[4] Defunct As a staunch conservative and monarchist, Kemp was alarmed by the rise of communism in Spain, and was motivated to join in the fight against them after hearing about the atrocities committed in Republican held areas of the country.

In November 1936, shortly after the end of the Siege of Alcazar, he broke off from reading for the bar exam and travelled to Spain where he joined the Carlist Requetés militia under the Nationalists and later the Spanish Legion.

[9][10] Wounded several times, he continued fighting until he suffered a shattered jaw and badly damaged hands in the summer of 1938, the result of a mortar bomb, and was repatriated to England.

[11] Having barely recovered from his jaw injury, Kemp had a chance meeting with Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, the head of MIR, a small department of the War Office and a precursor to the Special Operations Executive.

Becoming one of the earliest pupils at the Combined Operations Training School, he sailed in the hold of HMS Fidelity to Gibraltar and took part in a mission to pursue a German U-boat.

[13] Another SSRF raid, Operation Fahrenheit led by him, was to capture German servicemen for interrogation by attacking a signals station at Pointe de Plouezec on the north Brittany coast.

On one occasion, brigade-commander Mehmet Shehu, leading 800 partisans, had refused to attack 20 German soldiers out of fear of suffering too many casualties.

Kemp regarded Shehu as a "gunman and a thug" and the LANÇ as a collection of dishonest murderers who were more concerned with attacking rival partisan groups than the Germans.

Under the command of Bill Hudson, Kemp and other SOE agents dropped into south eastern Poland, near Częstochowa, with the goal of assisting the Home Army in an advisory role.

[18] Released after three weeks in prison, Kemp spent two further months in Moscow awaiting an exit visa before finally being turned back over to the British Army.