SECRETS, SILK, AND CYANIDE

Secret Operations in Buckinghamshire 1939-1945

This lecture will include: 

• An overview of the key agencies behind these operations and their work.

• A focus on the Special Operations Executive (SOE), its HF wireless stations at Poundon and Grendon Underwood.

• SOEs role in supporting agents operating undercover with resistance movements in Europe.

This lecture will be presented by Maj Gen Bill Robins CB OBE

Major General Bill Robins designed and operated military and intelligence communications networks for the UK armed forces, other government departments and our allies during the Cold War and its messy aftermath.

During the Second World War, many of the great houses around Buckinghamshire supported venomous secret wars, conducted quietly and lethally beneath the titanic battles around the globe. Much about them has stayed in secret archives since 1945. Historians are now unwrapping more.

Major General  Bill Robins will present an overview of the key agencies behind these operations and their work, and then focus on the Special Operations Executive (SOE), its HF wireless stations at Poundon and Grendon Underwood and their role in supporting agents operating undercover with resistance movements in Europe.

The talk will highlight the primacy of HF radio and manual cryptography to support this work, and the mistakes which led to the tragic fate of both the French Prosper network and the Dutch network.

He will cover the support to SOE by the Special Communications units of our Corps and outline the work of the women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in support of SOE. He will also describe SOE’s frequently toxic relationship with its sister agency, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and cover the deadly cat and mouse games between German security agencies and Allied agents, as well as the skilful and courageous work of the RAF Moon squadrons supporting SOE and SIS.

Finally, he will talk about some of SOE’s triumphs and disasters and a few of the courageous women and men who lived and died for it.

This lecture will be presented by Maj Gen Bill Robins CB OBE

Major General Bill Robins designed and operated military and intelligence communications networks for the UK armed forces, other government departments and our allies during the Cold War and its messy aftermath.

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