Camp X
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Camp X was the unofficial name of a World War II paramilitary and commando training installation, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. Camp X was jointly operated by the British Security Co-Ordination Service (BSC) and the Government of Canada. The official names of the camp were many: S 25-1-1 by the RCMP, Project-J by the Canadian military, and STS-103 (Special Training School 103) by the SOE (Special Operations Executive), a branch of the British intelligence service MI-6.
Camp X was established December 6, 1941 by the BSC's chief, Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian from Winnipeg, Manitoba and a close confidant of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The camp was first opened for the purpose of training American COI (forerunner to the CIA) agents to be dropped behind enemy lines as saboteurs and spies, at a time when the US was forbidden by an Act of Congress to be involved in World War Two.
Camp X trained over five hundred Allied secret agents, including British intelligence operative Ian Fleming, later famous for his James Bond books. The Camp X pupils were schooled in a wide variety of special techniques including silent killing, sabotage, partisan support & recruitment methods for resistance movements, demolition, map reading, skilled use of various weapons, and Morse code.
One of the unique features of Camp X was Hydra, a highly sophisticated telecommunications center. Given the name by the Camp X operators, Hydra was invaluable for both coding and decoding information in relative safety from the prying ears of German radio observers. The camp was an excellent location for the safe transfer of code due to the topography of the land; Lake Ontario made it an excellent site for picking up radio signals from the UK. Hydra also had direct access via land lines to Ottawa, New York and Washington for telegraph and telephone communications.
External links
- Camp X Historical Society (http://www.campxhistoricalsociety.ca)