T SECTION• 535SYMONDS, RONALD.Born in June 1916, Ronald Symonds was edu-
cated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, where he read French and
German, and joined theIntelligence Corpsin 1939. By the end of
World War II, he had been promoted to the rank of major and was
engaged in training personnel for theBritish Control Commission
for Germany. In 1951 he joinedMI5and spent five years in F
Branch dealing with countersubversion, including a tour of duty in
Malaya. Upon his return he was posted to the protective security
branch and in 1961 transferred to the D1counterespionagesection,
where he ran the investigation of Frank Bossard, a Soviet spy in the
Air Ministry. In 1972 Symonds was appointed deputy director-gen-
eral, running the organization between December 1973 and March
1974 when the director-general,Sir Michael Hanley, was ill. Upon
his retirement in 1975, Symonds served on the Royal Commission
on Gambling, and he died in 1997.
–T–T SECTION.TheSpecial Operations Executive(SOE) designation
for theBelgiumsection was ‘‘T.’’ It was headed byHardy Amies,
but was handicapped by the requirement to liaise closely with the
Belgian government-in-exile, which was opposed to any significant
sabotage of Belgian economic assets. SOE’s enforced relationship
with the exiled Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot’s administration virtu-
ally precluded it from developing any useful contact for a long period
and instead of a strategy of wholesale sabotage, a campaign of minor
pinpricks was adopted, albeit reluctantly.
In February 1942 an agreement was reached with Pierlot for SOE
to liaise directly with Action, a subsection of the Deuxie`me Direction
of the Ministry of Defence headed by Major Bernard. This arrange-
ment broke down almost immediately, and it was not until October
1942, when Bernard had been replaced by Colonel Jean Marissal,
that a new treaty of cooperation could be negotiated. Even then, the
personalities still jarred, withPhilip Johnsobserving that Marissal
‘‘had been too orthodox for him to adapt to this relatively newly con-
stituted SOE.’’ The new document was signed in October 1942 and
heralded a two-phase approach: a preparatory stage in which arms