Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare Quotes

Fight for all you hold dear. Die as if it counts. Life is not so hard Nor is death.

Difficulties existed only to be surmounted, and there was no setback that a little thought and determination could not overcome.

the SOE was formed to carry out operations seen as being too politically explosive, illegal, or unconscionable to be embraced by the wider British establishment.

desk simply to say: “Would you be willing to be parachuted into Greece next week?”’ Woodhouse thought about it for a moment. ‘There seemed no reason to say No, so I said Yes.’5 He reasoned that it would be a good opportunity to practise his Greek.

His system is a combination of ferocious blows, holds and throws, adapted from Japanese bayonet tactics, ju-jitsu, Chinese boxing, Sikh wrestling, French wrestling and Cornish collar-and-elbow wrestling, plus expert knowledge of hip-shooting, knife fighting and use of the Tommy gun and hand grenade.

The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors offered him a six-figure sum in recognition of his pioneering wartime inventions. Jefferis was gratified but turned it down. ‘His Edwardian principals of right and wrong were very strong,’ said his son John.16 He did not believe he should profit from having helped to defeat Hitler.

Not many weapons could relieve a man of his underwear.

a most Gallant Company of Gentleman Adventurers’.32

Let me be brave and gay again Oh Lord, when my time is near. Let the god in me rise up and break The stranglehold of fear. Say that I die for Thee and the King, And what I hold most dear.

The Duchessa d’Aosta had been placed under the command of Geoffrey Appleyard and a skeleton crew, who were so delighted with their prize ship – and their Italian prisoners now locked below decks – that they hoisted a skull and crossbones from the mainmast. March-Phillipps exploded when he saw it fluttering in the dawn breeze. ‘We all got a rocket and we were told we weren’t to fly the Jolly Roger,’ recalled Leonard Guise. ‘He was a great stickler for etiquette, old Gus.

He was the first to admit that he had been singularly ill-qualified for all his previous jobs. Just a few months earlier, he had accepted the editorship of Gardening Magazine. ‘Nobody could know less about gardening than me,’ he said. But it didn't stop him dispensing advice for his readers. ‘I would solemnly give them my views on whether it were better to plant globe artichokes in September or March.’18 Now, at last, he had fallen into a job for which he was extremely well qualified, one in which the only seeds to be planted were those of wholescale destruction.

one cannot defy nature, but must adapt and accommodate oneself to her. Nature will not change; it is man who must change if he is to live in conditions where nature is dominant.’6 Adaptability and confidence were two of the key elements in the psychology of survival.

COLIN GUBBINS’S DECISION to attack the Pessac transformer was at one level blindingly obvious. Deprive the U-boat base of power and you deprive the enemy of his ability to function. But it was also a clever piece of lateral thinking, one that opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Military factories, aerodromes and industrial docks: suddenly, the Nazis’ soft targets looked enticingly vulnerable

There was a flash, a roar and, for Hayes at least, an unwelcome surprise. The force of the blast lifted him clean off the deck and hurled him into the water, from which he emerged, concussed and bedraggled, minus his pipe, shorts and pants. March-Phillipps’s men were astonished by the spigot’s power. Not many weapons could relieve a man of his underwear.

This, like all the other British communiqués, was completely untrue. After two years of war, the British government and its servants were finally learning to behave like cads.

The W-Bomb was to be the first weapon of war that could both sink a ship and cure a hangover.

These new recruits found that life at the Firs was never dull. Bombs exploded unexpectedly, sheds caught fire and, on one memorable occasion, an entire corner of the building ‘containing some lethal liquid’ blew up in a spectacular explosion. It was hastily repaired, before the owner of the property, Major Abrahams, got to hear about it.

Das Reich’s journey to Normandy should have taken no more than seventy-two hours. Instead, it took seventeen days for the main body to arrive, and it was even longer before the last of the vehicles reached the battlefield. By the time General Lammerding’s men and tanks were ready for action, it was too late. The Allied beachhead was secure.

We created an establishment which contributed more to the war effort than any other weapons design department,’ said Macrae. But it was an establishment so ungentlemanly in its outlook that it was to be for ever erased from history.

Culling staff and methods from SIS’s D section (D for destruction) and the Army’s similar MI (Military Intelligence) unit, its masterminds, who started the organization from three rooms at St. Ermin’s Hotel, referred to themselves as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

He complained to his superiors at ‘being shot at from behind hedges by men in trilbys and mackintoshes and not allowed to shoot back’. But those men in trilbys taught him a lesson he would never forget: irregular soldiers, armed with nothing but homespun weaponry, could wreak havoc on a regular army.

The work was to be done ‘by undercover men, spies and saboteurs, who, if caught, would be neither acknowledged nor defended by their government’. They would be working outside the law and were to borrow their tactics from guerrillas and gangsters like Michael Collins in Ireland and Al Capone in America. In signing up for Section D, they were effectively signing away their lives.

the men were offered extra supplies of pemmican, a gumlike mixture of animal fat and protein. At its best, it tasted like salt-pork chewing gum. At its worst, it was like rancid whale blubber.

Sabotage and subversion represented the only possible way of striking back and Churchill instructed Dalton to establish – as he called it – a Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Senior figures in the War Office and Admiralty decided that sinking German ships would be more cost-effective than building British ones.

Fleming had good reason for acquiring the longbows. He intended to teach his men to use them ‘to hurl incendiary charges into German petrol dumps’.30 Without fuel, Hitler’s tanks and jeeps would be trapped inside their beachhead.

All his men were crack shots, but Fairbairn himself favoured close-range physical combat over the bullet. ‘His system is a combination of ferocious blows, holds and throws, adapted from Japanese bayonet tactics, ju-jitsu, Chinese boxing, Sikh wrestling, French wrestling and Cornish collar-and-elbow wrestling, plus expert knowledge of hip-shooting, knife fighting and use of the Tommy gun and hand grenade.

Pollock delighted in underhand work – it was not so different from being a lawyer

the whole art of guerrilla warfare lies in striking the enemy where he least expects it and yet where he is most vulnerable

The Art of Guerrilla Warfare and The Partisan Leaders’ Handbook.

If you wanted to win – and win at all costs – there was no place for gentlemanly behaviour. Guns, gas or grenades; you should be prepared to get your hands dirty. ‘A spiked mace smashed in the face,’ he reasoned, ‘is probably quite as

On 10 March, ten days after the attack, Gubbins received the sweetest news of all. He received a message from another agent at the plant, describing the visit to Norsk Hydro of General von Falkenhorst, the commander of the occupying German forces in Norway. ‘At the sight of the ruined plant, he smiled and said: “This is the most splendid coup I have seen in this war.”’42 A consummate professional, he admired the saboteurs’ work and conceded that they had pulled off a dazzling act of destruction. Once he had inspected the damage, he ordered the release of all the Norwegian civilians who had been rounded up. He then issued a second order: that all the German sentries on duty that night were to be arrested.