War Recollected and the 1950s

Abstract

After Allied North African landings and victory at El Alamein (23 October 1942), SIS interest diminished in West Africa and Greene sought a move to another area of intelligence. He arrived back in England on 1 March 1943 and, based near St Albans, Hertfordshire, worked for Kim Philby’s sub-section of Section V (counter-intelligence), directing SIS activities in the Iberian Peninsula and parts of Northwest Africa. Greene’s duties included responding to reports from field agents in Lisbon and neutral Portugal and assessing information from decoded Enigma messages. His primary contact with Philby was to brief him on local German intelligence activities and their dealings with the Vichy French in neighbouring Guinea and French West Africa (especially Senegal). In summer 1943 Section V of SIS moved to 7 Ryder Street, London, where Greene (known to the Soviets as LORAN) continued to work for counter-intelligence against the Abwehr in the Iberian Peninsula and the Azores. He was responsible for cataloguing known Axis agents and contacts in a ‘Purple Primer’ and worked on turning some of them to support Allied intelligence activities.¹ In October 1943 the Allies landed in the Azores and, with the discreet compliance of the neutral Portuguese, set up intelligence bases there. Twelve copies of a secret briefing pamphlet were printed to support this mission, with short essays (two by Greene and one by Philby) on Portuguese administration, local agriculture and wireless communication.

The theme of exile and the homeless wanderer suggests another pattern. The exile seems to be a wanderer from a postwar world, not merely after the Second World War and decolonisation but from an England forever lost after the First World War.

Couto, On the Frontier, 143