The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS - also known as MI6) is one of the world's most secretive organisations. SIS is not bound by the 30 Years Rule under which British government departments release their records into the National Archives and consequently hardly any documented histories of their activities have been written. A rare exception is Sebastian Ritchie's fully documented study of a Second World War SIS agent, Our Man in Yugoslavia: The Story of a Secret Service Operative. Its subject is Owen Reed, and army officer recruited into SIS in Cairo in the summer of 1943.

Our Man in Yugoslavia

Reed was parachuted into German-occupied Croatia, where he worked with Tito’s Partisans and with other Allied covert organizations, such as the Special Operations Executive, gathering intelligence, arranging airborne supplies, and helping escaped prisoners of war to reach freedom. But after reporting back to London in July 1944, Reed returned to Yugoslavia to find relations with the Partisans deteriorating. His erstwhile comrades now began working against him, and the intelligence he passed to SIS came increasingly to focus on the communist takeover, rather than residual German resistance. In the spring of 1945 Reed found himself at the centre of a tense stand-off between east and west – the first great confrontation of the Cold War – before his final withdrawal from the field. Blending biography and operational history, Our Man in Yugoslavia tells the remarkably human story of how a very unassuming citizen soldier found his way from the battlefield of Alamein into the clandestine world of secret intelligence. A case study, illustrating the means by which SIS field operatives were recruited and trained, and describing their work in detail, this book also considers SIS activities in this important theatre more broadly, and challenges many earlier assessments of their wartime role.

Owen Reed, early 1942

Contents:

Chapter 1.  The Life and Death of the 24th Armoured Brigade Chapter 2.  Base Wallah Chapter 3.  The Secret Intelligence Service and Yugoslavia, 1939-1943 Chapter 4.  'The Department that deals with Liaison between Different Services' Chapter 5.  Judge or Fungus? Chapter 6.  Through Judge Mission Chapter 7.  The Istrian Debacle Chapter 8.  Slovenia Chapter 9.  The Last Battle Chapter 10.  Conclusion: From Judge to Outlaw

Some personalities in SIS operations in Yugoslavia

Our Man in Yugoslavia: The Story of a Secret Service Operative, by Sebastian Ritchie; publisher Frank Cass, September 2004, ISBN 0-7146-8441-4

Amazon UK

Amazon US