Woodcote House and Donald McLachlan

Woodcote House, Aspley Guise & Donald McLachlan

The late local historian Arthur Parker’s research notes on the buildings on Aspley Hill, Woburn Sands, include a house called “Woodcote” at the western end of Woodside in Aspley Guise. He mentions it was requisitioned during the Second World War and used by Donald Harvey McLachlan for clandestine radio propaganda work. McLachlan was a journalist before the war and later editor of the Daily Telegraph. I thought this sounded a very interesting story, so I have looked into him and the house in more detail and found a fascinating tale of the secret war work which was conducted in the nearby villages under the stewardship of Sefton Delmer.

In reading about the propaganda work, I found a biography of Otto John, an anti-Nazi German who had escaped to England after being involved in the failed plot to kill Hitler. He was sent to Aspley Guise to assist in the fake radio transmissions and counterfeit printing. My research then morphed from being a standard house-history to something much more interesting. Not only did this district provide manpower to the armed services, but it also played a very special part in waging the psychological war on the Nazis too. The 80^th anniversary of VE Day in 2025 seems a fitting moment to make this story more widely known.

Part of Parker’s account of Aspley Hill says, “In 1874 Thomas Swabey of Wavendon… bought up the various pieces of the corner field, and followed by purchasing from Pain (1) 1874 and (2) 1875, the two fields below, thus giving the property an area of 7½ acres. On the corner field he built his residence and named it “Woodcote”.  Thomas Swabey died in 1886 [actually 1883. Ed.] and his widow in 1931, both being buried in St. Michael’s churchyard; how long they remained in occupation I cannot tell but the house was later let to Arthur Grimsagh Grimshawe, and in 1903 Swabey’s widow sold the whole to the Duke of Bedford for £4,000.”

This is what I can find on the previous occupants of “Woodcote”:

The Swabey family lived at Wavendon House for a time in the 1860s. Their third son, Thomas, married Eliza Prickett, eldest daughter of a vicar whose brother lived in Aspley Guise, in August 1868. Possibly after living with his parents a while, it was this Thomas Swabey who bought up the land in Aspley Guise and erected a house known as ‘Woodcote’. He appears as the resident living there in an 1877 trade directory.  The 1881 census shows “Woodcote, Wood Lane” with Thomas (53), who gave his occupation as “Dividends and Land”, wife Eliza (38) and their four daughters and two sons. Looking after the Swabey’s were a cook, a housemaid, a nursemaid and an under-nurse, as Mrs. Swabey then had four children who were under five years’ of age.

Yet before the next census, Thomas died, aged 56. He was found lying dead in Aspley Guise woods in December 1883 by a member of the Duke of Bedford’s family, George Russell M.P.  He had set off walking with his son to Woburn to see his banker, but had returned home for a forgotten cheque book and was then hurrying to catch-up with his son again. Thomas had been seeing the local medical professional, Dr. Veasey, for epilepsy and the doctor suspected he had died of apoplexy. The event caused quite a sensation locally. Since the last census, the Swabey’s had had another two children, so Mrs. Swabey was left with eight young children to look after. Thomas left a personal estate of more than £6,600 in his will.

Mrs. Swabey is named as the resident of Woodcote in the trade directories of 1885, 1890 and 1894 but these were sometimes significantly out of date by the time they were printed. Although Mrs. Swabey was still living somewhere local in 1891, taking a keen interest in village life, by then another family were living at Woodcote, the Prichards. William Prichard (58) was a Clerk in Holy Orders and Magistrate. He, too, had a large family – four daughters and three sons. They and their four staff all had Welsh birthplaces, with which the census enumerator struggled to copy down! I can find only a few brief mentions of them locally in newspapers, so they could not have stayed in the district for long. They were only tenants anyway, as, as Parker says, Mrs. Swabey was renting the house out.

In 1898, a Miss Bird is listed in a trade directory as the occupant but I can find nothing about her. By the census of 1901, the house was occupied by Cecil Grimshaw. He was 34 and “Living on own means”. His wife, son and a nephew lived with him; his wife and nephew both entered “Not Known” for their birthplace. Five domestic staff looked after them. He had a number of run-ins with the law regarding his use of an unlicenced motor car, non-payment of rates, “furiously driving a motor tricycle at 17 or 18 mph”(!) and other petty infractions. He fired some kind of small canon (presumably as he was the Lieutenant of “K” Company, 3^rd Volunteer Battalion, Beds. Regt.) to wake the village up to inform them that the besieged British troops at Mafeking had been relieved during the Boer War in 1900. Parker says that in 1903, during Grimshaw’s tenancy, Mrs. Swabey sold the house to the Duke of Bedford for £4,000. Obviously keen on new-fangled inventions and technology, Grimshaw had one of the first telephone numbers locally – “No.6” in a 1907 directory.

Less than a year later, Grimshaw had gone. By 1908, a James Henry Renton is first recorded at Woodcote. Their name appears in the newspapers that year as they arranged for 50 members of the ‘Women’s Suffrage Society for Woburn Sands, Aspley Guise and Woburn’ to meet in their garden at Woodcote. Speeches were given and promises of support were made. The 1911 census describes him as a “Director of Public Companies”, 58 years old and married with a son. They too had four servants. According to a Luton Times report of September 1909, he was a Director of the Labu (Federated Malay States) Rubber Company, and also the first director of the Sendayan Rubber Company, which had been successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange. He was certainly well-travelled as he had been born in Spanish Town, Jamaica. In Aspley Guise, he chaired the local National Service League and the Conservative and Unionist Association. In 1912, there was a large garden party at the house to support the National Service League, attended by dozens of local figures. It was opened by Lord & Lady Ampthill and the Luton Red Cross Band provided the music. The annual Aspley Guise Rose and Sweet Pea Show were hosted in the garden in 1913.

Their second son, Harry Noel Leslie Renton, was born in Ceylon and educated at the Knoll School on Aspley Heath. He was a keen cricketer and even got up his own team to play against Aspley Guise in the years before the First World War. At the outbreak, he signed up with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He was killed on 30^th July 1915, aged just 20. His name appears on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial and is also commemorated on the Aspley Guise Memorial. From his obituary in The Times, August 4^th:

“Lieutenant Harry Noel Leslie Renton, 9^th KRRC. who fell on July 31^st, was born in Ceylon and educated at The Knoll, Woburn Sands, and Harrow School.  He was a monitor at Harrow, Head of his house, and in the upper Sixth form. He was house cricket and football captain, and member of the school cricket eleven and kept wicket for the school in the Eton and Harrow Match at Lords in 1914. Lieutenant Renton matriculated at Magdalen College Oxford, in April 1913, and was to have entered University in October 1914, but on the outbreak of war he joined the Army and was gazetted second lieutenant in the 9^th KRRC on September 23, 1914, lieutenant on February 13. Left for the Front on May 21^st.”

His entry from the ‘De Ruvigny’s Roll Of Honour 1914-1924’ gives excerpts from letters sent to his parents after his death:

“Killed in Action near Hooge during the capture of a German trench. Major Hennessy of the 9^th Batt. wrote “I think you know what affection I had for your son, and the high esteem in which I held him. He was a real soldier through and through, absolutely fearless, painstaking, trustworthy and his men loved him. He was my right-hand man in everything and however difficult the task set him; I could always be absolutely sure he would see it through all right”. Capt. Young: “All through the day Noel behaved with the greatest coolness and I do not know what we would have done without him, as there was only three of us. He never paid the slightest attention to danger, and he was tremendously pleased when I ordered the charge, not only his own platoon, but the whole company was devoted to him, and would have followed him anywhere, as they did. As you know he and I were great friends since last September and there is nothing I can say except how fond we all were of him and that he died as well as a man could.”

James Renton and his wife moved from Aspley Guise to London after the war, but James was knocked down by a taxicab and killed in November 1920. He was buried back at Aspley Guise. Woodcote’s new tenants were by then Bryden and Emily Glendining. From Parker’s work:

“Here the Duchess established her private physician who ran the Woburn Hospital. Dr. Glendining and Mrs. Glendining became a close personal friend. Unfortunately the Dr. contracted tuberculosis, and for his benefit the Duchess had erected in the grounds a wooden chalet, fitted with water and gas, overlooking the wide-spreading lawns, and it was there that the doctor ended his days.”

Initially there was just a Cottage Hospital in Woburn, known as Marylands, built for the Duchess of Bedford in 1903, who wanted a local facility for the villagers. After War broke out and realising that they could contribute much-needed bed space for injured soldiers, the riding school and tennis court at Woburn Abbey itself had been converted into a second and much larger hospital to hold 80 beds, an operating theatre, X-ray room, kitchen bathers and offices. Four smaller rooms were added to provide a further 20 beds.  A long veranda in the Abbey garden known as ‘the covered way’ was used as an open-air ward, a facility that greatly benefited patients suffering from septic wounds.  A few months after the outbreak of the First World War, the Abbey Hospital began taking wounded men direct from the Front. In these early days the Duchess served her apprenticeship as a probationer in the wards, starting work each day at 5.45am. She became a highly skilled radiologist and was in sole charge of the X-ray department, conducting examinations, keeping records and developing the plates in the darkroom.

Very early in the War, her diary from September 7, 1914 reveals: “Admitted the first soldiers from Bedford to the Cottage Hospital.  I little thought when we built it ten years ago that we should ever see the Red Cross flag flying over it.”  When Armistice Day brought the Great War to an end, the Duchess wrote to the Army Council to request that she continue this work. Subsequently, Woburn Hospital was converted into one of only 12 military orthopaedic hospitals for the aftercare of the wounded. [Woburn Abbey & Gardens Facebook post]

The Duchess was skilled but nevertheless only an amateur, so Glendining had been brought in to oversee the professional medical care. By March 1918, he was advertising for a gardener who could also maintain a small electric light plant, at his Woodcote home, or be willing to learn, with wages offered of 33s. a week. There are only two female servants present at the house for the night of the 1921 census – the Glendinings must have been away, possibly abroad as they don’t seem to appear anywhere on the English census that year – they certainly travelled to Gibraltar in 1924. Perhaps the electric light plant mentioned had been in connection with his duck-husbandry, which he had to give up due to illness. From the Bedfordshire Times, 14^th August 1925:

Sadly, he died just a couple of years later. An account of his life appeared in his obituary in the Luton News on 26^th May 1927:

“Duchess’s Surgeon. Link with Woburn War Hospital. Mr. Bryden Glendining, F.R.C.S., who was chief Surgeon and adviser at the Duchess of Bedford’s Hospital at Woburn from the early days of the war up to about two years ago, died at his residence, Woodcote, Aspley Guise, on Thursday. Born in New Zealand in 1879. Dr. Glendining came to this country to study for his degree, and the appointments he held later were Walter Emden research scholar in the Cancer Research Laboratory at Middlesex Hospital; House Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London; resident surgeon at Hartford, and the British Hospital, Paris; gynaecological surgeon, Hampstead and N.W. London Hospital; and assistant surgeon at the Chelsea Hospital for Women. He was also appointed surgeon to the Queen of Spain, and spent two years in that country, and took his degree of F.R.C.S. in 1908. In 1913 the disease which eventually ended his career first manifested itself, and he spent some months in a sanatorium. Being unfit for war service and obliged to make his home in the country for a time, he accepted the post of surgeon to the Woburn Military Hospital, and also continued his surgical work in his London Hospital. The double task proved too much for him, and he was obliged to give up his London work, and subsequently he devoted himself entirely to the War Hospital, where 2,500 patients came under his care. At the close of the war he continued his work as surgeon of the Woburn Hospital and Battlesden Nursing Home, until ill-health compelled him to resign in 1925. He was a man of exceptional ability, and illness cut short what promised to be a brilliant career. The funeral took place at Woburn on Saturday afternoon, in the presence of a large gathering.”

Glendining left just over £9,500 in his will. From 1927 to 1939, his widow Emily continued to live Woodcote. She was there when the 1939 Register was taken to assist with ID cards for the population as the next war loomed. Still living on “Private Means”, she had a husband-, wife- and daughter-team of the Bowyer’s, as Butler, Housekeeper and Maid respectively, but her two house-guests are more interesting – one was William James Entwistle, FBA (1895-1952) a British scholar of the Romance languages and literature, with a speciality in Spanish; and Charles Richards, a Director of the firm Metropolitan-Vickers, a heavy electrical engineering company, formerly known as British Westinghouse. It was particularly renowned for its industrial electrical equipment such as generators, steam turbines, switchgear, transformers, electronics and railway traction equipment. Both gave “Foreign Office” in the notes against their entries. These were just two of the many people billeted locally who were engaged in military projects in the area that weren’t well-known to the general population at that time, not only at Bletchley Park and the various outstations, but also at Cranfield aerodrome. Parker says:

“Mrs. Glendining continued in residence, and when War broke out, and her son was in the Army, she slept there alone. The Government had taken most of the large houses available in the district and was averse to such houses having only one occupant, but Mrs. Glendining was elderly and had nowhere else to go. Eventually an arrangement was made whereby she had her own quarters in the house and the remainder with its furniture was taken over, but not occupied by foreign nationals as most were.”

In another section, called ‘Noteworthy Residents’, Parker adds:

“Half the members of the national press were in the district, on and off, from the day War broke out. Towards the end of the war, Donald McLachlan, sometime Editor of the Daily Telegraph, was at Woodcote in Woodside. After his day’s work in Whitehall, for the Navy, he would dash home through the black-out, have a quick meal, and then sit down to write, and probably before morning his words had been broadcast from somewhere in the district to the underground in Europe.”

It is interesting that Parker knew that McLachlan was doing clandestine work when he wrote this in the 1970’s, which was before much of the work carried out at Bletchley Park and the nearby propaganda broadcasting stations became common knowledge. It is now well known that Aspley Guise housed many “secret spies” in the Second World War, but not only did they house British military intelligence officers, they were also home to many exiled or captured Germans and other Europeans who were voluntarily helping the Allied war efforts.

Woodcote was just such a house. In the 1939 Register, Donald McLachlan, his wife Katherine and three children (two entries are still restricted due to Data Protection) were living in the tiny village of Brown Candover, in Hampshire. His occupation is “Editorial staff of Newspaper – ‘The Times’” but it also adds that he was in the “Officers Emergency Reserve”.

Born in Islington in 1908, his father was the manager of The Grand Hotel near Trafalgar Square for many years. His mother died when he was 11. He was educated at the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. After a period as a Laming Fellow (a prestigious academic fellowship position, typically awarded to individuals pursuing advanced research or studies in a particular field) at Queen’s College, Oxford, he began his career in journalism in 1933 with a position as a sub-editor and foreign correspondent for The Times. As a correspondent, he specialized in European affairs and twice acted as an assistant correspondent in Berlin. In 1936 McLachlan became an Assistant-Master in Winchester College, though he continued to undertake part-time editorial work. He taught Russian, German and current affairs.

“He was a stimulating teacher, encouraging his pupils to think for themselves, and sharing with them a first-hand knowledge of European personalities. When the Spanish Civil War started in July 1936, he hung a map of Spain in class with the battle fronts marked daily so as to keep up to date.” [“A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson” by Peter J. Conradi, p.82.]

In 1938, he took over as editor of the Times Educational Supplement, a position he held for two years. During this period, he also helped to prepare The Times’s Air Raid Precautions (ARP) team, which was widely regarded as the best in the City of London. But over-seeing the ARP was not to be his major contribution to the War. Although initially selected to be a member of the Army’s Intelligence Corps., he was soon ‘poached’ to the equivalent Naval version by its Head, Admiral John Godfrey. On 8^th July 1940, Donald Harvey McLachlan (no.141464) was made a Lieutenant (Special Branch) RNVR, but his name does not appear in the ‘Naval Intelligence Section Staff & Distribution of Work’ handbook, published in December 1940. [TNA: ADM 223/257]

After a short time in the German Section (NID1) he became the First Secretary of the Future Operations (Enemy) Section (FOES), a small body set up initially under Captain T. H. Troubridge to study and forecast future strategy. Towards the end of 1940 he was transferred to NID’s Co-ordinating Section (NID 17) which worked in the Admiralty’s Room 39. He had appeared by the next publication of the Naval Intelligence Section Staff handbook in May 1941, listed as having been appointed on 31^st December 1940 and shown under ‘Miscellaneous Services Home’ and working on ‘Special Duties’. Among his close colleagues during the war was Ian Fleming. Mark Simmons, in his book “Ian Fleming’s War”, says McLachlan and Fleming were old college friends too. So McLachlan and Fleming were working together, directly under the Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty in London. McLachlan, in his own history of the section, “Room 39”, describes it thus:

“To pay a call on the Director of Naval Intelligence in 1939, you entered the Admiralty by the door in the Mall behind Captain Cook’s statue, were announced by telephone, escorted a good sixty yards along a bleak, echoing corridor in the style of a Midland town hall, and guided into a short transept. There you were handed in to uniformed messengers in a lair of booking-office proportions opposite Room 39, full of papers in transit, boxes and trays, kettles and milk bottles and the paraphernalia of tea-making. If you were one of the officers of the Division with the entre to this personal staff room, you kept straight on, turned the handle of 39 and walked in. Time and again, as one entered, the eye was caught by the historic scene from the three tall westerly windows facing the door: the garden of No.10 Downing Street straight opposite, the Foreign Office – St James’s Park lake – Guards War Memorial composition to the right of it; and to the left the elegance of the Horse Guards, the Treasury and the old Admiralty, terribly frail buildings, one thought, to house the brains of a great war machine. In the middle of the picture was the parade ground used by the Guards for Trooping the Colour, now littered with the impedimenta of the balloon barrage.
More than ever in peacetime, this was the traffic junction of the High Command: Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet offices, Planners and Intelligence Heads, the regular civil servants and the irregular wartime bosses moved to and fro within this complex of buildings. Just below Room 39 was a private exit from the Admiralty to the Horse Guards Parade, which the First Sea Lord would use on his way to obey some summons from Churchill of the Chiefs. To have a key to this short cut was one of the DNI’s privileges.  Above was the First Sea Lord’s vast room, where the political head of the Admiralty wielded what little power was left to him by the Cabinet and Their Lordships. One felt the atmosphere of a great headquarters in a historic setting: a Pentagon in five parts.” (“Room 39”, pp.1-2.]

Here, McLachlan and Fleming would meet one Sefton Delmer. Delmer was born in Berlin as a British subject, the son of Australian parents living in Germany. He had been a schoolboy in Germany during the First World War, where he was bullied for sounding English, then in later school years he came to England, where he was bullied for sounding German! He became a British journalist, stationed in Germany before the Second World War. He had met Hitler and his top generals and despised them. He was the only journalist with Hitler when he looked around the burned-out Reichstag building in 1933. McLachlan, too, had a connection to the event, as he was also in Berlin as the Times correspondent and his dispatch about the fire was thought so good by his employer that he was summoned back to London to write leaders. [From “A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson” by Peter J. Conradi, p.82.]

Delmer recognised the problems Nazism would cause for Europe and the world at large. He would do all he could to see them beaten. For the first couple of years of the War, Delmer was still roving the accessible parts of Europe, sending stories back to the Daily Express. He had an interest in the use of propaganda, as the quote to the left shows. Once he was back in England, he found there was a weekly German propaganda broadcast being beamed into Britain by Hans Fritzsche, the Reich’s Minister of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda. Delmer was able to listen to these, then write and broadcast his own witty answers to their outlandish claims, which were broadcast back over Germany by the BBC within two hours.

In October 1941, he approached the BBC with a detailed plan to interfere with German radio programmes, using brute transmitter strength to drown-out German radio programmes and replace them with our own. [TNA: FO 898/62] He had several suggestions; to play a recording of the fanfare played for German news then officially announce the German capture of Moscow, the surrender of Stalin and cessation of Russian hostilities; to insert a piece negatively describing conditions at the German front lines into their own news broadcasts; to introduce an actor playing a German military expert giving a lecture who suddenly goes off-script to tell listeners how soldiers were being killed, “struck down from behind”, before interrupting the show with a fake announcer, panickily introducing gramophone records. Lastly, he suggested adding harrowing items at the end of real German news broadcasts, such as a bombed mother speaking to her son. He ends the ideas by saying “I can see that the objection that will be raised to the scheme is no doubt that the German can do this better than we can as they have more transmitters at their disposal… Therefore we might as well show them what total radio war can really be. I am sure we can do better than they.” Hand-written across the bottom of the typed letter, he wrote, “This is just a rough sketch. Could I come and discuss it with you?”.

The BBC European service controller, Ivone Kirkpatrick, forwarded Delmer’s “ingenious proposal” to R. H. Bruce Lockheart, director-general of the Political Warfare Executive, who were then in charge of co-ordinating British propaganda efforts. Kirkpatrick’s covering letter says the BBC would have to give careful consideration of all the implications involved if it went ahead and would have to take a transmitter away from the Air Ministry to make it happen – it doesn’t sound like they supported the idea. But Bruce Lockheart saw the possibilities and seems to have cut the BBC out of the plan entirely. Delmer was given clearance to work for the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Officer, but remained technically a civilian who was never in British military service.

Delmer was then introduced to Admiral Godfrey by Ian Fleming, Godfrey’s chief assistant. Delmer convinced Godfrey of the value of unofficial ‘Black’ propaganda and the damaging psychological effects it could have on the enemy, as compared to official (‘white’) broadcasts from the BBC. Godfrey immediately recruited Delmer to run such a station. Delmer was supplied with three Navy officers to assist him. Delmer’s autobiography, “Black Boomerang”, published in 1962, gives several first-hand accounts of McLachlan during the War, including recording their first meeting in Room 39 at the Admiralty in London, over-looking Horse Guards Parade, where the Naval Intelligence team were based:

“I felt considerable trepidation the first time I called on the officers of NID17Z, my ‘pupils’ as Ian insisted on describing them. I feared they would resent the intrusion of a civilian. But the RNVR lieutenants sitting at the new desks could not have been more friendly and differential. There were three of them there the first time I called. One was Robert Harling, a young man with the laughing, big eared, long-nosed face of a mediaeval court jester and the shrewd appraising eyes of a physician. He was an artist typographer in civilian life, Ian told me, as he introduced us. (Robert Harling is today editor of House & Garden, and author of several best-selling novels of suspense.) The second, whom Godfrey had handpicked to command the section, was a bony, sandy-haired Scotsman called Donald McLachlan. (Today Donald McLachlan is the editor of the Sunday Telegraph.) He had been a Don at Winchester, had spent a short time in the Berlin office of The Times, and had then worked for several years on The Times foreign desk. The third was a young marine officer called David Astor. [The Honourable David Astor is now the editor of the Observer.) but Astor had been posted to another unit by the time I next visited the department.” [“Black Boomerang”, pp.71-72.]

Godfrey wrote his memoirs, but apparently, they were never published. However, Ellic Howe (master-counterfeiter and printer who worked the documents presses at Marylands in Woburn) quotes from a manuscript version in his book “The Black Game” and gives the inception of the team from Godfrey’s viewpoint:

“The chief difficulty in starting a new section to operate an entirely new process is to find the right sort of staff. The qualifications for the job were a deep knowledge of German mentality, a capacity to see things from the German point of view and to know what would hurt them most, combined with an instinctive flair for high-grade journalism and “putting things across” in a way that would influence public opinion. In this case the public opinion was that of the German Navy personnel, their wives and families, and particularly the U-boat fleet.
McLachlan possessed these qualities to a marked degree. He had been on the editorial staff of The Times, Times correspondent in Berlin, a schoolmaster at Winchester and Editor of The Times Educational Supplement before he came to NID. He was a terrifically hard worker with very strong nerves. He was ready for the job and also ready to take great responsibilities. I think Donald was genuinely pleased when I asked him after dinner at 36 Curzon Street if he would like the post. He accepted and I then asked him and Ian Fleming to put the machinery in motion for creating a Naval Section (17z) in collaboration with PWE [Political Warfare Executive]. I was greatly relieved and confident that there would be no lack of sting with him, Ian Fleming and Sefton Delmer in charge.”

So Section NID17Z had been created from the Director of Naval Intelligence’s personal staff and a civilian. It was their duty to be in touch with all current propaganda and subversive operations of interest to the Admiralty and collect from all Naval Intelligence sections the material require for such operations. Quite a few of the references to McLachlan in Naval Intelligence history books are merely where he is giving his opinion of Ian Fleming, who went on to have quite a famous writing career…

Charles Morgan wrote up some history of the Naval Intelligence sections which can be found in a file at the National Archives [ADM 233/463]. The duties and staff of Section 17 (Coordination and Special Intelligence) were captured in a snapshot of their structure on 11^th September 1942. Fleming appears doing Joint Intelligence Committee work and providing daily situation reports, Political Warfare Executive (PWE) work on “Propaganda, Rumours etc.” and also working with the Special Operations Executive and Secret Intelligence Services. McLachlan’s name only appears under the ‘PWE’ heading.

Delmer initially lived at “Larchfield”, another Aspley Guise house on West Hill, before setting up in another requisitioned property, at “The Rookery”, opposite Aspley Guise Church. Here he gathered a group of German defectors, dissidents and prisoners of war who had convinced the British that they wanted to assist in deposing Hitler.

His radio station, named “Gustav Siegfried Eins”, was a success. NID17Z could provide information from Nazi signals broken at Bletchley Park and from debriefing new Prisoners of War to get the latest situations. Captured German orchestras were used for the music, or they used the latest records that had been flown in from the friendlier parts of Europe – all of which wove together perfectly to make a very convincing ‘German’ radio station. Although many Germans realised the radio station was ‘phoney’, they carried on listening anyway, as the news was more up-to-date than their own side were telling them and the entertainment sections were better!

The radio shows were then recorded onto discs in a studio in the converted billiard room at Wavendon Tower and taken to be broadcast from Milton Bryan, but this took time and resources and Delmer worried they sounded a bit ‘staged’. He knew that ‘Live’ news broadcasts changed slightly with every bulletin. Delmer recalled it was McLachlan who raised the idea of creating further stations and making them ‘live’ in December 1942:

“Frascati’s was my favourite restaurant in war-time London. Its gilded Edwardian cherubs, its plush chairs and elderly waiters held a nostalgic echo of my Paris eating places. I could be sure of meeting no-one there who knew me, and there was ample space between the tables so that my guests and I could talk without being overheard. But the most compelling attraction of all was that the bins in Frascati’s cellars held a collection of clarets and champagnes which was unrivalled in the London of 1942. Many of my most successful ‘black’ ventures were born there under the inspiration of a Moët Chandon 1919 – (I have an almost necrolatrous passion for old champagne) – and a superb Ausone 1923. No suggestion, however, was more fruitful or more important than that which Donald McLachlan put to me at a Frascati lunch just before Christmas 1942. For that meal with Donald saw the conception of the counterfeit radios Deutscher Kurzwellensender Atlantik (German Shortwave Radio Atlantic) and Soldatensender Calais. (Soldiers Radio Calais)
Camille, our Niçois waiter, had just made his customary promise of gastronomic prestidigitation: “I have something upper ma sleeve for you, gentlemen – moshroomps on toast.”
Donald had politely savoured the aged Moët Chandon, as though he shared my admiration for it. And now we were ready for business.
“I have a very important proposal for you from the Admiralty,” Donald began in his methodical way. “You know we are now conducting a knockout offensive against the U-boats. We have a whole arsenal of new weapons for detecting and destroying them, which will make going to sea in a U-boat about as attractive as a cruise in a coffin. It may well be that we shall cause the first real crack in the morale of a German fighting service. And if the U-boatmen crack it is bound to spread to other arms. Do you agree?”
Donald had a trick of asking people whether they agreed, when he knew they most certainly did. I remembered only too well the Kiel mutiny of the Germany Navy in the previous war, and how it spread its infection all over the country.
“Well, in view of all this, the Admiralty planners are anxious to step up our Psychological Warfare attack on the German navy and the U-boat crews in particular. The main Instrument of that attack should, in their view, be not the B.B.C. but ‘Black’. What do you think of reinforcing Gustav Siegfried with a new station specially beamed at the U-boats? How about a ‘black’ news bulletin?”
Donald, of course, knew that a ‘black’ news bulletin mixing truth and calculated fiction had for long been my dream – if only to try out my ideas for a new and livelier style of newswriting and news selection. I longed to show the B.B.C. the difference between the stodgy news presentation of the old-fashioned journalism to which the B.B.C. bowed down, and the sharp and vivid style of my side of Fleet Street which I hoped to adapt to radio. I wanted to demonstrate the mass appeal of the significant ‘human story’, until now absent from the air, the technique of ‘personalising’ the news. But how could it be done? I reminded Donald how I had tried to launch a ‘black’ news bulletin with a station called ‘Wehrmachtsender Nord’. It was a short-lived venture. Very soon I had come to the conclusion that it did not sound right, because, like all ‘black’ transmissions at that time, it had to be pre-recorded. Radio news to be news, and sound like news, I had discovered then, must be broadcast live. It must be up to the minute, changing from bulletin to bulletin. But unfortunately, our ‘black’ studios could not handle live broadcasts. And after a few weeks of experimentation, I had abandoned the recorded ‘Wehrmachtsender Nord’.
“If we could get facilities for a live broadcast then I am all for it,” I said. “We could have a counterfeit Forces Programme ostensively for the benefit of U-boat crews and the troops in France. It could model itself on those Forces Stations the Germans have set up in Belgrade and Lvov. But how on earth are we to get facilities for live transmissions? Besides they’ll turn live broadcasts down on security grounds.”
“Don’t forget you have the Admiralty behind you,” said Donald. “A word from Charles Lambe [Deputy Director of Plans, Admiralty] to Dallas Brooks [Deputy Director General at the Admiralty] will work wonders. And as for security, surely all you need is a switch censor?’’
I was still unconvinced because of the lack of a studio. And then I suddenly had an idea. My department had recently put up a huge 600-kilowatt medium wave transmitter at Crowborough, and had built studios for it at Milton Bryan near Woburn. The transmitter had been designed and built for the purposes of intruding on enemy frequencies. It was intended to drown the voice of the enemy station, and impose its own voice on it by superior strength. But for the time being it had been lent to reinforce the B.B.C. No one was using the studios at Milton Bryan, why should we not be allowed to use them? The other regions would be sure to protest, but with the help of the Admiralty, who knows, maybe we might be awarded the necessary priority. Donald and I left Frascati’s in a state of high elation – not exclusively due to the Moët Chandon – determined to fight for the right to broadcast live, an unheard of innovation for ‘Black’.” [“Black Boomerang”, pp.77-79.]

Once the stations were up and running, information for the news items they shared were collated from many sources. McLachlan was even able to arrange that underground agents in France signal back results of the football matches between various U-boat crews whilst they were on shore leave. The station could then announce, within a few hours of the games being over, the names of the goal scorers and into which café the teams had gone to celebrate afterwards! The station could then comment with some gossip on the men named from their other intelligence resources. This led to the Germans feeling like they were being watched. [Black Boomerang, p.99]

Other listeners completely taken in were the American Embassy in Berlin, who reported to Washington in September 1941 that “Using violent and unbelievably obscene language, this station criticises the actions of the [Nazi] Party and certain Party-favoured Officers, especially the SS. Superficially it is violently patriotic and is supposed by many officers to be supported by the German Wehrmacht in secret.” [The Black Game, p.117.]

Some broadcasts had indeed bordered on the pornographic, with graphic descriptions of what Nazi Party members were doing with the ordinary German soldiers’ wives back home while they were at the front lines risking their lives. Not everyone agreed with this sort of psychological warfare. When Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons, was given transcripts of the items, he wrote to Anthony Eden, then Foreign Secretary saying: “If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I’d rather lose it.” Delmer explained, many years later (in a Times Literary Supplement article, 21^st January 1972), that pornography was merely used to attract the greatest number of listeners possible, who could then be fed the propaganda messages they had prepared so carefully.

In April 1943, McLachlan sent Delmer a note saying he had arranged for the radio station to give out details of where the British Navy had placed mines the night before. This might seem counter-intuitive, but they would give out 25-40% true locations, 20% half-true locations and the remainder were entirely false, causing confusion, fear and wasting the time and resources of the German Navy. [“The Black Game”, pp.183-184.]

As the Battle of Britain receded and then America entered the War, Mclachlan was attached to the staff of Admiral Ramsey, the Naval commander for operation ‘Overlord’ – the invasion at Normandy. Delmer had met and convinced the commanders of all the Allied military services that his radio stations could lay some groundwork for D-Day – if they were kept in the loop. McLachlan helped secure this inter-service cooperation and they also got the BBC on-side to accept their role too. [“Black Boomerang”, p.119.]

Otto John was one of the Germans at the Rookery assisting with ideas for broadcasts. His biography “The Man Who Came Back”, by Willi Frischauer, was published 1958. It contains an entire chapter of a first-hand account of their life and work assisting with Black Propaganda radio stations in Aspley Guise and printing work at Woburn. He and his brother had assisted in arranging the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler, as depicted in the 2008 film “Valkyrie“. He escaped Germany afterwards and came to England, while his brother was arrested and executed. Although McLachlan isn’t mentioned by name in the book, Frischauer gives a vivid description of the village and The Rookery at the time Otto John arrived there in December 1944:

“The outbreak of war hardly touched the pleasant sleepy villages on the Duke of Bedford’s estate, although they were barely an hour’s drive from the centre of London. The Duke moved from Woburn Abbey, the ancestral seat, to a small lodge in the grounds; a few young men joined the forces, and an R.A.F. unit was encamped in the district. Until 1941, the traditional pattern of village life was unchanged in such places as Aspley Guise, Milton Bryan and Woburn Sands, all small communities off the beaten track.
The commotion started when requisitioning notices were pinned on some of the big houses and the builders arrived at Milton Bryan to carry out mysterious structural alterations inside some of the old familiar places. The next thing that happened was a new tenant taking over The Rookery, a fine old country house and garden high above the road to Aspley Guise. Before long the intensive activity around The Rookery began to disturb the placid life of the villagers. Comings and goings by day and night, house guests galore, cars manoeuvring up the narrow drive; they watched streams of visitors arriving, mostly foreigners with strange guttural voices. It was the same at Dawn Edge, a house at the other end of the village where a permanent week-end party was in progress or so it seemed. People were shifting from one house to the other and from village to village, some on foot, others by car. Huts went up to accommodate the over-flow. The drive from the road to The Rookery was widened, and the vicar complained in the parish magazine that a permit had been issued for such non-essential work while urgent repairs in the village had to remain undone. The foreign population around Woburn Abbey increased to well over a hundred men and women. In June 1944 there was a new invasion, this time of Americans who looked like “uniformed civilians” and somehow resembled the earlier arrivals both in looks and in behaviour. But gradually local tempers cooled down, and the villagers resigned themselves to the presence of the strangers in their midst.” [“The Man Who Came Back”, pp.90-91.]

Many of the German prisoners and deserters were housed around Aspley Guise, in “Dawn Edge” and “The Rookery” and others. They had been given civilian clothes and rations, but also some basic pay which they used in the village shops and pubs, startling the locals! Otto John’s biography again:

“The tenant of The Rookery, a bearded, burly giant with prodigious energy and a sharp, biting wit, was known all over the world, except in Aspley Guise, as Sefton Delmer, the famous Daily Express correspondent. Delmer, a figure larger than life in many ways, and very much the bulldog-type of Englishman, was born in Germany of English parents, went to school in Berlin and learned to speak idiomatic German without a trace of an English accent. While representing the Daily Express in Germany before the war, he came closer to Hitler than any other foreign newspaperman, and accompanied the Fuehrer on many tours through the country. Superficial readers suspected Delmer of Nazi leanings, a primitive interpretation of his work. Delmer, in fact, took advantage of his intimate contact with the Nazi hierarchy to scoop his competitors. He also managed to find out more about Hitler’s real intentions than most professional diplomats and intelligence agents were able to discover. In peace or war, it was only a matter of time before the British authorities would make use of his unique insight into Nazi affairs. By the time he took up residence in Aspley Guise he was no longer working as a journalist. His loyal servants at The Rookery were a married couple, cook-housekeeper and gardener, who kept the strange assortment of his “guests” well fed and contented. There were rarely fewer than a dozen, though never the same people for long. Among themselves they referred to the house as RAG, short for Rookery, Aspley Guise.
Late one evening in November 1944, an army car arrived at RAG and from it emerged a captain followed by Otto John.
“Come on in, Mr. Juergen!” the captain said to John as soon as the door was opened. They entered the big lounge.
“Well, here you are. I shall be on my way again; it’s late.”
The captain turned to go and a slim, fair-haired man rose from a chair. His appearance was that of a German aristocrat.
“I am sorry,” he told the captain in faultless English, “but you can’t leave him. I am only a minor figure here, and not authorized to accept anybody. You will have to wait for the chief.”
The captain shrugged his shoulders and settled down to wait. John-Juergen, too, sat down. He could feel the other man’s inquiring eyes scrutinizing his quaint appearance, his dark eyebrows and coal-black hair with an eighth of an inch of reddish-blond growth showing at the roots; his suit cut in a foreign style. On that day, he was told later, he looked like something out of a cheap spy thriller. For a long time the three men sat in silence until a car could be heard coming up the drive and a key was turned in the lock. “Ah, here is the Chief!”
“Hello, Mr. Juergen,” said Sefton Delmer, shaking John by the hand.
The captain took his leave without much delay; the Chief drew Juergen into an empty room and, without much ado, explained the routine at RAG. “Like you, Mr. Juergen,” Delmer said, “everybody here has a cover name.” Whether they knew each other or not, people did not address each other by their real names, and did not ask each other personal questions.
Work started early in the morning with the scrutiny of Nazi newspapers and publications which were flown in from Stockholm and Lisbon every day. Next came the study of transcripts of all German broadcasts, and a great deal of other German literature supplied by several intelligence agencies. John was impressed with the use to which, according to Delmer, the material was put. He knew something of the Abwehr and General Staff methods in this field, but it was clear that the German technique of exploitation lacked the psychological flexibility of Delmer’s staff. RAG received information obtained from deserters and prisoners of war, from secret agents and underground fighters in occupied countries. Why, John thought, these British know more about Germany than the Germans themselves! All this material, meticulously analysed and interpreted with the pooled knowledge of a group of Germans from every walk of life – a group which John was about to join – formed the raw material from which lethal ammunition for the war against Hitler was compounded at RAG.
This was one of the secret headquarters of the Special Operations Directorate of the Psychological Warfare Executive which was controlled by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. Delmer was the Director, while R. H. S. Crossman, another journalist and tenant of DE (short for Dawn Edge), was responsible for liaison with the Americans, who installed a corresponding propaganda unit in the vicinity. Delmer’s department worked in close co-operation with the British Broadcasting Corporation’s European Service under the control of Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, until, with the approach of the Allies to the borders of Germany, Kirkpatrick was appointed High Commissioner of the future British-occupied Zone of Germany. Having studied the reports of the special investigators who had questioned John the previous week, Delmer, whom John recognized as one of his anonymous visitors, Crossman and Kirkpatrick had come to the conclusion that he was a sincere German patriot anxious to continue his fight against Hitler from Britain. Indeed, he had cheerfully accepted the offer to join the cloak-and- dagger outfit under Delmer’s direction.
As was to be expected of a man who had lived for so long under the shadows of the gallows as a conspirator, John was highly emotional at first, and was likely to remain unsettled for some time. The question of the moment was whether his burning idealism, forged in the fire of the resistance, could be brought in line with the more professional and cynical outlook of Delmer’s motley crowd, and with the kind of work they were doing. But Delmer had successfully welded his heterogeneous staff into a smoothly-working machine regardless of personal views, convictions, background or political motives. He would not find it too difficult to assimilate another new type in his “collection of cranks and characters”, as they were described by the more orthodox Foreign Office officials who came into contact with them.
“Conference at 10 a.m. Mr. Juergen,” John was told before he retired. Next morning a loud bell reminded the “new boy” that it was time for him to take up his new duties. He went to the big drawing-room of The Rookery, where he found most of the fifty-odd chairs grouped around a low platform already occupied. He was about to introduce himself to his neighbour, with his code name Juergen, of course, when he spotted a familiar face and only just refrained from addressing the man as “Herr von Putlitz”! Instead, he waved and moved over to the former German diplomat, whom he knew from his pre-war association with the resistance. Before they had time to enter into a conversation, Delmer mounted the platform. After a perfunctory greeting “the Chief” began to allocate the day’s tasks. The fair-haired man, whose pseudonym John now understood to be “Rene”, was the first to receive his instructions. He, John gathered, was one of the major speakers of Soldatensender Calais – Soldiers’ Radio Calais – one of the “German” radio stations operated by RAG. “The Sergeant will supply you with material,” Delmer told Rene. The “Sergeant” was an expert on German naval affairs.
Next a young man whose accent betrayed his Austrian origin was briefed on the new issue of Nachrichten für die Truppe (News for the Troops), a German-language news-sheet of which a special R.A.F. Squadron regularly dropped thousands of copies over German and German-occupied territories. Discussion switched to items suitable for inclusion in the new edition of the highly successful booklet, “Sickness Can Save You”, which instructed German soldiers on the most effective ways to feign sickness and avoid front-line service. Reports from prisoners of war indicated that the first edition had achieved its purpose; commanders of several units were threatening to court-martial and shoot every soldier found with it.” [“The Man Who Came Back”, pp.91-95.]

Otto John disagreed with the individual politics of some of the men he was billeted with, but with others he found an affinity and they worked well together on ideas to thwart the Nazis:

“John and [Father Elmer] Eisenberger [an Austrian Catholic priest] played chess. They became close friends. Eisenberger spoke regularly over the “black” radio stations, always beginning his broadcasts, “I, a Catholic priest…” John seemed doubtful whether this practice was morally defensible. He began to wonder whether what was being done at RAG was really right. “We must all decide for ourselves how far our conscience permits us to go,” Eisenberger retorted. “I am constantly examining myself. If I overstep the mark which I have set myself, I am the one to blame. You, too, must know in your own mind how far you can go.
John was impressed with the profound knowledge of German affairs which some of Delmer’s English colleagues had at their fingertips; most of them were journalists who had represented British newspapers in Berlin before the war – Karl Robson, Delmer’s studious deputy, and young Paul Bretherton, to mention only two whom he learned to admire greatly. But most impressive of all was Delmer’s own inexhaustible ingenuity which was apparent at every conference. “Our little joke of last week seems to have been a huge success,” he said one evening, and John noticed that Der Dicke (Fatty), as everybody called Delmer behind his back, permitted himself a rare smile of satisfaction. “The ‘I’ boys report that S.S. men have been merrily arresting each other in the Breslau area.” From the bomb-proof underground transmitter at Milton Bryan a week earlier, broadcasts had gone out announcing that “Allied saboteurs wearing genuine S.S. uniforms have been dropped in the vicinity of Breslau.” The result was confusion and a vast, futile security operation in the area. The “I” boys – Military Intelligence – often confirmed the astonishing successes of Delmer’s Black Propaganda…
The trick worked as well on a lower level. Questionnaires, designed at RAG, were dropped behind German lines with a request to anti-Nazis to supply information. As a next step RAG experts themselves filled in some of the replies containing compromising information or derogatory remarks about the Nazi regime, and added ingenious hints which pointed to well-known Quislings and Nazi supporters as the informants. Underground agents played the questionnaires into the hands of the Gestapo, and the Security Service was soon following a hundred false trails.
John suggested that it would also be a good idea to keep the Gestapo busy by broadcasting regular coded messages calling certain-non-existent-German resistance fighters in Berlin to meetings at theatres, cafés, or in flats, choosing code names which could be quickly deciphered. It was one of John’s favourite pastimes to visualize the Gestapo jumping in all directions and pouncing on innocent theatregoers. Or there was RAG’s “Military Correspondent” who regularly extolled Hitler’s great strategic successes in terms which spread gloom and despondency in a thousand homes. “The layman must understand,” he would say, “that the life of individual soldiers is expendable. It does not matter whether five hundred or five thousand men are killed – the main thing is that victory can be reported to the Fuehrer.”
Work at RAG proceeded with the speed of modern newspaper production. Genuine German broadcasts were monitored, and when they closed down at the approach of R.A.F. or U.S. bombers, a RAG programme was immediately substituted on the same wave-length. John was full of ideas for items to be disseminated on these short bursts. German casualty lists were regularly read over the Milton Bryan station; so were lists of decorations and awards. “Private Gruber, gravely wounded in action – Iron Cross 3rd Class; Sergeant Bauer who lost a leg in the Battle of Riga – the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross; Gauleiter Steiner, for services to the Party – a hunting lodge in the Black Forest and the sum of 10,000 marks…” [“The Man Who Came Back”, pp.96-99.]

McLachlan came up with an operation called the “Rommel Plan”, to discredit Field Marshal Erwin Rommel who had been put in charge of the defence of France after his battles in North Africa. His two-page outline [TNA: FO 898/65] describes a wholly fictitious plan that Rommel wanted to launch a major suicide glider attack on England before D-Day.

“Rommel Plan. Secret. Objectives:
– To discredit Rommel himself from the leadership of the German forces in the West.
– To emphasise Germany’s inability to take offensive action.
– To arouse alarm among the mobile reserves organised and training as parachute for airborne infantry formations.
In order to succeed in the above it is essential to make the listener believe that the British believe that an attack on England is planned and their propaganda makers have been told to try and undermine the morale of the troops taking part in it. Everyone writing and thinking about the operation must therefore try and believe that it is really threatening. We must try and think of the kind of stories and incidents we would invent if we believed there was a Rommel Plan.”

A few months later, Rommel was implicated in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler and chose to commit suicide rather than face a show trial.

In February 1944, Delmer wrote a memo to the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence in which he described how he, McLachlan and another intelligence officer had identified German prisoner of war, General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, as an ideal choice for broadcasting appeals directly to German soldiers to overthrow Hitler. After his capture in North Africa, Thoma was being held at Trent Park, known as the “Cockfosters Cage”, a Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre prisoner of war facility for captured senior officers, operated by MI19. They secretly recorded and translated the conversations of the inmates. It was clear that Thoma was anti-Hitler and he also gave away the development locations of the Nazi V-rocket programme, allowing Allies to bomb the sites. However, it does not seem that their plan to use him thus was ever carried out. [TNA: FO 898/65]

McLachlan obtained a copy of the Bordeaux Naval Base telephone directory from an unknown source in April 1944. This was swiftly dispatched to Intelligence to “…copy this precious document in full… If a full transcript is too much sweat, I suggest that Sergeant asks me to mark the naval numbers likely to be useful to us. It is a gold mine…”

In another National Archives file, [FO 898/69] there is a jovially unofficial letter from McLachlin to Delmer, who appears to be away on leave from the Rookery (the “little red brick house” where Mrs. Maddy was the housekeeper), with his wife, Isobel. Sadly, the year is not given, but as it references the Rommel plan, it must be 1944. ‘Missiles for delivery’ are likely to be the leaflets being printed at Woburn.

“April 3. My dear Monster, We have of course heard nothing from your Hitlerian majesty even though you probably spend half the day wondering what we are doing in your absence. Great things are being achieved. Sgt. and Halkett go off on leave to-morrow leaving a N.P. [News Programme?] for every night of their week’s leave – you see what tact does. Then the Rommel joke has been approved and will be ready for you when you return. Then we progress w[e]ll with our journalistic plans with Dennis straining at the leash and the Americans very interested indeed. Missiles for delivery are in manufacture close to where we live and should be ready for the dress rehearsal. The question of feeding the monster on the particular kind of military ration he can masticate is now under active consideration and I shall try and see the Brigadier of Monty’s who is in charge of its preparation and delivery. That will mean circuiting Muir and Messrs. Crossman and Oechaner on a level just above them.
I hope you are using some of the hours when you are not building Phallic sand castles or drying your golf jacket in the sun to reflect how you propose to perform when the curtain goes up. I would like some practical proposals as soon as you come back; at the moment I think too specially in naval terms.
I lie awake at night wondering whether you are lying awake on springs broken or undigested food. I hope Mrs. Voss has done me credit. It would be useful to know just when you are returning on Sunday so that I can be ready for you – and Mrs. Maddy. I hope Isobel is doing some nice sketches of greatness relaxing.
In the little red brick house all are happy.
Yrs. ever, D. H. McLachlan.
I sign in full in case you lose the letter!”

McLachlan and Delmer were obviously good friends and McLachlan’s daughter can still recall that Delmer made very good wooden whistles for her brothers, while she received dolls from her father’s American and Canadian colleagues. Mrs. Maddy, the housekeeper at the Rookery, gets several mentions in the books about this period and was beloved by all concerned. She kept in touch with Delmer after the war and visited his home in Lamarsh in Essex with her husband. Her descendants still live in Aspley Guise today.

When ‘the curtain finally went up’ and D-Day arrived, the Black propaganda network was used to spread the news, not only by radio but also in their printed newspaper, ‘Nachrichten’, created at Marylands in Woburn (the same building as Dr Glendining had used to treat patients in the First World War) and dropped over occupied Europe:

“In neutral newspapers from Istanbul to Stockholm it was one of the minor sensations of D-Day: the first news of the allied landing in Normandy, so they reported, had been given to the world by the German Soldiers Radio Calais. At 4.50a.m. on June the 6^th, 1944 a Calais announcer had interrupted the station’s dance music to flash a report that the invasion had begun. Fifteen minutes later the announcer had been back with a longer report. It was so graphic that Swedish monitors picking up the broadcast, said an Aftonbladet reporter, decided that the radio station itself must be either in the invasion area or close to it. In fact, however, the distinction of having ‘scooped’ the invasion story did not belong to us at all. It belonged to our competitor Dr. Goebbels and his indefatigable news agency the DNB. We ourselves had picked up the invasion report from a flash on DNB and had immediately put it on the air. But we knew a little bit more about the invasion than did Dr. G. and the DNB. And with Aspidistra’s 600 kilowatt of power to boost our announcer’s voice we made a great deal more noise. Ten anxious hours I had waited at MB for that DNB flash which gave us the signal to put out our carefully prepared invasion reports. Donald McLachlan, the only other member of the MB team to be in on the secret of D-Day and H-Hour, had spent most of Monday, June the 5th, at the SHAEF head-quarters in Bushey Park, just in case there was another change in the plans. Shortly after seven in the evening he strode into my office at MB, flung his naval officer’s cap on my desk and announced:
“It’s on! Ike is definitely going through with it.”
“Are you sure he can’t change his mind once again and call it off?” I asked gloomily. For we had been through this once before twenty-four hours earlier. “The weather is bloody awful,” I added. “Just look at it.”
“No,” said Donald, “I am sure it’s all right this time. And the Met. boys say the weather will improve.”  So we decided to go ahead with our plans. I warned Harold Keeble – who was in the know – that I hoped to be changing the front page of Nachrichten with a ‘special’ piece of late news. And then we went to dine at R.A.G. It was a trying meal. For we had strict instructions from the Security men to let no one in on the secret. Donald and I could think of nothing but what lay ahead. We would have given anything to talk about it. But we dared not. The trickiest part of the evening was getting Hans Gutmann, my chief news writer, to come back to MB with me at midnight without anyone noticing that something was up. Hans had been with us for dinner. And when, just before mid-night, he got up to go home I offered to drive him to the married couples’ house where he stayed.
“I have to pop back to MB for a moment,” I said, “there are one or two items I want to rewrite. I’ll give you a lift on my way.”
“Perhaps I can help?” Hans asked, as I had hoped he would.
“Well, that would of course be most useful,” I said. “I’ll come too,” said Donald, and off we went without my team suspecting anything. At MB the three of us went through to my office.
“I am very relieved you have come, Hans,” I now said. “Donald and I could not really have done this job without you. You see what we want to do is to work out a top-secret draft in German of the kind of story we shall put out, if and when the invasion takes place. I want to have three stories on ice for the great moment – the first a brief flash announcement for Calais, the second a rather longer story for the first bulletin and finally a much fuller piece for Nachrichten. The object will be to suggest to the garrisons of the Atlantic wall defence works that their line has been breached, that they are cut off and that they might as well give up. We don’t want to say that of course. All we do is give them a picture of the situation from which they can draw their own conclusions. The whole thing is only a mock-up, of course, Hans, but I would like to get on with the job full speed ahead as one never knows when it will be needed.” Han’s liquid brown eyes shone with enthusiasm. And I could see from the grin twitching around his mouth that he had guessed what was up. This was the great moment he had been waiting for ever since that evening in November 1938 when the Stormtroop mob had smashed the plate-glass windows of his antique shop in Berlin’s Kurfurstendamm when he had been forced to flee for his life. He yearned to know more. But Hans Gutmann did not embarrass me by asking difficult questions. “Just a mock-up to be kept on ice for the great day,” he said in German, “and you want us to write it now, at one a.m.”
“Fine!” I grinned. “Here is the outline of the stories. Donald has cleared the stuff with SHAEF.”
And that is how we came to capture what should have been Dr. Goebbels’s great scoop. For when the DNB flash came through on the Hell-schreiber tape, thanks to Gutmann and Donald, we had everything ready. Our announcer put out his flash:
“The enemy is landing in force from the air and from the sea. The Atlantic Wall is penetrated in several places. The command has ordered alarm grade 3.”
Without waiting for the main story in the Calais bulletin to be broadcast I jumped into my car and raced off to Marylands with the new front page for Nachrichten. Harold Keeble was ready and waiting to replate. It was a splendid front page which he and Dennis Clarke produced. And despite its lateness, John Gibbs and his printers rushed it through in time for the American Fortresses to deliver Nachrichten to our readers in Normandy only a few hours later. “Atlantic Wall breached in several places” said the banner headline in German. “Armour penetrates deep into the interior: bitter fighting with parachute commandos.” I still have a copy of that number. And when I read it through again today and remember that this ‘report’ was based exclusively on Donald’s knowledge of the plans and his picture of what he hoped would happen, and that it was at least twelve hours in advance of any official news releases, then I thrill once more with admiration for the masterly job done by Donald McLachlan and Hans Gutmann. But it is even more interesting as an historic document. For it shows how our reports were written to fit in with the allied deception plan which was to mislead the Germans into the belief that the invaders were striking at the mouth of the Seine and at Calais. Keeble had splashed the report across three columns of the Front page of Nachrichten in his best Daily Express style.
To top the whole thing off Donald and Hans Gutmann had produced a box-insert under the heading “What is available.” (‘Was bereit steht!’) It showed the tenuous German resources and gave a most alarming picture of the over -extended German defence front. I will quote just two sentences from it: “An average of 18 Luftwaffe aircraft go with each German division in the West. At the tie of the battle of France in 1940 there were eighty Luftwaffe aircraft to each German division. During last week’s battle of Rome the Anglo-Americans had 160 aircraft for each of their divisions.” We had begun to slap that biceps at last.” [Black Boomerang, pp.161-164.]

The “Hell-schreiber tape” was a news teleprinter machine, left behind by the Germans in London as the War started, that was still connected to the German network and most-usefully delivered their breaking news stories straight into Allied hands. The excellence of the printing work was mentioned in Otto John’s biography:

“The wording and lettering of forged German clothing and food coupons was prepared at RAG. When a large batch was dropped in the Mannheim area, there was a run on the shops and the “ration” could not be honoured. The result was a riot. One piece of equipment which was both useful and amusing was a teletype machine which was connected with the German network over which news agency messages were transmitted all over Germany. With this machine it was possible to distribute suitable news-items for the use of Nazi newspapers inside Germany. The choice of topic and the formulation of these items was a favourite preoccupation at RAG.
Relations among the men who thought up these ingenious ways of spreading disharmony in Germany were happily harmonious in spite of underlying tensions. Like John, almost every member of the RAG circle looked back on a turbulent past and carried with him the after-effects of severe strain and stress. The author of the best German leaflets to be produced at RAG was an elderly German Jew who had a harrowing time before he escaped from Germany.” [“The Man Who Came Back”, pp.99-100.]

After the invasion, while Delmer stayed in England running the Black Ops, McLachlan moved with the forces into Europe. He was able to obtain the latest German documents and dispatch them to Delmer to assist with creating forgeries, including a morale-boosting flyer that Himmler had been distributing to his forces on the Western Front, called “The Scorpion”:

“Donald McLachlan had sent me several examples of the German ‘Scorpion’ together with the intriguing suggestion that we might be interested in contributing a ‘Scorpion’ produced at MB. “The splendid part is that the Germans are not delivering these ‘Scorpion’ leaflets to their troops by road,” he wrote, “they are dropping them from the air. I can arrange for our counterfeit ‘Scorpion’ to be dropped to them in the same way and knowing your skill and Hull’s, I see no reason why the troops should not be completely taken in.”
I must explain that Donald, with a small team from MB consisting of Squadron-Leader Eliot Hodgkin (‘the Squodgkin’ to all at MB) and my admirably efficient P.A., Betty Colbourne, had followed SHAEF to France in order to be able to continue servicing us with intelligence, captured documents, and operational requests. Now he had gone forward and had temporarily attached himself to the staff of the U.S. 12^th Army Group’s intelligence chief, Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert. The P.S. to Donald’s note was most revealing: “I know you are terribly busy, but please try and do this and make a specially good job of it. I am anxious that we should impress Sibert with what we can do. He could be very useful to us. – D.”
Impress Sibert we certainly did, but I rather doubt that his impression was favourable. Not that this was due to any shortcoming in our ‘Scorpion’. What with the Corporal writing the text, Nansen vetting it for the correct SS style of language, and Hull doing a perfect job with type and paper, it was a useful contribution to the ‘Himmler for President campaign’. For it clearly held out the possibility that Hitler should be deposed and his place taken by Himmler.
The question it answered was – “May the Führer capitulate?” Our ‘Scorpion’ reply was – “No! If the Führer shows the slightest sign of wanting to give in, then in accordance with the order of the Reichsführer SS of October the 18^th, 1944, the command must be taken over by the next highest Führer who is willing to carry on the fight. The Reichsführer SS knew what he was doing when he issued that order.”
And the leaflet made it more than clear that the situation was grave enough for any Führer to capitulate.
We delivered a nice big batch of the MB Scorpions to Donald in the middle of November, and very shortly after Donald’s friends in the U.S. Air Force dropped them on and around the regular readers of the genuine ‘Scorpion’. Donald rubbed his hands in glee and so did his U.S. accomplices. And then, as always happens when we feel too pleased with ourselves, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, stepped into the scene. In this instance she was disguised as a German peasant who sometimes crossed the lines and had already brought the Americans valuable information about the German units opposite them. This time, too, the peasant had some interesting information. But he also had a bunch of German papers with him, among them our ‘Scorpion’.
“Vurry, vurry interesting,” I can hear the G.2 Captain Stone commenting when the ‘Scorpion’ was brought to him, “and vurry significant. This is a vurry serious situation. We ought to take advantage of it.”
Captain Stone was not among the very restricted number of American officers whom Donald had taken into his confidence. Moreover, this was the period when it was the fashion for Intelligence Officers in the 12^th Army Group sector to take the view that the German forces facing them were in a state of progressive disintegration – a view that had been deliberately fostered by subtle German deceptive moves in preparation for Hitler’s ‘do or die’ offensive in the Ardennes.
So the captain, never questioning the genuineness of the document for one moment, rushed it by special dispatch-rider to General Sibert’s H.Q. And, there, on the following morning, it was the subject of a full-scale intelligence inquest with political experts analysing it and General Sibert himself deciding that he would suggest to the Ops. people that they should make an attack on this front in view of the parlous state of German morale. The irony is that Sibert was making this recommendation at the very time when Hitler, impressed by the sparseness of the American forces in the Ardennes sector – only four American divisions were holding a front of eighty miles – was just about to complete the build-up for his last counter offensive.
Poor Donald sat in on this conference nervously turning his gold-braided naval commander’s cap round and round and asking himself, should he speak up and tell the meeting the truth or should he keep quiet. In the end he decided it would be tactless for him to speak before so many officers. He would get hold of Sibert privately later, and warn him. That, however, was not altogether easy for a mere naval commander and a British one at that. When at last Donald managed to break in on the general, Sibert glowered displeasure.
“Yes, what is it?” he barked, and there was none of his usual affability in his welcome.
“It’s about that ‘Scorpion’ leaflet, sir,” said Donald as nervous as a schoolboy talking to his headmaster.
“Yes, vurry interesting and significant,” said General Sibert, now rather more mollified. “I am sending it on to General Bradley with a suitable recommendation.” And he made as though to wave Donald away. But Donald stuck it out.
“I did not want to mention this at the conference this morning, sir,” he said in that precise, academic voice of his. “But that leaflet is not evidence of German morale, sir. It is one of ours, made in Britain. What we call a ‘black’ operation, sir. The sort of thing I told you about when I first had the privilege of being presented to you.”
Sibert stared at Donald in angry disbelief, and then his face relaxed into a shout of laughter.
“Well, I’ll be goldarned,” he said. But suddenly he realised the non-humorous aspects of Donald’s revelation. He called his aide, “Get me Hansen on the ‘phone,” he said. “I must stop that German leaflet getting through to Brad.”
Then he turned to McLachlan again. “Really Commander, I think I should have been warned about this operation in advance. Supposing you had not been present at this morning’s conference…”
Donald explained that he had informed a small and select number of U.S. officers, but that he had not felt it right to bother the General himself about what was really just a routine ‘black’ operation. General Sibert accepted that, good sportsman that he is. But I do not think that we won in him a great friend and supporter for ‘black’. At least not for British ‘black’.
We went on and did three or four more ‘Scorpions’, less complicated than this first one, but each telling the truth in its most naked and unvarnished state. I wondered how long it would be before Himmler found out what was happening and stopped his bright lads dropping leaflets on the German units from the air.” [“Black Boomerang”, pp.191-193.]

Delmer’s book has few specific dates, but we know McLachlan made at least a couple of trips back to Bedfordshire before the end of the War. Another of the radio teams had been monitoring enemy radio stations and had worked out that they switched off when our bombers were approaching, in case their radio signals could be used to aid our navigation. Therefore, our very strong radio transmitter ‘Aspidistra’ could be used to seamlessly ‘jump on’ to the same frequency and continue with news and music, but would now be playing what we wanted the Germans to hear. Delmer wanted to use it to make a fake announcement that Hitler had been deposed and that Nazi forces had capitulated, hopefully making wavering soldiers surrender and causing general confusion. At the time, McLachlan was back in Milton Bryan (“…for a brief visit…”) and helped him draft an official plan to put before the Chiefs of Staff, but it was firmly ruled out. [“Black Boomerang” p.198.]

The National Archives has a file of the minutes from Political Warfare Executive (Enemy & Satellite) “Black” meetings [TNA: FO 898/61]. McLachlan was often present or submitted ideas though Delmer. At the meeting on 13^th April 1944, “Lt. Comdr. McLachlan outlined a rough plan for exploiting the feeling among the German Navy that they were in a special position vis a vis the Allies. It was agreed that this sounded most useful and Lt. Cmdr. McLachlan and Mr. Delmer were invited to work it out. In this connection Mr. Delmer once more raised the question of establishing a so-called “desertion zone” and it was agreed he should take this matter up unofficially with his Air Ministry contacts.”

Translation of the document:

“Comrades! The leadership’s intentions are becoming ever clearer. They know as well as we do that the war is lost. They know that the anger of the misled German soldiers is rising rapidly. Therefore, we front-line soldiers are to be kept away from the borders of the Reich.
Even before they were cut off, the divisions in Finland and Latvia were ordered to hold out to the last man.
The garrisons of besieged cities and fortresses are forbidden to surrender, even though there is no hope of replacement. The Luftwaffe is prevented from providing us with protection against the enemy bombing squadrons.
The field army is not to return from this lost war so that the leadership, supported by the murderous and spy organizations of the SS and the Gestapo, is safe from our wrath, which it fears more than the victorious external enemy! But we will not allow ourselves to be slaughtered! We want to live for Germany’s future! Soldiers’ Group West”

On at least one occasion, leaflets in German blew out of a travelling lorry and were found by children cycling up the hill to Ridgmont. They took them to Paster Davies of the Courtney Memorial Hall chapel as they didn’t understand the language (thankfully!).

Well before the end of the war, in October 1944, the editor of the Times, Robert Barrington-Ward, was trying to get McLachlan (now a Lt. Commander) back to his old newspaper job. He contacted the Director of Naval Intelligence directly asking for him to be released, as the Times wanted to be ready to open an office in Berlin as soon as the war ended. It was mentioned that McLachlan had volunteered for service while many of his contemporaries had stayed in their “reserved” occupation jobs. The unorthodox request caused a flurry of correspondence [TNA: ADM 1/17162] between the Director of Naval Intelligence and the First Sea Lord. As well as complaining about the approach, they thought that it wasn’t justified… and they already had plans for McLachlan anyway. Admiral Ramsey wrote:

“I understand McLachlan is the officer designated on the “I” [Intelligence] staff for “German Morale and Political Questions”. As I see it his functions will be to advise the Naval Commander-in-Chief and later the Naval Head of the Control Commission on the state of morale in the German Naval Forces. He will also keep a special watch on political intelligence for matters of Naval interest. In regard to his propaganda activities about which Captain Lewes has spoken to me I foresee two main lines along which he would work, with the object of total extermination of the German Navy.
(a) As a short term policy propaganda would be aimed as inducing the Germans to co-operate with us in making their disarmament and demobilisation as quick and as easy as possible.
(b) As a long term policy propaganda would be aimed at the seafaring population; their desire to go to sea should be weakened; and inclination to serve in the German Navy should be rooted out and in particular, a dread of service in submarines should be created. Finally they should be taught that Germany is not and never has been a maritime nation and that attempts to make it into one have failed dismally (vide the last two wars). If this can be achieved by propaganda, it is obviously most desirable that it should be and that the best brains available should be employed on this valuable work.”

…so I. M. R. Campbell, the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, replied to Barrington-Ward in the negative. It is interesting to see how they believed propaganda could be used to influence an entire nation, even in peace-time.

The Rookery team were now so good at second-guessing what orders would be made by the German High Command, using just intelligent deduction and anticipation, that when the advancing Americans captured a railway bridge at Remagen before the Germans had time to blow it up, McLachlan realised that the German would probably try to attach explosives the bridge by frogmen. So Delmer put the story out on the radio, saying it had been ordered but would be impossible because of underwater currents. Hitler had in fact ordered this to be tried and so believed he was surrounded by traitors giving his secret orders away to the enemy!  The frogmen, mindful of how dangerous they had been told the attack was and believing the enemy knew about the plan anyway, surfaced long before they even got to the bridge and promptly surrendered.

Another Political Warfare Executive file at the National Archives, “Underground Propaganda Committee: meetings, minutes, and reports 1940-1945” [TNA: FO 898/69] contains the agendas, marked “MOST SECRET”, full of the various ideas for rumours to spread in different theatres of war. Each idea was called a “Sib” (derived from the Latin ‘sibillare’, meaning to hiss or whisper) and they give a fascinating insight into what was being used in the radio broadcasts and printed material to spread fear and disillusionment among the enemy. These are some examples taken from different meetings:

Not all of these proposals would have been used. Each branch of the armed forces (and also the Foreign Office) were represented at meetings and could veto ideas if they thought a ‘sib’ might impact other missions or strategies.

Unsurprisingly, there are no period local newspaper reports from Aspley Guise featuring McLachlan’s name in the war years among those searchable online, nor any mentioning Woodcote. In the research “Not Bletchley Park”, by John Taylor, the story of some of the other local military projects of World War Two, McLachlan is mentioned as delivering a final message to Otto John, still billeted at the Rookery (which Otto referred to as the “Den of Thieves”) in 1945:

“At the end of the war, with Sefton Delmer now concerned with other duties, Otto had remained at the Rookery under the care of Mrs. Maddy and having instructions to stay where he was, until London decreed otherwise, he partially countered the inactivity by borrowing Mrs. Maddy’s bicycle and exploring the local countryside. Then, admitting that Otto’s presence had almost been forgotten, Commander Donald McLachlan called at the Rookery in early July [1945] with orders for Otto to attend an interview in London. This was regarding a German Austrian division of the Foreign Office which, to be set up in Bush House, London, was intended to establish the theory of the re-education of the population in the British occupied zones.”

Otto John’s biography says that he was told (but not by whom, presumably it was McLachlan):

“There will be another job for you soon… We shall want you to talk to the captured German generals. There are so many things we shall have to know. We shall have to produce a detailed analysis of the war; we shall want to know as much as possible about the German High Command. We must study the past to prepare for the future.” [“The Man Who Came Back”, p.106.]

A second mention of McLachlan in Taylor’s research says he attended the farewell dinner at the Dorchester for Robert Bruce Lockhart, the Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive, after the war had ended:

“As for Lockhart, in the restaurant of Bush House on August 31^st he took his leave of the staff, and shaking hands and saying goodbye to all the members, some 600 people, this occupied him from 4.30pm until 6pm! A dinner in two private rooms then followed on the first floor of the Dorchester Hotel. Including Delmer and McLachlan, many of Lockhart’s colleagues were present.”

McLachlan’s efforts in black propaganda work during the war were finally officially recognised on 11^th December 1945, when the King appointed Temporary Commander Donald Harvey McLachlan R.N.V.R. “an Officer of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for Distinguished Service during the war in Europe” – an OBE.

But at the end of the war, their Naval Intelligence section NID17Z did not disband completely, they moved into formulating how propaganda could now be used to help rebuild Germany. They thought they could use the same techniques to give the German people hope that their country could recover. The British wanted those living in the British Administration area to be given “the right kind of newspapers, radio, periodicals, books, theatre and so forth”. Delmer was offered the job of becoming the new ‘Controller of the German-Austrian Division of the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office’. He took it, but it was on condition that McLachlan must be come too. McLachlan had been about to return to the Admiralty in order to join a new team of Naval Intelligence men chasing up German Naval secrets in disintegrating Germany. When he heard the outline of the new project, he opted to be Delmer’s deputy. Delmer would oversee radio and newspapers, while McLachlan worked on books, films and theatre. They worked together on a plan to overhaul the German newspaper system, which was antiquated and unpopular. Germany had no libel laws or Contempt of Court process to stop newspapers interfering with criminal trials, etc. They designed a template newspaper and planned to send out news stories to the regions via a teleprinter.

Although the plan was approved and they had some backing from military friends, they found the pre-existing British administration team who had already set-up in Germany unwilling to take their advice and even downright unhelpful. It was a clash between the younger Fleet Street men who had learned so much during the war and the old guard bureaucrats who resisted change. New offices were set up in Hamburg and many of the Milton Bryan team were transferred there. But some were still stuck in England…

In 1969, Otto John published his autobiography, in which he adds more to his story of the end of the war. He says he was taken to London, where: “McLachlan installed me in a back room on the sixth floor of Bush House, with a desk, chair and a well-stocked bookshelf. He left it to me and my imagination to propose to him what should be published in the British zone of Germany”, while they waited for official clearance for John to go back to Germany.

The Imperial War Museum has a transcript online of an interview about a newsreel documentary being shown in Britain about the German concentration camps just after the end of the war. The Foreign Office had intervened and taken the film out of distribution. McLachlan, described as being of the “Political Intelligence, German and Austrian Division”, wrote to the director, Sidney Bernstein, on 4^th August 1945:

“My personal opinion is that we need a first-class documentary record of these atrocities and that we cannot be content with the rather crude and un-thought-out newsreel so far shown. On the other hand, policy at the moment in Germany is entirely in the direction of encouraging, stimulating and interesting the Germans out of their apathy, and there are people around the C-in-C who will say “No atrocity film”. I would say that the atrocity film, if really good and well documented, would be shown willingly and successfully in nine months’ time when the difficulties of the winter have been tackled. There may therefore be no hurry for it, and rawstock and technical personnel could perhaps for the moment be spared from it for the needs which the C-in-C has stated as urgent and of which you have been informed.” [IWM, Papers of Sidney Bernstein, Documents.22883, 65/17/1-12].

Otto John found himself with a new handler who knew nothing about him. He contented himself by translating English books of history and poetry. Then he was invited by the Ministry of Information to a private showing of a film on Belson, possibly the same as the one mentioned above, to give his thoughts. It left him shocked and distressed and he no longer wanted to live among the English. He eventually went home to Germany. The Rookery in Aspley Guise returned to private hands after the war, but not before its purchase was proposed by the governmental agency, “The Sugar Beet Research and Education Committee”. [TNA: MAF 117/58]

Delmer’s team in Europe had just got the first drafts for their new German newspaper ready when Winston Churchill was defeated in the post-war election. The team lost all their well-placed friends in Government and the newly elected Labour party were very suspicious of what Delmer was up to. They briefed foreign correspondents that the team (and specifically Sefton Delmer) were losing the propaganda battle against the Russians in Europe. Delmer was ‘invited’ to leave his Foreign Office-backed post and take up one within the European Command, running a simple news service. He was not prepared to submit to such a demotion, so immediately quit. When he consulted with his team colleagues back in London, four of them (including McLachlan) all agreed and quit too. The section was therefore shut down.

The Sunday Express, of 17^th February 1946, ran a frontpage expose about the “Fat-of-the-Land life of German POWs” which had been enjoyed in Aspley Guise. They interviewed the local shopkeepers who confirmed that their foreign ‘visitors’ had not had to worry about ration books etc. Someone else said they had dined off mushrooms cooked in wine and the landlady of the Anchor said she had had to ask them not to speak German in her pub!

After his war service, McLachlan returned to The Times as a leader writer and assisted with the Times Literary Supplement. He left The Times in 1947 to take a position as Foreign Editor of The Economist and then in 1954 he moved to The Daily Telegraph, where he worked as Deputy Editor. He originated the phrase “the smack of firm government” in a leader of 3^rd January 1956, criticising the premiership of Anthony Eden.

There is some film available from BBC Archives of McLachlan interviewing the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, in June 1953. The panel session, anchored by the BBC’s William Clark, saw Nehru answering questions from three distinguished editors: Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman, H.V. Hodson of The Sunday Times and McLachlan for The Economist. Through the 1950s, he was responsible for compiling several reports for the  Royal Institute of International Affairs, such as “Atlantic Alliance. NATO’s role in the free world” and “Defence in the Cold War. The task for the free world”.

In 1961, McLachlan became the editor of the new Sunday Telegraph, a position he held for five years. Ex-Prime Minister Edward Heath referred to him as “a close friend” in his autobiography, “The Course of My Life”. He contributed a foreward to Douglas Rookes’ book, “Conspiracy” in 1966, describing Rookes’ campaign for justice after he was sacked by BOAC under pressure from a union that Rookes had left.

After his retirement, McLachlan wrote two books. The first was a history of the Naval Intelligence division, called “Room 39” in 1968. Sadly, he makes no reference to his personal situation, billeting or achievements anywhere in the book. Such was the secrecy still about Bletchley Park’s role, that it is only ever described in the book as “…the great communications centre outside London” and referred to throughout as ‘Station X’. There are no references in the book to his being in Aspley Guise at all.

He then contributed two essays on military intelligence gathering and its relationship with the Press to “The Fourth Dimension of Warfare: Intelligence, Subversion, Resistance” by Michael Elliott-Bateman in 1970. Again, Aspley Guise and the Black radio broadcasts are not mentioned.

His second book was a biography of his former Times editor, Robert McGowan Barrington-Ward. Just before that was published, he was staying in Elgin for a few days, visiting the area from his home in Selborne, near Alton, Hants., to do research work for a new biography he was starting on Kurt Hahn, founder of Gordonstoun School. On 10^th January 1971, Donald McLachlan’s car left the road and struck a tree at Sluie Lodge, Edinkillie and he was killed, aged 62.

The Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University hold some of his Naval Intelligence papers, mixed in with those of Patrick Beesly, under reference GBR/0014/MLBE. Their catalogue entry for him intriguingly says he had promised to deposit more papers to Churchill College, Cambridge but the promise was frustrated by the Ministry of Defence removing the remainder after his death. One of his sons was also a longtime Fellow of Trinity College. Some sources say he had also been awarded the American “Legion of Merit” medal, but I cannot track an award of this.

Sefton Delmer had been just about to publish a history of the various rouses the Allies used before D-Day to fool the Germans into thinking the main invasion would be made in Norway and Calais in France, as a diversion from the real Normandy plan. It was delayed for two years due to copyright arguments, but when it finally came out in 1973, it was dedicated to the memory of Donald Harvey McLachlan whom he said had first introduced him to “the labyrinth of Storey’s Gate” – the original home of Naval Intelligence and now the Churchill War Rooms. There is no mention of McLachlan in the book otherwise, whether that was Delmer’s decision or at McLachlan’s request, I do not know. Delmer was introduced on his “This is Your Life” TV programme in 1962 by Eamonn Andrews as a “…friendly Falstaff who knew Hitler well – and Hitler lived long enough to regret the association.”

McLachlan’s son, Jeremy, was interviewed for “The Black Art”, by Lee Richards (2010), just before he died in 2010. He said that his father knew a great deal about how to get under the German’s skin. He was a man of tremendous vitality, both intellectually and physically. Although he could appear too serious and too analytical at times, he had an underlying warm sese of humour which could burst forth spontaneously and unpredictably.

Back at ‘Woodcote’, where this story started, once the war was over and the secretive military men and foreign civilians went away, Mrs. Glendining got her house back. Their only son, Maj. George Michael Glendining. M.C., R.A., married in December 1946, to Barbara Charnock, younger daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Charnock Smith, of Glyndon, Woburn Sands.

Mrs. Glendining had a few more years in the house before she passed away in April 1951. With the house still belonging to the Duke of Bedford, it had to be cleared and a sale was organised, as advertised in the Bedfordshire Times of 11^th May 1951.

The sale was followed up with a report of the prices in the Ampthill & District News, 29^th May 1951:

“FURNITURE SALE. A quantity of household effects and outdoor effects, offered by Messrs. Foll and Parker, of Woburn Sands, at Aspley Guise, on Wednesday. by order of the Executor of the late Mrs. E. E. Glendining, attracted a large crowd of prospective purchasers, more than 200 people being present at one time. Good prices were realized: antique walnut chest £55; mahogany bureau – bookcase £40; two pairs linen sheets dated 1838 £10 10s. and £11 10s.; mahogany bedstead and wardrobe £20 each; seven Chinese coloured prints on rice paper £6. 5s.; oak dresser-sideboard £32; radiogram £12; and motor mower £27.”

The original typescript ledger of Foll & Parker’s sales from this period still exists and shows the sale made £1,182 in total, a little lower than the £1,890 at which they had valued the goods.

Woodcote went on to be sold by the Duke of Bedford’s estate in 1954, realising £3,750. It was advertised as “DETACHED RESIDENCE KNOWN AS WOODCOTE, ASPLEY GUISE. 8 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 4 reception rooms, offices. All main services. Outbuildings, etc. 7 ACRES of gardens and grounds.” in Country Life, on 15^th April 1954. It became the home of James Summerlin, director and owner of the PLYSU plastics factory in Woburn Sands for many years.

It was eventually demolished and a new dwelling erected on the site which uses the same name.

 

My thanks to Donald McLachlan’s family for assisting with this article. Also John Taylor for his research into the local wartime projects.  I have applied for Donald McLachlan’s service record, but this may take up to twelve months to arrive.

Bibliography
“The Man Who Came Back”, Frischauer, Willi. Frederick Muller, 1958.
“Black Boomerang”, Delmer, Sefton. Martin Secker & Warburg, 1962.
“Room 39 – Naval Intelligence in Action 1939-45”, McLachlan, Donald. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.
“Twice Through the Lines”, John, Otto. Econ Verlag, 1969.
“The Fourth Dimension of Warfare: Intelligence, Subversion, Resistance”, Elliott-Bateman, Michael. Manchester University Press, 1970.
“Very Special Intelligence”, Beesly, Patrick. Hamish Hamilton, 1977.
“Very Special Admiral”, Beesly, Patrick. Hamish Hamilton, 1980.
“The Black Game – British Subversive Operations”, Howe, Ellic. Michael Joseph, 1982.
“Bletchley Park’s Secret Sisters”, Taylor, John. The Book Castle, 2005.
“Churchill’s Wizards – The British Genius for Deception”, Rankin, Nicholas. Faber & Faber, 2008.
“The Black Art – British Clandestine Psychological Warfare Against the Third Reich”, Richards, Lee. Psywar.org, 2010.
“A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson”, Conradi, Peter J. Bloomsbury, 2012.
“Ian Fleming’s War”, Simmons, Mark. History Press, 2020.
“Not Bletchley Park”, Taylor, John. Online https://www.mkheritage.org.uk/archive/jt/misc/secret.html
Interviewing Prime Minister Nehru on BBC 1953 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6XeUjU3giY

 

Page last updated: 8th May 2025