大象传媒

Part Two of an edited oral history interview with Mr. Dafydd A.V. Williams about his wartime experiences as a Wireless Operator initially working at Bletchley Park and subsequently undertaking various postings. The interview was conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

鈥淎fter the Spanish Civil War, Franco of course won in Spain and probably 10s of thousands of Republican Army soldiers went into France to avoid capture. And they were really the backbone of what was known as Franc Tireur Patriot, the FTP which was the underground resistance movement in that area. There had been indications that they were going to use the arms that they had got to do an incursion into Spain.

And also the other job of the Mission was to try and obtain the surrender of the German Garrisons in the German Forts outside Bordeaux harbour. And in fact the German Garrisons did agree to surrender but they said they would surrender only to the British - not to the FTP. We were making arrangements to take the surrender when apparently De Gaulle heard about it and he blew his top and threw out all the British and SOE people and the Jedberg Teams that were in that particular part of France. In that particular part of France, there were no Germans there but there were no British or Americans either, it was a completely uncontrolled area for some time. The FTP and FFI, the Forces Fran莽ais Interieur had come in and were trying to take over. There where German Garrisons on the outskirts of Bordeaux, in fact they didn鈥檛 surrender until the end of the war, they stayed active. Basically, because De Gaulle moved his FFI Forces and there was no real fighting, he managed to get control of the area.

My final job was in fact to organise a plane to fly out, I think he came from Twinwoods in Bedfordshire, it was an American Dakota plane. There would be about five people on a team. I was the Wireless Operator for the team, yes. There was two SIS people, there was an MI9 person and there was MI5 which was the counter Intelligence Service, and myself, that would be five. My knowledge came from passing and coding the telegrams which were going. I was based in Hendaye which is a small town on the French side of the French-Spanish border. In fact we took over the ABHWER villa! They鈥檇 gone by the time! So I had to send a signal to arrange a flight. They landed at a small grass airfield near Tarbes in Central Pyrenees.

We had to get there. I know we must have sent back about 15 people. There were at least three or four SOE people, some MI9 people and there were also some people, they were called the Jedberg 鈥� this was for the Invasion of France. They formed what was known as the Jedberg Teams - that three people, a British and an American and a local person, a team of three with a Wireless Operator 鈥� there would be four in the team. There were about fifty or sixty of these teams sent into France to cause mayhem and to provide Intelligence. They in fact went in, in uniform, they weren鈥檛 in civilian clothes, they were uniformed teams. They were all put onto this one plane. Including the SOE people who had been chucked out of Bordeaux by De Gaulle who were all fairly senior people and are fairly well known people.

I saw that off and then eventually when that ended I went back into Spain, to Madrid. I think we鈥檇 come out in a car, it had Diplomatic plates on, the team. That鈥檚 right, there was a MI9 station van and the SIS man鈥檚 car. The SIS man in fact had been the Rolls Royce representative in Paris before the war and it was in fact a Bentley! A really nice Bentley! One could get petrol on the black market - don鈥檛 forget money was no object. So after Madrid I was then recalled to England.

I must have been arriving back in England in September (1944) and I was then sent on leave I remember. Then I came back to Whaddon Hall and I think that because of what I knew and what I鈥檇 been doing I was kept away from the main operation group, from people I鈥檇 been working with previously. I went into the Design Section - designing equipment and I then went 鈥� as part of that I went up to Tempsford to be taught how to use the special equipment from aircraft to ground which was called Ascension. I did about three of four training flights from Tempsford. It was an operational system. You didn鈥檛 need to know Morse as it was voice and basically you had an aircraft flying at 25,000 or 30,000 feet and then you had the agent on the ground with a small set and you spoke and passed coded messages. The operator, the agent didn鈥檛 need any training to do this. I was being trained how to use the equipment from the air - possibly to be one of the flying operators or alternatively it could have been just to teach me the system. I think again one must emphasise that you were never told the full facts you only knew what you were supposed to be doing, never knew the full picture and one added one and one and made ten. Anyhow after that training I was told I was going to be posted out to the Far East, to India and I was to be Commissioned as a Lieutenant. This is when I went to the Lord Lieutenant and was directly Commissioned. I had a Private鈥檚 uniform on at that time, yes and I remember handing in my brown papers and being given back the blue papers of an Officer.

I went by train from Bletchley to Bedford, accompanied by one of the Officers. I was pleased that I had made it into that status although having worked for nearly two years in a civilian capacity and one knew what one was doing and it was a nice job which one enjoyed. I then went on leave to get a uniform.

Then I was posted to the Far East. Again why an insignificant Lieutenant but in fact I went out on a Royal Imperial flying boat. They needed me quickly is the answer! I spent quite an enjoyable flight - in those days it took four nights to fly from Swanage to Calcutta. The first night was in Sicily, the second night in Cairo, the third night in Habbinaya in Iraq, the fourth night in Karachi and then we landed in Calcutta on the afternoon of the fifth day. One only flew during the day, you didn鈥檛 fly at night. We stayed in hotels, except in Habbinaya where you were in the RAF base. I remember staying in the Shepherd鈥檚 Hotel in Cairo. I arrived in Calcutta, this would have been about January 1945. My job in Calcutta was to run, well to be in charge of the training school that trained operators to go into Burma and Malaya and also the receiving station and transmitting station to operate to those agents. There was a big expansion of the operation at this time in connection with the planned Invasion of Malaya. It had been decided to expand the intelligence operation by sending in about six of these teams of one local officer, a native speaker and a wireless operator and they were going into Malaya.

I trained them up and they went into the Field. And then my next job was in fact to go myself on the Invasion of Malaya and operate the main base station in Malaya to send the information back. I remember I went up to Delhi and drove the Signals truck down to Nasik near Poona in South West India waiting for the embarkation and that was where of course we heard that the atom bombs had been dropped and there was no need for the Invasion of Malaya.

It would be August by then so after that I went back to Delhi and then back to Calcutta. The next job I did in Calcutta was a very short job 鈥� at that time there were problems with the Indian National Army which had been serving with the Japanese and there was quite serious civil unrest at that time. It was decided to send Intelligence people to about four of the main towns. I got some Signals people and trained them up and sent them out, to set a network up to send Intelligence back. And then it was decided that I would be sent to Tokyo to start the main station in Tokyo, in the Embassy in Tokyo.

It was decided that I would be sent to Japan. So the plan was to fly to Singapore and then take a ship from Singapore to Japan. I flew out to Singapore and then in Singapore it was decided we would go in as civilians to Japan, as part of the Embassy. Then apparently McArthur heard about this and he was not prepared to have British Intelligence staff in Tokyo. So after about two months of telegrams being sent from Bevin to 鈥� I saw the telegrams 鈥� he still refused to allow British Intelligence into Tokyo. So I then went back into uniform and was posted as an ordinary signals persons with my group 鈥� to the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces to Kure in Japan. We went in a boat I remember to Kure and then as soon as we arrived at Kure I caught the train to Tokyo into the Embassy. And then as soon as we got to the Embassy I took off the uniform and reverted to civilian status and I was in Tokyo for about a year.

The British Embassy immediately after the end of the Japanese war wasn鈥檛 in fact an Embassy. It was 鈥� of course there was no government to require an Embassy so it was in fact a commissioned ship in the Royal Navy known as HMS Return although it was still basically an Embassy. The Head of the Mission was Admiral Fraser but the Foreign Office people were there. Perhaps I鈥檇 better say this, I鈥檝e never seen it in the press before 鈥� I should say that the person that I reported to in Tokyo was John Profumo, he was Head of our Section! I was in the Wireless Section.

Well, life in Japan immediately after the war was very pleasant. There have been recent programmes about what it was like. But because the Emperor had accepted the surrender and had authorised all his troops to co-operate, they did co-operate. The whole of my time in Japan there was never any bother at all, you felt perfectly safe walking out. There was never any spitting, booing, not any unpleasantness at all. As an example I can remember coming back late at night into Tokyo from somewhere outside and the jeep broke down. And we pulled up outside a house to try to repair the tyre and immediately the people who owned the house came out with hot water and lemon to wash our hands and towels, really that is the kind of courtesy which one got.

Another thing again might be of interest - because again I鈥檝e never seen this in any published data 鈥� one had a lot of spare time in Tokyo, it wasn鈥檛 particularly busy and one of the jobs I used to do was helping in the War Crimes Commission section. To help them just with the book work and doing odd jobs for them. One of the odd jobs was they had brought up from Changi Goal in Singapore a Japanese Lieutenant Commander who was a Doctor and had been the Doctor in Changi Goal. He had been brought up for war crimes as a war criminal. There were so many affidavits saying that he had done all he could to help the British Prisoners of War during his time in Changi Goal that the decision was made just locally to release him. My job was in fact to take him from prison back to his home, it was just outside Tokyo. He spoke good English, he鈥檇 been educated in France as a Doctor and was well versed in Western ways. Because of that I became a great friend of his and I used to stay with him quite a few weekends because he had a house at the seaside just outside Tokyo. But it just goes to show that not all Japanese were as how they are painted. As he explained to me the trouble is we were taught that to surrender makes you inferior, you die rather than surrender and any person who has surrendered isn鈥檛 worthy of living - that was what we believed. I wasn鈥檛 involved in any of the trials although I did attend two or three times the main war crimes trial of Tojo and the others.

By this time I was of course, having spent four and a half years, I was thinking of leaving and in fact finishing my education because I鈥檇 got a place in Cambridge to go back to, I鈥檇 made certain of that before I started. So I said that I wasn鈥檛 going to continue, that I wished to retire, it must have been January or February 1947. Again, to show the friendliness of the place, Admiral Fraser gave me personal orders to all Fleet Officers to expedite my travel back to the United Kingdom. So with these orders I could go to any Fleet Office and get on any ship going anywhere at any time! Laughter! In fact I took the ship called HMS Bonaventure which was a midget submarine depot ship from Tokyo via China to Singapore. That was a very nice adventure and a fortnight in Shanghai, a fortnight in Hong Kong and then back to Singapore. Then I took the HMS Victorious, the aircraft carrier back from Singapore. I also had got a visa from the Russian representative on the Control Commission giving me a visa to travel back to England via the Trans-Siberia Railway. Laughter! But I chickened out on doing that one but I could have done! I did have the full itinerary in my possession, the visas and passports to travel back via Moscow. So anyhow I then came back and I spent about four months or five months just working in Hanslope Park in the Store Room earning some money. I was working there at Hanslope until about August I suppose and then I went up to Cambridge in the September of that year. After three years at Cambridge I took my degree and then I had to find a job.

It would be 1950 by now and I was offered three jobs. One with the 大象传媒, one with the United Nations in New York and the other was back with the 鈥極ld Firm鈥�. I turned down the 鈥極ld Firm鈥� because this time there was going to be no promotion there - it would just be a low level job. I didn鈥檛 take the American job because I was courting my wife so I joined the 大象传媒. Well, I was of course an engineer. The first job was actually up at the old television studios at Alexandra Palace in the original EMI studios at Alexandra Palace. From there I went into the Specialist Departments. I moved through building television studios, helping the building of Television Centre then I was sent out to New York for three years as Senior Engineer. In New York, I ended up actually as the 大象传媒鈥檚 representative in New York for six months. I came back and I was responsible for building the Short wave transmitter stations including the relay bases on Ascension Island and in Antigua and throughout the world. I was then promoted to be in Charge of the Department actually running the Medium and Long wave transmitters of the 大象传媒. Then I became Chief Engineer of the External Broadcasting - of the whole of the External Broadcasting

One of the jobs I do which I see my handiwork very often 鈥� I was involved in the development of the film recording equipment for the Coronation in 1953. And if you look at the old pictures of that you will often see when the Archbishop is just about to put the Crown on the Queen鈥檚 head the picture suddenly does a little jump and that was me trying to get a better picture! Then I took early retirement at 55 and joined the International Telecommunications Union and went out to run a project in Bangladesh. It was interesting overseeing the change from black and white television to colour television in Bangladesh. After that finished I went out to Mozambique for six months and then I came back and was in Geneva for about nine years or so really doing half time work. That was quite nice, six months a year in Geneva and six months retired. I fully retired when I was 70!鈥�

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