Dieppe Raid

[Surpmil]

One caveat here. The book No Queensbury Rules, about WE Fairbairn and EA Sykes' WWII SOE and OSS service quickly points out that the biggest problem the researchers encountered was the abundance of published, and widely accepted as fact, 'fabricated' histories of individuals' SOE/OSS experiences, training and operations, including Ian Flemings historical account of events. In fact, the editors repeated cautions that about the questionable validity of certain accounts that they included was annoying for me when I read the book.

I should add that the researchers also point out that many (read most) of the SOE files were reportedly destroyed immediately after 'closing shop' after the war.

https://cqbpublications.com/products...combat-1940-42

SOE was a bit of a cowboy club like the OSS, some say. Also seems to have been full of marxists of various stripes, and aroused the violent resentment of other similar organizations IIRC, M16 in particular. That would be one reason for purging their files: so the organization could not be easily reconstituted if needed again; or politicians merely decided it was. Probably it also contained many very talented and original individuals well able to "think outside the box", but when peace is declared the "establishment" generally tries to put things back where they were before "the recent unpleasantness" so rudely interrupted routine! LOL. Hence for example the disappearance of the Machine Gun Corps and the near disappearance of the Royal Tank Corps after WWI. In the later case the senior officers of the Corps cleverly got the King to become Colonel-in-Chief which scotched the plans for outright abolition.

Richard Meinertzhagen, not necessarily an entirely reliable witness one must admit, stated that before the war he was working on a plan with Lawrence and Churchill and perhaps a few others to somehow amalgamate British intelligence, and perhaps counter-intelligence services. He states in his memoirs IIRC that after Lawrence's death, he had to give up this plan. Now it so happens that some odd events surrounded Lawrence's death. Could there be a connection? Not likely we'll ever know.