Female in Mi5, Italy 1918

[dante]

 British War and Victory, named to S Todd-Naylor, Mi5, British military mission Rome, 1918 

Not many of these around I would guess.......Sheila Todd-Naylor was the Daughter of Henry Paul Todd-Naylor CIE, CSI who was Commissioner Bhamo frontier district (died 1910) and sister of William Bryan Todd-Naylor KRRC who was killed in Action 1916.
She served in Mi5 in the British Military Mission in Rome in 1918.  

The MI5 run British Military Mission to Italy had the responsibility to ensure that after the defeated at Caporetto and after the Bolshevik revolution took Russia out of the war that a similar turn of events in Italy may take them out of the war.

She was born on 12 Nov 1895 and baptised on 28 Nov 1895 at Bhamo, West Bengal and married in 1919 Luther Holden Barford who was also serving in Mi5 (serving in Rome with Sheila). Sheila and Luther divorced in about 1935. She subsequently married Herbert J. Paton, White's Professor of moral philosophy at Oxford. Paton served with the Admiralty's Intelligence Division during the First World War and became an expert on Polish affairs in which capacity he attended the Versailles conference in 1919.

[Mervyn Mitton]

Dante  -  the 1st WW was so vast in area and Countries that aspects are often overlooked.  I think that this award to an Mi5 operative in Italy comes under that category.  Mervyn

[peter monahan]

What a great story!  Do you know if there is a biography, printed or private for her, Dante?  Any descendants? 

[dante]

No I have her sisters brief notes on her father but nothing on Sheila, I would imagine her work continued for a considerable time and she took her secrets to her grave...