Personal and military papers of Major General Sir Robert Edward Laycock, 1923-1968, chiefly relating to service with Special Service Brigade and as Chief of Combined Operations, 1940-1946. Includes papers on volunteering for Special Service Brigade, including completed application forms for volunteer Commando officers, 1940. Papers on Special Service Brigade training 1940-1941, including gas, bayonet and signalling training. Memoranda, reports, instructions and other papers, 1940-1942, relating to LAYFORCE (commanded by Laycock in the Middle East), including papers on the Folbot Section (later to become Special Boat Service). Papers on Special Service Brigade, [1941-1946], including memoranda, reports, minutes, papers on their reorganisation, disbandment and the future of Combined Operations, also including papers belonging to Lord George Jellicoe relating to Special Service Brigade in the Middle East; reports and other papers on Special Service Brigade operations, notably Operation TORCH, (the invasion of North West Africa, Nov 1942) and Operation HUSKY, (the invasion of Sicily, Jun 1943). Laycock's official and personal correspondence,1923-1968, chiefly relating to Special Service Brigade. Lectures and speeches to and on Special Service Brigade, chiefly by Laycock. Draft publications, scripts and press cuttings relating to Laycock and Special Service Brigade. Memoirs and accounts of Commando action, including parts of Robert Edward Laycock's memoirs and memoirs of members of 'G' Troop, 7 Commando. Papers on Laycock standing as Conservative parliamentary candidate for Bassetlaw in the 1945 general collection and on his refusal to stand for the 1947 bye-election. Papers relating to Laycock's time as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Malta. Poems by Laycock.

Manuscript diaries, detailing his SOE training in Haifa, Palestine, Cairo, Egypt, his service as an instructor at the Allied Military Mission Commando School at Pendalophos, British relations with allied Greek partisan units, and SOE harassment and demolition activity prior to and during the German withdrawal from the Greek peninsula, 1943-1944; reports, mainly compiled byEvans as commander of the Vitsi sub-area, relating to intelligence, reconnaissance and demolition missions alongside Greek Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos (ELAS) units, the pro-German infiltration of West Macedonia, and the conduct of Operation NOAH'S ARK; papers relating to SOE commando missions, including notes detailing weapons, ammunition and supplies used; lists of alliedPolish, Czech and French participants in the Allied Military Mission, autumn 1943; papers relating to the construction of the SOE airfield at Grevena, 1944; list compiled by Evans concerning hostile Armenian, Italian, German and Greek forces, 1944; notes detailing the nominal roll of partisan forces in the Vitsi sub-area, 1944; papers relating to SOE and ELAS border assaults into Yugoslavia and Albania, 1944; papers detailing the splintering of relations between British and Greek forces in Greece, 1944; booklets of deciphered signals messages received and issued by the Vitsi sub-area station, relating to the movement of German forces and Yugoslavian partisans, under the command of Marshal Josip Broz (Tito), and the execution of Operation NOAH'S ARK, 1944; correspondence with Lt ColArthur Edmonds, Officer Commanding Area 1, West Macedonia, Lt Col Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, Officer Commanding Allied Military Mission, West Macedonia, and allied British, American and Greek soldiers, 1944; policy and procedure papers, including his official secrecy declaration, 1944; papers relating to SOE technical training, finances and supplies; papers, in Greek, relating to combined operations between the Allied Military Mission and ELAS 9 Div, including command and control agreements and messages from Gen Karayannis, commander ELAS 9 Div, relating to German movements in the Vitsi sub-area; official report, in Greek, from theGreek government, detailing the history of Greek partisan forces in Greece, 1940-1944; Greek propaganda leaflets and newspapers relating to Greek partisan activity in West Macedonia, and Ellinikos Dimokratikos Ethnikos Stratos (EDES) and ELAS power struggles, 1944; German divisional daily order concerning the psychological state of German occupation troops; personal correspondence from German 1 Mountain Div soldiers; papers relating to the proposed publication of an account of Evans's career in the SOE; papers relating to the publication of Hammond's article, 'The Allied Military Mission in Northwest Macedonia', Balkan Studies (Volume 32), 1993.