Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

YUGOSLAV SECTION• 595

As ‘‘William Mole,’’ Younger wrote several detective thrillers, the

best of which wasThe Hammersmith Maggot. His first novel,Tram-

ple an Empire, released in 1952, was described by the publishers as

‘‘above all a protest against earnestness and an assertion of the small

man’s rights to laugh at his ruler,’’ perhaps a surprisingly icono-

clastic approach for a serving MI5 officer. The same book was

praised by Wheatley (who neglected to mention that Mole was his

stepson) as ‘‘quite out of the ordinary and exceptionally good.’’ In

his murder mysteryThe Skin Trap, Younger described the anguish of

a murderer handicapped with a humpback, a result of spinal tubercu-

losis as a child.

Younger finally retired from MI5 in the late 1950s, having inher-

ited a fortune and being determined to devote himself to writing. He

originally concentrated in poetry, and his first book of verse,Ma-

donna and Other Poems, was praised by the critics. Howard Spring

wrote that he ‘‘is writing better poetry than Byron did at his age.’’

During the war he had married Nancy Brassey, the widow of Wing

Commander Reginald Leslie who was killed in the Mediterranean in

1943. She also wrote some novels, and together they producedBlue
      Moon in Portugal, a travelogue of their experiences in that country.
      Younger died suddenly in early 1961 while on a visit to Sicily, where
      he contracted Asiatic influenza, having recently completedGods,
      Men, and Wine, which was published posthumously.

YUGOSLAV SECTION.TheSpecial Operations Executive(SOE)
section coordinating operations inYugoslaviaduring World War II,
also designated DH. The campaign in Yugoslavia was one of contra-
dictions. Most of the missions, particularly toDraza Mihailovic’s
liaison officers, were dreadfully ill equipped and ill prepared, and the
choice of personnel was quite eccentric. When, for example, there
was a determined effort to send in reinforcements during the spring
of 1943, the majority of SOE’s Serbo-Croat speakers were Canadians
and members of the Communist party. Two offungus’s three agents
had fought in the Spanish Civil War, andhoathley iconsisted en-
tirely of miners from Quebec. About 28 Canadian or American im-
migrants returned to fight in their homeland, of whom five
disappeared, and at least three chose to remain in Yugoslavia after
the war, taking jobs in the Communist regime, evidently undeterred
by the appalling massacres that followed Tito’s takeover.