George H.W. Bush enlisted in U.S. Navy and served as a pilot of a Grumman Avenger Torpedo aircraft. Two years later, Lt. Bush flew one of his fifty-eight missions alongside three other Avenger bombers. Each plane carried three aviators. Their mission was to bomb the radio station located on the small island of Chichijima.

Despite the intense flak and anti-aircraft fire, Lt. Bush and the other planes managed to take out the radio station. His plane was hit and falling at a speed of one hundred ninety miles per hour when Lt. Bush bailed out hitting his head on the plane’s tail. He ended up in the water and was able to inflate a small raft which he floated in for four hours before the USS Finback, a submarine, picked him up. This was the second time Lt. Bush had to be plucked out of the water during a mission.

Lt. Bush in the cockpit of the “Barbara III.” Photo by anonymous (date unknown).
Lt. Bush in the cockpit of the “Barbara III.” Photo by anonymous (date unknown).

Unfortunately, the two airmen flying in his plane did not survive. The other planes went down and seven airmen were captured by the Japanese. They were tortured, beheaded, and their livers were cut out for their captors to eat.

Lt. George H.W. Bush was the only survivor of the mission. He would be awarded the Navy’s Distinguished Flying Cross for this mission in addition to three Air Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation for his service during World War II.

Watch Lt. Bush being rescued at sea by the USS Finback. Click here.


British Military Intelligence

There are two primary intelligence departments in Britain: Security Service or MI5 (Military Intelligence Section 5) and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) or MI6. While MI6 is responsible for foreign intelligence, it is MI5 that provides domestic counterintelligence. It is similar to the American intelligence structure of the CIA (foreign) and FBI (domestic).

MI5 was founded in 1909 and is under the authority of the Home Secretary within the cabinet of the prime minister. It had its troubles during the inter-war period (between the two world wars) due to weak leadership. However, its greatest accomplishments during World War II were Operation Double-Cross (click here to read the blog The Double Cross System) and Operation Fifth Column. Both of these initiatives were headed by MI5 spymaster Maxwell Knight.

Maxwell Knight (1900-1968) is generally considered to have been Ian Fleming’s model for the character of “M” in the James Bond series. In the mid-1920s, Knight was working undercover for MI5 by infiltrating early British fascist groups as well as communist cells in England. Knight became MI5’s director of intelligence and eventually head of Section B5(b) which was responsible for infiltrating agents into subversive organizations. Read More Agent Jack, “M” and the Fifth Column