Page 134 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

when War broke out in 1914, rendering him an enemy alien. However, he stole a uniform and escaped Germany by train, pretending he was a Prussian officer on his way to the front. Although an obvious candidate for service with Military Intelligence, such was the demand for Infantry manpower that he entered Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Hertfordshire Regiment in January 1917.
Serving with the North Staffordshire Regiment on the Western Front, he was shot through the lung and mentioned in despatches. No longer fit for front line service, Foley was finally accepted into the Intelligence Corps and, in July 1918, was part of a small unit recruiting, training and running agents in France and the Low Countries. Immedi- ately after the War, he served with the Inter-Allied Military Commission in Cologne before retiring as a Captain in 1921. Serving as the passport control officer in the British Embassy in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s, the post was a cover for his work as head of the MI6 detachment in the city. During this time, he recruited numerous agents and acquired vital information on the build-up of the German military following the rise to power of Hitler. Indeed, his work recruiting and handling agents still forms the basis for security service training.
As Hitler’s persecution of the Jews gathered pace, Foley used his official position at the
Embassy to issue visas for people to travel to Britain or Palestine. A Palestine visa required a surety of £1000 (a huge sum in the 1930s) but Foley accepted £10 on the never-fulfilled pro- vision that the remainder would be forwarded once the recipient reached Haifa. Those refu- gees who had no money were persuaded to produce a note from a friend promising the money. As War approached and the situation of German Jews became more perilous, Foley began to obtain forged visas and hide people in his Berlin apartment pending the arrival of the documents. The personal risk was enormous as he did not have diplomatic immunity, but he still took ever-increasing chances. By 1939 Foley was travelling to Concentration Camps, con- vincing the Nazis that Jewish prisoners had been granted visas but had been interned before they could receive it. One survivor of Sachsenhausen, Gunter Powitzer, recalls being summoned from a group who were later led to the firing squad, allowed to shave and clean up by the SS, and taken to meet a small man with round glasses, who produced a visa he had never even applied for.
In August 1939, days before War was declared, Foley was evacuated from Berlin along with the remainder of the Embassy staff. He is estimated to have personally saved over 10,000 people. Employed during the War as a Major in the Intelligence Corps he interrogated Rudolf Hess after his flight to Britain and ran agents work- ing in Germany, convincing Hitler that the allied landings would take place on the Pas de Calais. Retiring in 1949 he died in relative obscurity in Stourbridge in 1958. Only in recent times has Foley’s contribution as ‘The British Oskar Schin- dler’ been recognised.
MURTALA MOHAMMAD (1961 Nigerian Army Signals)
Murtala Rafai Ramat Mohammed was born in 1938 in Kano, northern Nigeria. Joining the Nigerian Army in 1958, he was sent for training at Sandhurst and was commissioned in 1961 into the Signals. Appointed ADC to one of the regional administrators, he later became a troop commander and travelled for an advanced tel- ecommunications course at Catterick Garrison.
Promoted Major in 1964, he commanded a sig- nals squadron in Lagos and the following year became acting Chief of Signals for the Army then, on further promotion, Inspector of Signals
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