Where The museum is on a tri-service base at Chicksands, nine miles east of Bedford. The fully working military base is a joint services Defence Intelligence and Security Centre (DISC).
What “We are the museum and archive for the Intelligence Corps,” says its curator, Sally Ann Reed. The corps as it exists today was created in 1940 and is part of the British Army.
Opened 1990. Between 1970-90, there was an Intelligence Corps Museum in Ashford, but this closed when the Channel Tunnel was built and Chicksands, which had been used by the US Air Force, was vacated in 1997.
Collection At Chicksands, the museum joined with the Medmenham Collection of aerial photography and interpretation, which dates from 1914. It also hosts the British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany collection, which covered the military mission in East Germany; and the Y Service, which was the wireless interceptor service in the second world war.
Operators passed the information they received to code-breakers at Bletchley. It has a lot of radios. Last year, the museum opened a display dedicated to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the war. The museum has a canister, about the height of a fridge, containing all the equipment that an agent operating in enemy territory would need.
Help at hand Reed, a former air force imagery analyst, joined the museum in the middle of 2009, having previously worked in Cyprus as a policy officer for the governmental side of the military presence there. The two other full-time staff are an archivist and an assistant.
Budget The Ministry of Defence pays staff wages; all other revenue is raised by the museum.
Visits 4,000 a year. Visitors need to book in at least 24 hours before they arrive. “It is part of the experience that you book in at the guardroom on arrival and are escorted to and from the museum,” Reed says. “We have to be careful about security, but we are open to those who want to come.” Admission is free.
Highlights “I like the SOE collection. It is unique and it gives a snapshot of what agents had to do in the second world war,” Reed says. “We have on loan from his widow the fake identity card, medals and Morse code key that belonged to Pierre Louis Le Chêne, a British officer who was an SOE operative in occupied France.
"He was captured by the Gestapo and survived two years of torture in a concentration camp, during which he never betrayed any secrets, which was a real feat.”
Survival tip “Military museums serve a community,” says Reed. “I encourage members – past and present – of the Intelligence Corps to visit and give us memories and stories. We have a Green Memories series in which we record the stories of the old and the bold. Letting people know we are here is essential.”
Sticky moment “I wore smart clothes to my first day at work here,” says Reed, “and scruffy ones the next.” The museum had two weeks to revamp itself before Prince Philip, the patron of the corps, visited. “We were painting at 10pm,” she remembers. “Time was of the essence – and then the prince arrived 45 minutes early.”
Current project Updating the website, redecorating and working on new displays are priorities, as are setting up an online shop and fundraising. The museum is also conducting an overdue inventory. “We’ve unearthed all kinds of things,” says Reed, “including captured Argentinean compasses, radios and lots of German kit.”
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