The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 3 - Expansion and Espionage

After the success of the limpet mine the upstart division of inventors were producing new things left right and centre. They had quite the variety: they produced the first sticky bombs, grenades that glued to tanks and blew shrapnel inside (many thought this too horrible to use, which contributed to much of the blowback on the division); bombs placed under toilet seats; and a bombard, a weapon that essentially shot an explosive barrel to be used against tanks, just to name a few. The lattermost was demonstrated for Churchill himself alongside Charles de Gaulle. Although it almost took off the French general's head, the bombard quite effectively toothpicked the heck out of a tree. Churchill loved it so much he made the inventors an actual division in the hopes of allowing them to circumvent some of the bureaucratic red tape, naming them MD1, the Ministry of Defence.

Charles de Gaulle, pictured with the head that the
members of MD1 would enthusiastically
note wasn't accidently blown off by a bombard while
demonstrating a new weapon. Also pictured:
the most French looking man to ever have existed, right
down to the moustache and the air of snootiness.

Soon, they were allowed to hire 3,000 men, spending much of their resources training the new recruits in all sorts of underhanded fighting. It was often pretty dreadful stuff; one of the ideas was to castrate the Nazi captures and send them back as a method of demoralizing the troops - which, I'll admit, would certainly have the intended effect. Naturally, the type of men to be hired for work like this were frequently criminals and the like, which often would go head-to-head with the brass. One of the officers, for example, played a prank on a generals who thought his training base was impregnable. The officer managed to sneak in and set off an explosive during one of his lectures. It might have been all in good fun, but considering their reputation, it probably set them back a step.

Nevertheless the camp stayed alive, and Churchill tasked the men with preparing for the would-be invasion of Britain. Of course, it ultimately never happened due to the Battle of Britain going in the allies' favour. That meant that they got to turn their sights overseas with the main focus being undermining the Nazi power on the mainland to prepare for the eventual invasion. But before they could get going, they ran into a snag - their headquarters got bombed.

They looked around for a new spot and settled on the Firs. The new location was actually a large house a rich man was selling on the market, which, much to the man's dismay, they confiscated for the purposes of winning the war (he eventually got it back, but not after blowing up most of his lawn, I would assume). The more reserved, classic British nicknamed it "Churchill's Toy Shop" in mockery. Personally, I like the name. It sounds very Willy Wonka-esque, but with a flare for the explosive. And with fewer Oompa Loompas, which is a win for everyone. From here, Churchill dubbed his new group the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare", and told the men to "now set Europe ablaze," using words that are almost comically distinct in the Churchill manner.

The Firs: a most lovely backdrop for the production of
hidden toilet-seat mines and discussions of Nazi castration.
Apologies for the use of the word "castration" now three times
in this blog. Blame history.

With the new change of location came a change in personnel. Gubbins, the tough-as-nails Scotsman, was put in charge of operations and immediately set to work hiring whomever he pleased. He happened to hire almost exclusively women to work in the office, not because he wanted to fool around (at least not entirely, as he was a renowned party animal) but because he simply trusted them more. And he would need that trust, because they were about to undertake their first major espionage operation.

In Pessac, France, there sat a massive electrical transformer. While the power station was itself unimportant, it fueled a submarine factory not far away, meaning that the disruption of the power grid would in turn halt the flow of boats that were of massive consequence in the ongoing ocean battles with the Nazis bent on sinking supplies bound for the warfront. After going for a practice run on a nearby, similar friendly factory they went to work at infiltrating the real thing. After they were parachuted in with their explosives, they found there to be a wall along the perimeter, and while it was shorter than expected the whole thing was lined with sentries.

The whole thing could never have worked without Churchill.
You need a man that would hold a Sten gun with the
same childlike delight of a boy holding a puppy to so
enthusiastically campaign for this stuff.

Fortunately, guard duty is exceedingly boring, and one could imagine that if you went to war to be a soldier you're signing up for the glory of battle (at least the imagined promise of it) rather than standing beside an empty field guarding a big electrical facility. It's hardly a war story to write home about. The espionage force, composed of a small team of the Free French resistance fighters working for Gubbins, watched the sentries for days to discover that those forces of boredom were becoming strong, and complacency had long since set in. They would often leave their posts early, often before midnight. The leader of the operation, Sergeant Forman, simply hopped the fence and unlocked the main gate. They walked right in and found it to be deserted, empty due to the belief in an electrical plant not being the target of parachuting resistance fighters. They planted multiple limpet charges and blew multiple transformers to smithereens, resulting in removing the factory from production for almost a year. The saboteurs got the heck out of there and managed to escape, leaving the guards to be executed for their lack of diligence - as well as a harsh curfew and imprisonment for many of the French people living in Pessac.

The operation was a massive success, and as a result the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was further proving its worth. With Churchill by their side and successes coming through, clandestine warfare was on the up and up.

Even if it wasn't very British.