CROSS, JOHN• 125to Major Barry was to lead a team of three SIS volunteers, assisted
by some Chinese communists chosen by the Malay Special Branch,
into the forest to report on enemy troop movements. Known as ‘‘Sta-
tion A,’’ it was to form a radio net with similar outposts on Java and
in Rangoon and make regular reports to SIS’s main receiving center
at Kranji.
The plan went wrong almost from the beginning when the Japa-
nese swept through the supposedly impenetrable jungle and outma-
neuvered the disorganized British defenses. Kranji was evacuated
just before Singapore surrendered, leaving Barry and his mission iso-
lated in the jungle for a harrowing three years. Racked by disease
and cut off from the outside world, Barry slashed his wrists in mid-
July 1944, leaving Cross in charge of what remained of his party. In
April 1945 they eventually linked up with Major J. V. Hart of MINT
and reestablished contact with the Inter-Services Liaison Department
in Ceylon, which had long given up Barry’s mission for lost. By the
end of the following month, they were aboard HMSThuleand head-
ing for Fremantle, where they received a hero’s welcome and a Dis-
tinguished Conduct Medal.
After a brief period of recuperation, Cross was brought back to
London and returned to civilian life, but he continued to correspond
with the Chinese friends who, by their membership in the Commu-
nist party, had become opponents of the British colonial presence in
Malaya. Although invited to remain in SIS and return to Malaya
under cover, Cross declined to do so, but he kept in touch with ‘‘the
friends’’ whenever he traveled abroad.
Although self-educated, from a humble background in Acton,
Cross was an exceptional man, and Cross was not his true name. He
had been born Valentine Frederick Hegelund to a bigamous Dane,
the manager of a cinema in North London who later ran off to Cali-
fornia. His stepfather, determined to erase all trace of his natural
parent, transformed him into John Cross. A committed Socialist, he
later ran a woodworking business in Abingdon, worked for a wire
wholesaler in London, and ended up as a credit controller in an em-
ployment agency he started in Bletchley. Cross published an account
of his grueling experiences in 1957 and thereby became the first SIS
agent of World War II to write about his contribution to the secret
war.