 Naples 44, an intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth, by Norman Lewis. Read by Nicholas Bolton for Naxos audiobooks. Foreword Volunteers from the armed forces in World War II found to possess linguistic qualifications but who had attended either a Redbrick University or no university at all were frequently directed into the intelligence corps. There followed four months of basic infantry training, plus another two at the corps depot at Winchester, the latter period largely devoted to ceremonial marching and learning to ride a motorcycle. Only in a final two weeks at Matlock was any intelligence instruction imparted. At the end of this fortnight, trainees considered to have shown promise were interviewed by the selection officer who went through a pretense of discussing with them their future. What the trainee did not realise was that however encouraging the report on the major's desk or promising the dialogue that ensued, his fate had been instantly settled from the moment of the officer's first quick scrutiny of his face. The selection officer believed that blue was the colour of truth. To the blue-eyed trainees, therefore, went the responsible and sometimes glamorous jobs while the rest were tipped into the dustbin of what was then called the Field Security Police. In this they were confronted with the drudgery of delivering army-style pay-attention-you-fuckers lectures of snooping detested by all in the vicinity of military installations in the hope of pouncing on unwatchful guards or discovering significant scraps of paper not properly disposed of by burning and of making up alarming rumours with which to fill in the emptiness of the weekly report. The escape from this predicament was a posting to an overseas section. Most of these, composed at first of an officer and 11 NCOs, were located in the principal cities or ports of countries wherever there happened to be British troops. Others, known as divisional sections, accompanied the forces in the field. Vague as their overseas duties first were, FS men tended more and more to be employed primarily as linguists to bridge the gap between the military and the civilian population. Often the liaison was fumbling and imperfect. Core selectors were straightforward men of war without patience for linguistic hair-splitting. Rather, for example, than waste Spanish speakers, they were sent to Italy. It being agreed that Spanish and Italian looked in print and sounded much the same. It was typical, too, that a Romanian-speaking friend should find himself incoherent and gesticulating among the Yugoslav partisans, both were Balkan languages, and at the FSO of 91 FS section with which I went to Algeria should be an authority on Old Norse but have no French. The Field Security Service Sample complete. Ready to continue?