Captain Peter Baker – Royal Artillery, Intelligence Corps, Phantom GHQ Liaison Regiment & MI9/IS9

Captain Peter Baker MI9 .

Peter Baker spent an eventful war mostly behind enemy lines helping Allied soldiers escape and leading resistance forces before he was captured in Holland.
  • Memorial Text
  • Captain Peter Arthur David Baker
  • 1921-1966
  • Royal Artillery, Intelligence Corps, Phantom GHQ Liaison Regiment, MI9/IS9
  • Military Cross, Croix de Guerre, Savoy Cross, Madaglio D’Oro
  • For valour in service behind enemy lines in Italy, France and Holland
  • Peter Baker enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1939 and elected to serve in the ranks for 8 months before taking up an Officer’s Commission. He was promoted to Captain whilst attached to the Intelligence Corps in Oxford during 1942.
  • He was then posted as Intelligence Officer, GHQ Liaison Regiment- known as Phantom – a secret front-line battle assessment, cipher and signalling organisation.
  • In July 1943 he was based in Algeria before landing in Taranto, Italy for operations penetrating 100 miles behind enemy lines.
  • In 1944 he was posted to IS9, a secret organisation tasked to reorganise resistance groups and escape routes for shot-down aircrew in France and Belgium, after the Normandy landings.
  • In August 1944 he went 60 miles behind enemy lines with the French Resistance to the Foret of Freteval to facilitate the rescue of over 150 aircrew and army evaders who had been hidden in the forest by the Comete network sustained by the local French Resistance.
  • In September 1944, whilst working with the Dutch Resistance he sent London Photostat details of the German V2 Rocket and their Atomic Bomb plants.
  • In October 1944 he canoed across the River Waal near Tiel to take command of the Underground and organize escape lines for trapped Airborne Forces from the failed ‘Market Garden’ landings at Arnhem.
  • He was captured when the safe house he was in was betrayed. He managed to conceal his secret operational role but following an escape attempt he was severely treated. On release in April 1945 he weighed just 7 stone.
  • A man of outstanding bravery and infectious energy.
  • Remembered by his daughter Penelope. 5th August 2017.
  • Garden 1 – Special Operations – Allied Special Forces Memorial Grove – Ash tree, Fraxinus Jasopidea.