MI9

When Neve arrived back in London, military intelligence immediately recruited him as an agent.

He was invited to join a department set up to help escapers known as MI9, supplying those escape lines in Belgium and France with money and intelligence.

These escape lines ultimately brought 4,000 Allied servicemen to freedom.

By the time the Allies won the war, Neve was famed as a hero.

If we're going to be able to be agile in our thinking, we have to think both outside and inside the box.

In World War II, Military Intelligence Section 9, or MI9, were based in Beaconsfield and had to work literally inside and outside of the box.

MI9's job was an escape-mindedness, as they helped their people deal with interrogation from the enemy and provide escape tips and aids.

Their job was to help people avoid capture or escape should they ever find themselves in hostile territory and incarcerated in prisoner of war camps.

MI9's job was essential in the war against Nazi Germany and they needed the very best unusual and creative thinkers to ensure their success.

For that to happen, MI9 had to think differently about who they hired and that is what led them to Christopher Clayton Hutton.

Hutton's CV did not indicate there was anything about him suiting him to a role in MI9.

He had been a journalist, worked in publicity in Hollywood and had been a pilot in the Royal Air Force in the First World War, but none of that got him the job.

Looking back on it in later life, he was absolutely furious with what had happened and, and the way that his liberty had been curtailed by, by this man.

One of the things your book revealed to me was the existence of an organization I'd never heard of called MI9.

MI9, a new branch of military intelligence set up to aid escaping prisoners of war.

Tell me about its presiding genius, a man that was nicknamed Clutty, who did all sorts of things for POWs.

Christopher Clayton Hutton, known as Clutty, was an inventor.

It's almost like hear no evil, see no evil, et cetera.

Then when he came back and he was debriefed by MI9, again, he's, he's really quite cross because the debrief is very rushed, and no one seems to want to listen to actually what happened to him, where he's been.

They're just keen to know who helped him with evasion, because you've got this, these Tedder certificates.

So Sir Arthur Tedder is giving out certificates to patriotic French people and Dutch people, et cetera, who have helped Allied airmen to escape.