My great uncle Roderick George Maitland Kirby has always been a bit of mystery. We have no photos of him, and knew little about him other than he was most likely born about 1911 and in Ceylon like our grandfather. But thanks to George H. Graham’s amazing family history site I had found a little more about ‘Roddy’ from announcements in The Times and Roll of Honour (see more here).
I’ve made some notes and amendments on this post based on some feedback from Mike Chapman.
That included him being a Captain in Royal Corps of Signals who died aged 28 on 22 June 1941 and is buried at St Mary’s Church, Whaddon (see ‘Mike Chapman Notes 1’ in comments about age below but Roddy was more likely 30). The announcements do not explain the nature of his death during the war (e.g. Killed In Action or on Patrol, etc), but my father believed he had died in a car accident. Then back in an 2009 I received an email from Jeremy Bird via George H. Graham. Jeremy’s grandfather had worked at Whaddon Hall and thought Roddy may have been murdered by his commanding officer. Or at least the date of his death, location of where he was buried and his regiment made it very likely that he was a victim of a story his grandfather had told him about serving at Whaddon Hall during the war (see more here).
The story sounded like an episode of Foyles War, but one thing my family history hobby has taught me is that seemingly far fetched family stories can end up being true and that includes exploits of relatives in WW2. And even ones that turn out to be not so true, normally have a grain of truth in them that is easy to see how they might have been embellished. Yet despite attempts to uncover the mystery including getting help via mutual friend from Professor Sue Black OBE who was a trustee of Bletchley Park that operations at Whaddon Hall were connected to (see ‘Mike Chapman Notes 2’ in comments for explantion). I was still left none the wiser.
Yesterday, however, I was contacted by Mike Chapman who is a volunteer at Bletchley and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). In 2020, while working on the CWGC with their Eyes On Hands On project he became intrigued to find two Royals Signals’ buried at St Mary’s at Whaddon, which is one of the sites allocated to him. As he explained:
Proving that one of them belonged to MI6 Section VIII based at Whaddon hall was relatively easy as the chap’s Army serial number fell within a range reserved for that unit. Officers of course weren’t allocated the same ID numbers so Captain Kirby took a little longer.
He had seen my post about Roddy’s mysterious death as part of his research that included an application to the Ministry of Defence for his service record, which they treated it as a Freedom of Information request. As a result of the information they sent him he’s been able to add Roddy to the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour.
Turns out he was MI6 civilian based at 54 Broadway in London in September 1939, was seconded for some special duties work which from the date was probably Dunkirk related, and was then given an emergency commission in June 1940 to join what was known as Special Signals Unit No.1 based at Whaddon Hall. A further search showed he had a driver there called George Westhead who was billeted at Home Farm and worked in the radio station at Windy Ridge near St Mary’s Church. There is a photograph of George in the Whaddon Quarterly from May 2017 sitting on motorcycle, and judging by the blurry stripes on his jacket he was either a Sergent or Lance Corporal. Not sure if George drove the Packard mention in the article, but Griff Thomas was also billited at Home Farm with him did, so it’s highly probable.
The records that Mike received confirmed that Roddy died from ‘injuries received in a motor accident’ in Lower Beeding not far from where I now live in Sussex. He has also kindly added Roddy to the CWGC site here and I have included the photograph of the gravestone he took in the image at the top of this post. I am hugely grateful to him for his detective work that included tracking me down on LinkedIn. It reminds me that I must visit the Bletchley Park museum and pay my respects to great uncle Roddy at St Mary’s Church while there. And I hope to say thank-you to Mike in person when visiting.
Looks like Mike has solved the mystery that although not the Foyle’s War version is still fascinating and not least because of Roddy’s ‘Special MI6 Application’ as part of his Emergency Commission to the Royal Signal Corp. As you can see he’s added “many types of cyphering” in response to relevant cipher work:
And in further down in his application he’s mentioned other useful miltitary experience that includes what looks like mission with Belgium GCHQ from 10.4.40 to 15.5.40 where the mission name is redacted and special intelligence duties the following month where details are also redacted:
I’m guesing that is how Mike deduced that his special duties work was probably Dunkirk related, which means there maybe two family connections to that historic event given my mother’s brother Michael was there as part of the BEF and it maybe him smoking a cigarette in a photograph that is included in a book about the evacuation (see here).
What’s not clear is how he endeed up working as a civilian at MI6 at 54 Broadway, which the Cambridge Five spy Kim Philby described as “a dingy building, a warren of wooden partitions and frosted glass windows…served by an ancient lift.” All of his relevant ‘electrical, engineering of chemical’ experience in his application form from 1929 to 1939 has been redacted. But it does show he was educated at Beaumont College like his brother (our grandfather) and then later at an ‘army crammer’ in Banbury, but I can’t make out the name.
Mike has shared some additional information on how Roddy ended up at Whaddon Hall (see ‘Mike Chapman Notes 3’ in comments below).
It is also not clear what exactly he was doing at Whaddon Hall other than being an M.T. Officer (Motor Transport – see ‘Mike Chapman Note 4’ in comments) as part of Headquaters Group in Special Signals Unit No. 1 with acting Rank as Captain and senior/important enough to have been allocated a driver. I think he may have reported to Colonel Lord Sandhurst (Ralph Mansfield, 4th Baron Sandhurst) who was also chauffered by one of two drivers mentioned above and described as “an enthusiastic radio amateur” had been appointed to develop the “highly successful Radio Security Service, (R.S.S.) known by the cover of MI8(c)” (see more here). And possibly the Col. Comd. Royal Signals Unit No. 1 who signed the redacted ‘report a death of a soldier’ ATB Form 2090 for Roddy.
I mention this because the link I have shared mentions how radio amateurs were recruited in order to cope with a shortage of trained staff and became known as Voluntary Interceptors, or V.I.s (see ‘Mike Chapman Note 5’ in comments for more detail on V.I.s). Perhaps that’s how Roddy ended up working as a civilian at MI6 before his emergency commission into the Royal Signal Corp and posting at Whaddon. Alternatively, the redacted employment history may show that he had worked for an electronics manufacturer like the Philco Company where Richard Gambier-Parry had worked as a sales manager before being reruited by the Secret Service and tasked with leading the Communications Section headquatered at Whaddon Hall (see more here). Whatever his route into MI6, Roddy seems to be involved in same or similar intelligence activities linked to Bletchley Park.
The FoI request information also has some correspondence about his army pistol going missing that he possibly had with him when involved in the motor accident, but that seems proceedural rather than more cloak and dagger and/or being linked to possible muder mystery mentioned earlier. And, so, seemingly no dun dun duuun! Given Mike’s help shows it is unlikely that Roddy was murdered, then there is a possible victim to be identified. Maybe that is the other Royals Signalsman buried at St Mary’s at Whaddon who Mike also identified. Or maybe another who died around that time and was buried elsewhere (see ‘Mike Chapman Note 6’ in the comments).
Anyway, this is probably as close to an obit as I can put together for great uncle Roddy. RIP.
a tale of downward social mobility 
First class post, thank you. Christian v. W.
Thanks Christian and I am about to add follow-up post with some notes.
Some more refletive notes added here:
Mike Chapman Notes 1: Mike has pointed out the following about my mention that my great Uncle was when he died on 22/06/1941.
Firstly, 28 is the age on his grave which is a private memorial so in theory specified by his family. It’s also the age quoted in his CWGC casualty record:
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2706770/roddy-george-maitland-kirby/)
And it also used on George Graham’s family history website:
https://www.ghgraham.org/georgekirby1876.html).
But Mike highlights how his MI6/Army papers and death certificate state that he was born 28/03/1911 which makes him 30 on the day he died.
And how, in addition, wherever his birth year is quoted it always seems to be 1911 which would make him somewhere in the age range 29-30, not 28.
He thinks he had to be 30, and for whatever reason the CWGC records show the wrong age. And because we already know that the ‘maitland-Kirby’ entry for his surname is wrong and errors did occur, then he reckon that the mistake was carried over to other documentation. That makes sense to me and not least because of the death certificate.
Mike Chapman Note 2: I had original written that operations had moves from Whaddon Hall to Bletchley Park. But as Mike kindly explained the connection between Bletchley Park and Whaddon Hall. As my follow-up post explains I have struggled with navigating through all the different locations, organisations, groups, divisions, etc and how the nest, who lead whom and so on. And, so, the following from Mike is hugely helpful.
Bletchley Park was purchased for Government use in late spring 1938. Circa 150 MI6 and GC&CS staff from 54 Broadway first occupied the site in Sep-Oct 1938 (a response to the Nazis threatening to invade Czechoslovakia). They were only there briefly but a slightly larger party of around 180 had moved back in by the time war was declared on 03/09/1939. That included an MI6 radio station known as ‘Station X’ which occupied the water tower at the top of the main house and one end of the newly built Hut 1. That radio station we are told had nothing to do with the GC&CS codebreaking operation. It wasn’t intercepting enemy radio messages, it was involved in two-way communications with MI6 staff working in our embassies in Europe and north Africa.
Most of the MI6 staff moved out of Bletchley Park in early 1940, largely due to a lack of work space. Some went back to London but ‘Station X’ was one team that moved to Whaddon Hall around March 1940 (so shortly before your great uncle was appointed to there).
From a Bletchley Park perspective, Whaddon Hall was effectively a satellite operation from the end of 1939. You’ll see references to the radio transmitting station on ‘Windy Ridge’ which was in fields behind St Mary’s church, only a couple of hundred metres from where Captain Kirby is buried. As the war progressed MI6 Section VIII at Whaddon was at the heart of what became known as the Special Communication Unit (SCU) operation, and that radio station was used for transmitting ULTRA intelligence messages out to commanders in the field. It had other roles as well, not all of which were GC&CS/codebreaking related. Today we might describe it as a centre of excellence for secret radio communications and its work included the training of special duty radio operators and building radio equipment for various purposes including clandestine operations.
For more information on Whaddon and the role of MI6 Section VIII, Mike highly recommends purchasing ‘Secret Wireless War’ book by former MI6 Section VIII staff member Geoffrey Pidgeon:
Mike Chapman Notes 3: Mike thinks we do know how your great uncle came to be at Whaddon Hall. The way we’ve worded Roddy Kirby as being an MI6 civilian in September 1939 has been done carefully as it is very possible that he joined SIS (Secret Intelligence Service – MI6’s official name) prior to the outbreak of the war.
He’s shared some other records that he’s accumulated since 2020 which he hopes will also be of interest, and one of those is a passenger list for the Royal Mail Lines vessel ‘Highland Chieftain’.
On 03/07/1937 Roddy sailed on that vessel from London bound for Buenos Aires. His occupation is recorded on the manifest as a radio engineer which we’ve also seen quoted in his MI6/Army records. By then he was already 26 and Mike thinks the question has to be asked whether by 1937 he might already have been working for the Government.
Regardless, Mike says we know that MI6 seconded him to special duties work in May/June 1940 so he would have been in contact with people who were well positioned to recommend him as a chap who would be useful to MI6 Section VIII.
He also points out that we can’t be sure as the name is redacted, but there is a very good chance that the colonel who formally requested that he join his Special Signals Unit No.1 at Whaddon was Richard Bambier-Parry, later Brigadier Sir Richard Gambier-Parry, KCMG.
I can add that I know that my grandparents had gone to Argentina in the 30s, leaving my father to stay with his grandparents. I am not certain but I think it was a coffee plantation and by all accounts the venture was unsuccesful. That doesn’t mean Roddy was not working for MI6 and visiting my grandparent when there could have been a cover story, regardless of whether he did visit them or not.
Mike Chapman Note 4: I had originally thought that M.T. may have stood for Military Technician have searched for what M.T. Officer might have designated. As Mike explained, ‘M.T’ was the abbreviation for Motor Transport. He doubts that Roddy was organising or maintaining the fleet of cars, buses, vans and trucks that they’d have had at Whaddon, but that would be a role title which wouldn’t excite too much interest from those processing his paperwork who didn’t have the security clearance to know what he was really going to Whaddon for!
Mike Chapman Note 5: Mike has provided more detail about the ‘voluntary interceptors’ or ‘VIs’, explaining they worked for the Radio Security Service (RSS) which was set up at the start of the war by MI5 and the Home Office to try and identify radio communications to/from German spies, primarily Abwehr military intelligence agents. By the time that unit was set up your great uncle was already in MI6.
It’s also near clear if Lord Sandhurst worked at Whaddon because as far as Mike knows he was at the RSS HQ at Arkley near Barnet, north London. That seems to support by subsequent thoughts about it being Gambier-Parry who might have signed the redacted ‘report a death of a soldier’ ATB Form 2090 for Roddy and not Lord Sandhurst. See my follow-up post:
Mike Chapman Note 6: Mike is certain as he can be that there is no link here to Signalman Geoffrey Pearson who rests in the adjacent grave. He died 26/09/1943 so two years after Roddy. Signalman Pearson was aged 42 and died off duty at nearby Wolverton. Mike points out that may find online a reference to him falling off a tall radio mast but his cause of death is recorded in the Royal Signals records as ‘congestive heart failure due to coronary thrombosis’. That doen’t sound like he was murdered!
Carrying on that theme, Mike knows of only one other Royal Corps of Signals grave in the area and that’s a chap buried in the Wavendon churchyard on the other side of Milton Keynes. Signalman Donald Landells Locke died aged 08/10/1941 aged 28. He was attached to MI6 Section VIII as well but it’s thought that he was working in support of Sefton Delmer’s Political Warfare Executive black propaganda unit which was based in the area of Woburn/Aspley Guise/Wavendon/Milton Bryan):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefton_Delmer