332 • MARTIN, ARTHUR
took over Western Command. This posting ended in his dismissal,
having incurred the wrath of the War Office over his deployment of
troops to guard Liverpool docks. Just when his career appeared to be
heading into the doldrums, he was offered the opportunity to join
Special Operations Executive(SOE). His task was to reduce the
interdepartmental conflict between SOE and SIS, and in March 1943,
after five months atBaker Street, he switched to SIS.
After the war Marshall-Cornwall retired from the army at age 58
and became editor-in-chief of captured German archives. He later be-
came involved in some arms trading and wrote military histories. He
died in December 1985 at his daughter’s home in Yorkshire. In his
memoirs, published a year before his death, Marshall-Cornwall re-
called the many overseas inspection tours he undertook during 1944
as SIS faced reorganization in anticipation of peace, but was charac-
teristically discreet about the rest of his work.MARTIN, ARTHUR.Arthur S. Martin dedicated much of his life to
preserving the integrity of Britain’s security apparatus without com-
promising the quality of its judgment. Martin’s first involvement with
the secret world occurred during the war when he was a transferred
from the Royal Signals to the 53rdSpecial Wireless Group(SWG),
a radio interception organization in the Middle East that routinely
monitored the enemy’s transmissions so the cryptographers could an-
alyze the raw material and maybe acquire some useful information
from it. The cipher experts atBletchley Parkand elsewhere were
unable to perform unless there was an accurate record of an enemy
signal, and it was the task of the various SWGs posted in various
theaters of battle to obtain the necessary intercepts.
Although Martin did not prove an exceptional wireless operator,
he did sufficiently well in the SWG to be offered a permanent posi-
tion withGCHQat the end of the war, and in 1949 he was assigned
to London as a liaison officer with the Security Service. He played a
key role in preparing the cryptographic evidence that was to form the
basis of the identification and subsequent interrogation of the atomic
spy Klaus Fuchs, and soon afterward he joinedMI5to work on the
investigation of wartime leaks from the British embassy in Washing-
ton, D.C.—an inquiry that was to prove the catalyst for thedefection
ofGuy BurgessandDonald Macleanin May 1951.