This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

James Bond may have Q branch supplying him with ingenious gadgets, but during the Setwell War,

the agents of the Special Operations Executive had something just as remarkable, the SOE camouflage section. This secret unit developed ingenious ways to hide weapons, radios,

explosives and documents inside everyday objects, from oil cans and firewood to record

players and tubes of toothpaste, helping agents operate behind enemy lines under the watchful

eyes of the Gestapo. My guest today is Craig Moore, whose book Exploding Rats and Other

Devious Devices of ESOE, the Camouflage Section 1941-1945, explores the remarkable work

of this little-known wartime unit and the ingenious devices they're created to keep agents alive

and operational in occupied Europe.

Craig, welcome back.

Now, your speciality is armored vehicles.

We've talked about the Covenant, we've talked about the Panther.

So how do you end up looking at the SOE's camouflage section?

I was looking for tanks.

I went down to National Archives.

One of the projects I'm interested in is something called Operation Bertram, where

in the desert they camouflaged tanks to look like lorries, lorries to look like tanks,

so to deceive the enemy.

But we also, during the run-up to D-Day, we had a ghost army in Rondova to try and to pretend that Patton was going to land at Calais and

the deception worked and so I've been going through the National Archives putting in camouflage

...