Kenneth Syers was another British Council lecturer, who worked in Yugoslavia in 1940-41. Shortly before the Axis occupation he was evacuated to Athens with a number of other British Council personnel, and from there he moved on to Cairo. In Cairo he joined the Royal Air Force and worked in air intelligence, but in due course found his way into SIS; both he and his wife Pamela were working for James Millar by 1943. In August Syers was parachuted into Bosnia to replace Bill Stuart as SIS’s representative at Tito’s headquarters. His later movements are not well documented, but it is known that he was serving in Serbia in September 1944. A small collection of his papers held by the Imperial War Museum indicates that he was still in the field in May 1944, but not located at Tito’s headquarters. Syers was a Cambridge graduate of strong left-wing views, but he apparently made no attempt to conceal his communist sympathies.
Nigel Watson
Nigel Watson is thought to have worked for MI5 in the inter-war years. Born in 1899, he served in Russia during the civil war and became an accomplished linguist, fluent in Russian, French, Italian and German. During the Second World War he apparently became bored with this office job in MI5 and secured a transfer to SIS. Assigned the codename 'Bordeaux' (and with the rank of Major), he was dropped into north-west Slovenia (Partisan IX Corps HQ) on 10 May 1944 with an interpreter (Josip Dolenc), a wireless operator, Sgt Marlow, and an encoder, Sgt Ashworth. Uniquely among SIS officers in Yugoslavia Watson established his own network (or ‘circuit’) of agents, some of whom had been parachuted into Slovenia as part of earlier SIS missions. They included Ivan Mikuz, Radoslav Semolic, Miroslav Krizmancic, Nikolaj Sever, Milan Dolenc (Josip’s elder brother), Niko Dorski, Alojz Knez, and others. From late September 1944 onwards, as relations between the Western Allies and the Partisans declined, local Partisan leaders closed down Watson’s circuit, arresting and interrogating its members or moving them to other areas; they also ordered Watson to stop work. Their particularly uncompromising stance on Watson’s activities may possibly have been influenced by intelligence from the Soviet mission to the Partisans concerning Watson’s activities during the Russian civil war. SIS withdrew Watson from Yugoslavia in November 1944 and replaced him with Major Lyle Smythe.
Mervyn Whitfield
Whitfield was apparently recruited into ISLD through the Royal Air Force, for his rank is recorded as Squadron Leader. He was another of the officers sent to northern Slovenia in 1944, but he was withdrawn towards the end of the year, and therefore escaped the fate that befell Parks and Gatoni. He succeeded Owen Reed as SIS representative at Partisan headquarters Slovenia in February 1945, and remained in Slovenia until the end of the war.