Interesting one from 'The Scotsman'... Spy couple's guns haul found in spring clean - Scotsman.com Spy couple's guns haul found in spring clean Published Date: 12 May 2010 By Frank Urquhart HE WAS one of the most celebrated heroes of the elite Special Operations Executive during the Second World War whose exploits could have come straight from the pages of the Commando comic. As a lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders, Geoffrey Hallowes escaped from Japanese-occupied Singapore in a tiny dinghy before joining the top secret SOE. After the war, he married one of the most famous spies in the Allied cause – Odette Sansom, the SOE agent and George Cross holder who survived two years of captivity in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she had been condemned to death. And it was revealed yesterday that a secret cache of weapons, found hidden in the Surrey home the couple once shared, have been donated to one of Scotland's leading regimental museums. The six firearms, including a German machine gun and a Luger pistol, were collected by Mr Hallowes while he was serving with the SOE. They are understood to have been discovered when relatives were clearing out their former home at Walton-on-Thames in Surrey. The guns have been donated to the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen after firearms specialists with Surrey Police helped to reveal the significance of the find. Mr Hallowes' family had previously donated the collection of medals awarded to the SOE hero to the museum following his death in 2006. The medals include the Croix de guerre and Légion d'honneur. Jesper Ericsson, the curator of the Gordon Highlanders Museum, said: "The acquisition of these firearms is the most important addition to the museum's armoury since it opened in 2007 and will become the most important items in the firearms collection as a whole. "Geoffrey Hallowes was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary history and these firearms relate to his service as an SOE agent." "We are most grateful to Surrey Police for their generous help and support in facilitating this donation." A spokesman for Surrey Police explained the force had been contacted about the discovery of the weapons in March 2008 by a local resident who had found the firearms while clearing out a property. Mr Hallowes' remarkable wartime adventures began in February 1942 following the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese. As a junior officer with the second battalion of the Gordon Highlanders he was one of four chosen to deliver the news to outlying units. After doing so, he eventually made it back to British occupied territory. He then joined the Yugoslav section of SOE's Force 133, based in Cairo, before being posted to head one of the SOE teams parachuted into France to help organise the resistance after D-Day. In 1956, he married Odette Sansom, whose exploits had been celebrated in the 1950 film starring Dame Anna Neagle. Odette died in 1995. Mr Hallowes, who became a founding director of International Distillers and Vinters in 1962, died in September, 2006, aged 88. WIFE AND HERO ODETTE Hallowes was the only heroine of the Second World War to receive the George Cross while alive. Born in France, she married Roy Sansom, a hotel worker, before the couple moved to London. Following the occupation of France she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive and was sent to France. Both she and Peter Churchill, the head of the SOE operation, were betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo. They survived torture and imprisonment and were freed in 1945. In 1946, Odette, by then a widow, was awarded the George Cross and in 1947 she and Churchill married. The marriage ended in divorce in 1956 when she married Geoffrey Hallowes.
They've just found 30 kg of explosives stashed by the communist resistance down the road from here in a garden bordering the village school (Sorry it's in Dutch) 30 kilo dynamiet in centrum Wellen - Hbvl.be Apparently there are likely to be buried firearms as well but the explosives were hidden in the pigeon loft. De Vries, the man who hid them is 97 and happened to casually mention the fact to a TV interviewer. The sinister side is that after being involved with the lynching of suspected collaboraters after liberation, it is quite evident that he was expecting a further armed struggle in support of the revolution. This material was not casually forgotten in 1945.
Rich, think of it the other way round... This material was not casually forgotten in 1945 The sinister side is that after being involved with the lynching of suspected collaboraters after liberation, it is quite evident that he was expecting a further armed struggle in support of the revolution. Getting hold of this stuff during the war and keeping hold of it - despite the throughly-infiltrated and actually German-run "SOE" network in the country up until June 1944 - made arms and explosives caches an incredible time, labour and risk investment over quite few years They weren't something you just willingly gave up As late as the 1970s when Freddie Forsythe was writing his "Dogs Of War" - recognised to be based in detailed planning he was in on for an African nation take-over by a group of old Congo hands, and squashed before jump-off by the British - there was still a healthy trade in old WWII arms in Europe "on the underground", not just the legal re-sale of WWII-era items by Interarm in Birmingham and the Yugoslavians etc. If nothing else - every good revolution needs funding...and guns/explosives are worth their weight in folding, spendable money
