Richard Melville Brooker

Richard Melville Brooker
Nickname(s)	"Bill Brooker" "R.M. Brooker"
Born	23 September 1909 Paris
Died	1994 (aged 84)
Buried	Sicklinghall Cemetery, Harrogate Borough, North Yorkshire, England
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army Special Operations Executive Secret Intelligence Service British Security Coordination Office of the Coordinator of Information Office of Strategic Services
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Commands	Chief Instructor, Beaulieu Commandant, Camp X
Battles/wars	World War II

Richard Melville "Bill" Brooker was a British soldier, spy, instructor, and commando during World War II, and integral to the Allied effort in defeating the Axis. He was a member of Churchill's Special Operations Executive (SOE), and Commandant of Camp X, where he trained the men and women who would become the leaders of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), which became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is considered one of the fathers of modern American central intelligence, and gained the admiration of William J. Donovan and Allen Dulles, and even is mentioned as being a great instructor of spies in the memoirs of Kim Philby.^[1][2]