Trainees at Camp X.
Camp X was a secret training school and radio communications center that operated in Canada during the Second World War. It was located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario, between Whitby and Oshawa, Ontario. Camp X was established by Sir William Stephenson, the director of British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the operational and liaison arm of UK Intelligence in the US.
Stephenson was a Canadian businessman and a close friend of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt. Stephenson was a Canadian businessman and spy, who was also known as Intrepid. He was also a decorated fighter pilot in World War I and the recipient of the Medal of Merit, highest United States civilian honor during the period it was awarded.
Camp X was officially known as Special Training School No. 103, or STS 103. It was one of many such schools around the world that served the needs of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) a British agency created in 1940 to conduct clandestine operations behind enemy lines. Camp X opened on December 6, 1941, just one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war.
Camp X was run by the SOE with the cooperation of the Canadian government and the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck was the first commandant of CampX and a veteran of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Major Richard Melville (Bill) Brooker was the second commandant of Camp X and a former journalist who had lived in Paris and Berlin before the war. Lieutenant-Colonel Cuthbert Skilbeck was the third and final commandant of Camp X and a fluent speaker of German and French who had served as a diplomat in Marseilles.
Camp X trained agents from various Allied countries, including Britain, Canada, the United States, and France, in the skills of espionage, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla warfare. Camp X also had a radio communications center called Hydra, which transmitted and received messages from agents.
Hydra was built by engineer Benjamin deForest Bayly from various parts acquired from amateur radio stations. Bayly was a Canadian electrical engineer and a professor at the University of Toronto. During World War II he invented a cypher machine called the Rockex and handled communications at the secret intelligence base Camp X. He later ran an engineering company in Ajax, Ontario, and was the first mayor of that town.
Hydra transmitted messages securely by using coded Morse signals that could only be deciphered by authorized recipients. Hydra also used multiple frequencies and directional antennas to avoid detection and jamming by enemy forces. Hydra communicated with England’s Aspidistra station, as well as other SOE and OSS stations around the world. The Aspidistra station was a British medium wave radio transmitter located in Crowborough, England, that was used to broadcast black propaganda and military deception to Nazi Germany during World War II. It was one of the main stations that Hydra communicated. Hydra also transmitted coded messages from Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko, who exposed a Soviet spy ring in Canada in 1945.
Several of the buildings at Camp X. Photo taken in 1947. Training at Camp X ceased in April 1944,
After the American entry into the war, the camp helped train American agents, who were eager to develop their own covert capabilities under the leadership of William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camp X provided Donovan with instructors, facilities, and a syllabus that became the basis for his own training program.
Camp X was also a Canadian operation in many respects. It relied on the support of the Canadian military and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who provided security and logistics for the camp. It operated with the knowledge and consent of the Canadian government, although Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was not fully aware of its purpose or activities. The camp’s staff included Canadian officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as British and American personnel. Some of the agents who trained at Camp X were Canadians, who went on to serve in various theaters of war.
The training at Camp X was intense and rigorous. The training regimen typically lasted three to four weeks. The trainees learned various skills such as sabotage, subversion, intelligence gathering, lock picking, explosives, radio communications, encoding and decoding, recruiting partisans, and the art of silent killing and unarmed combat. The training process was designed to make or break potential agents. Instructors wanted to weed out the weak and only select the best candidates.
Training took place from early in the morning until late at night, often under harsh conditions and simulated scenarios.The training was conducted in various locations around the camp, including a mock German village, a shooting range, an obstacle course, and a lakefront dock. The trainees also practiced their skills in real-life scenarios in nearby towns and cities.
The instructors and commanding officers evaluated the trainees’ skills after they finished the training. They reported their recommendations to the SOE in London. The trainees went to Britain for more assessment and training. Then, another branch of the SOE would develop a mission for each that was best suited for their expertise.
The legendary Lieutenant-Colonel William Ewart Fairbairn was one of the instructors at Camp X. Fairbairn was a British Royal Marine and police officer who developed a system of hand-to-hand combat called Defendu, based on his experience in the Shanghai Municipal Police. Defendu was designed to be simple, effective and lethal. It combined elements of boxing, wrestling, savate, jujutsu, judo and street fighting. Fairbairn published a book about Defendu in 1926, which he later revised as Scientific Self Defence in 1931. He made a training film in 1941 called Unarmed Combat, where he showed the Home Guard, Commandos, and other military forces how to use Defendu’s strikes, holds and throws. The film had actor David Niven as the narrator, who was a Commando himself since the start of the war.
During World War II, Fairbairn was recruited by the British Special Operations Executive as an Army officer to train Allied special forces in close-quarters combat, pistol-shooting and knife-fighting techniques. He also co-designed the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, which became a symbol of the Commandos. One of the places where he taught his methods was Camp X, where he was given the nickname “Dangerous Dan”. At Camp X, Fairbairn instructed agents from various countries, including the US, in the art of silent killing. He also demonstrated how to use every -X was significant and lasting.
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, visited Camp X in the summer of 1942 while servingas a naval intelligence officer and was inspired by its methods and gadgets (although this is disputed by some historians who claim he never set foot in Camp X). While there, he also met Stephenson. Fleming later used his experience at Camp X as a source of inspiration for his novels, incorporating some of the techniques and gadgets he encountered there.
The fictional spy school in Casino Royale was based on Camp X, and the character of Q was modeled after Charles Fraser-Smith, a BSC agent who supplied ingenious devices to the operatives. Officially, Fraser-Smith was a temporary civil servant for the Ministry of Supply’s Clothing and Textile Department in London. In actuality, he developed and supplied gadgets and other equipment for section XV of Britain’s SOE. He was stationed at Camp X where he trained agents in the use of his inventions.
Some of the famous trainees at Camp-X were:
- Roald Dahl, the famous author of children’s books, who worked as a British air attaché in Washington, D.C. and gathered intelligence from influential Americans.
- David Ogilvy, the founder of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, who worked as a researcher and analyst for British Security Co-ordination in New York.
- Frank Pickersgill, a Canadian lawyer and Rhodes scholar, who joined the SOE and parachuted into France to organize resistance groups. He was captured and executed by the Nazis in 1944.
- René duch*ez, a French-Canadian journalist and broadcaster, who served as a radio operator for the SOE in France and Belgium. He transmitted vital information to London and helped coordinate sabotage missions.
- Vera Atkins, a Romanian-born British intelligence officer, who supervised many SOE agents in France. She was responsible for recruiting, training and briefing them before their missions. She also investigated their fates after the war.
- William Grover-Williams, a British racing driver and Grand Prix champion, who became an SOE agent in France. He led a network of saboteurs who destroyed German vehicles and equipment. He was captured and killed by the Gestapo in 1945.
Training at Camp X ceased in April 1944, as the need for new agents diminished with the progress of the Allied invasion of Europe. Hydra continued to operate. Camp X was taken over by the Canadian Government in 1947 and operated as a military signals station until it was closed down in 1969. The buildings were eventually demolished. A monument was erected at the site in 1984. Today, the area is known as Intrepid Park, after Stephenson’s codename. Camp X is widely recognized as an important part of Canada’s military and intelligence history, as well as a significant contribution to the Allied victory in World WarII.
Camp X photos courtesy Lynn Phillip Hodgson Camp-X ● Official Site
*The views and opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the original authors and contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Spotter Up Magazine, the administrative staff, and/or any/all contributors to this site.
