(Lawrenson-Lloyd-Evans)
In 1940 Alec Lawrenson was a reader in English at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Like other British academics in Yugoslavia, he was evidently contacted by SIS and became what one source describes as 'an improvised agent who was not very good or discreet at his job. Half Ljubljana knew what he was doing.' There is no way of knowing if this critique is justified, but there is evidence that Lawrenson was very active in his anti-Axis work, being involved, for example in the sabotage of rolling stock - presumably in north-east Italy or southern Austria. In due course he was given the protective diplomatic cover of a vice-consul's appointment as well as an assistant, GS Frodsham. Soon after his appointment, when Lawrenson was absent from Ljubljana, Frodsham was found dead in his flat, poisoned by gas. Although his death was officially recorded as suicide, it seems likely that Frodsham was in fact murdered by German intelligence.
John Leonard
John Leonard's real name was Zdravko Lenscak. He was a Slovene, whose family came from the Primorska region. In Rome at the time of the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, he subsequently served on the secretarial staff of a member of the Yugoslav government in exile in London, who was in contact with SIS. Leonard apparently volunteered for service with SIS in 1942. Together with a radio operator named Alojz Sivec, he was infiltrated to Partisan headquarters in Slovenia in the summer of 1943 to head an SIS mission codenamed ‘Moth’. By September 1944 Moth mission had two additional personnel, Sergeants Jelen and Mikuz. Leonard’s activities are not very well documented, but one SOE observer reported in January 1944 that ‘the field [for intelligence gathering] is so great that the ISLD party have been able to do great work, particularly in respect of locations of factories, airfields, and descriptions of bridges, and their information sources extend well into northern Italy. The very valuable rail traffic reports from a Ljubljana source closed when Ljubljana was cordoned off. Leonard has done excellent work, but I was astonished to find that he dropped without any previous intelligence training, and also knows nothing of the organisation of the German army.’ In October 1944 Leonard and his staff all sought and received permission from ISLD to join the Partisans. He was replaced by Owen Reed.
Leonard was formally admitted into the Partisan armed forces in January 1945, and was wounded in action in March. After returning to his unit he was kept under close surveillance by the Partisan secret police, OZNA, who were suspicious of his former associations with SIS and the government in exile; during the year OZNA concocted a series of entirely fictitious reports alleging that Leonard remained in the service of British and American intelligence. In November he disappeared and nothing more was heard of him until 1961, when a court in Ljubljana proclaimed him to be dead. He was said to have died on 1 December 1950. His radio operator, Sivec, suffered a similar fate.
Robert Lethbridge
Lethbridge became chief ‘Passport Control Officer’ in Belgrade in 1940. His staff included Parsons, Thom, Shires, James and Gerrish. He is suspected of some involvement in encouraging the coup d’état that unseated Yugoslavia’s Prince Regent in March 1941 and precipitated the Axis invasion. But perhaps his most notable achievement at this time was the recruitment of an Abwehr operative, Dusko Popov, who subsequently worked as an extremely effective double agent for MI5. When the Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia Lethbridge and his staff fled towards the Adriatic coast. After unsuccessful efforts to evacuate them by flying boat and submarine, they surrendered to the Italians, Italy having agreed to repatriate any British diplomatic personnel captured on foreign soil, on the strict understanding that Britain fully reciprocated. Lethbridge, his staff, and other members of the British diplomatic community, were then evacuated to Italy, from where they were taken by train across Vichy France to Spain. From Spain they returned to Britain via Portugal or Gibraltar. Lethbridge’s later activities are not well documented, although there are indications that his involvement in SIS operations in Yugoslavia continued from a distance. In 1942 he was sent to North America to help recruit émigré Yugoslav left-wingers for infiltration to Tito’s Partisans.
Leonard was formally admitted into the Partisan armed forces in January 1945, and was wounded in action in March. After returning to his unit he was kept under close surveillance by the Partisan secret police, OZNA, who were suspicious of his former associations with SIS and the government in exile; during the year OZNA concocted a series of entirely fictitious reports alleging that Leonard remained in the service of British and American intelligence. In November he disappeared and nothing more was heard of him until 1961, when a court in Ljubljana proclaimed him to be dead. He was said to have died on 1 December 1950. His radio operator, Sivec, suffered a similar fate.
John Lloyd-Evans
In 1940 John Lloyd-Evans was officially a press officer at the British consulate in Zagreb. But in fact he worked for SIS with James Millar and Bill Stuart. He had formerly run the SIS ‘Z’ network in Prague, after which he had worked in Rumania. He was one of the officers responsible for maintaining links with the TIGR organisation in Slovenia, and would apparently often meet two TIGR members by appointment in a café opposite Ljubljana railway station. He has been described as ‘small, thickset and rather coarse-mannered … his teeth were discoloured by heavy smoking, though he was not much more than 30.’ Like other SIS personnel he gave himself up to the Italians following the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and was subsequently repatriated. His later activities are not recorded in the available documents.