Three Witches

Inleiding

De '3 heksen' was een logo dat al in 1943 door IS9 gebruikt werd en te vinden is op gebouwen, vliegtuigen, jeeps en dergelijke. Over de reden van dit logo is geen officieel document te vinden.

IS9 was belast met het opsporen en terugbrengen van -met name- gestrande piloten. Die waren waardevol voor de luchtmacht. De opleiding duurt lang en is duur en er moesten vele, vele missie gevlogen worden.

Voor de berichtgeving werd in 1944 besloten S-phones in te zetten. Mobiele draagbare radiosets, die door field agents gebruikt werden. Daarvoor moest contact gelegd worden met overvliegende vliegtuigen op basis van een vast vlucht- en zendschema. Dat zou een verklaring kunnen zijn voor de symboliek.

Er is echter nergens een officieel document van 'Operation Three Witches' te vinden. Ook niet van 'Operation Blackmail'. Deze aanduiding komt een aantal keer voor in de ORB's (Oerational Record Books, vliegrapporten) van het 264e squadron van de RAF, maar niet in de ORB's van de drie andere squadrons die ook deze vluchten uitvoerden. Ook in interne documenten van enkele betrokkenen (waaronder Leo Fleskens) wordt 'Blackmail' gebruikt. Dit is ook overgenomen in enkele publicaties zoals 'Vijf jaar luchtfront'.

Het lijkt erop dat beide namen, 'Three Witches' en 'Operation Blackmail' een soort officieuze aanduiding was van een aantal direct betrokkenen en dat die namen een eigen leven zijn gaan leiden. Maar ook dat weten we niet zeker.

Er is ook een order van Airey Neave uit 1945, die het verdere gebruik van het logo verbiedt (zie hieronder). Dat had er mee te maken dat IS9 aan het eind van de oorlog is opgedoekt. Alleen een Award Bureau (AB) ging nog enig tijd verder.

De Kerstkaart van Three Witches

In het archief van Jos hebben we 2 cartoons gevonden. Een kerstkaart/nieuwjaarsgroet aangetroffen waarvan de cartoon gemaakt is door de broer van Leo Fleskens. Op die kaart staan diverse plaatsen en stippen. Van de meeste namen/stippen weten we inmiddels wat die betekenen. Daar zat meestal een van de zendteams met een radio toestel. Hieronder hebben we op een rij gezet wat we ervan weten. van deze kerstkaart zijn verscheidene exemplaren in omloop geweest. Er is nog een tweede cartoon die volgens ons uniek is en speciaal voor mijn vader gemaakt lijkt te zijn.

Kerstkaart 1945/1946

Abandon Logon.Er staat:
Subject: Unit Badge of I.S.9 (W.E.A.).
1 The Unit known as I.S.9 (W.E.A) has now been disbanded and the three witches badge which was worn on uniforms and painted on cars is no longer recognised by the military authorities. 2 It will therefore be removed forthwith from all cars and uniform.3 The Military Police have been informed of the above.
26 Jun 45.Airey Neave Major

Gevonden op de website www.tremele.nl. Dit logo is opgezocht/bedacht door de webmaster en heeft verder geen status.

Wat zien we op deze kaart?

Met hulp van Gerard van Loenen kunnen we de meeste plekken op de kaart duiden:

De 3 rode stippen:

'Burma house': In Tilburg was het IS 9 WEA S-phone centrum in het Birmahouse onder leiding van Capt. M. Macmillan. Deze laatste was samen met Capt. T . Nevell binnen IS 9 WEA verantwoordelijk voor het onderdeel “S “ Phone Detachment. De resultaten van de IS 9 WEA vluchten werden ook in het Burmahouse besproken.(bron Gerard van Loenen)
Zeist: 'In Zeist zat vanaf 21 maart 1944 het team van mijn oom Luuk van Loenen met de zender “Alex”. In Zeist was ook een verzamelpunt van koeriers met militaire inlichtingen, dat was bij mijn grootvader op de Steijnlaan 2b. Soms werden de gegevens via koeriers naar Amsterdam gebracht.' (bron Gerard van Loenen)
Boven Rotterdam: waarschijnlijk is dit Wassenaar, waar op Konijnenlaan 21 het gecombineerde Awardsbureau van IS9 en MIS-X gevestigd was. Na de oorlog was dit bureau belast met het bedanken en soms financieel compenseren van alle pilotenhelpers. Jos heeft ook voor dit bureau gewerkt

De plaatsnamen (van Zuid naar Noord)

'Base': is waarschijnlijk 'airbase' Gilze RIjen waar de squadrons Mosquito's en Austers van RAF en RCAF gestationeerd waren
Made: nog niet duidelijk, maar waarschijnlijk een agent en zender voor de Biesbosch crossings
Tholen: de Boathouse waar getrained werd om over snelstromend water te navigeren. Deze Boathouse is oorspronkelijk bij een steenfabriek ten oosten van Nijmegen gevestigd.
Dordrecht: In Dordrecht zat Benjamin Edward de Groot met de zender “ Widgeon” (bron Gerard van Loenen).
Goerree: Op Goeree zat de zender “Sheldrake”, eerst bemand door Hezemans en Hazen, vrij snel daarna overgenomen door Hoogendoorn, De Lint en Jacobs. (bron Gerard van Loenen).
Rotterdam: waarschijnlijk een S-phone van Groep Albrecht
Amsterdam: idem
Utrecht: idem
Nijmegen: hoofdkwartier van IS9, Kerkstaat 12-14 te Hees
Deventer: 'Lucas van Wijngaarden, codenaam “Borstal” opereerde oostelijk van Deventer. Hij gebruikte de namen “Abel” en “Henk Kruizinga”. (bron Gerard van Loenen)
Winschoten: wordt genoemd in het verslag van Jos. Leo Heaps had hem naar Winschoten ontboden.

Gerard van Loenen meldt verder het volgende: Aan de groep “Albrecht” zijn ook een achttal S-phones ter beschikking gesteld. “Albrecht” had centra in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Zeist en Deventer. Volgens mij was het bereik van de IS 9 WEA-vluchten te groot voor communicatie met Amsterdam en Deventer.

Badge IS9 - Three Witches

Wat zien we op deze tweede cartoon?

Titmouse= codenaam van Jos bij IS9. STYN: weten we niet. DOEWA: weten we ook niet

Embleem: Weten we niet zeker. Het zwaard komt ook terug in het embleem van SHEAF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces, olv generaal Eisenhower). Maar evengoed komt het voor in het symbool van de Stoottroepen. Dat waren voormalige Knokploegen die opgenomen werden in de Nederlandse Binnenlandse Striijdkrachten o.l.v. Prions Bernhard die vanaf begin September 1944 gevormd werden. Jos was lid van 7e Compagnie Blauwe Jagers.

Embleem van SHEAF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces

Embleem van Regiment Stoottroepen van de Nederlandse Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten

The Story of Nick Lambrechtsen

THE MYSTERY OF THE THREE WITCHES

We moved to Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1939 to Kerkstraat 14, and lived in a big 3 storey house on the west side of Nijmegen, in a village called Hees. It is close to the Maas-Waal canal. That village celebrated 815 years of its existence in 2011. A book in Dutch: “Hees bij Nijmegen – Van dorp naar groene stadswijk, 1196-2011” to commemorate this event has been published in August 2011.

This shows our house as it looked in 1939, taken from the street. The house is still there. The name of the house was “De Kamp”, and is shown in the vertical metal work below the chimney, to the left of the 6 narrow windows. That name has been removed after the war. Its location shows the approximate division between the two families. We lived in the left hand side. You can see our front door. Our neighbours at #12 were in the right hand side, but under the same roof. Their front door was on the side of the house. There were ponds in front of the house, which is why the entrance gates are over a bridge. In 1944, we used to make rafts of petrol cans when the water was high enough, but we fell off quite often. The ponds were filled in well after the war. The entrance pillars were wrecked by the English soldiers who drove their trucks onto the section. They must have found it a bit narrow and were sometimes a bit careless. The pillars were replaced in 1947 and have been made of plain bricks.

On 17 September 1944, the British and American troops reached Nijmegen and it was liberated after prolonged heavy fighting, but it became a frontier city for 7 months. It was the last city to be freed in the well-known “Operation Market Garden” with its Battle of Arnhem which the airborne troops of the 1st British Airborne Division could not hold against the German Panzer divisions that happened to be nearby. I remember American airborne troops coming past our house, walking very quietly in their rubber boots. They had been dropped south of Nijmegen near Groesbeek. We offered them pears from our pear tree. At first they were suspicious: these kids could try to poison us, but soon they enjoyed eating that fresh fruit and gave us real chocolates in exchange. That was such a luxury. We had not seen real chocolate for years. Later-on tanks, most probably Sherman tanks, came through our street, and we saw how they cooked their food in half a drum that they filled with sand, then put petrol on, and then set on fire. When the flames started to die down, they would poke the sand, and things would flare up again.

Because we had such a big house, we had British Commonwealth soldiers quartered in our house: I think there were 23 of them at one stage. They were British, Irish and Scots, and a few Canadians. We slept in the cellar under the house, so they could occupy as many rooms as they liked. The soldiers turned out to be an intelligence unit [see next paragraphs] which helped to get the airborne troops back from Arnhem through the Betuwe which was no-man’s land. This operation was called “Operation Berlin (Arnhem)” and involved the 23rd Canadian Field Company of the Royal Canadian Engineers which on the night of 25/26 September 1944 managed to get some 2,500 airborne troops back to liberated territory, using “assault boats” and “storm boats” . They had to cross two big rivers, Rhine and Waal, and had to avoid German artillery. Subsequent efforts were made on 22/23 October 1944 in “Operation Pegasus” when about 138 troops were carried across the Rhine. However, Operation Pegasus II on 18 November 1944 was not successful, but seven men crossed during the next two days . The latter crossings [or subsequent crossings] may have been made with inflatable canoes, but the soldiers found that they were so noisy on the water that the Germans could hear them at night and shoot at them. So then ‘our’ soldiers “acquired” all the canoes from a local Dutch canoe club. Those wooden canoes were much quieter on the water so they were successful in bringing back some more soldiers from the Battle of Arnhem. In February 1945 and later, more troops from Arnhem were brought back [see “Later Escapes” in reference 5]. After our soldiers left some seven months later, we were left with a big pile of canoes. The police came round and thought that we had stolen them. We said: “The English soldiers did it. Please take the canoes away”. And they did.

Caspar, de broer van Nick in een bolderkar. Voorop heeft Nick een heks getekend, op basis van het logo van IS9

Logo van IS9 door Nick op de bolderkar aangebracht

Logo IS9-WEA

Logo SHAEF: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditory Forces

Badge derived from http://www.militaryantiques.co.uk/showpagec.ihtml?cat=309&jump=17

The logo /emblem of the intelligence unit comprised 3 witches, and we used their stencil to decorate our “splintcar” built on an old pram frame. See photos of my youngest brother Caspar in the crate on the splintcar, and a close-up of the witch. The crate had contained army rations.

I painted the witch onto the crate but did it the wrong way around! After all, I was only 10 at that time. The soldiers had made a stencil so that they could paint the 3 witches onto the mudguards of their trucks.

TThe footnotes show that it took me a long time to find out which intelligence unit had been staying in our house, but between August 2012 and June 2013, I finally got the answers.

The officers of the soldiers stayed with our neighbours at #12, but we reckoned we had a much better deal, and certainly a lot more fun. Being soldiers from an intelligence unit , they had a big transmitter in what was actually the bedroom of my brother and me. That transmitter was important enough for the Germans to pinpoint its location, so they sent a flying bomb, a “V-1” [“doodle bug”] to obliterate it. Fortunately they got the distance sufficiently wrong so that the bomb missed us by about half a kilometre and dropped into the farmland behind our house. It still created a lot of damage: blowing out windows and making the ceilings come down. You might say a bit like a big earthquake. In addition, the soldiers had portable transmitters which had been built into petrol cans, called “Jerry cans”, because the Germans designed them first. I am sure that they took such transmitters with them when they were dropped behind enemy lines to gather information or sabotage things. They also used these transmitters to listen in on German messages, and with the help of a Dutch woman, they would reply with erroneous messages to lead the Germans “up the garden path”. When the soldiers sent messages in code to their headquarters, we could not make any sense of the code because it used common words, like ‘sugar’ and ‘tea’. We saw that they had the key code on a piece of cloth [silk?] so that they could swallow it if they got caught by the Germans. We also had a big tree on the corner of our house, which the soldiers used for practising throwing their knives. We reckoned that was to kill German sentries. Since the soldiers were part of SHAEF, several had the famous rainbow badge of that Force; they were very proud of it.

The “Three witches” badge of the Intelligence School No 9, Western European Area. Badge derived from:

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u195/rolfiw/threewitchessmall.jpg

The SHAEF=Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force badge, derived from www.military-graphics.com

This concludes my search for the meaning of the “Three witches” badge .

But since I am mentioning badges, one of the soldiers had a badge with P on it. He was extremely proud of it, because that belonged to the GHQ Liaison Regiment Phantom Force, which was established in 1939. Its main duties were to use wireless communications and mobility in order to provide real-time assessment from the front line. Phantom recruited men with various skill-sets – linguists, drivers and mechanics – and undertook rigorous training in wireless communication and cipher. In January 1944, the Phantom Force was absorbed into the Royal Armoured Corps but Phantom was disbanded in 1945 . It seems to me that members of the Phantom Force would have been a good match for the Three Witches.

The reference to the Royal Armoured Corps is interesting because, while we had the Three Witches in our house, the Guards Armoured Division of the XXX Corps had its Head Quarters under Major General Sir Allan Adair at the Weesinrichting Neerbosch, on the other side of the Maas-Waal canal, from 22 September to early November 1944. Then the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division took over, followed by the 49th Division West Riding of the Polar Bears . Near this Weesinrichting [orphanage] an airstrip for Austers was made, such as used by 664 AOP squadron [see below]. This airstrip was most likely “Nijmegen 66” . The strip has been described in detail with photos by Mr Arjen W. Kuiken, 10-02-2017 [Reactie 9] on the Dutch website https://www.noviomagus.nl/h1.php?p=Gastredactie/Geertsen/AOP.htm%23Rx09 It was approximately located at the present day Binderskampweg, Neerbosch. I think it is very likely that the Three Witches communicated with the Guards Armoured Division HQ. Since the bridge over the Maas-Waal canal at Neerbosch had been blown up, they would have had to travel via Weurt, but it still would have been a fairly short trip of 5-6 km.

Just one more anecdote: One day, my mother had put a green camouflage parachute in the garden to dry it on the grass. She got a big telling off from the soldiers because a spotter plane could easily see that from the air and possibly betray the presence of the intelligence unit. She was very firmly told never to do that again. My mother used the parachute silk to make summer pyjamas. She made several pairs and wore them for years because the parachute silk was very strong and lasted well. Talking of spotter planes, I found a photo of a Canadian captain, George Swan RCA who was in “A” flight of 664 AOP squadron which was based at Gilze-Rijen B-77, the Netherlands, at that time, and he has a Three Witches badge on his sleeve; see next page!

This photo is #2481 from Library and Archives Canada, Faces of War collection, see http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/second-world-war/faces-second-war/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=2481&

Captain George Swan on the right; General H.D.G. Crerar (centre) attending an investiture at the Civic Auditorium, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 13 January 1946; unidentified corporal of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (RCASC) on the left.

Dr Nick Lambrechtsen QSM

Wellington NZ

6 February 2019

Footnotes Story of Nick Lambrechtsen

[1] The involvement of this Canadian Field Company was revealed in April 2015 when my sister in the Netherlands found our mother’s 2 sketch books with 35 drawings of the soldiers who had stayed in our house. None of the sketches was named but one Lance Corporal Gerald A Sutherland had written his 23rd Canadian Field Company details on the cover of one of the books. I have managed to track down his next of kin. The drawings are now at the National Liberation Museum, Groesbeek. See https://www.bevrijdingsmuseum.nl/
[2] See http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/war_23rce.htm which contains a detailed “Report on the Evacuation of Survivors of 1st Airborne Tps from their bridgehead at Arnhem and the river Neder Rijn at Arnhem” by Major M L Tucker, OC 23rd Canadian Field Company. More information on “Operation Berlin (Arnhem)” can be found in http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/donald/operation.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berlin_(Arnhem) and in the book “Storm Boat Kings” by John Sliz, see http://stormboatkings.ca/
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pegasus The “Annexure 1 to Appx ‘F’” by Lt Col D T Dobie DSO to “Evasion Report: 21 September – 23 October 1944” by Major A D Tatham-Warter states that “I.S.9 will make arrangements for planes back to England.” See http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/RepPegasus.htm The involvement of British military intelligence in these evacuation operations is also mentioned in the “Postscript” of “A Bridge Too Far: The Canadian Role in the Evacuation of the British 1st Airborne Division from Arnhem-Oosterbeek, September 1944” by David Bennett; see http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo6/no4/history-histoire-01-eng.asp
[4] Thanks to Anne Wickes, of The Second World War Experience Centre, Horsforth, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS18 4TJ, I have finally found out that the "Three witches" badge was worn by members of IS9(WEA) which stands for Intelligence School No 9, Western European Area. She advised me on 7 August 2012 that this unit dealt with escapers, evaders and POWs mainly and was attached to SHAEF=Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. The 3 witches are not a reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but to a story related in a book called 'Road to En-Dor' by Lt E H Jones. Lt Jones was a British serviceman taken prisoner by the Turks in the First World War and he and a fellow prisoner convinced their Turkish captors that they were mediums, skilled in the use of the Ouija board.
[5] I received additional information from Fred Judge, researcher at the Military Intelligence Museum, Chicksands, Shefford , UK, about this unit. He writes on 12 June 2013 “I am more than ever convinced that the unit stationed in your house was probably one of the Special Counter Intelligence Units (SCIUs) which were run by MI6 with MI5 participation and often quite a few members of the Intelligence Corps”. A few days earlier, on 9 June, he wrote: “’Both the Security Counter Intelligence Unit' (SCIU), and the 'Special Patrol Unit' (SPU) had close links to the intelligence and security fraternity and some of their members were MI5 and/or MI6 in uniform. Their role was to run agents and line-crossers in the field, amongst many other similar duties. Members came from a number of other units including American and Canadian.”
[6] For more information on the “Three Witches”, see Barbara Smith’s website http://www.mi9-is9.com/ where she describes her husband Jimmy’s “A Husband's Most Secret War in MI9 IS9”. The website has a lot of information on MI9/IS9. It shows in a letter that the Three Witches were disbanded on 26 June 1945. She quotes several books, and has included the drawings that my mother Helena de Baat made of 35 of ‘our’ soldiers, under the website bar “Can you help?” She obtained them by permission from the National Liberation Museum, Groesbeek.
[7] More details about the Phantom Force can be found at http://www.bobsimsmilitaria.com/shop.php which has a ‘Phantom Force Address Book’, and at http://www.militaryantiques.co.uk/showpagec.ihtml?cat=309&jump=17 where I found the badge.
[8] See “Tweemaal aan het front: de Weesinrichting Neerbosch 1940-1945”, by Dr Henk Termeer. Downloaded via https://www.academia.edu/8366849/Kinderen_oorlog_en_bevrijders._Weesinrichting_Neerbosch_1940-1945
[9] For “Nijmegen 66” see the book “RAF Squadrons: A Comprehensive Record of the Movement & Equipment of all RAF Squadrons and their Antecedents since 1912” by Wg Cdr C G Jefford MBE, first published in 1988, ISBN 1 85310 053 6. He describes how “Nijmegen 66” was used by the 653, 662, and 660 RAF squadrons. Major John Dicksee of the AOP Officers’ Association wrote to me 22/10/2007 that it was probably the B flight of 662 squadron that used this strip.

Openstaande vragen

Wie heeft nog meer informatie over 'Operatie Blackmail'?
Zijn er ergens rapporten van de 2nd Tactical Airforce (TAF) die over deze vluchten gaat?
Wat zouden de afkortingen STYN of DOEWA kunnen betekenen? Of zijn het namen van personen of gebeurtenissen?

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