I’m taking a bit of a gamble with this story. Usually the stuff I post is out of copyright. The excerpts below are from a book published in 1977 by the then Lord Rothschild. I have contacted his estate to seek permission to quote this small excerpt but received no reply. I think this story is worth telling and shows the man in a good light so I’m going to take a chance and copy some images here. I will remove if anyone objects and make a donation to a suitable charity if it causes concern.
Lord Rothschild (1910-1990) was one of those larger than life characters, a real polymath if lived a life to the full.
During WW2 he worked for MI5, advising on the vulnerability of British industry to sabotage, and in one or two other related “spooky” activities related to explosives, much of which there is little or no public record of. In 1944 there were some sabotage devices sent from Spain, I think, to the UK hidden in cases of onions. One arrived, somehow in Northampton and Lord Rothschild went to deal with this German sabotage device which used 21 day timers. I have no other details of this German operation. Below is an extract from Rothschilds telephone conversation with his secretary as he rendered the device safe. It reminded me very much of the Earl of Suffolk, another Lord involved in Bomb Disposal in the Second World War who I have written about before – he too conducted his RSPs while talking to his secretary on a field telephone.
I understand that it was mainly for this operation that Lord Rothschild was awarded the GM. Good job. No doubt his secretary then asked “So, how do you think that went?”
This excerpt is from “Meditations of a Broomstick” By Lord Rothschild, published in 1977 by Collins.
Pretty amazing. Like many other EOD officers that I have known, he exhibits a great sense of control and self assurance. Thank you sir for sharing.
It took me over 2 months, but I finally got a copy of this book. I’ll have to wait to read it until I get finished with “At Close Quarters”, the biography of Colonel Hector Grant-Taylor, another interesting figure of the time.
There were giants in those days, and they looked like ordinary men.
I just picked up a copy of this book and look forward to reading it.
Be safe and Merry Christmas
Hi Roger, I’m working on a novel that takes place during the time of the Spanish Armada, and I have a question you might be uniquely qualified to answer. If a “Hellburner” machine vessel was being observed not to have gone off, despite the Bory clockwork device IED, would it make sense to try and hit the vessel with cannon fire in hopes it would explode, rather than send someone back onto the ship post-evac to see if they could fix it?
My theory is that that would be discussed by those in charge but, yet, not completely conversant in explosive technology – imagine this vessel was Giambelli/Bory designed. Another quirk is that, of course, the telescope had not been invented yet, and so those observing the strategy from another ship would not have any idea why the explosion didn’t occur.
I hope to hear from you, and thank you, again, for your diagram of the Bory clockwork. It was exactly what I needed to see.
Author
Interesting question. The answer is “it depends”. (Sorry about that!). If the unexploded vessel was not near any valuable things like other ships, perhaps. But how would you know there was a device aboard?. In modern bomb disposal thinking, one might give it what we call a “soak”, i.e. Leave for long enough that any long delay or mal-functioning fuze is less likely to still cause an explosion. Depends on your appetite for finding out about the device design. Depends on your appetite for recovering the large amount of explosive and putting it to use for your own purposes. Depends on how brave your protagonist is, and how much he was being paid. Depends…. Happy to discuss further.
Just found your website (a year after you retired it) and it’s excellent. A quick internet search found a copy of “Meditations of a Broomstick” and I’ve snapped that up. I think I got interested in this topic after reading Nigel Balchin’s “The small back room”. (I actually have an (Australian) WW2 EOD telephone set – presumably a copy of the British version – that hooks on to a telephone operator’s breast microphone, has a pair of headphones and a toggle switch for off/on, and is powered by the old “800” cycle lamp battery.)
Best regards,
Chris.