OBITUARY : Edgar Harrison, April 17, 1915 - November 26, 2005

The Times
December 22, 2005

OBITUARY : Edgar Harrison, April 17, 1915 - November 26, 2005
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MI6 special communications operator who kept wireless links open as the 
Germans advanced through Greece in 1941

AS A member of the special communications unit of MI6, Section VIII, 
during the Second World War, Edgar Harrison ran a covert radio station in 
Athens before the German invasion.

He was subsequently parachuted into Yugoslavia; worked with the Long Range 
Desert Group in North Africa; and was Churchill's personal radio 
operator whenever Britain's wartime leader was in the Middle East.

Churchill always wanted to have the latest updates on Ultra intelligence 
during his wartime travels - not least to give him the edge on Roosevelt 
and Stalin when the three leaders met - and so Harrison was included in 
the party at all their conferences.

This was all part of a career in the Army, which Harrison had joined as a 
boy soldier in the Royal Corps of Signals at the age of 14 in 1929. His 
military training was to stand him in good stead in 1941. When the Germans 
were driving the British Army out of Greece..../snip/


....Having served his long apprenticeship, he was sent with a detachment 
to China, and after a series of adventures, found himself operating both 
overt and covert traffic, in the wireless room of the embassy in Peking 
(Beijing). He worked at other stations in China and Hong Kong, and later 
went to the SIS (MI6) station then situated in London, at Barnes.

In 1939 he was sent to St John's Wood barracks. There, he was given a 
sealed envelope and a railway pass to take him as far as Northampton. He 
was instructed not to open the envelope until he was on the train. He then 
found he was to alight at Bletchley, where "someone will meet you".

That was to be Charles Emary, of MI6 (Section VIII), who had been an agent 
in Spain. Harrison was taken to the mansion at Bletchley Park, put into 
civilian clothes and started to train agents in morse to go into Europe. 
He was now a member of Section VIII.

In September 1940, Richard Gambier-Parry, head of Section VIII, asked him 
to go to Greece to set up a covert station in Athens at the HQ of the 
British Military Mission, run by his brother, Major-General Michael 
Gambier-Parry. After the German invasion he got away by small boat, first 
to Crete and then, when that too was overrun by the Germans, to Egypt. He 
was awarded the British Empire Medal (Military) for his work in 
maintaining communication with naval units offshore during the Greek 
campaign.

Thereafter he had many adventures. Later in 1941, by now commissioned, he 
was parachuted into Yugoslavia to work with the resistance there. At that 
stage this was the Serbian Chetniks of the royalist Draza Mihailovic, whom 
the British Government supported until it realised that Tito and his 
partisans constituted the real opposition to German occupation. For this 
dangerous and difficult assignment Harrison was awarded the Military 
Cross.

He also worked with covert teams in Georgia and Ukraine, besides his 
experiences with China. After the war, which he ended with the rank of 
captain, he was prevailed upon to stay with the organisation, by now 
renamed the Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS), as it moved from its 
wartime base at Whaddon Hall to Hanslope Park, a few miles north of 
Bletchley. The place is now the base for Her Majesty’s Government 
Communications Centre (HMGCC)..../snip/


....In retirement he contributed a chapter to Geoffrey Pidgeon's book 
The Secret Wireless War (2003), which revealed for the first time the 
extent of Section VIII's work, and the major role it had played in 
disseminating Ultra traffic to military commanders in the field. Harrison 
also wrote his own account of events which is being prepared for 
publication.

For many years, Harrison gave an oration at the commemoration service for 
the Battle of Kalamata held at the site annually, and he was able to do so 
again this year, at the age of 90. Harrison's first wife Guinevere died 
in 1982. He is survived by his second wife, Florence, and by a son of his 
first marriage.

Edgar Harrison, OBE, MC, BEM, signals officer, was born on April 17, 1915. 
He died on November 26, 2005, aged 90.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1952661,00.html



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