Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard was an author, firearms expert, and a BritishSOE officer. He is chiefly known for his intelligence work during the Irish War of Independence and for the events of July 1936, when he and Cecil Bebb flew General Francisco Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco, thereby helping to trigger the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. He was the author of many published works on weaponry, in particular on sporting firearms.
During the Irish War of Independence, Pollard was Press Officer of the Information Section of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Together with the Section secretary, CaptainWilliam Darling, he produced the Weekly Summary, a weekly newspaper distributed to the police forces in Ireland. The crudeness of this paper and its ambivalent attitude toward reprisals 'resulted in much negative publicity for the Crown forces and the Irish Administration'. He was also directly involved in two particularly bungled attempts at 'black propaganda'. One was the attempt to produce and distribute a fake version of the Irish Bulletin, the gazette of the Irish Republicans. The fraud was quickly exposed and the reliability of information emanating from Crown sources in Ireland severely damaged. A second incident involved the bizarre attempt to fake a military engagement in County Kerry. The press-release included photographs of the purported scene of the battle. These were republished in a number of Irish and English papers before the actual location was identified as Vico Road in Dalkey, a quiet seaside Dublin suburb. The entire event had been staged by Pollard and Captain Garro-Jones, a colleague of Major Cecil Street, and was without foundation. In December 1920 in the House of Commons, the British government denied any knowledge of these pictures or the circumstances in which they were produced. Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Pollard recorded his interpretation of the history of Irish nationalist organisations in Secret Societies of Ireland, Their Rise and Progress. He alleged that the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain, had been assassinated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, rather than by forces acting for the British Crown.
Spanish Civil War
Pollard was a devout Roman Catholic and a supporter of the conservative side in Spain in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War. He and a former MI6 colleague Cecil Bebb played an important role in the events leading up to the outbreak of hostilities. During lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, Douglas Francis Jerrold, the conservative Roman Catholic editor of the English Review, met with the journalist Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the monarchist and right wing newspaper ABC and later Franco's senior press advisor. They conceived a plan to move General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco, where the Army of Africa was stationed. The Madrid government recognized that Franco was a danger to the Spanish Republic, and had sent him to the Canaries to keep him away from political intrigue. If a Spanish plane flew to the islands, the authorities would most likely be alerted, but a British aircraft would attract little or no attention. Jerrold and Bolin then persuaded Pollard to join the enterprise as "cover". They charted a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft, which flew out of Croydon airport, London, at 07.15 on the morning of July 11, 1936, piloted by Bebb, and also carrying Pollard, Diana, and Dorothy. The aircraft was bound for the Canaries. Pollard and Bebb delivered Franco to Tetuan on July 19, and the General quickly set about organising Spanish Moroccan troops to participate in the coming coup. It is possible that British intelligence services may have been complicit in the flight. However it is not clear yet how much the British government knew or was involved in these activities, or if the Britons involved were in fact acting on their own. Britain remained officially neutral during the Spanish Civil War.
Later life
In 1940, once Franco had seized power, Pollard was appointed head of MI6's semi-autonomous ‘Section D’ in Madrid. Pollard listed his hobbies in Who's Who as "hunting and shooting". Douglas Jerrold of The English Review said of him that he "looked and behaved like a German Crown Prince and had a habit of letting off revolvers in any office he happened to visit". Pollard's personal SOE file has recently been released, revealing him to have been an experienced British intelligence officer. When considering Pollard for a place in SOE, one officer wrote: "Certain jobs Pollard apparently could do well, but he was definitely unreliable where money and drink was concerned". He was also a skilled linguist and an expert in firearms, and had a good deal of personal experience of wars and revolutions, such as those in Mexico and Morocco.
Author and firearms expert
Pollard was a much-published expert on firearms, having written the 'small arms' section in the official War Office textbook. His history of the Second Battle of Ypres is still in print today.
The Book of the Pistol and Revolver, London, McBride, Nast & Co., 1917..
