It's World War II. Across Europe, North Africa and China, resistance groups and partisan revolutionaries are battling fascists who have occupied their countries. In Greece, a man sends a report of Nazi troop movements to the Allies. In Tunisia, Nazi supply lines are disrupted and communications links are damaged. In China, the advance of Japanese troops is delayed by the destruction of a munitions depot. In France, a railyard is destroyed, slowing the movement of Nazi troops in response to the Allied invasion of Normandy.
The globe-spanning secret agents and deadly commandos who committed these acts share a secret link — they were all trained at a sprawling facility for spies and saboteurs on the shore of Lake Ontario in Ontario, Canada. The school, which the British created to train Americans and Canadians in the art of special operations behind enemy lines, was such a secret that even Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King didn't know about it when it was created. It was known as Camp X.
The story of Camp X was hidden for decades. What went on there, and what the camp's trainees would go on to do, rivaled the most daring exploits of fictional secret agents. How the camp was created and its role in the creation of U.S. intelligence organizations is a fascinating and overlooked tale of World War II.
The British Connection
In 1941, the U.S. was officially neutral regarding World War II. Although President Roosevelt wanted to assist Britain in the battle against Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers, isolationist pressure prevented an official declaration of war. At the same time, Roosevelt realized that the U.S. needed some form of intelligence agency to gather information on the nation's enemies and combat enemy agents who might be working within the U.S. But building an intelligence organization from scratch was a nearly impossible task. The British had vastly more experience training intelligence operatives, which could give American intelligence and espionage a massive jump-start. But neutrality meant that kind of cooperation couldn't occur in any official capacity.
Thus, an organization called British Security Coordination (BSC) set up shop in Rockefeller Center in New York City in 1940, in an office labeled innocuously as "British Passport Control." However, it functioned as a liaison between the Special Operations Executive (SOE) — a major British intelligence and espionage organization — and the U.S. officials leading the creation of American intelligence organizations. William Stephenson, a Canadian who had served Britain as a fighter pilot in World War I, headed BSC.
Canada was part of the Commonwealth (and still is), and there was some tension between the genuine Canadian desire to support British war efforts and an equally genuine Canadian desire to go to war as an independent nation. So, Canada was an ideal place for British SOE operatives to train American intelligence agents, although word of that plan didn't reach Prime Minister Mackenzie King until the camp was well-established, for fears that he might forbid the whole project [source: Stafford].
Under Stephenson's direction, a Vancouver businessman named A.J. Taylor purchased 260 acres (105 hectares) of land near Oshawa, Ontario, for $12,000 under the inconspicuous name "Rural Realty Company, Ltd." The property had varied terrain, including open fields, dense woodland, a swamp and a rocky length of Lake Ontario shoreline. It was home to a farmhouse and some storage buildings, to which were added barracks, classrooms and a building to house radio equipment [source: Bicknell]. The fields and orchards led the camp's students and staff to refer to the facility simply as "The Farm," although it was officially designated a Special Training School, STS 103. It opened for operations on Dec. 6, 1941. The next day, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. fully entered the war.
Meanwhile, American intelligence activities were being consolidated under the Office of the Coordinator of Information — an intelligence agency formed by President Franklin Roosevelt — which became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. The OSS was the precursor to today's CIA. But intelligence organizations were pointless unless they could employ trained secret agents. That's where Camp X came in.
Training at Camp X
The British gained experience in guerilla warfare and commando operations in their dealings with the sprawling British empire, in far-flung locales such as Turkey and closer to home, battling nationalists in Ireland. Their well-established system of training operatives was condensed into a training regimen lasting three to four weeks at Camp X [source: Stafford]. There was no single curriculum for training at the camp — instructors adapted the program for each group of trainees, based on where they were headed and what they'd be doing there. Operatives destroying bridges with the French Resistance would face far different conditions than agents gathering information on troop movements in North Africa.
Some types of training were integral to the Camp X experience no matter the mission. Everyone learned to read and make maps, move silently, hide well and look inconspicuous. Recruits learned to fire guns, but instead of the careful marksmanship of most military training, they were taught "instinctive gunfighting," the ability to aim and fire at a moment's notice without using a practiced stance or even looking down the sights. They all learned close combat so they could defeat guards and other enemies if using a gun wasn't possible or would make too much noise.
Demolitions training was another Camp X training cornerstone. In fact, the frequent detonations acted as a cover — the camp looked like a facility for training and experimenting with explosives to nearby residents (of which there were not very many) [source: Stafford]. Trainees could also receive instruction in forging documents, creating and spreading propaganda and harnessing the unrest of local militia groups to fight the Nazis.
Lt. Col. Bill Brooker was not the first commandant of Camp X (Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck was), but he was the most influential. He enforced a strict military code of discipline and brought with him a wealth of experience in training agents at SOE schools in the U.K. Brooker knew his agents had to be ready for anything, so he engaged in unorthodox training methods, like interrupting students' classroom sessions with mock gun battles then making them recall facts about the incident, such as the number of shots fired or what the assailants were wearing. Students undertook mock missions, infiltrating a guarded house or sneaking through the damp Ontario night.
Former Shanghai policeman Maj. Dan Fairbairn was only briefly in charge of close combat training at Camp X, but his methods took hold and he went on to train Americans in the U.S., where his influence was cemented. Fairbairn's idea of close combat was simple: No method was out of bounds, and your sole goal was to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. The silent kill was Fairbairn's specialty — he even developed a commando knife that military forces still use today — but he also promoted the use of eastern martial arts methods or a swift kick to an enemy's testicles to win a fight.
Much of the Camp X doctrine was distilled into a training manual, which included details on how to hide in trees, how to spy on someone using binoculars and how to kill a man by chopping the back of his neck with the side of your hand [source: Rigden]. The men who were trained at Camp X went on to achieve spectacular exploits and reach influential positions. We'll meet some of them next.
