Harold Peteval

The following day Major Harold Peteval reported for duty.

Peteval had been Johnny's G.II at Western Command, where they had worked together for the best part of two years. He had been just too young to have participated actively in the First World War, but had been in the Second World War from the beginning, had spent several months in France and had been evacuated from Dunkirk. People who had known him in France spoke of his remarkable imperturbability under shell fire, and later we learned that “our Harold” frequently went out at night to get the best possible view of an air-raid, in order to see if either the attack or defence had developed new techniques. On the other hand, he would have run a mile rather than have to talk to a General.

He was a large, solemn man with a mass of thick, smooth, black hair, a heavy moustache (later reduced to more elegant proportions on his marriage to the Bishop of Chichester's daughter), and heavy-lensed spectacles through which his brown eyes seemed enormous. His forebears had been Huguenots which perhaps accounted for his puritanical outlook on life and his activities as a 'do-gooder' in the East End, which he coupled, somewhat curiously, with an addiction to dance halls. But he was a bundle of contradictions and so reserve by nature that few people ever saw the best side of him. In fact, he was far from popular with the rest of Johnny's staff...

This was mainly due to his utter devotion to Johnny, which he carried to such an extent that it was definite toadying. Quite unnecessarily, he stayed on working every night for hours after the rest of us had gone home. He always spoke of Johnny in an awed whisper as 'The Colonel', would often reprove us in a schoolmaster-ish manner, saying with a shake of his hairy head, “Oh, I don't think that The Colonel would like that”, and was not above carrying tales to Johnny about our occasional criticisms of him.

Whenever he spoke of our work, it was with the low-voiced intensity which seems to become habitual to many officers long associated with Intelligence and jealously guarding its secrets.; but if one got him on his own, it soon became apparent that his serious mien hid a delightfully subtle sense of humour and that, having thought deeply upon nay problem, he always had an interesting and often original point of view on them.

In any case, now that Johnny was irritably demanding of me innumerable trivial services that any ordinary Intelligence officer would have regarded as part of his normal work, the arrival of the tried and proven Harold was for me sweeter than the answer to any maiden's prayer. However, it soon emerged that the poor chap was utterly overwhelmed by his sudden translation from a Divisional Intelligence H.Q. to our fortress basement where he was to be one of the fewer than twenty officers who initiated the activities of the nine million six hundred thousand men and women by then wearing His Majesty's uniform.

That Harold proved invaluable to Johnny and an asset to the Section there is no doubt at all. In his own line he was competence itself and he did all the dreary little routine tasks that, had our work been less secret, would have been done by a filing clerk. Moreover, under that thick hatch he had a good brain and, although his duties were entirely to do with 'I', he often produced ideas that were useful to us when making our Plans. But in certain other respects he was hopeless.

On the first occasion that Johnny sent him off to represent us at a high-level conference, he waylaid me outside our room. In fear and trembling, his eyes boggling behind the thick lenses, he implored me to go with him. I said that it was pointless for two of us to go and I would willingly relieve him of the job. We then made a pact that he should take on all work connected with the office, while I attended all conferences and, as required, bearded Generals in their dens. With Johnny in his moods I was only too glad of an excuse to spend a lot of my time out of the office and it will have been gathered by now that I enjoyed expressing my views with tact or, if need be, vigour; so this “Jack Sprat and his Wife” arrangement suited us admirably.

On Harold's arrival I naturally did all I could to make him comfortable, and I asked if he had everything he wanted in his new sleeping quarters. He replied that the one thing he would be grateful for was a piece of soap as in the rush of leaving Wales overnight he had forgotten to pack his tablet and he was not due for his next ration until the end of the month. From my considerable wartime stores I willingly obliged, but my surprise can be imagined when I learned later that in peace-time Harold was the manager of a soap factory!

Source: DW's unpublished Memoirs. Partly reproduced in 'The Deception Planners' pp 78-9.

On Peteval being awarded the O.B.E.:

I am glad to think that on the day Harold's decoration was gazetted I alone, at least, took Harold out to lunch

Source: DW's unpublished Memoirs.