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Formation | 1945 |
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Founder | Major General Sir Colin Gubbins |
Type | Private members' club |
Purpose | Established for former personnel of the Special Operations Executive and associated special forces groups |
Key people | Anne, Princess Royal (Patron) The Lord Sedwill (President) |
Website | sfclub.org |
The Special Forces Club (SFC) is a private members' club located at 8 Herbert Crescent in Knightsbridge, London. Initially established in 1945 for former personnel of the Special Operations Executive, members of wartime resistance organisations, the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, its membership now includes those who had served, or were serving, in organisations and units closely associated with special operations and the intelligence community.
The SFC was founded in 1945 on the initiative of Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, the last Chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). [1]
The club was intended by its founders to be a meeting place for both those who had served in the SOE and for members of kindred organisations. This tradition has continued, with the club maintaining a close relationship with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); like-minded groups in Australia, Canada and New Zealand; along with the successors of European and other resistance organisations.
Unlike many other clubs that were open only to men and officers, it was initially open "only to ex SOE agents and personnel, and to Resistance members from all over the SOE's areas." The members of the Special Forces Club had a cheap membership card that gave them the right to stay in London at a very modest charge. The SFC has always welcomed all ranks and men and women, reflecting the membership and spirit of the SOE. John Singlaub was the club's honorary vice president.[ citation needed ]
After 1964, the members of the Special Forces Association, such as selected partisans and resistance leaders, started to have a second type of membership card for which there was no fee. During the Special Forces annual dinner in 1964, Colin Gubbins affirmed that the first purpose of the SOE was to "establish a Club which would be of direct practical and immediate benefit to the younger members of SOE, men and women who had joined us during the war and who at the end of it had to start a completely new life in a strange and upset world." The second institutional objective of the SOE was to "maintain and strengthen even further the intimate links which, through our wartime activities, we had built with men of goodwill in all the occupied countries in Europe and Asia, to the end of trying to foster mutual understanding and create a happier world. In all these countries, men who had been in constant intimate association with us for years, some of them hitherto obscure, came at the War's end into the highest government offices". [2]
After Gubbins' death in 1976, a fund was set up in his memory by his close friend Margot Morse, SOE's former Head of Registry. Morse later went on to act as chief executive of the club during the late 1970s when under her leadership the club faced down an existential financial crisis.
Today, the club's membership is drawn primarily from the intelligence and security communities, both military and civilian, and Special Forces along with other organisations and individuals whose work reflects the ethos of the club such as high-threat bomb disposal experts and members drawn from the psyops community. Great stress is placed on the personal qualities of applicants along with their technical qualifications and operational experience to ensure that the club maintains its reputation as one of the most discreet locations in London. Current membership includes a number of holders of the Victoria Cross and George Cross.
The club is located in Knightsbridge, London. [3] The building is not owned by the club, but is leased from Cadogan Estates.
The club is famous for its collection of photographs of members of SOE and OSS and those from the post war era. Those members killed in action have their photograph framed in black. [4] There is also a collection of prints and original paintings reflecting the background of the membership.
The club has undergone a radical transformation in terms of its business practices to ensure its efficient administration and has a very active programme of guest speakers and events. In 2015 the club celebrated its 70th anniversary and 75th anniversary of the founding of the SOE with a major dinner and reception at the Natural History Museum (SOE Station XVb during the War) attended by the club's patron Anne, Princess Royal and the Crown Princes of Norway and Denmark plus 850 members and guests, including veterans of the SOE and OSS.
In recent years the club has refurbished its bar and dining room, and there is a rolling programme of improvements to the bedrooms and other facilities.
There is a long-standing tradition whereby overseas members support renovations. The Danes were responsible for a bedroom in memory of Ebbe Munck, who initiated the armed resistance movement in Denmark, the US created the Donovan Room in memory of William J. Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS, and the Dutch renovating the Prince Bernhard Room. There are also rooms named the Australian Room, the Belgian Room, the Polish Room, and the Canadian Room redecorated by members from those countries. The Norwegians refurbished the Linge Room, named after Martin Linge, the founder of the wartime Norwegian Independent Company 1, and have made other donations.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World War II.
The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class, men who had escaped into the mountains and woods to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire which provided forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.
The Norwegian resistance to the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany began after Operation Weserübung in 1940 and ended in 1945. It took several forms:
Andrée Raymonde Borrel, code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Diana Hope Rowden served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE's Acrobat circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until she was arrested by the Gestapo. She was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Operation Jedburgh was a clandestine operation during World War II in which three-man teams of operatives of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Free French Bureau central de renseignements et d'action and the Dutch and Belgian armies in exile were dropped by parachute into occupied France, the Netherlands and Belgium. The objective of the Jedburgh teams was to assist allied forces who invaded France on 6 June 1944 with sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and leading local resistance forces in actions against the Germans.
The Auxiliary Units, Home Guard Shock Squads or GHQ Auxiliary Units were specially trained, highly secret quasi military units created by the British government during the Second World War with the aim of using irregular warfare in response to a possible invasion of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany, "Operation Sea Lion". With the advantage of having witnessed the rapid fall of several Continental European nations, the United Kingdom was the only country during the war that was able to create a multilayered guerrilla force in anticipation of an invasion.
Major-General Sir Colin McVean Gubbins, was the prime mover of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War.
Norwegian Independent Company 1 was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) group formed in March 1941 originally for the purpose of performing commando raids during the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany. Organized under the leadership of Captain Martin Linge, it soon became a pool of talent for a variety of special operations in Norway.
Virginia Hall Goillot DSC, Croix de Guerre,, code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II. The objective of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE and OSS agents in France allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. After World War II Hall worked for the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Force 136 was a far eastern branch of the British World War II intelligence organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Originally set up in 1941 as the India Mission with the cover name of GSI(k), it absorbed what was left of SOE's Oriental Mission in April 1942. The man in overall charge for the duration of its existence was Colin Mackenzie.
Éliane Sophie Plewman was a British agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and a member of the French Resistance working as a courier for the "MONK circuit" in occupied France during World War II. SOE's objective was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance against the Axis Powers, especially Nazi Germany in occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements. Plewman was captured by the Gestapo, and later executed by the SS in Dachau.
The Cretan resistance was a resistance movement against the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by the residents of the Greek island of Crete during World War II. Part of the larger Greek resistance, it lasted from 20 May 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the island in the Battle of Crete, until the spring of 1945 when they surrendered to the British. For the first time during World War II, attacking German forces faced in Crete a substantial resistance from the local population. In the Battle of Crete, Cretan civilians picked off paratroopers or attacked them with knives, axes, scythes or even bare hands. As a result, many casualties were inflicted upon the invading German paratroopers during the battle.
National governments deal in both intelligence and military special operations functions that either should be completely secret, or simply cannot be linked to the sponsor. It is a continuing and unsolved question for governments whether clandestine intelligence collection and covert action should be under the same agency. The arguments for doing so include having centralized functions for monitoring covert action and clandestine HUMINT and making sure they do not conflict, as well as avoiding duplication in common services such as cover identity support, counterespionage, and secret communications. The arguments against doing so suggest that the management of the two activities takes a quite different mindset and skills, in part because clandestine collection almost always is on a slower timeline than covert action.
Nicolas Redner Bodington OBE was a British journalist and soldier. During the Second World War, he served in the F section of the Special Operations Executive and took part in four missions to France.
Air Commodore Sir Charles Jocelyn Hambro, was a British merchant banker and intelligence officer.
In 1941 when the Axis invaded Yugoslavia, King Peter II formed a Government in exile in London, and in January 1942 the royalist Draža Mihailović became the Minister of War with British backing. But by June or July 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had decided to withdraw support from Mihailović and the Chetniks he led, and support the Partisans headed by Josip Broz Tito, even though this would result in "complete communist control of Serbia". The main reason for the change was not the reports by Fitzroy Maclean or William Deakin, or as later alleged the influence of James Klugmann in Special Operations Executive (SOE) headquarters in Cairo or even Randolph Churchill, but the evidence of Ultra decrypts from the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley Park that Tito's Partisans were a "much more effective and reliable ally in the war against Germany". Nor was it due to claims that the Chetniks were collaborating with the enemy, though there was some evidence from decrypts of collaboration with Italian and sometimes German forces.
Odd Kjell Starheim, DSO was a Norwegian resistance fighter and SOE agent during the Second World War. He died when a Norwegian ship he had captured off the coast of Norway was sunk by German bombers on its way back to the United Kingdom.