Marked Most Secret: Operation Locksmith

After seventy years of silence, a humbling story of bravery by a Second World soldier, and indeed that of his team, is finally being shared this month at our saleroom. A rare SOE Gallantry medal group, awarded to signaller Sergeant Thomas Handley, is to be sold on Sunday September 6th, and is the result of a tale both as dramatic as it is tragic. For like many such awards, it was requested that no details should be made public, nor communicated to the press; leaving Handley’s family firmly in the dark for a lifetime. 

Serving with the Royal Signals from 1940, it is believed Handley was an early volunteer for Commando and operational paratroop training, before seeing active service in the Middle East, and ultimately with the Special Operations Executive’s Cairo office. Known as SEO, it was a British World War II organisation, officially formed by the Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton in 1940. The directive was simple, its forces were to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against Axis powers, whilst also aiding local resistance movements. 

Whilst Handley’s service prior to 1943 still remains shrouded in mystery, what is clear is that in this year he took part in Operation Locksmith, a mission intended to block the Corinth Canal. The proposed method being that of a ‘blockship’, whereby a ship is deliberately sunk in order to prevent a channel being used. The four-man party led by Lieutenant Commander C M B Cumberlege, DSO and bar, disembarked in uniform, from a submarine on the east coat of Greece, near Poros on January 14th, laden with specially designed magnetic explosives. Within three days Handley had successfully opened up wireless communication with Cairo, which he maintained, despite their hideout being betrayed by a Greek fisherman ten days later. The group moved quickly by night, but were forced to make several risky journeys in order to laboriously carry the two tons of munitions and explosives with which they were burdened. 

Despite further interventions by both German and Italian forces, the team successfully  deposited their mines as intended, although it appears that the delayed action fuses failed to detonate, or where otherwise ineffectual, as no blockship came about. Thereafter, following treachery from hostile locals, and a fire fight with a German patrol, the unit’s radios, complete with secret code books were captured by German forces. What transpired next has never been fully explained, but what is known is that Handley received a message, purporting to be from SOE Cairo, although almost certainly sent by the Germans using the seized wireless set, informing the team of a rendezvous with a British submarine, though in fact a trap, which finally lead to their capture in April.

While his comrades were imprisoned, it appears Handley, under duress, was forced by the Germans to send false messages back to SOE Cairo. However Handley, at great personal risk, managed to insert covert ‘tells’ into these communications alerting Cairo of his compromised situation, right through to the month of June, despite knowledge that discovery regularly resulted in the immediate shooting of the operator. That it was Handley operating the wireless set was beyond doubt to the three operators at the Cairo end, who confirmed that all transmissions were in Handley’s own inimitable style. Furthermore, Handley, as usual, was doing the enciphering. The result was that excellent use was made of this contact with the enemy for MI9, where false information was fed out, and much made of the ‘smoke’ received in return. 

However it was not to last, and Handley was eventually ‘caught at his own game’. On September 24^th a reliable Greek contact who had been asked to attempt to secure the escape of the party, telegraphed to inform officials that the four men had been at Stalag VIII-B concentration camp in Lamsdorf since May. This was contrary to Hitler’s infamous ‘Commando Order’ whereby captured Allied commandos be summarily executed. For a time in 1944 it was believed the party had been moved to Stalag Luft III, before being last heard of at the POW camp at Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, east of Berlin, toward the middle of February, 1945. From here Lieutenenat Jack Churchill, DSO, MC, brought home a message from Cumberlege, an extract of which read; All charges against us baseless.

The men were brutally treated during their time in captivity. Following the war, a full investigation was launched into the fate of the party. A former inmate of the camp, who was employed as an orderly, was interviewed, and provides the only account of the fate of the men. He remembered the Locksmith four, together with two other Allied captive soldiers. They had been denied Red Cross parcels and their health was poor, they were emaciated, suffered from skin and teeth complaints, and were kept in solitary confinement. The orderly, alongside other Allied POW’s on a better diet, were reduced to smuggling food to the six at night whenever possible.

He last saw the men on our about April 10th 1945 when they were all transported by ambulance car to the Industriehof where they were murdered. He was not a witness, but knew too well the procedure; in every instance when a prisoner left the Zellenbau in his prison garb, his fate was all but inevitable. In cases of normal release, prisoners invariably left either in their uniforms or civilian clothes. Following their departure he had been required to assist the Head Camp Orderly in packing their effects and taking them to the Komandantur, from where, it was said, they were despatched to the Gestapo HQ Columbia-Haus, Berlin. By chance he later also received the men’s prison uniforms, returned by accident, and forwarded them on to the camp boiler room where they were summarily burned. The uniforms had been unimpaired, which led to his assumption that the six may have been gassed or hanged, although it was also common practice for victims to remove their own clothing under pretence of a medical exam, before facing a firing squadron. Handley was 30 years old, and before the war he had been a librarian. 

Handley was awarded the Military Medal while a prisoner of war. An extract from the recommendation for the award reads ‘Without consideration of his personal safety, he took a grave risk the whole time in deliberately hoodwinking the enemy in a manner which has in other cases resulted in the immediate shooting of the operator.” 

Handley’s family only discovered his bravery, and fate, in 2000, when previously sealed documents, including a transcript of the above interview, were eventually disclosed. Finally bringing to light the work of these valiant few, and closing the chapter in a family, for too long left unwritten. 

- GN

The medal group will be included in an auction of military medals, arms and militaria, and carries a pre-sale auction estimate of £10,000-20,000.