SECRET WAR OF CHARLES FRASER-SMITH

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Because of the wartime secrecy there was no written production process to work from. At the end of the war, any complete pencils still at the factory were sent off to the British Government, along with all written instructions and remaining components. Most, if not all of these, may have been destroyed. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: He said he was impressed by my initiative and inventiveness, and he was looking for someone with those qualities to work in his department. NARRATOR: Fraser-Smith’s gadgets don’t just assist you after you have made a break for freedom. They can also help set you free in the first place. Captured British soldiers are expected to form secret groups to plan escapes called ‘escape committees’. The idea is to make breakouts an organized, disciplined process. And there was a way to supply the escape committees. It was at an Open Brethren meeting in Leeds when Charles was giving a talk on his experiences in Morocco, that the director of the Ministry of Supplies (MOS) in Leeds, G. Ritchie Rice, was in the audience as well as Sir George Oliver, Director General of MOS in London. A meeting was immediately set up with Ritchie Rice and after much discussion Charles was offered a job with the MOS in Leeds. Charles Fraser-Smith was the son of a solicitor who owned a wholesale grocery business; he was orphaned at age seven. He was then brought up by a Christian missionary family in Croxley Green in Hertfordshire. [3] He went to school at Brighton College, where he was described as "scholastically useless except for woodwork and science and making things." [4]

The pencils reveal their secret compartment and internal items – which were kept hidden from the public under the Official Secrets Act until 1975. The two masterminds of the operation were Charles Cholmondeley and Ewan Montagu, two men with what Churchill called "corkscrew minds". CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: And then, quite without warning, I received a message that I was being reassigned to London and that I would be required to sign the Official Secrets Act. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: One of the chaps who would occasionally call me on the red phone with a secret request or a gadget instruction. Very able and highly inventive certainly, as you can see in the James Bond books he wrote after the war. Unknown to Charles, Lt. Commander Ewan Montagu had conceived a plan that required this container along with the items. Also unknown to Charles, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, a neighbour in Croxley Green, who usually travelled to London from the same local railway station, was also a fellow conspirator to the plan. A leading forensic scientist and a Home Office pathologist, Sir Bernard was tasked with selecting a corpse who would be code-named 'Martin'.

Itching Powder

Once this temporary appointment was completed, Charles and Blanche decided they too would like a holiday before returning to their home, Khemisset, in 1939. Only one chapter here is devoted to Charles’ “Q” activities, since Fraser-Smith's previous book ( The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith) had already been published. His son talked him into writing about his war experiences, since the period of secrecy he had agreed to was over. Charles did not consider himself very educated or articulate, so two ghost writers worked with him. “Charles was somewhat disappointed that the finished book contained relatively few of his outspoken Christian statements. But enough of his highly individual views, and his remarkable life, characterises the book for the reader to understand that this is no conventional story of espionage and undercover work” (p. 151). The book made him a celebrity, with interviews and showings of some of his gadgets. He wrote a couple of other books, with proceeds going to Arab World Ministries.

Initially Fraser-Smith supplied clothing and standard props (from second-hand sources) for SOE agents working behind enemy lines, but SOE directives and his taste for gadgetry led him to develop a wide range of spy and escape devices, including miniature cameras inside cigarette lighters, shaving brushes containing film, hairbrushes containing a map and saw, pencils containing maps, pens containing hidden compasses, steel shoelaces that doubled as garrottes or gigli saws, an asbestos-lined pipe for carrying secret documents, and much more. [4] [5]The novelist Ian Fleming also worked in similar secret circumstances during the war and was aware of Charles Fraser-Smith and his accomplishments. When writing his novels after the war Ian Fleming created the character 'Q' who devised the gadgets for 007 in the James Bond stories and the character was modelled on Charles Fraser-Smith. In an example of lateral thinking, Fraser-Smith used a special left-hand thread for the disguised screw-off top of a hidden-document container; he suggested this would prevent discovery by the "unswerving logic of the German mind", as no German would ever think of trying to unscrew something the wrong way. [4] CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I’m pleased to say that even his cycle tires and brakes were provided by me. Very hard to get the materials at that time in France. No need for any cloak and dagger devices though. It was enough we were able to support his very demanding practice rides. The last thing one wanted was for him to take a tumble. It’s unknown how many are left in the world, due to the fact they were carried in one of the UK’s most recognisable aircraft during World War Two. I’m actually thrilled that there is another pencil in circulation." CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I knew that if I were to deliver satisfactorily and on time, I would have to bend the rules to their limit. One of my first calls was to Scotland Yard to see if they could be persuaded to renew the government offer to buy privately held handguns - this time offering a higher price. But they said they’d need the approval of the Home Office. I knew well enough that waiting for that to happen would take weeks. So I asked if they would mind if I advertised myself, putting notices in the press offering generous prices for handguns. No-go there too I’m afraid. No one fully understood the new wartime regulations, but no one wanted to risk running afoul of them.

Charles Fraser-Smith was the son of a solicitor who owned a wholesale grocery business; he was orphaned at age seven. He was then brought up by a Christian missionary family in Hertfordshire. He went to school at Brighton College, where he was described as "scholastically useless except for woodwork and science and making things." NARRATOR: 21st November 1942. A beautiful moonlit night over occupied France. An RAF Lysander - one of the slowest and most outdated aircraft still in service - is making its ponderous way to a rendezvous at low altitude. It is not clear why the children were not brought up with Caroline their mother as the 1911 census reveals that she went to live in Ramsgate as Housekeeper to Dr.Fisk, originally from St Albans, Hertfordshire. In April 1943, the body was dropped into the sea from a Royal Navy submarine and then floated towards the coast of Spain, where it was spotted by a sardine fisherman and the series of events was set in train.CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: Our POWs were entitled to receive carefully vetted gifts from home. And so, we had a means of getting my little gadgets into the prisons so long as they could be adequately disguised. NARRATOR: They did work together on one operation though, a ruse worthy of Bond at his most daring, Charles and his brother Alfred were for a short time pupils at The Court House, a private school in North Finchley. NARRATOR: The British law that binds all who sign it to 30 years of silence about government work, on pain of imprisonment, a pre-condition of spycraft.