SECRET WAR OF CHARLES FRASER-SMITH

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CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: He said he was looking for someone who wasn’t an insider, someone with the kind of brain that could cut corners. The civil servants in his office were too hidebound and inflexible for a time of national crisis. Well, I jumped at the chance. Unknown to Charles, Lt. Commander Ewan Montagu had conceived a plan that required this container along with the items. Also unknown to Charles, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, a neighbour in Croxley Green, who usually travelled to London from the same local railway station, was also a fellow conspirator to the plan. A leading forensic scientist and a Home Office pathologist, Sir Bernard was tasked with selecting a corpse who would be code-named 'Martin'. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: The escape kits evolved during the war considerably, and as I became more experienced I began to come up with more gadgets and devices of my own to improve them. I certainly wasn’t their only author but I’m proud of what I did contribute. Charles kept samples of many of his gadgets which were put on show in many exhibitions. He died in 1992 at his home on the edge of Exmoor.

Charles Fraser-Smith is believed by many to be the inspiration for the character "Q" in Ian Fleming's James Bond stories. The wartime story of Charles Fraser-Smith in his own words can also be found at the Cumberland Pencil Museum.

Feeling a bit peckish?

In most cases I was forced to go well outside the normal channels to get anything done. Knowing when something of mine went well - a gadget really worked and out-foxed the enemy, perhaps helping to save a valuable life - was all that I needed by way of inspiration. Officially Fraser Smith worked for the Ministry of Supply’s Clothing and Textile Department. In practice, he invented, made, and provided gadgets and equipment, to field operatives carrying out work for the Special Operations Executive. Neither Fraser Smith’s boss nor personal assistant knew what he was up to. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: One of the chaps who would occasionally call me on the red phone with a secret request or a gadget instruction. Very able and highly inventive certainly, as you can see in the James Bond books he wrote after the war. Many years after the war, when the Official Secrets Act was lifted, its purpose became known and the plot became the basis of a book and, later, a film. Based on the true story of a huge deception to dupe and fool the German High Command the book/ film was called 'The Man Who Never Was'. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Fleming was determined to get his hands on German codebooks. And at that time, a number of German bombers had been captured more or less intact after crash landing in Britain.

NARRATOR: Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission you’ll hear the true stories behind the world’s greatest espionage operations. You’ll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their secret skills? And what would you do in their position? Only one chapter here is devoted to Charles’ “Q” activities, since Fraser-Smith's previous book ( The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith) had already been published. Officially, Fraser-Smith was a temporary civil servant for the Ministry of Supply's Clothing and Textile Department (Dept. CT6). In reality, he developed and supplied gadgets and other equipment for section XV of Britain's World War II intelligence organization, the Special Operations Executive. Travelling by train from his home in Hertfordshire to a small office in the clothing department of the Ministry of Supply, near St. James's Park in London, Fraser-Smith was actually working at the direction of MI6 in the nearby Minimax House. Performing a job so secret that neither his secretary nor his boss knew what he was doing, Fraser-Smith invented numerous ingenious gadgets intended to help prisoners of war to escape and to aid SOE agents gathering information on Nazi activities in occupied Europe. Because of the wartime secrecy there was no written production process to work from. At the end of the war, any complete pencils still at the factory were sent off to the British Government, along with all written instructions and remaining components. Most, if not all of these, may have been destroyed.NARRATOR: When France surrenders there are still boats traveling between Casablanca and Britain. But not many, and the war in the Atlantic is heating up. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I knew that if I were to deliver satisfactorily and on time, I would have to bend the rules to their limit. One of my first calls was to Scotland Yard to see if they could be persuaded to renew the government offer to buy privately held handguns - this time offering a higher price. But they said they’d need the approval of the Home Office. I knew well enough that waiting for that to happen would take weeks. So I asked if they would mind if I advertised myself, putting notices in the press offering generous prices for handguns. No-go there too I’m afraid. No one fully understood the new wartime regulations, but no one wanted to risk running afoul of them.

The novelist Ian Fleming also worked in similar secret circumstances during the war and was aware of Charles Fraser-Smith and his accomplishments. When writing his novels after the war Ian Fleming created the character 'Q' who devised the gadgets for 007 in the James Bond stories and the character was modelled on Charles Fraser-Smith. To do this they went through channels in Spain to get the information. Although the country was neutral in WWII many military personnel were pro-Germany, so an officer in the capital of Madrid helped them. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: And then, quite without warning, I received a message that I was being reassigned to London and that I would be required to sign the Official Secrets Act. Nor was it possible to ask the assistance of any of the team who had been involved in the design and manufacture of the 'secret pencil'. They had all since passed away. With their passing, the knowledge of how to make the secret pencils was also lost. So, a new generation of pencil makers began at exactly the same stage as their predecessors had in 1942.

Paper Chase

Shaving brushes and, hairbrushes hiding useful objects in the handle such as maps printed on handkerchiefs and silk tissue. Smoking pipes and dominoes also carried maps within them.