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enemy.

    1. Air Raid Precautions. OETA is responsible for the maintenance and repair of civil ARP. Hence it is probable that reports of air raid damage of the territory would reach OETA Cairo.
    2. Police. Civil security. Native raiding. Control of arms. Hence probable that CHEESE would hear of sabotage, attacks by Arabs on Italian settlers, desertions from Libyan Arab Force (Gendarmerie), sale of arms by native troops, concealed arms.
    3. Collection of political intelligence. Morale of local population both European and native.
    4. Hygiene. OETA is responsible for maintenance of civil hospitals and enforcement of hygiene regulations. Also for supply of drugs to civil hospitals and doctors.
    5. Supplies and rationing.
    6. Maintenance of roads, railways, and communications. (When taken over from HEs and HCS to relieve them for other duties.)
    7. Propaganda.
    8. Military security (in conjunction with the Corps of Military Police and the Field Security Wing).
    9. Removal and installation of enemy officials.
    Given OETA’s very wide remit, and the breadth of its reach across the region, with a special emphasis on the former Italian colonies in East and North Africa, SIME was confident that CHEESE’S newstatus would not only provide him with an income, but would also make him an increasingly attractive asset to his Abwehr controllers. The lengths to which Simpson and Robertson went to create scenarios for CHEESE to acquire apparently harmless pieces of gossip that, to an Abwenhr analyst, might have a rather more significant interpretation, was extraordinary, and much time was spent drafting scenes, in much the same way that a playwright would construct an episode, which gave CHEESE an interesting tidbit. For example, Simpson imagined that
    CHEESE has had rather a trying day at OETA, where his habit of a cup of coffee from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. does not meet with the full approval of his superiors. He drops into one of his favourite eating places, the Regent, just off the Kasr el Nil, the proprietor of which is a friend of his. (The Regent is patronised by British and Dominion NCOs and he has often gleaned titbits of information there.) On entering the place, he is pleased to see one of his Greek Army acquaintances. CHEESE joins him and they have dinner together. During dinner, the Greek tells him that they have returned from the desert and are back in Alexandria again. The Greek has taken the opportunity to pop down to Cairo to see a girlfriend of his. One may imagine his feelings on learning that this girl has decided to become a nurse; and so he finds himself at a loose end. He welcomes CHEESE and proceeds to drink more wine than is really good for him. CHEESE asks what he intends doing when he is back in Alexandria? The Greek gloomily replies that he doesn’t know, but suspects that it will be more exercises again, adding that ‘as if they hadn’t done enough damned exercises already’. CHEESE discreetly guides the conversation into other channels adding that he, CHEESE , might be up in Alexandria soon, and that he would like to meet some of his aforetime friends and acquaintances, but supposes that they will not be so lucky as his friend, and still be up in the desert. The friend says that CHEESE needn’t worry. For the whole of the 1st Greek Brigade are back, less those who wereunlucky enough to be bumped off, or wounded. Eventually CHEESE takes his friend back to the latter’s digs and then seeks his own flat.
    This completely imaginary episode was created for the sole purpose of conveying the impression that the 1st Greek Brigade had been withdrawn from operations in the Western Desert and was now based in Alexandria. Similarly, another encounter, displaying some humour and entitled CHEESE
Snoops Again,
was conjured up in January 1943 to provide another piece of the Abwehr’s intelligence jigsaw puzzle:
    On Friday evening, 9 January 1943, CHEESE had been called in by his temporary boss,