Canadian Field Security in the Second World War
Documents from 1941-1944 released in 2023.
A detachment of Canadian Field Security men make a dramatic entrance in Norman Lewis’ Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy. Lewis, who served as a British intelligence officer and worked with the Canadians in Italy, writes with all of the old-world-meets-new-world fascination of a Brit getting to know North Americans:
“the promised Canadians arrived in two splendid Dodge lorries, and proved to be the wildest of real-life, gun-slinging cowboys straight from the prairies. They have everything that any soldier can possibly want: an assortment of guns, hip flasks, poker dice, signed photos of Rita Hayworth, pocketfuls of french letters and occupation money.”
Lewis’ Canadians are forever “laden with weaponry and Strega.” They are always on the hunt. One of the sergeants carries a big diamond he bought along the way.
When I picked up Naples ’44 a few years ago, I had not expected much in the way of Canadian content.
But the appearance of Canadians on the book’s pages triggered a historical reflex. It is a little advertised but true occupational hazard that when a historian reads a new or curious fact, said historian must also look to see what related records are available in the archives.
And so it was, without much conscious thought, that I set the book down and brought up the Library and Archives Canada online catalogue and typed “Field Security” in the search bar.
The results of my investigation were shocking if not surprising. Several of the wartime folders were still “closed.”
This perfectly — and painfully — illustrates the the absence of a “thirty year rule” in Canada. (Heck, an 80 year rule would be nice here!) There is no rolling system where by documents become “open” rather than “closed” because of their age. Records that are born with a security classification stay that way forever unless a researcher comes along and requests that they be reviewed.
(LAC has achieved important results with a process called “block review” but there are real challenges to applying this program to military, intelligence, and diplomatic history records from the last 75-80 years.)
I requested the archival files as per the Act. A response took 870 days, but ultimately LAC was able to respond to my request and open the records. (That these were microfilm records made for a challenging digitization process, and, as you’ll see below, decreased the quality of the scans.)
What follows then, are records that in some cases date from 1941. They were finally “opened” — declassified — this week, in March 2023.
Now all of the documents from this release package are available at Canada Declassified.
What does Field Security do?
This 1941 UK document entitled “Field Security Work in the Middle East, including Italian East Africa and Greece” was created by G.H.Q. Middle East and distributed to Canadian Field Security Sections. It provided early lessons for Canadian units that would later end up in Sicily and Italy.
The document outlines the responsibilities of field security personnel attached to advancing formations. Tasks included taking charge of enemy headquarters, police stations, and wireless stations in order to secure enemy documents and prevent them from being sabotaged or destroyed. They protected municipal buildings and power plants from sabotage.
In addition to searching for documents with intelligence value, “FS” interviewed (“interrogated”) civilians both for information and in "preparation of a future informer service."
When working in occupied enemy territory, field security personnel had to deal not only with "isolated subversive elements, i.e. single spies and saboteurs" but with the whole civil population. People had to be registered, checked, controlled, and watched.
Some of the later Canadian experience reveals how much civil administration work fell to field security units, even after Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) was established.
The Canadians in Sicily
This memorandum entitled “Tactical Employment of 1 CDN Field Security Section” offers an example of how a section functioned in a provincial capital and district, and sought to inform planning for future campaigns in France and Germany.
This memo in particular is worth a read in full. I’ve only pulled out a few bits here:
Upon arriving in a town, the section’s priority was contacting the local police or Carabiniere. The police needed to guard important sites because no troops would be available for such a task. These sites would then be searched by the Canadians as soon as possible.
Sorting through the files in Fascist headquarters was enormously difficult because there was just so much paperwork:
“Fascism was built on ‘Bumph’ and consequently everywhere one goes one has to wade through stacks of it to get at the facts.”
White List and Black List
After establishing itself in a town, the section would get to work interrogating civilians and building a “Black List” and a “White List.” The section itself is divided into a “White List Department” and “Black List Department.”
This particular part did not digitize well, but it is revealing of how the Canadians had come to feel about their interrogation tasks. Perhaps worth reading on your browser or turn your phone sideways.
Only with “infinite patience and laborious persistent interrogation” could it be determined who should be arrested.
“The FSO is a man of parts.”
This memorandum oozes with the frustration facing Field Security Officers (FSOs).
For example, in describing relations with divisional command:
The “natural staff contact” for a Field Security Officer is “either too busy to give thought” to the FSO’s problems, “or, in quiet periods, takes a sudden and usually thoroughly disruptive interest in the way the section is doing its job.”
The memo also includes extensive discussions of the transportation challenges facing a FS Section. This point, about the challenges of transportation via motorcycle [MC = Motorcycle, PW = Prisoner of War], is hard to argue with.
Weekly Field Security Reports
Perhaps the most interesting part of this release is a series of six weekly security reports from the end of 1943. They track the ups and, mostly, downs of occupation life.
In Sicily, the invading allies had promised food if the Sicilians did not resist. But in November “incompetent handling of food supplies” was being used as a “powerful propaganda weapon” by pro-Fascists. Some villages and rural districts were the sole responsibility of a few FSOs or Security NCOs who had to deal with this crisis alone.
“For some inexplicable reason Sicilians on the whole seem to be incapable of organization, even for personal welfare, and it is a heavy responsibility for an NCO to organize the feeding in isolated villages.”
The Usual Suspects
In Taormina, the Canadian and British Field Security Sections found evidence that the Mayor, the warehouse owner, the Chief Priest and the Chief of Police were all on the wrong side of things:
Rumours
Field Security kept watch on rumours and morale, too. This is an intriguing rumour because Roosevelt was in Cairo meeting with Churchill — not Ribbentrop — in late November. A Roosevelt-Ribbentrop meeting would have been something else entirely.
Food Crisis: We’re Not in England Anymore
The food situation continued to deteriorate into December, with “actual contempt being indicated in some places.”
In Messina and Syracuse, relations between Canadian troops (“tps”) and the civilian population were “far from satisfactory” and the Canadians were partially at fault.
A week later, improved relations were “probably due to increasing realization by officers that stricter control is necessary than was the case in England.”
“Christmas came and went but the extra pasta made no appearance”
There was no pasta at Christmas in 1943.
Security Advice to the Troops
In February 1942, the Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada sent on a list of “Security Advice to Troops.” The list had been prepared by members of the Field Security Course training at R.M.C.
The list is reminiscent of the “loose lips sink ships” posters we usually associate with the homefront, but these messages were for troops in the field.
The digitization of the page is imperfect so I’ve copied the list, below.
1. Don’t tell her the Unit’s plans, she is only interested in your plans for tonight.
2. Life begins at 40 - don’t stop it earlier by disclosing Military Information.
3. Better to use your head than to lose your head.
4. Hitler rubbed his hands with glee / He’d got some information / A soldier and a peasant maid / Had been in conversation.
5. Brief life is here our lot; don’t make it briefer.
6. Your wife or girl friend will love you just the same and worry less if she does not know your sailing date.
7. You may as well send weapons to the enemy as give him information.
8. A dumb cluck named Paddy McGin / Told all the town girls with a grin / All the facts that he knew / What the Unit would do. / And they passed it straight on to Berlin.
9. Better to be close-mouthed and thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.
10. Beware of kind people; they may be Hitler’s kind.
11. A man is wise who seldom talks, but one who talks is seldom wise.
12. Let the Adjutant worry about Orders and stop publishing your own Part 3’s.
13. There was a young man in the ranks / Who told all he knew about tanks / Now his pals are all dead / So is he, ’tis said; / So he has no more time for such pranks.