Foreign office confidential: true adventures of the Silver Greyhounds

SPENT thirteen years with the Foreign Service Messengers and from 1951 to 1957 had the honour to head the Corps. Since my retirement I have been amazed at the ignorance of people as to exactly what a Foreign Service Messenger does. Certain fiction writers have depicted the Messenger as a cross between Bulldog Drummond and D'Artagnan. A man armed to the teeth, with a penchant for blondes, ready to spy on enemy countries, a sort of gentleman adventurer. He is none of these things.

He is in point of fact simply a diplomatic courier. His work comes under the control of the Foreign Office and his duties are, as they have always been, to convey personally, never leaving out of his sight or keeping, and to deliever safely, secret and confidential despatches passing to and fro between the Foreign Office and British Embassies and Consulates abroad.

There are, of course, certain similarities between Bulldog Drummond and members of the Corps. The majority are retired senior officers of the Army, Navy or Air Force. All have to be extremely able and trusted men, all have to be cap able of acting on their own initiative and of thinking for them selves in the moments of real danger that sometimes arise.

The Corps, unique this country, can trace its history back for several hundred years, originally under the reigning monarch but now responsible to the Principal Secretary of State.