news PIC OF THE WEEK: The Spy Game: a T-62, somewhere in the USSR, 1963

[The Tank Museum]

The public perception of the spy, the field intelligence operative, is generally based on popular fiction, somewhere between James Bond and George Smiley. The truth, especially in terms of military intelligence, is somewhat more prosaic. Rather than feats of derring-do, it is the patient gathering of thousands of small pieces of material which together contribute to the bigger picture of what exactly the opposition is up to.

 

This week’s photograph, marked as `secret`, was taken from within the cover of trees and shows part of a column of Soviet T62 Main Battle Tanks. Dated 1963, it was taken by a member of BRIXMIS, the British Commanders-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany. It was taken by a Royal Tank Regiment Officer, Lt. Col. Harrison, who donated his extensive collection of souvenirs acquired during his BRIXMIS service to The Tank Museum. They include a number of clandestinely taken tank pictures like this one.

 

BRIXMIS, together with its French and American counterparts FLMLM and USMLM, was an organisation set up in 1946 as part of an agreement whereby, in the interests of defusing military tension, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact would allow a limited number of observers to monitor each other’s forces either side of the Inner German Border. Needless to say, both sides interpreted “monitoring” as an excuse to gather intelligence, or in other words to spy on, the activities of the people on the other side of the border.

 

BRIXMIS, a team of some forty or so British military personnel, set about their covert task with some relish; notable coups including the spiriting away of parts of a Soviet Yak 28 aircraft which had crashed on the Stossensee, the recovery of fired munitions from tank and artillery ranges and the acquisition of sections of tank explosive reactive armour. One less salubrious source of intelligence material came from military rubbish dumps; owing to the fact that Warsaw Pact forces were not issued with lavatory paper, documents, many classified, were used instead. Once recovered, these yielded much useful information, though their interpretation must have been a less than enviable task!

 

The task of an observer could be extremely hazardous. The intrepid Lt. Col. Stephen Harrison records being chased across country by Soviet tanks and APCs, shot at and arrested on numerous occasions. It is not really surprising that the BRIXMIS photographer chose to operate from well within cover; the T62 was then a recently introduced type and the crew’s reaction to being photographed would have been adverse to say the least. Members of both the French and American missions were killed in the exercise of their duties.