What a Man !

“I have known RWOC for close to 20 years. We both met on the Army Combat Survival Instructors’ Course where we were on the same syndicate. At the time we were both working in a unit working behind the Iron Curtain, in East Germany responsible for monitoring the activities of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany.

Despite being captured by the hunter force Reb quickly convinced them that he was a BT engineer from Luton, on secondment to the BT Exchange in May Street Belfast. He was set free, I was subjected to 24 hours of stress positions and harsh. All I got to show for it was a HAC Gurnsey style cardigan and membership of a good dining club near Lincoln’s Inn. He proved excellent at building relationships with the East Germans, in part due to his command of “Hoch Deutch” that had become quite unfashionable during the communist era. His command of the language combined with his superior rapport-building skills set him out as a man apart from the rest of us.

Whilst other crews spent the night roughing it in fields and woods, with Reb we were always guaranteed a room for the night in a 5 star hotel or some schloss still in the hands of its aristocratic owners. If it were not for the fact that I knew he was a common Intelligence Corps Other Rank this aspect of tradecraft demonstrated to me he has many qualities befitting an Officer in the Royal Air Force.

Some of the relationships that Rebel formed with the underground intelligencia are said to have paved the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I next saw RWOC in Iraq in 1991, where he was working as a member of the Iraq survey group, under Command of a man I now know to be an agent handler as well. Much of Rebs work was now at the diplomatic level, dealing with Ministers and heads of the armed forces. Even after it had been de commissioned and grounded at Cosford, Reb was still flying everywhere by Concorde - again showing traits that only a person who has worked closely with the RAF can do.

Over the years the more I got to know Rebel the more I noticed the occasional slip about “Century House”, or that other temple of espionage tradecraft “the Cotton Centre”. Eventually he let slip that he had been trained at Fort Halstead, AKA the Fort.

This truly is one impressive guy, good to know he is on your team. When he gets together with another Agent Handler, these guys are truly unbeatable. I am not worthy - Respect !