Winston Churchill's Toyshop Quotes

“In due course, all the beautiful tools and fixtures we had set up at Whitchurch for making this really remarkable bomb and fuse were, like the rest of our apparatus, taken away and thrown on the rubbish heap. However, I have retained a full set of drawings. Does anyone want to buy a nice bomb?”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“By this time, the effect of the drinks kindly furnished to me by the officers in the Mess had worn off and I was feeling discouraged. First, I had been made to sign a form stating that if, in firing this PIAT, I were injured or killed, the Ministry of Defence would not be responsible. Next, the gentleman who had acquired this PIAT from the museum told me he had tried it out earlier on, which I thought was rather brave of him, and had been concerned because something had whistled back past his ear — probably, he suggested, part of the cartridge case. His advice to me was to refuse to fire this weapon until I could be provided with a tin hat, although for some unknown reason these commodities appeared to be in short supply on these particular ranges and he had so far been unable to locate one.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“Millis trotted down to the ranges to try it out. His idea was to fire 2-inch mortar rounds from it, so we had fitted up a dozen or so dummy ones with the necessary tail tubes and fins which we hoped would keep them stable in flight. Millis insisted on firing this menace himself, which was just as well because nobody else volunteered for the job, and we onlookers were very pleased to find him the right way up when he had done it. But he admitted that the kick was pretty unpleasant.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“It was all too easy to wind up the Prof. into a state of great indignation. Millis had only to suggest to him that somebody was obstructing our work for him to breathe fire and thunder and set about getting whoever it was removed from his job.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“No attempt could be made to calibrate these time fuses in hours. They could only be identified with colour bands, which indicated that they should go off within a few hours, a fair number of hours, or a lot of hours. And the situation was complicated by the fact that they had a terrific temperature coefficient. In very hot weather, a theoretically long delay fuse might go off in a few minutes. In very cold weather, it might not go off at all.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“One of the delights of running an establishment such as M.D.1. is that you never know what is going to get up and hit you. We appeared to have run into an era of calm once the Sticky Bomb was safely launched.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“The service personnel and all other staff were paid weekly in cash whatever salary was fixed by the Commanding Officer. No Treasury approval was required. And what is more, these lucky people had to pay no income tax at all on their earnings. They were so hush-hush that, so far as the country was concerned, they just did not exist.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“My lesson had been learnt through having to visit our previous colleagues, the Cloak and Dagger Brigade. The first detachment had abandoned the St Ermins Hotel at St James’s Park in favour of a foothold at Bletchley Park at Bletchley, Bucks. Bletchley Park was a super-secret station run by the Foreign Office, inhabited mainly by brilliant, long-haired youths who contrived to break the enemy’s codes every so often.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“The electrics must have gone a bit wrong. First the steering became ineffective. That did not matter much as all I had to do was to open the switch to stop the motor. But it refused to stop; apparently a relay had jammed. And, of course, the wretched machine, now quite out of control, must head for our party on the first tee. We waited to try to determine its course and then fled at the last moment. As luck would have it, or maybe because he was the tallest of us, the machine picked on King Haakon to aim at and he had to run the most — which he was well equipped to do. He escaped fairly easily and then, to my intense relief, the machine buried itself in a nearby bunker and passed out.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“As Prime Minister, I instruct you to proceed with all speed with the development of this excellent weapon. As First Lord of the Treasury, I authorise expenditure of £5,000 on this work to tide you over until proper financial arrangements are made.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“For he kept the detonators in one trouser pocket and the battery in the other — and he demonstrated this fact to me. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘could be safer than that?’ I explained patiently that if he went on like this, sooner or later he would, in a moment of mental aberration, contrive to get both detonators and battery in the same pocket. As I did not want to have any eunuchs about the place, he would cease this practice at once. He retired hurt; but he was more hurt a few weeks later. For he slipped back into his old ways, and the inevitable happened. He was extremely lucky, because, although he was quite badly burnt, his love life was not affected — not for long anyway.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“The action of the device was as follows: when the bullet was trodden on, the cartridge would be pushed down the tube. The striker head in contact with it would also be pushed down, and the extension tube as it moved down the spindle would collapse the umbrella spring. When this was flush with the spindle, the sleeve would be released and under the influence of the compression spring would give the striker head a hearty kick in the pants so that the cartridge was fired. The unfortunate fellow who was doing the treading would then get shot through the foot and any other part of his anatomy which happened to be in the line of fire. The troops soon christened this device ‘The Castrator’.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“An umbrella spring — the kind that enables one to put a gamp up and down — was let into the spindle and so placed that when the sleeve was pushed down and the spring beneath it was fully compressed, the umbrella spring would pop out to lock it there.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“It was a miserable journey, with everyone lined up on deck wearing lifebelts in case we were torpedoed — this apparently being a favourite pastime of U-boats in foggy weather. But nothing happened.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“Later on, when it was my cupboard, I did decide to investigate this device a little further to see if anything could be done with it. I took it apart or at least started to do so. The action from then on was self-supporting and a series of bits and pieces impelled by powerful springs shot around the room. I never succeeded in re-assembling this contrivance but I kept some of the pieces to remind me how not to design a mechanism.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“Again, the local shops were able to meet the requirement. We went round to the chemists buying up all their stocks of a certain commodity and earning ourselves an undeserved reputation for being sexual athletes.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“One day a pellet would dissolve at a rate which alarmed us and would no doubt have alarmed a Limpeteer.”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence

“This is the story of a rather unorthodox department known as M.D.1. (Ministry of Defence 1). Born at the War Office early in 1939 with a staff of one commissioned and one non-commissioned officer charged with the task of devising special weapons for irregular warfare,”
― Stuart Macrae, Winston Churchill's Toyshop: The Inside Story of Military Intelligence