MITCHELL, GRAHAM• 365MI(R).The military intelligence section designated MI(R) or MI(Re-
search) was created in 1938 as a War Office unit dedicated to the
study of unorthodox or irregular tactics, headed by Colonel Joe Hol-
land, with a headquarters at Station XII, Aston House, near Kneb-
worth in Hertfordshire.
MI(R)’s first attempt to run a clandestine operation into enemy-
occupied territory in 1940 ended in disaster. Led by Alan Warren of
the Royal Marines, it consisted of three French-speaking officer ca-
dets from Woolwich and was intended to make contact and organize
the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force that were believed to
be wandering aimlessly in the French hinterland. Warren and his
team spent three weeks on enemy-occupied territory but failed to find
a single straggler. Their main preoccupation was avoiding the many
German patrols and trying to find, after the failure of their wireless,
a way back across the Channel. Eventually they commandeered a
rowboat and set off toward England. They were eventually rescued,
exhausted and demoralized, by the Dungeness Lightship. This humil-
iating episode was a matter of acute embarrassment to MI(R), and
virtually no records of the debacle exist, apart from Warren’s own
candid account of it. He was subsequently transferred to theAuxil-
iary Units, and thereafter to theSpecial Operations Executive
(SOE) headquarters in Singapore.
MITCHELL, GRAHAM.Although crippled by polio as a child, Gra-
ham Mitchell excelled at sports and played tennis to competition
standards and was a fine yachtsman. In 1930 he won the Queen’s
Club men’s doubles lawn tennis championship. Educated at Win-
chester, where he won an exhibition, and at Magdalen College, Ox-
ford, Mitchell had a sharp mind that manifested itself in his game of
chess. He specialized in correspondence chess, in which he once
ranked fifth in the world and represented his country.
After coming down from university, Mitchell joined theIllustrated
London Newsand was employed by the Research Department of
Conservative Central Office. His politics at this time appear to have
been to the right, for he was close to Sir Joseph Ball, the Tory politi-
cian and former World War IMI5officer who was appointed to the
Security Executive in 1940. By then Mitchell had been recruited into
MI5 where, from November 1939, he worked forRoger Hollisin