SOXMIS STORIES

On an exercise in the early 80's (I was in a Brigade Sig Sqn) an odd voice suddenly broke into the Brigade Command Net. One of our watchkeepers, an Education Corps officer was a Russian linguist and identified the language as russian.

If he is breaking in I thought he must be close by - turns out there was a Soxmis car nearby and the RMP chased them in a Landrover. Thing is, I know Brixmis and the other allied Missions didn't carry radios, assume Soxmis did - otherwise it's a massive and unlikely coincidence !

Later - maybe on the same exercise our MT Staffie "lost" his SMG and the whole troop ended up combing the woods for the weapon, which we never did find. Didn't do the Staffie's career much good and he was posted out soon after......

Of course we found out Soxmis had been sniffing around our locations once we packed up and moved.

We had a fella lose his FN C1 (SLR) in a German village. As was pointed out by the Meatheads (MP's ) it was probably well hidden with weapons that had been stashed when Napoleon was last through. I remember when the RCMP from the embassy in Bonn came down to Lahr to investigate said FN C1, the fella was crying out, " For Kriss sake do they want to make it a federal case". It was pointed out to him that the RCMP are the Federal Govt's police. Silence ensued.

Does this bring back memories ...

Len (Ciphers)

Soxmis had there base at Bunde,and the building had more antenna,s on it, than the BT tower, used to see them in the NAAFI shop escorted by RMP all the time buying booze and cigarettes [Yes the did get a BAOR Ration Card] There there was allways RMP cars outside the misson, and when a SOXMIS car left the RMP followed.

The whole 4 pages of British Army SOXMIS card



Sighting Report Confirmation Postcard



and the smaller US Army item



Note the differant plates for differant missions.

Ciphers

Have you got one of those chits they gave you on the Berlin train?

I lost mine in a move

No unfortunately I kept nothing from my Army wanderings except for a couple of Beer Hall mementos from Japan ... wished I had now. As for the Soxmis unit in Bunde I don't think it was there in my day (1952), certainly there was no NAAFI shop, just the camp (Birdwood) NAAFI .. we (HQ 6 Armoured Div and HQ 6 Armd Div Signals) were the first occupants of Birdwood in 1952 after the Division reformed and became part of 1 Corps.
Len (Ciphers)

In the 1970's Birdwood Barracks was home to a RCT Transport Regiment and there was a small NAAFI Family's Shop outside of the camp close to the Married Quarters Area

The SOXMIS Mission House Compound was the outskirts of Bunde

some more info here:

http://baor-locations.com/BirdwoodBks.aspx

and here

http://pub40.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=3402386187&frmid=22&msgid=729333&cmd=show

Hi Guys, I am proud to say that I served with the White Mice team for quite some time. I was that person that turned the lights off, so to speak after the unit was disbanded. Some great times.

Yes, the Soxmis were located til the end at Bunde and the RMP used to sit at the woodyard to follow them once they left the compound. The RMP saved the woodyard owner a small fortune in security having marked police vehicles at his entrance nearly 24/7 all year round.

Interesting that Soxmis types had ration cards for the NAAFI...now that's Detente!! LOL

Here's a question -- just idle curiousity on my part -- was SOXMIS part of the Russian Intelligence Service (i.e. KGB)? I imagine it probably was or linked in someway. Lot of fellows out of a job once the USSR broke up, I would imagine.

Not all SOXMIS were part of the intelligence service, clearly they were intelligence gathering trained and they did collect info & pictures to be passed on. Some of the officers were however, special forces.

the small naffi shop was well outside the camp

the married quarters were in Hunnerbrook which is 8kms away.well they were in 1968 and i never saw in the 2 years i was there any somix personal in the naffi or there family .

they did come on the camp to go to the medical centre but were only allowed under escort.

the camp was shared with 2 div signals regiment and 33sqn and 4 sqn rct and a small aac section plus reme workshops. in 1970 i was posted up the road to 2 div hq at lubbecke but continued to go to birdwood on a regular basis.


ciphers your photos of the camp new are much the same as i remember in the 60s the camp was much the same just a little worn round the edges.
have got a photo of the guardroom some where and a few of the camp but but they dont show much mostly people and trucks lots of 33sqn on excercise in bavaria and the south of france,all of my photos of tunis barracks, lubbecke went in a burgalry

whitemicebaor wrote:

Not all SOXMIS were part of the intelligence service, clearly they were intelligence gathering trained and they did collect info & pictures to be passed on. Some of the officers were however, special forces.

Even when living in Germany and being aware of SOXMIS, of course, I found the whole concept of "open espionage" interesting...well, odd actually LOL.

I remember asking my dad about it. He explained it, after a fashion, but all the explanation did was make it more confusing. I understood, in my teenage sort of way, the idea of one side spying on the other during the Cold War (or at any other time for that matter) and I understood the huge presence of USSR and its satellite states 'over there' vs NATO 'over here' which fed into that whole needing to spy on each other thing. Such, I suppose, were the ways of the world....it was this openly spying and being tracked and reported upon aspect I thought odd. How effective could being a spy be if the side you're spying on knows you're a spy and keeps tabs on you and only allows you to 'spy' in certain areas under certain conditions?

If SOXMIS was able to more or less freely drive around gathering info the info was clearly there to be gathered. No secrets there. If something was secret, and I have no doubt there were more secret installations/activity occurring during that period than any of us were aware of (duh...it was secret!!), then SOXMIS wouldn't have been able to get within miles of it, even if they knew it existed (through traditional espionage techniques, for instance).

Awww geez....now my head hurts!

I suppose, as I believe my Dad's explanation tried to illustrate, it was a matter of just keeping tabs on each other. One certainly wasn't about to rely on the information passed over by the upper echelons, or even mid-echelons, of the Other Guy because 'they' had an agenda so of course one's own information gathering was more reliable. I get that part.

I dunno...it just seems all kind of....well, has anyone ever read Mad Magazine and their strip Spy vs Spy? The White Spy and the Black Spy constantly trying to out do and out smart and out explode the other but the other always knows what the other-other is up to so all the shenanigans come to nought, then they do it all over again.

Therte is a bit about SOXMIS on my website at:

http://www.redcap70.net/SOXMIS.htm

the area work office PSA were responsible for the building and horticulture maintenance and it wasn' t untill the late 1980's that they let us in to do anything to the gardens.that was quite an experience

Stephen, more importantly if the Soxmis gained intelligence and they were not being followed by marked RMP Vehicles who was following them? perhaps they were given enough rope!!! Dead letter box's !!! Thought provoking heh ;-) 007 eat your heart out.

For those who would like more information, the "official" BRIXMIS site is here: http://www.brixmis.co.uk/

whitemicebaor wrote:

Stephen, more importantly if the Soxmis gained intelligence and they were not being followed by marked RMP Vehicles who was following them? perhaps they were given enough rope!!! Dead letter box's !!! Thought provoking heh ;-) 007 eat your heart out.

I am not now wholly convinced one can apply logic to this Cold War phenomenon...but let's try! :-)

Okay, if SOXMIS gained intelligence and were not followed by marked RMP, then SOXMIS might have gained intelligence NATO didn't want them to have.

By ensuring SOXMIS only gained intelligence NATO wanted them to have it seems to me the whole exercise of 'open espionage' was, as mentioned earlier, right out of the pages of Spy vs Spy.

Wouldn't it have just been easier to exchange information? But of course, the Cold War was an era of rampant paranoia and the arms race (I get a nuclear missile head, you get two, so I get four, so you get six....)

Alternatively, if SOXMIS gained intelligence that was allowed, what use would such intelligence be? Isn't the whole point of gaining intelligence on the Other Guy to gain an upper hand over him? Or forestall his gaining an upper hand over you, at least.

Aaaaarrrrghh....now my head is hurting all over again LOL

The whole SOXMIS/BRIXMIS equation was anything but like 007...more bureaucrats skulking around than dashing Monte Carlo-attending secret agents.

"We know who you are. You know we know who you are. We know that you know that we know who you are...you know?" Very odd.....

Ahh there you go logic flies out of the window when there is a game in play, the treaty was signed in 1946 and much happened over those years. It had to be seen to be fair, and off course it was to a point and appeared to many to be so. It was a game of cat and mouse, hence the RMP Patrols were called White Mice, fact.

Soxmis gained what they thought was what they needed and, so did both sides to be honest, they gave us what they wanted us to know and some stuff got taken by their observations etc, and the same went for all sides. It was a game for the politicians.

Sadly you cant' always gain the upper hand, but it can appear to be so, read some more Bond Books, in principle its all there in some form or another. I will say that beyond Bond it was real and it was exciting to be there and experience it and like all stories it was also very boring and mundane at times.

They knew we were there to police them, it was the rules of the game, we also knew that they were there to gather info and ensure that both side were really playing the game regarding arms troops and whatever, but in truth they got away with very little and I beleive this to be the same for Brixmis, although clearly Brixmis were there in much larger numbers and could perhaps really play cat & mouse, personnaly I hope that they did.

during the early seventies brixmis had some new arrivals to there ranks two sas hugh mcleod and ken connor armed with nothing more than expensive cameras and night vision equipment. they were not based at the olympic stadium with the rset of brixmis but at the lakeside mansion at potsdam,they were given a driver wayne fury from the royal corp of transport.

there mission to photograph any new soviet artillery so western analysts could calculate the capabilities and possible impact in case of war.

so we were as active as soxmis if not more so between 1945-90

i have not given away any secrets by naming anyone as it is well documented in plenty of books on the cold war

Hi Oldtimer, Yes, I know Ken Connor. As I stated I really feel sure that the intelligence gathered by the Brits was more fruitful than that of the Soxmis in the British Sector, although, I guess I will never really know. I would say that because Brixmis was so big there was most definitly more room for manouvre, Lol. You are also very correct to say what you have regarding Secrets etc, LOl.

yes we had a much bigger contingent then soxmis most of the work like you say was boring but we had some big successes. ken was responsible for what is now known as the biggest find.
whilst ken and graham geary were searching the rubbish bins at the soviet barracks at neustrelitz in east germany they found a log book in neat cyrillic script and technical drawings. it turned out to be detailed data on the t-64 and t-80 soviet battle tanks giving all its strengths and weakness. i had hoped to go to brixmis but at that time i was the commanders driver at 2 div hq and he would not let me go, but as it was a cushy number i did not complain to much and got back to bunde a lot to see my mates.

Hi All
If i am right this was the unit that keept an eye on them.?????

Brian.

As far as I know the 'white mice' (those keeping an eye on SOXMIS) were 19 Support Platoon, 113 Provost Company, RMP. ( I did write 111 Pro Coy before but I was wrong)

I will try and find a picture of their plaque and post it on here later

As promised here is the plaque. However this could be an unofficial plaque, I don't know.



I also have this for your interest:



On the left is an RMP car, on the right is a SOXMIS car[/url]