A TBO Homage: Committee
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:00 pm
"Do not ask: Do not even surmise..."
"Any other business ? Ah, Colonel Foster, OSS..."
"Gentlemen, I've been trying to obtain more background on the 'Miss Smith' whom Silverbird Captain Eastwood has applied to bring here as his war-bride.
"This was hindered by the recent cooling of diplomatic relations following those Brit scientists' unauthorised transfer of 'Manhattan Project' material to the Soviets. To put it politely, the Brits are no longer our best buddies.
"As it happens, the Brit authorities are doubly unhappy. The extent of the scandal means all of their atomic scientists, incriminated or not, must now be considered 'compromised'. Who planted, nurtured such ideas ? Who 'turned a blind eye' ? Who gave tacit approval ? Who may later have a 'marker' called, to effect anything from a 'Small Favour' to sabotage of a design ?
"And then there are possible 'Sleeper Agents': Wary review of pre-war associations and connections suggests a quorum of 'Soviet Sympathisers' are now deeply embedded in the Brits' 'Government in Exile', set in like fly-strike maggots...
"A surprising number of Soviet Sympathisers laid low during the Occupation. Their only activity was anonymous denunciation of 'Intellectuals' and supposed Partisan members. They had the temerity to claim much credit for the Liberation. They expected to prompt a Communist Revolution, seize power before the Royalist 'Government in Exile' could return.
"The Brits' 'Special Operations Executive' gave them short thrift: A remarkable spate of 'Accidental Death', 'Misadventure' and even 'Natural Causes' ensued.
"A further factor is that SOE is being disbanded. Most of their operatives were 'Hostilities Only', so may now return to obscure civilian life. Some staff and facilities are being transferred to Brit's Military Intelligence, Branches #5 and #6. Much, in fact, as the rump of our OSS will soon be subsumed by FBI and CIA.
"For 'Operational Security', the in-country SOE network kept scant few records of their activity. Terse Morse reports to picket submarines was the usual limit.
"However, given enduring concerns over those potentially compromised scientists and probable Soviet 'Sleeper Agents', some 'Horse Trading' proved possible.
"May I place on record a commendation for our Liaison Officer, Captain Henderson ? Thank you.
"In the absence of detailed SOE records, his information must be considered 'Anecdotal', even 'Hearsay'. However, cross-referencing press reports and captured German records confirm these tales, albeit tangentially.
"Yes, for several years between First Blitz and Halifax Coup, the SOE ran a 'Boarding School', where they trained a surprising number of very, very clever girls and young women as spies, saboteurs and assassins. Though unforgivable, it was necessary. We have the FBI report from the 'Viennese Prial' describing their extraordinary curriculum. The sheer span of skills was considered a wild exaggeration. It was not.
"That school's students proved utterly terrifying, a murrain upon the Occupiers. A testimony to their abilities is that most survived, un-scathed and un-suspected.
"A few examples: 'Code-name: HORNBY', a ghillie's daughter, was a 'Sniper's Sniper'. She routinely made half-mile kill-shots in poor light and a cross-wind. Her 'Party Trick' was downing trainee Luftwaffe pilots as, newly solo, they warily lifted across their Midland fields' up-wind fence. Her 'Big Game' rifle's bullet would tear through their cockpit side at knee height. Too high for a soft landing, too low to recover, the stricken pilot would lose control, crash and burn. She claimed fifteen --Fifteen !!-- outright kills of both pilot and aircraft, with as many more left 'Unfit for Service'.
"Agent 'Code-name: FISHPLATE' loved trains and railways. She excelled at subtle sabotage, routinely contriving apparently accidental but exasperating damage, such as washed-out culverts. Then, she dropped an avalanche on that double-header SS troop train departing Holyhead. Swept the laden whole into a Welsh lake: A stormy night, barely a 'Corporal's Guard' survived. Given their numbers, their early-mark Panzers, they would have made scant difference to the Eastern Front, but this was SOE's retribution for those excesses in Ireland.
"SOE described Miss Smith, 'Code-name: MONGOOSE', as their 'Maestro of Mayhem'. Like an 'Old West' Marshal, she was the lethal 'Help' sent to 'resolve' beset districts. The Occupiers suspected the ensuing rash of attrition was Partisan action, but the sheer variety confounded them. They whispered jokes about the Brits' invisible, implacable 'Angel of Death', 'Das WaffenGeist'...
"Miss Smith's remarkable 'Close Combat' skills were documented by Captain Eastwood: Two SS guards knifed, three muffle-shot, the rest swept with 'Berrt', her modified Sten.
"Early in the Occupation, Miss Smith had gate-crashed the dinner-party of a Collaborator / Informer family who'd caused her beloved aunts' death. Muffle-shot the three chauffeurs, one armed. Muffle-shot the harridan house-keeper. Shot the two armed SS officers and two senior Administrator guests. Shot both parents and their twin sons, the latter recently, proudly inducted to the SS Youth. Then she heart-staked all four SS with their own dress-knives. And, some-how, fatally framed several local informers as the culprits...
"Beyond gun-play, Miss Smith displayed a preternatural ability to inflict death by 'Accident' or 'Natural Causes'. She was certainly responsible for the ghastly death of the Moseleys, their 'Sandford Seven' clique and that 'Mitford Bitch'. How many of them perished before their mansion burned down is unclear. But, they all died. Else-where, she killed several of the Halifax Coup principals.
"Miss Smith famously poisoned an entire SS barracks with Ergot, inflicting symptoms akin to 'Jimson Weed'. The few survivors of that week's madness were ordered to the Eastern Front, to die in the usual way. The contaminated flour's supplier, a local Collaborator, confessed under torture that he was a 'Deep Cover' partisan. Of course, once the Gestapo got to work, he would have equally admitted to being Mexican or a Mongolian Steppes' herds-man...
"An interesting example: Miss Smith was sent to 'Tancaster', a generic market town. She had robust 'cover' as 'Commercial Traveller' for 'Brown & Co', a Reich-accredited supplier of 'Victorian-era' spirit and oil lamps, domestic plumbing supplies and such. Despite appearances, they were an SOE 'front', their thriving, Reich-wide mail-order business an invaluable source of intelligence and funding, a reliable way to distribute many well-forged ReichsMarks.
"Accosted by the local Gestapo as she stepped off the train, those two Agents, un-done by her accreditation and fluent Viennese German, ended up accepting 'Brown & Co' catalogues and vying to buy her dinner.
"For several weeks, she did 'Commercial Traveller' rounds. Then, plans laid, her 'Morality Play' unfolded. An obnoxious Luftwaffe officer, who habitually drove too fast, wrapped his nice car around a tree and died of it. A gluttonous Administrator suffered a fatal heart-attack in mid-meal. An exceptionally fanatical SS officer had an acute Ergot episode. He lost his mind, began ranting, raving and shooting at shadows, was left a broken man. A Gestapo Agent, who'd boast of how many he'd sent to the Death Camps, was engulfed by a flash-over from his lodgings' reluctant hearth fire. Badly burned, he lingered in agony until taken by sepsis and pneumonia.
"All these could be considered 'Unfortunate Attrition' rather than 'Partisan Activity'. The collapse and death of a dishonest business-man in his company's secure cash office seemed such, too. The room was locked and bolted from the inside, the diagnosis stroke or apoplexy. The local Constabulary did 'Due Diligence': They noted the lack of any secret way, the secure slit-window, the key and its big fob on the desk's open ledger, the door's steel bolt set.
"Even if the door lock was 'worked' with duplicate key or 'picks', how could you possibly set that steel bolt from the outside ?? Either his death was indeed 'Natural Causes', or a truly Sherlockian 'Locked Room Mystery'...
"The ensuing audit revealed gross discrepancies. Worse, a cashier claimed several big bundles of 'un-documented' ReichsMarks, previously glimpsed in the open safe, were now absent. This suggested that so-willing Collaborator had been embezzling the Occupiers, too...
"It was, of course, Miss Smith's work. She divided those many missing ReichsMarks between delighted local partisans and 'Brown & Co'. And that set bolt ? SOE surmised she'd 'borrowed' the big magnet from a Radio-Gramophone's loud-speaker. 'Herded' the steel bolt just far enough to partially engage its staple, to rip that from frame when locked door was belatedly broken down...
"Following the Liberation, Miss Smith undertook SOE's 'house-cleaning' of the North-West 'Communist Resistance' with equally lethal, yet unattributable efficiency.
"That, Gentlemen, is an indication of the mettle of this formidable young woman.
"I appreciate that a quorum of this Committee consider Miss Smith's attendance at that SOE training centre prohibits marriage to Captain Eastwood. Spy, saboteur and assassin ? With 'sides' of forgery, lock-smithing and safe-breaking ? What 'pillow-talk' may ensue ??
"I would suggest you have grasped the stick by the wrong end: The FBI have become aware that revenant factions of the former German Bund plus a bizarre assortment of 'crazies' have variously sworn vengeance upon Captain Eastwood for the Wewelsburg Strike. Rather than admit such irritants exist, rather than have a rota of so-obvious body-guards and their administrative trail follow him for possible decades, may I offer a more elegant solution ?
"Why not let Miss Smith marry her soul-mate Captain, relentlessly dispose of such trouble-makers in her conveniently deniable ways ?"
"Any other business ? Ah, Colonel Foster, OSS..."
"Gentlemen, I've been trying to obtain more background on the 'Miss Smith' whom Silverbird Captain Eastwood has applied to bring here as his war-bride.
"This was hindered by the recent cooling of diplomatic relations following those Brit scientists' unauthorised transfer of 'Manhattan Project' material to the Soviets. To put it politely, the Brits are no longer our best buddies.
"As it happens, the Brit authorities are doubly unhappy. The extent of the scandal means all of their atomic scientists, incriminated or not, must now be considered 'compromised'. Who planted, nurtured such ideas ? Who 'turned a blind eye' ? Who gave tacit approval ? Who may later have a 'marker' called, to effect anything from a 'Small Favour' to sabotage of a design ?
"And then there are possible 'Sleeper Agents': Wary review of pre-war associations and connections suggests a quorum of 'Soviet Sympathisers' are now deeply embedded in the Brits' 'Government in Exile', set in like fly-strike maggots...
"A surprising number of Soviet Sympathisers laid low during the Occupation. Their only activity was anonymous denunciation of 'Intellectuals' and supposed Partisan members. They had the temerity to claim much credit for the Liberation. They expected to prompt a Communist Revolution, seize power before the Royalist 'Government in Exile' could return.
"The Brits' 'Special Operations Executive' gave them short thrift: A remarkable spate of 'Accidental Death', 'Misadventure' and even 'Natural Causes' ensued.
"A further factor is that SOE is being disbanded. Most of their operatives were 'Hostilities Only', so may now return to obscure civilian life. Some staff and facilities are being transferred to Brit's Military Intelligence, Branches #5 and #6. Much, in fact, as the rump of our OSS will soon be subsumed by FBI and CIA.
"For 'Operational Security', the in-country SOE network kept scant few records of their activity. Terse Morse reports to picket submarines was the usual limit.
"However, given enduring concerns over those potentially compromised scientists and probable Soviet 'Sleeper Agents', some 'Horse Trading' proved possible.
"May I place on record a commendation for our Liaison Officer, Captain Henderson ? Thank you.
"In the absence of detailed SOE records, his information must be considered 'Anecdotal', even 'Hearsay'. However, cross-referencing press reports and captured German records confirm these tales, albeit tangentially.
"Yes, for several years between First Blitz and Halifax Coup, the SOE ran a 'Boarding School', where they trained a surprising number of very, very clever girls and young women as spies, saboteurs and assassins. Though unforgivable, it was necessary. We have the FBI report from the 'Viennese Prial' describing their extraordinary curriculum. The sheer span of skills was considered a wild exaggeration. It was not.
"That school's students proved utterly terrifying, a murrain upon the Occupiers. A testimony to their abilities is that most survived, un-scathed and un-suspected.
"A few examples: 'Code-name: HORNBY', a ghillie's daughter, was a 'Sniper's Sniper'. She routinely made half-mile kill-shots in poor light and a cross-wind. Her 'Party Trick' was downing trainee Luftwaffe pilots as, newly solo, they warily lifted across their Midland fields' up-wind fence. Her 'Big Game' rifle's bullet would tear through their cockpit side at knee height. Too high for a soft landing, too low to recover, the stricken pilot would lose control, crash and burn. She claimed fifteen --Fifteen !!-- outright kills of both pilot and aircraft, with as many more left 'Unfit for Service'.
"Agent 'Code-name: FISHPLATE' loved trains and railways. She excelled at subtle sabotage, routinely contriving apparently accidental but exasperating damage, such as washed-out culverts. Then, she dropped an avalanche on that double-header SS troop train departing Holyhead. Swept the laden whole into a Welsh lake: A stormy night, barely a 'Corporal's Guard' survived. Given their numbers, their early-mark Panzers, they would have made scant difference to the Eastern Front, but this was SOE's retribution for those excesses in Ireland.
"SOE described Miss Smith, 'Code-name: MONGOOSE', as their 'Maestro of Mayhem'. Like an 'Old West' Marshal, she was the lethal 'Help' sent to 'resolve' beset districts. The Occupiers suspected the ensuing rash of attrition was Partisan action, but the sheer variety confounded them. They whispered jokes about the Brits' invisible, implacable 'Angel of Death', 'Das WaffenGeist'...
"Miss Smith's remarkable 'Close Combat' skills were documented by Captain Eastwood: Two SS guards knifed, three muffle-shot, the rest swept with 'Berrt', her modified Sten.
"Early in the Occupation, Miss Smith had gate-crashed the dinner-party of a Collaborator / Informer family who'd caused her beloved aunts' death. Muffle-shot the three chauffeurs, one armed. Muffle-shot the harridan house-keeper. Shot the two armed SS officers and two senior Administrator guests. Shot both parents and their twin sons, the latter recently, proudly inducted to the SS Youth. Then she heart-staked all four SS with their own dress-knives. And, some-how, fatally framed several local informers as the culprits...
"Beyond gun-play, Miss Smith displayed a preternatural ability to inflict death by 'Accident' or 'Natural Causes'. She was certainly responsible for the ghastly death of the Moseleys, their 'Sandford Seven' clique and that 'Mitford Bitch'. How many of them perished before their mansion burned down is unclear. But, they all died. Else-where, she killed several of the Halifax Coup principals.
"Miss Smith famously poisoned an entire SS barracks with Ergot, inflicting symptoms akin to 'Jimson Weed'. The few survivors of that week's madness were ordered to the Eastern Front, to die in the usual way. The contaminated flour's supplier, a local Collaborator, confessed under torture that he was a 'Deep Cover' partisan. Of course, once the Gestapo got to work, he would have equally admitted to being Mexican or a Mongolian Steppes' herds-man...
"An interesting example: Miss Smith was sent to 'Tancaster', a generic market town. She had robust 'cover' as 'Commercial Traveller' for 'Brown & Co', a Reich-accredited supplier of 'Victorian-era' spirit and oil lamps, domestic plumbing supplies and such. Despite appearances, they were an SOE 'front', their thriving, Reich-wide mail-order business an invaluable source of intelligence and funding, a reliable way to distribute many well-forged ReichsMarks.
"Accosted by the local Gestapo as she stepped off the train, those two Agents, un-done by her accreditation and fluent Viennese German, ended up accepting 'Brown & Co' catalogues and vying to buy her dinner.
"For several weeks, she did 'Commercial Traveller' rounds. Then, plans laid, her 'Morality Play' unfolded. An obnoxious Luftwaffe officer, who habitually drove too fast, wrapped his nice car around a tree and died of it. A gluttonous Administrator suffered a fatal heart-attack in mid-meal. An exceptionally fanatical SS officer had an acute Ergot episode. He lost his mind, began ranting, raving and shooting at shadows, was left a broken man. A Gestapo Agent, who'd boast of how many he'd sent to the Death Camps, was engulfed by a flash-over from his lodgings' reluctant hearth fire. Badly burned, he lingered in agony until taken by sepsis and pneumonia.
"All these could be considered 'Unfortunate Attrition' rather than 'Partisan Activity'. The collapse and death of a dishonest business-man in his company's secure cash office seemed such, too. The room was locked and bolted from the inside, the diagnosis stroke or apoplexy. The local Constabulary did 'Due Diligence': They noted the lack of any secret way, the secure slit-window, the key and its big fob on the desk's open ledger, the door's steel bolt set.
"Even if the door lock was 'worked' with duplicate key or 'picks', how could you possibly set that steel bolt from the outside ?? Either his death was indeed 'Natural Causes', or a truly Sherlockian 'Locked Room Mystery'...
"The ensuing audit revealed gross discrepancies. Worse, a cashier claimed several big bundles of 'un-documented' ReichsMarks, previously glimpsed in the open safe, were now absent. This suggested that so-willing Collaborator had been embezzling the Occupiers, too...
"It was, of course, Miss Smith's work. She divided those many missing ReichsMarks between delighted local partisans and 'Brown & Co'. And that set bolt ? SOE surmised she'd 'borrowed' the big magnet from a Radio-Gramophone's loud-speaker. 'Herded' the steel bolt just far enough to partially engage its staple, to rip that from frame when locked door was belatedly broken down...
"Following the Liberation, Miss Smith undertook SOE's 'house-cleaning' of the North-West 'Communist Resistance' with equally lethal, yet unattributable efficiency.
"That, Gentlemen, is an indication of the mettle of this formidable young woman.
"I appreciate that a quorum of this Committee consider Miss Smith's attendance at that SOE training centre prohibits marriage to Captain Eastwood. Spy, saboteur and assassin ? With 'sides' of forgery, lock-smithing and safe-breaking ? What 'pillow-talk' may ensue ??
"I would suggest you have grasped the stick by the wrong end: The FBI have become aware that revenant factions of the former German Bund plus a bizarre assortment of 'crazies' have variously sworn vengeance upon Captain Eastwood for the Wewelsburg Strike. Rather than admit such irritants exist, rather than have a rota of so-obvious body-guards and their administrative trail follow him for possible decades, may I offer a more elegant solution ?
"Why not let Miss Smith marry her soul-mate Captain, relentlessly dispose of such trouble-makers in her conveniently deniable ways ?"