File TAYLOR, GF 4/4 - Papers relating chiefly to SOE operations in South Asia and South East Asia, Dec 1943

Letters, notes and related papers chiefly on SOE activities in South Asia and South East Asia, including: notes on the need to create devices specifically for operations in East Asia; telegrams on possible operations in South America and Latin America; a telegram concerning the relay of information between ‘G’ [William Stephenson, Head of British Security Co-Ordination] in Washington DC, journalist Ian Morrison in Australia, and Lord Mountbatten, South East Asia Command, on US plans in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA); a telegram on the deployment of personnel of the Free Thai Movement (FTM); correspondence with the Shell Petroleum Company relating to the oil refinery at Balikpapan, Dutch East India (Indonesia); instructions for a planned visit to Washington DC by Maj E Grut (an SIS operative seconded to SOE) to make contact with Siamese (Thai) nationals in the USA; meeting minutes on the possible overthrow of Romanian leader Ion Antonescu; telegrams on the closure of the SOE South Africa Mission; biographical notes on Maj Leopold (‘Len’) Manderstam, an SOE specialist on the USSR; a telegram on the possible use of the BBC and US radio stations for transmitting messages to SOE operatives in the field; telegrams on training for SOE India personnel; telegram on the necessity of building an SOE organisation in China, relations with Australia and on joint Allied special operations in the Philippines and elsewhere, following the Allied conference at Cairo (codenamed Sextant); instructions for a tour of SOE India by ‘AD 4’ [Col Bickham Aldred Cowan Sweet-Escott]; list of SOE personnel and their locations in China, Turkey, Ecuador, Colombia and Chile.