‘Our secret war’ is likely to be the final look via oral history filming at Britain’s covert activities during the Second World War.
As part of an ongoing oral history and documentary project more than eighty exclusive interviews have been filmed with WW2 veterans, and more are already scheduled. Many of these women and men served in intelligence or resistance roles and haven’t ever spoken of these in such depth and detail. Their accounts are crammed with evocative code names and acronyms which include SOE, F Section, Force 136, Y Service, the Comète Line & MI9, SIS, Station X, Enigma, Ultra, the FANYs, the SAS, the Special Duties Squadron, and the Jedburghs- a guarantee that their stories are fascinating and very special.
Oral historian Andrew Denyer has recently joined Wide-eyed.tv’s producer Martyn Cox and cameraman Alan Benns for the continuation of this work and also kindly added his own archive of 14 filmed interviews with WW2 veterans of the Royal Observer Corps. [Click on “Sentinels of Britain” for more information.]
In 1940, neither the British public nor the ‘rank and file’ in the armed forces had any idea of the infrastructure being secretly created for resistance, sabotage, intelligence, and escape and evasion. So none could have dreamt they would ever be part of a covert war.
But needs must and thousands were recruited, many only in their late teens or early twenties and with a high proportion of women. Most were civilians and thus had no military experience. Training and serving alongside them were volunteers from the enemy invaded countries who’d managed to escape or been brought out especially to join this ‘irregular’ war effort.
They served their countries quietly, diligently, and often courageously; and some didn’t survive. Most did, but never spoke much of their work afterwards. Now, more than six decades later, the ‘Our secret war’ project is ensuring that the memories of at least some of these remarkable and very special veterans are finally recorded - and thus never forgotten.
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