Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

DE GREY, NIGEL• 137

Davies with a bemused Enver Hoxha regarding British regimental

connections. The Communist guerrilla chief could not understand

why officers from units with obvious royal connections, such as the

Royal Horse Guards and the Royal Scots Greys, were fighting to pre-

serve Socialism. Davies went through the list of his officers’ embar-

rassingly smart regiments and ended by reassuring Hoxha that his

own, the Manchester regiment, was thoroughly plebeian. Davies,

though badly wounded, endured Mauthausen concentration camp and

Colditz to be liberated in 1945.

D-DAY.The invasion of Normandy by Allied forces on 6 June 1944,
which succeeded in large measure because of a sophisticateddecep-
tioncampaign, codenamedfortitude south, which persuaded the
enemy that the long-expected landings would take place at the end of
the month in the Pas-de-Calais.

DE GRAAF, JOHANN.Also known as ‘‘Jonny X,’’ De Graaf was a
Cominternagent in Germany who volunteered toFrank Foley, the
Secret Intelligence Service(SIS) station commander in prewar Ber-
lin, to work for SIS. He subsequently provided a wealth of crucial
intelligence, including contacts made while on a clandestine mission
to London in 1934 under the alias of a wine merchant named Dink-
meir, and details of Communist plans for a revolution in Brazil in

1936. SIS later exfiltrated De Graaf from Rio de Janeiro and resettled
      him in Canada at Brockville, on the shore of Lake Ontario, where he
      managed a motel and was used by theRoyal Canadian Mounted
      PoliceSecurity Service as a human encyclopedia on Comintern oper-
      ations. In 1987 journalist Robert Moss based his novelCarnival of
      Spieson De Graaf’s exploits.

DE GREY, NIGEL.The grandson of the fifth Baron Walsingham, and
the son of a country parson, Nigel de Grey was educated at Eton.
Instead of going to university, he had wanted to be a linguist, with
the intention of joining the Diplomatic Service, but although he was
fluent in French and German, he failed his examination in Italian and
instead became a publisher, joining William Heinemann in 1907.
Three years later he married his second cousin, Florence Gore, who
bore him three children, John, Barbara, and Roger. At the outbreak