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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The 'White Lady' spy net stretched across Europe, encompassing more than 1,000 agents and producing 70 per cent of Allied intelligence on the German forces in the First World War. Through sheer ingenuity, it maintained a staggeringly complex network of spies deep behind enemy lines, who provided vital information on troop movements to and from the Western Front. Its success rested on one man: Henry Landau. Talent-spotted while on a dinner date with one of the secret service's secretaries, Landau left with an exclusive invitation to the service headquarters to meet the legendary 'C' (Mansfield Cumming, the 'chief' of what is now MI6). Fully aware that the man on the other side of the door had a reputation for intimidating his young recruits - such as stabbing his leg without letting on that it was wooden - Landau never expected to be given the daunting task of running La Dame Blanche, nor did he realise how instrumental he would be in helping the Allies turn the tide of the war. Vivid, fast-paced and utterly compelling, The Spy Net is the extraordinary story of the war's most successful intelligence operation, as told by the man who pulled the strings.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
HENRY LANDAU WAS serving with the British Army in 1916 when he was recruited into the British secret service, the organisation we now know as MI6, in order to reorganise the British networks in Belgium that were watching the German troop trains travelling to and from the Western Front. These train-watching networks allowed the British to work out the locations and numbers of German regiments.
Landau, who was born in South Africa, was talent spotted when he dated one of the secretaries to Mansfield Cumming, the first head of MI6 (then known as MI1c) and the original ‘C’. On finding out that Landau spoke French, Dutch and German, she told him he was ‘just the man my chief is looking for’. He was summoned to see Cumming’s deputy, Colonel Freddie Browning, at the secret service headquarters in Whitehall Court.
He informed me that I had been transferred to the intelligence corps, and that, as I had been attached for special duty to the secret service, he would take me up to the chief immediately. Up several flights of stairs I went, until I reached the very top of the building. Here, in a room that resembled the stateroom of a ship, I was confronted with a kindly man who immediately put me at ease. It was the chief, Captain C. He swung round in a swivel chair to look at me – a grey-haired man of about sixty, in naval uniform, short in stature, with a certain stiffness of movement, which I later discovered to be due to an artificial leg. After a few preliminary remarks, he suddenly came to the point: ‘You are just the man we want. Our train-watching service has broken down completely in Belgium and north-eastern France – we are getting absolutely nothing through. It is up to you to reorganise the service. I can’t tell you how it is to be done – that is your job.’
Landau went on to run La Dame Blanche, a group of more than 1,000 Belgian and French agents who monitored the movement of German troop trains to and from the Western Front. Named after a mythical White Lady, whose appearance was supposed to presage the downfall of the Hohenzollerns, it was arguably the most effective intelligence operation of the First World War and, according to Cumming, produced 70 per cent of Allied intelligence on the German forces.
At the end of the war, Landau was rewarded for his work with La Dame Blanche by being offered one of the plum jobs in the post-war intelligence service. ‘I was informed by the chief that, in recognition of my services, he had awarded me the best of his appointments abroad in the post-war re-arrangement of the secret service. I was to open an office in Berlin.’
With Bolsheviks causing mayhem and threatening a German revolution to match that in Russia, Berlin was expected to be the service’s most important overseas station. But Landau not only struggled to come to terms with the work, he also found himself in severe financial difficulties. He left the secret service and went to America, where he became a US citizen and published a book on his wartime intelligence experiences called All’sFair: The Story of the Secret Service Behind the German Lines.
The book was a bestseller in America, but was not published in the UK for fear of legal action by the authorities. Appearing only a year after Hitler had come to power, its revelations about those who had worked for the British during the First World War and had remained in Germany – in a number of cases, still working for the British – put them at risk. Landau also named his successor as MI1c’s head of station in Berlin, Frank Foley, who would subsequently become better known for his work helping Jews escape from Nazi Germany. Shortly after the publication of All’s Fair, the German authorities warned the population to be on the lookout for foreign spies. ‘A large number of spies are busy in Germany collecting all particulars, especially with regard to the possibilities of economic mobilisations,’ they announced. ‘Spies must be energetically brought to book. Great reserve must be shown towards all foreigners encountered in public houses, railway compartments etc.’
A second book was also published in the US to avoid legal action, but this book, originally called Spreading the Spy Net, was the most comprehensive, published in both the US and the UK in 1938. Although Landau had let much that it contained out of the bag in his previous two books, it was still surprising that British secret service chiefs decided against taking any action.
Quite why is not clear, but it might well have something to do with the man Landau describes as ‘the Dane’, in what is a deliberately disguised account of the work of the best MI1c agent inside First World War Germany. Karl Krüger was not, in fact, a Dane. He was a German naval engineer. Codenamed variously TR16, H16 or, as here, R16, he had been recruited by Landau’s wartime boss, the head of MI1c’s Rotterdam bureau, Richard Tinsley. Krüger had extensive access to the German North Sea and Baltic ports and provided the British with often extraordinary and highly accurate detail, both of damage caused to the German Navy by its British counterpart and of the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the new ships and submarines the Germans were building.
Krüger had continued to work for the British after the First World War and, by the time Spreading the Spy Net was published, was providing detailed information on the build-up of German forces under the Nazis. But he was already under suspicion, and taking action against Landau’s book would only have alerted the Germans to the British concerns for his safety.
It is unclear whether the Germans ever discovered the full extent of Krüger’s work for British intelligence, but, shortly after the start of the Second World War, they announced that he had been beheaded by axe (although there is some evidence that he frustrated his would-be executioners by committing suicide). It was initially assumed within MI6 that Landau’s account of Krüger’s work was responsible for his death – and when the Americans entered the war in December 1941, there was even an attempt to have Landau arrested – but, in fact, when Krüger came under suspicion, the British had put one of their best Dutch agents on his tail to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The Dutchman assigned to cover Krüger’s back was also working for the Germans, and it was he who informed them that Krüger was a British spy, thereby sealing his fate.
Michael SmithEditor of the Dialogue Espionage Classics Series May 2015
CHAPTER 1
FROM BOER TO BRITON
IWAS BORN TO be what by chance I became; no child could have been ushered into the world under better conditions or in a more fertile environment for the dangerous and varied service into which I was thrown at the time of the Great War. By blood, by breeding and education, by the very country and atmosphere into which I was born, and the circumstances through which I grew to manhood, I was a composite of many inheritances and many backgrounds.
I was born of a Dutch mother and an English father, in Boer South Africa. My earliest memories centre about the arduous, almost medieval life of the veldt, and my first vivid impressions were those of war. Hazily I can remember the long trek in ox wagons from the Orange Free State to our farm in the Transvaal, when I was between four and five years of age; the long spans of red Afrikander oxen, the kaffirs with their long ox whips, the campfires, the hunters returning with their day’s bag of springbok and koorhaan remain in my mind pictures at once remote and vivid.
I have visions, too, of my mother superintending the making of household essentials, which the Boer women of those days had to attend to – remedies for simple illness, soap, candles, and dried beef or biltong. She was an excellent horsewoman and a fine shot, and, in addition to her many household duties, it came naturally to her to handle the kaffirs and the stock in my father’s absence. I can see her, at the approach of one of those South African thunderstorms which always seemed to come suddenly from nowhere, calling to the kaffirs to bring in the calves and other small stock, and herself scurrying off to direct them. Married at sixteen, she probably knew more about farming and stock-raising than my father, for she came of a long line of French Huguenots and Dutch, who had lived on the land in South Africa for close on 200 years, ever trekking northward to escape British rule, and in search of freedom. There was something elemental in her makeup, a ruggedness of character which breathed of the veldt itself. Her main qualities were dependability and resourcefulness; she was the master of every situation which arose, largely because of her own experiences and a fund of general knowledge carefully handed down by her pioneer mother.
From seven to ten, I lived in the midst of the fighting of the Boer War, and though I had relatives fighting on both sides, my boyish sympathies were all with the Boers. The coming and going of small groups of horsemen, with their tales of heroic encounters with the British, their ambushes and skirmishes, their marvellous skill with the rifle, their hairbreadth escapes, their hiding places, their foraging for food, all filled me with the glamour of war, which later on as a young man, on the British declaration of war, sent me trudging to Whitehall in a frenzied endeavour to get into the great adventure before it was too late.
My English father, a burgher on account of his long residence in Boer territory, was forced to join the Boer forces, and was placed by General Joubert at the head of the Commissariat in the Standerton District; but during the latter part of the Boer War, guerrilla warfare removed all need of a fixed commissariat, and so my father’s application for leave of absence was readily granted. Through the back door of Portuguese east Africa and Delagoa Bay he was able to get to Europe to attend to the disposal of a large consignment of wool, which he had shipped at the outbreak of war, and which was being held up in Portugal. Finding himself unmolested on a visit to England, he was bold enough to try to return to the Transvaal via the British base at the Cape. All went well until, on the second day after his arrival in Cape Town, he ran into a group of Boer prisoners from his home district, who were being marched under guard through the street. Their yells of greeting led to his prompt arrest and internment.
My mother and the children were now stranded in the Transvaal, and, as our studies had been sadly disrupted during the war, my father decided to send us all to Europe to complete our education. Passes were eventually obtained permitting us to leave the country. My father was also liberated, as the war was now in its last stages. Mafeking and Ladysmith had been relieved; Lord Roberts had occupied Pretoria; most of the Boer leaders had surrendered; it was merely a question of rounding up De Wet and the few followers that still remained with him.
I was destined by this removal to lose my home for good; it is true I was to travel with my mother for some time, but I never knew a real home again. The chief impressions it had made upon me, however, strongly survived, because of the dominating character of my father, who had so largely filled my early horizons. A born raconteur, he had filled my boyhood fancies with pioneer tales of the past. In 1874, after a six months’ voyage out from London in a sailing ship, he had landed at the Cape to find that his elder brother, whom he was to join, had returned to England. Thrown entirely on his own, he had lived in succession the life of a transport driver, farmer, trader, and merchant. He had trekked with the Boers from the Cape, to take up new lands in the Transvaal and Orange Free State; he had participated in Kaffir wars; he had been connected with the diamond mines in Kimberley; he had ridden over the Witwatersrand and the site of the city of Johannesburg before the discovery of gold, and when there was hardly a farm-house in sight. He had wonderful tales of the illicit diamond buyers, cattle thieves, and the thousands of wildebeest, springbok, blesbok, and other game, which warmed the veldt in those days. No wonder I grew up into restless manhood, ever ready to follow every impulse and opportunity which led to adventure and travel.
My first sight of the sea and the three weeks’ voyage from Durban to Southampton was a thrill. When I arrived I found the grey treeless veldt, the kopjes, and the wide expanses of the Transvaal exchanged for the green fields, hedges, and lawns of England. Gone were the ox wagon and the unclad kaffir. I was deposited in London, to experience at the impressionable age of nine the delirium of a nation at the signing of peace, the Coronation of Edward VII with all its pageantry, and the metamorphosis of my own self from Afrikander to European, by means of school days and vacations on the Continent.
My recollection of my first school – Dulwich College – is vague. Memory brings to the surface odd events and impressions of no importance now, but which were probably of great interest to me then: my first Eton suit and bowler hat; P. G. Wodehouse, a prefect at Treddie’s house; the Bedford and Haileybury football matches; Dr Gilkes, the head master, stern and forbidding; and the Latin school song, which impressed me greatly.
Christmas found me in Dresden with my mother and sisters, and later on I was placed in a German school instead of returning to England. Dutch, which, of course, I spoke as fluently as English, helped me with German, and within six months I was speaking the language like a native. I have pleasant memories of Dresden, young as I was; I liked the Saxon people. The parents of my school companions were immensely interested in this boy from South Africa. I am afraid, urged on by repeated questioning, I sometimes gave them exaggerated descriptions of life on the veldt. Rucksack on back, I spent week-ends and vacations with my German companions and some of their parents on short walking tours in Saxon Switzerland. I recall the glorious scenery of the Basteibrücke, Schandau, Pillnitz, and other resorts, and the delightful wayside inns where we slept at night. With the inquisitive eyes of youth, I was absorbing all I saw of German life and customs; partly from my affection for the country, and partly from the fresh vividness of my boyish impressions, I was effortlessly creating a foundation of assured familiarity with Germany which proved of value later on.
I had now reached an important turning point in my life; the rest of my boyhood and young manhood was to be spent in boarding school and universities. My parents I saw less and less often, for my mother, on her return from Europe, was to obtain a divorce from my father. True to her Boer traditions, she returned to the land to conduct her own stock farm, while my father threw himself with enthusiasm into the multiple developments which were now taking place in South Africa under British rule. At the end of the year in Europe, it was decided that I should return to South Africa, where my father placed me immediately in the Durban High School. I remained there until my sixteenth year.
It was a splendid school, fulfilling the best traditions of the finest of the English public schools, and its faculty was composed of Oxford and Cambridge men. Here I was changed into an Englishman; I was taught to play the game; I excelled in athletics, and I was turned out a scholar. At prize-giving, I was patted on the back by Sir Matthew Nathan, the governor of Natal, in whose brother’s rooms at the Albany in London later on, I was often to sit answering rapid-fire questions on the political situation in Belgium and Germany.
Natal, with Durban, its chief port and city, was at this time a British crown colony, almost more English than England herself. It prided itself in being free of Boer settlers, and it was not until some years later, when it was forced into the Union of South Africa, that Dutch was taught in its schools. French was the modern language used instead, and here, in the Durban High School, over a period of five years, I gained that thorough knowledge of syntax and grammar, which later, aided by long stays in France and Belgium, and by close contact with their people, made me master of the French language.
Most of my vacations were spent on some farm or other, where my chief occupation was riding and shooting. What other country can boast of three kinds of partridges, quail, bustard, spur-wing goose, pau, muscovy duck (as big as turkeys – they had to be shot with a rifle), snipe, and three or four different species of smaller antelope, all within easy reach of an ordinary farm? It was enough to keep any healthy boy in the saddle from morning to night; I virtually lived on horseback.
At sixteen, I was ready for entrance to a university, but my father judged me too young to proceed overseas. Accordingly, I was entered as a student in the government Agricultural College, at Potchefstroom, in the Transvaal. Here I was in my element. I loved farming; it was in my blood. No course could have been more interesting to anyone who had been raised on the land. For an institution of its kind, we probably had the finest equipment and the most valuable stock in the world, for it was to serve not only as an agricultural college, but as a farm from which thoroughbred cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, poultry, and seeds were to be supplied to the whole of South Africa. I liked everything about the college, and even though I was in competition with boys and men much older than myself, many of them university graduates, my enthusiasm and application enabled me to pass out top of the whole college at the end of the first year.
At this juncture, the South African government decided to award about a dozen scholarships of £400 a year, for four years, to students for the purpose of study in American and English agricultural colleges. In the light of my success at Potchefstroom, one of these scholarships was mine for the asking, but my father, feeling that he could afford to pay the cost, decided to send me to Cambridge University at his own expense. It was a decision which changed my whole career. Wrongly or rightly, I believed these twelve government students would be given preference over me on their return to South Africa, and so, upon proceeding to Cambridge, I abandoned agriculture for a mining career.
Why I changed from agriculture to mining, instead of to some other profession, I do not know. I was probably influenced by my father’s elder brother, who had made and lost several fortunes in mining: he was one of the first to develop the mines on the Rand, and at one time had owned Auckland Park, the finest residential section of Johannesburg. Later the Witbank Collieries were named after him; he eventually died in Spain developing a cinnabar mine. Or, perhaps, it was that other mining uncle of mine who was on a continual treasure hunt, searching for a fabulous sum in gold bars, which the Boers had instructed him and four other men to bury, one night, on the eve of the British entry into Johannesburg. When they were able to reach the spot in safety, two years later, they were unable to locate the exact site; if he is alive, he is probably still digging. No doubt, it was the love of adventure which played the leading part in my decision.
My three years in Cambridge were the happiest days of my life. The friends I formed there are the only ones I have kept close to my heart. Some were killed in the war; some at odd intervals I still hear from. The will to succeed was driving me on, and scholastically I was a brilliant success: at the end of my first year at Caius College I was elected an exhibitioner; in my final examinations, in 1913, taking four sciences instead of the usual three, I passed the Natural Sciences Tripos with first-class honours. I mention this point, not in a spirit of braggadocio, but because my precocity played an important part later on in my wartime advancement at a very early age to a position of great importance.
To Cambridge I owe a debt which I shall never be able to repay. Its traditions, its customs, its old colleges with their priceless architecture, their quadrangles, libraries, lawns, and ‘backs’, and, above all, the companionship and the association with the products of England’s finest public schools, all left their imprint on me; they contributed to the moulding of my character, and inspired in me a love of learning and an appreciation of the finer arts. It is the genius of the English schools that they turn out persons who are above all equable and affable, but controlled, reserved, and self-contained – the type that can get along with anyone anywhere without losing its own dignity and self-sufficiency. If I lack anything of these attributes the fault is mine; I was certainly shown the way.
At Cambridge, almost half the year is taken up with vacations, and all of them I spent travelling on the Continent. My bicycle accompanied me always through Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France, and as I spoke the three languages of these four countries fluently, I was continually on the move. I covered hundreds of miles. I rode the pavé from Brussels to Ghent; I climbed the hills in the Ardennes. Walking tours carried me through the Black Forest and the Hartz; I explored the Rhineland from Heidelberg to Diisseldorf, sometimes pedalling my wheel, sometimes gliding lazily on river steamers. It was the people that interested me above all: their customs, their way of living, their philosophy of life. I was Bohemian in my tastes: sometimes I frequented the homes, cafes, and places of entertainment in the poorer sections; but other times, in the great cities, such as Berlin, I afforded myself the luxury of the big international hotels, the ‘Adlon’ and the ‘Bristol’, and restaurants such as those of Hiller, Borchart, and Horcher.
To see a country, to study its language and the ways of its people, to look under the façade which is dressed up for the tourist, and finally to learn its topography, there is no better way than a walking or bicycle tour. The energy expended is well repaid in rich dividends of experience and information gained. If I never visit Holland again, I shall ever remember that the road from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, via The Hague and Haarlem, is as flat as a pancake, and that, on the contrary, there are appreciable hills around Arnhem. Even if memory failed, the muscles of the legs would jog it.
Here, then, for almost four years, six months in the year, I was learning the ‘feel’ of Europe – absorbing a knowledge of the actual land and furthering a familiarity with its intimate life. It was a continuation of the days at Dresden, but with the field vastly greater, and the enjoyment enhanced by mature observation and judgement. All unwittingly, I was preparing myself for the role which I was to play during the war.
CHAPTER 2
GETTING TO THE FIRING LINE
IN JUNE 1913, having graduated, I left Cambridge with still two years to be spent at a mining school, if I wanted to qualify myself thoroughly as a mining engineer. To this end, three mining schools presented themselves: the one in London, Freiburg in Germany, and the Colorado School of Mines.
Ever ready for an excuse to travel, I decided on a personal tour of inspection, beginning with the college most remote. In July I sailed for Quebec as a steerage passenger in the company of two other Cambridge men. After a day’s experience, two of us decided to transfer to regular accommodation, however expensive it might prove. We were willing to suffer hardships, but we were afraid of disease: cleanliness was not an inherent characteristic of the steerage passengers from Galicia and southern Russia. Our chief occupation during the rest of the voyage was sneaking food out of the first-class saloon to pass on to our companion left in the steerage.
I was duly impressed by the usual round of sights offered to the tourist in the United States, but my one urge was to get out west. In Denver, I ran short of money. I was thoroughly unprepared for the difference in the cost of living in Europe and the United States, and I dared not apply to my father, who had not been consulted about my American trip. On impulse, I decided to work out the six weeks on a cattle ranch, and managed to be hired by the Carey Brothers, whose place is one of the biggest in the United States. I spent a happy six weeks oblivious of mining and studies, earning $2 a day, plus the best of food and lodging. The work, pitching hay, or tramping it down on the top of a haystack, was hard, but I was young and healthy, and the work did me a world of good. I thoroughly enjoyed the company of the cowboys, listening to their tales of early times in the West, and putting up with the many tricks they played on me; they broke me into the intricacies of the western saddle, and on privileged occasions I was allowed to ride the ranges.
Toward the end of September, I went to Golden, ready to give the Colorado School of Mines a trial. The London School of Mines opened on 15 October, so I knew I could still reach London in time for the opening if I wished. To a graduate accustomed to Cambridge with its serene reserve, its lecture and tutorial system, its traditions, its culture, its beautiful old colleges with their lawns and walks, the Colorado School of Mines was a direct contrast. Set among mines, where students could get practical experience, it was then, and probably is today, the finest mining school in the world; but my sole memory of it is the general instruction of the classroom system, which was too much for me, and the ragging of the freshmen, which as a post-graduate I was permitted to escape, but which, as a privileged spectator, I was allowed to witness. I wonder if the freshmen are still forced to roll eggs with their tongues across the stage of the local movie theatre, or whether enduring raw egg shampoos, and coats of green paint are still the order of the day?
If I had stayed in Colorado, the following years might have been very different for me; but on an impulse, which was perhaps homesickness and perhaps fate, I returned to England, and entered the London School of Mines as a post-graduate.
During this year, I worked incessantly, and the records of the School of Mines will show that I repeated my Cambridge successes by heading the lists in most of my classes. But though work was my chief interest and almost my whole occupation, the most memorable event of the time was my first innocent debut in diplomacy – the diplomacy of romance. Once again, it was chance that played the leading role.
One evening, dropping into the Empire in Leicester Square, I saw a young and beautiful girl among the demi-mondaines of the theatre’s then notorious promenade. She was so obviously out of place that my curiosity was piqued and I spoke to her. She told me her sad little tale: a stepfather in Lincolnshire, family trouble, the leaving of home to find work in London, no success, hunger, a chance acquaintance who had showed her the easy way, and had loaned her a dress. This was her second week as a daughter of joy. Had I been older, I would have treated her story with a shrug, but I was young and romantic, and I believed her. I found that her flat was being paid for by an Australian, a young Cambridge student to whom she introduced me. By agreeing to put up £10 a month for six months, I got him to agree to do likewise to enable her to go straight.
With an appropriate story about her being one of his relatives, he introduced her to a charming London family. Only an irresponsible youth could have done such a thing, but it all ended very happily: cultured and coming from a respectable family, she was able to pass it off with success. In later years, I often met Elsie; she married a colonel in the British Army and was for a time divinely happy. He was killed in the war, leaving her quite well off. I often saw her riding and her happy smile amply repaid me for anything I had done. There were only two of us who knew her secret, and she knew we would keep it well.
I met the sister of my young Australian friend, who was stopping with her mother in London. Time with her passed by as a delightful dream; she brought a tenderness into my life which I had never experienced before. I had known very few girls, and this was my first love. In March 1914 she and her mother sailed for Melbourne. They were to return in six months for our marriage.
The summer of 1914 I spent surveying in a lead mine in Flintshire, where I heard the first news of the British declaration of war. War was furthest from my mind at the time; I was happily in love, and filled with ambition. I had my life mapped out: one year more at the School of Mines to qualify as a mining engineer; then the mines on the Rand and in Rhodesia for experience; and after that London as a consulting engineer. But this was not for me. Restlessness seized me, and in short order my mind was made up. It was a surprised mine manager who saw me dash into my lodgings one morning to pack my bag in time for the London train leaving within the hour. But I scarcely made a coherent explanation to him. Here was the great adventure.
My first thought in the morning was to join the Honourable Artillery Company, a volunteer corps, but at their headquarters I was informed that for the time being they had no vacancies. I secured a personal letter of introduction to Lord Denbigh, the commanding officer, and was on my way back to HAC headquarters for a second attempt, when chance took me into the Royal Colonial Institute, of which I was a fellow. Here I ran into Mousely, a New Zealander, an old Cambridge man, who was on his way to Australia House to join the Australian Volunteer Hospital, which was then in the process of formation.
People were saying the war would be over in a few weeks, and in view of my rebuff that morning, and of my never having had any military training, I jumped at Mousely’s suggestion that I should accompany him for an interview. The Hospital was due to leave, he said, in a few days. Here, at least, was a sure way of getting out to France. By nightfall, we were members of the Australian Volunteer Hospital, under orders to leave for France as soon as the unit had been completed. Quarters for the time being were the Ranelagh Club, where the polo field proved a splendid training ground for us, and the club rooms excellent quarters for our officers; we slept in the horse boxes, and were glad of them at the end of a day’s drilling.
The next morning, regular army uniforms were handed out to about eighty of us, who comprised the rank and file, and we found ourselves in the presence of our officers: Colonel Eames, the commanding officer, and a group of Australian doctors who had been recruited from the London hospitals. I still remember with respect the regular army sergeant major, who knocked us into soldiers in those few days. We broke his heart at times, but we were willing. Infantry drill and stretcher drill was the order of day from reveille to dusk. At the end of about ten days, we were ready to join the Expeditionary Force. We were inspected by a RAMC colonel from the War Office, and orders were given to entrain. All was excitement. We had been trained as a field unit, and we had visions of ourselves dashing under shell and rifle fire to the rescue of the wounded. We thought we should be at the Front within forty-eight hours.
We embarked at Southampton in a troop ship, and found ourselves in the midst of other units, mostly infantry battalions which had been rushed home from Gibraltar and Malta. When we reached Havre, the retreat from Mons was rapidly proceeding. For a week we never moved from the wharf. Wrapped in our blankets, we slept on the hard cobblestones and the filth of the dock; we missed the horse boxes of Ranelagh. Rumours were rife: Uhlans had been seen on the outskirts of Havre; spies had been caught at the headquarters of the Allied forces. Confusion was all we knew to be a fact. Troops, including the French Marine Corps, kept arriving and departing.
Suddenly, at a moment’s notice, we were piled into a transport, packed to capacity with units from a dozen regiments, and we were off into the unknown destination. We slept on the deck where we stood. There were rumours of Bordeaux, but eventually we heard that our destination was St Nazaire. There, some public building probably a school, housed our unit. We had expected to see service as stretcher bearers; instead we found ourselves as orderlies carrying coverings, bandages, trays, bedpans, attending to the pitiful unceasing demands of an overcrowded hospital. The wounded kept coming in until some had even to be left on their stretchers.
I cannot describe the horror of the next few weeks. Nothing I subsequently saw in the trenches equalled it. Most of the wounded had lain for days in cattle-trucks, with only a rough field dressing for the most desperate cases. Practically every case meant amputation; here was horror worse than any battlefield. I subsequently saw men shot down next to me with limbs torn off by shells; but here I saw them slowly die in agony; I heard their cries for water and their groans. There was no supply of anti-tetanus serum on hand, and of the many who developed the dread disease all succumbed. With rubber gloves on, to protect ourselves, we stood helpless and watched them slowly die. I can still see the convulsive twitching of their haggard faces, the contorted look of horror of locked muscles, the frenzied, lost despair in their eyes.
The doctors and nurses did more than gallant service; they worked night and day. Many of the wounded were saved; but if so many died, it was certainly not the fault of the hospital or its staff; gangrene had set in and the tetanus germ was there long before these men, desperately wounded, ever reached St Nazaire.
I think it was in November that we eventually left St Nazaire. Entrained in cattle-trucks, we had great hopes that at last we were going to the Front, for we still had all our field hospital equipment with us. But our hopes were again dashed; after several days of shunting and slow progress, we detrained at Wimereux, and realised that a base hospital was to be our lot.
The war had already resolved itself into trench warfare, and Lord Kitchener was appealing for volunteers on the basis of a three years’ war. To serve in a base hospital was not what I had joined up for; at all costs, I wanted to get to the Front. I am afraid Mousely and I had made nuisances of ourselves; we had repeated interviews with Colonel Eames, the commanding officer, and with Lady Dudley, the wife of a former governor of Australia, who was intimately connected with the hospital, until finally, probably in order to get rid of us, our applications for a commission were recommended. In December 1914, I was gazetted a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, and was appointed to the brigade of a division, then in the process of formation at Ewshot.
I thoroughly enjoyed the four months of training we went through. Most of the subalterns were overseas Englishmen, who had hurried home at the outbreak of the war. There were men from India, China, South America, and other parts of the globe – an interesting group who were excellent company. The remaining officers were mostly ‘dug-outs’ – retired officers whom the exigencies of war had once more called to active service – and, as the training proceeded, we received a few ‘regulars’, chiefly recovered wounded, and a few ‘rankers’. The traditions of the regiment and of the officers’ mess were kept up; we all tried very hard to do the correct thing, and I am sure even the ‘dug-outs’, who were very critical, agreed we did very well, though I did once, flustered by having a general seated on my right, start the port in circulation in the wrong direction.
Most of the officers were good horsemen, but few of the drivers could ride; they were chiefly from the East End of London, chosen because of their small stature. Horses they managed with difficulty, but the South American mules, of which we had many, played havoc with them until they learned to keep out of reach of vicious heels. However, perseverance, practice, and willingness of spirit, carried the day; eventually they were turned out a credit to their instructors, upsetting the theory that horsemanship must be learned from youth up. Gradually as the few months went by, we acquired discipline, training, and, above all, equipment. Old French guns, even wooden guns, were all we had, until about a month before leaving for France. The officers went off to Lark Hill for a course in gunnery; brigades and their batteries went through target practice on Salisbury Plain; we were reviewed by the King and by Princess Mary. We were ready for the Front.
Life had been very pleasant for four months, at the government’s expense. We had had everything a healthy man desires: good, clean exercise, good sport, fine companions, the best of food and accommodation, the joy and responsibility of authority, hard work, and London, with its amusements, within easy reach on week-ends. This was all to change now; we had to get down to the grimness, the hardship, and, above all, what was the most terrible, the monotony of war.
In April 1915 I found myself once again on a transport ship under sealed orders for a port which turned out to be Boulogne. We entrained for the St Omer area, where we remained in rest billets for a few days. Then we slowly moved into the line in the Armentières sector, probably the quietest at that time on the Western Front. Everything was prepared for us: gun pits, telephone lines, observation posts, and billets; it was simply a question of relieving and taking over from the outgoing division. Simple as it was, I probably experienced the greatest thrill I ever got in the firing line: it was my first contact with the enemy, my first entry into a zone where I imagined death was constantly lurking in the form of a bullet or a shell. Later, I was to laugh at those first fears, for, in reality, it was the calmest of nights.
Relieving was done at night. It was an eerie feeling, approaching the front line for the first time: it was a pitch dark night, and the dazzling white Very lights, shot out rocketwise at regular intervals, clearly marked the position of the firing line. Bursts of machine-gunfire, interspersed with an occasional rifle shot and the howl of a shell, drowned at odd intervals the muffled sound of our gun wheels, horses’ hoofs, and the champing of bits. Once the gun pits were reached, the relief was quickly carried out, and we were soon wrapped in our blankets, trying to sleep. At first everything was new. Every operation, every scene was avidly taken in. It was great sport firing at objectives behind the enemy’s trenches, and a stinging thrill to watch a direct hit through field-glasses, after regulating by telephone the fire of a battery 3,000 yards away from the observation post. The routine of a week at the battery, a week as forward observing officer in the trenches, and a week at the wagon lines some 8 or 10 miles behind the Front, was eagerly gone through at first, but as the months dragged on it became terribly monotonous.
In 1915 we were suffering from shell shortage. Our ammunition was cut down each week, until eventually we were not allowed to fire more than six rounds a day, except in emergencies. The winter came on, and with it the rain, snow, and mud. The trenches became a quagmire. We were up to our thighs in water each day; and at night, we slept in dug-outs on wire bunks, sometimes only a few inches above the water. Add rats and fleas to make the picture complete. Rheumatism and trench foot were causing more casualties than the enemy’s fire.
I had my share of land mines, Big Berthas, Whizz Bangs, and Minnies, and saw men killed and wounded. I had an observation post razed to the ground while I sat in its sand-bag cellar for a couple of hours, wondering whether it would hold out against the ‘crumps’ that were being poured on it. In the front line, I spent a sleepless seventy-two hours as FOO cutting wire and directing an artillery barrage during a diversion we tried to create at the time of the Loos attack. But all this was tame to what the division had to go through on the Somme, and in many a subsequent battle later on, after I had left it. Actually, I saw more of death in the three weeks in the hospital at St Nazaire than I saw here during our whole nine months’ stay in the sector. Armentières remained to the end of the war the de luxe sector of the Western Front, a convenient terrain in which to give the new Kitchener divisions their first baptism of fire. If we could have relaxed, it would not have been so bad, but we were continually keyed up expecting something to happen which never did.
Our only relief from this dull routine was our three days’ leave in England every three months. We also had good food: the army rations were excellent, and this was supplemented by hampers which we were permitted to order from Harrod’s. For water, we used Perrier, as the ordinary supply was bad, and the local beer was even worse. How the peasants of north-eastern France could drink it, I never could fathom. I could get a little consolation out of letters. Most of my relatives were disappointed that I had abandoned a promising career for the service; they were too far away to realise that the best of England’s youth had joined up. My fiancée, cut off from me in Australia, wrote less and less, until finally we ceased to correspond. The end of the war seemed indefinitely postponed, and communication, because of censors and delays, became almost impossible. I seemed effectively cut off from the world.
Just when we began to think that we never would be transferred, we got orders to move. All immediately was excitement and bustle. The usual rumours flew around as to our destination. We were even going to the Dardanelles, and then it was to Mespot. Imagine our dismay when we found ourselves relieving the Guards at Laventie, a sector at that time almost as quiet as the one at Armentières. But we were really on the move: we only stayed there for a couple of weeks. At the commencement of March 1916 we started south again: the concentration for the Somme offensive had begun.
For the rest of my short stay on the Western Front, I was never again to complain of monotony. Events moved quickly. Before leaving Ewshot, I had been promoted to the rank of first lieutenant; I was now a captain. My battery commander had been placed on the sick list and was subsequently retired on account of advanced age; Captain Wells, who had succeeded him, had been wounded at Laventie; I now found myself in command of the battery.
We covered miles in intermittent snow over muddy roads. The displacement of guns, ammunition wagons, horses, and men over such a distance was an undertaking. We spent hours in the saddle each day, our hands and feet numb with the cold. It was ceaseless work, which called for endurance. At dusk, billets had to be found, and, when all the men and horses had been looked after, maps and orders had to be studied for the next day’s march. I enjoyed it; it was the only part of the war which recalled to me my boyhood memories and conception of war. We still had the mud, but I was in command of a fine group of men; I felt a good horse under me; we were on the move; we were going somewhere.
At Souchez, we moved into the line again, taking over gun positions vacated by the French. Here I was immediately faced with an ordeal: the French battery had already left, and I was faced with no indication as to the position of our front line trenches or that of the enemy. There were no telephone lines, nor any information as regards observation posts; the only thing for me to do was to reconnoitre for myself over ground which had been taken and retaken a dozen times, where not an inch was left unpitted by shell craters. I crawled through rotted fragments of French and German dead whose clothes had long since crumbled away, so that the only distinguishing marks were the long top boots of the Germans and the shorter ones of the French. Covered with mud, raked by machine-gun and shell fire, I reached our front line trenches, where I quickly established contact with battalion headquarters. Telephone lines were laid. As soon as I could get back to the battery we got the range, and were ready for all eventualities.
On the third day after taking up this position, my leave fell due. The enemy were to have one more crack at me, however before I entrained. At railhead, sparks from the locomotive betrayed us to a raiding German plane. In the darkness of the night, we heard the drone of its motor, the whistle of the bomb, then crash! We scattered as fast as our legs could carry us while three more bombs fell in quick succession. We had visions of an enforced return to the trenches; but, to our relief, the train was untouched, and other damage we did not care about. Within the hour, we were on our way to Boulogne and ‘Blighty’. I was not to see the Front again.
CHAPTER 3
I ENTER THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE
LEAVE FOR MOST of us colonials and overseas men, with no family or relatives in England, had resolved itself into a mad three days without sleep, doing a round of night clubs and shows, with companions of the opposite sex, not always well chosen. I had been no better or worse than the others. For all we knew, we might never return on another leave.
To me all this had brought a reaction of strong distaste, and on this particular leave I was grateful and happy to have a letter of introduction from a brother officer to his sister. She was a charming, highly intelligent girl, with a job at the War Office. We saw a great deal of each other, dining together, and seeing some of the better plays; starved for companionship, I told her a great deal about myself, especially about my travels. She listened with her eyes shining, but I was not allowed for a moment to fancy that she was a modern Desdemona – her excitement was all for the service.
‘What a pity you cannot get into intelligence!’ she cried. ‘You are just the man they are looking for. They have the greatest difficulty in finding an officer with military experience who speaks French, German, and Dutch, and who is thoroughly acquainted with the countries. The difficulty, of course, is Dutch,’ she added. ‘It is remarkable how few Englishmen speak it. It is typical of us as a race – we always expect the foreigner to speak our own language.’ I laughed at her remark. Wasn’t I returning to France that evening?
On arrival at Folkestone, ready to embark for Boulogne, we wretches leaving ‘Blighty’ were told that since a German submarine had been sighted outside, we could return to London, and report back the next evening. I woke next morning at the Waldorf Hotel with a fever and a body rash. Frantically I dashed to the nearest military hospital. My case was diagnosed as German measles, and to bed I was ordered. Entrance into a hospital in England automatically transferred one from the Overseas Command to that of the War Office. I realised that this meant I was now free to apply for the post my enthusiastic friend had mentioned. As I convalesced, I turned the matter over in my mind, and over the phone, I discussed it with her. She promised to talk to her chief about it.
A week later, I received orders to report immediately at the War Office. I hurried there, hoping to find out at once what my new duties would be. Instead, I was confronted by three examiners in succession; I was in for a language test. The examination, both oral and written, presented no difficulties. I had, in fact, the advantage of the Dutch examiner: I was speaking my native language, the first language I had learned as a child.
Next day a telephone call at the ‘Waldorf’ instructed me to report to Colonel B. at Whitehall court. He informed me that I had been transferred to the intelligence corps, and that as I had been attached for special duty to the secret service, he would take me to the chief immediately. Up several flights of stairs I went, until I reached the very top of the building. Here, in a room which resembled the state-room of a ship, I was confronted with a kindly man who immediately put me at my ease. It was the chief, C, a captain in the navy. He swung around in a swivel chair to look at me – a grey-haired man of about sixty, in naval uniform, and short in stature.
After a few preliminary remarks, he suddenly came to the point:
I know all about your past history. You are just the man we want to join T in Rotterdam, leaving tonight via Harwich and the Hook. Our train-watching service has broken down completely in Belgium and in north-eastern France – we are getting absolutely nothing through. It is up to you to reorganise the service. I can’t tell you how it is to be done – that is your job. You have carte blanche.
Use T as ‘cover’; communicate with me through him. Within reasonable limits, he will supply you with all the money you need for the organisation. You will find others in T’s office in charge of other branches of the secret service; co-operate with them.
Youare in complete charge of the military section; responsibility for its success or failure is on your shoulders. consult with Colonel Oppenheim, our military attaché at The Hague, as to the kind of information we require. A handbook and other information about the German army will be given you by Colonel Oppenheim. We will also send you questionnaires from time to time through T.
Urgent military information you obtain about the Germans will be telegraphed in code by Colonel Oppenheim direct to GHQ. Hand T all written reports concerning less important information; he will send it to us through the diplomatic bag. Anything else you want to know, ask T. Here is his address. Commander S. in the next room, will furnish you with your ticket and expenses, and will tell you when your train leaves Victoria.
He offered me his hand, wishing me good luck.
It was in somewhat of a daze that I found myself out in the street – events had moved so rapidly. I had envisaged a job in some government office in London, probably connected with the censorship; a commission in Holland, practically as a freelance, had been furthest from my mind. I had only the afternoon in which to get together some civilian clothes, and in a scramble like that of a nightmare, where everything happens at once and nothing seems accomplished, I bought underclothing, hats, and shoes, and routed out suits and coats long-forgotten in storage in Harrods. The pleasant friend to whom I owed my new career dined with me at ‘The Piccadilly’ to celebrate our common delight and excitement at my new enterprise. At eight-thirty that evening I was on my way to Harwich.
Again, chance had changed my whole career; as a matter of fact, it had saved my life. Had I developed the measles six days earlier or later, I should have been in France with my battery. A few weeks later, as I subsequently learned, it was wiped out completely on the Somme; every officer in it was killed.
Normally I should have got to the Hook in the morning, but with a group of several ships convoyed by destroyers, the speed of the convoy is that of the slowest ship. A fog further delayed our arrival until the evening. A short journey by rail brought me to Rotterdam too late, as I thought, to get in touch with T. After a good night’s rest at the Maas Hotel, where I had stayed in pre-wartimes, I called on T in his office, which occupied the whole of the first floor of a large building on the Boompjes. A man on guard at the entrance took my name, and after few minutes’ delay I was ushered in to T.
I found myself facing a short, though broad-shouldered man, ruddy of complexion, with small piercing eyes, who looked like the combination of sea captain and prizefighter. I spent the whole morning listening to his summing up of the situation. He was dreadfully worried. The whole of his organisation covering Belgium and north-eastern France, comprising over forty train-watching posts, had broken down, and nearly all the agents had been arrested. Frankignoul, his agent in Maastricht, had been striving to establish a new organisation, but so far had been unsuccessful, and absolutely no information was coming through. T seemed somewhat dubious as to whether I would be able to do anything, but he told me that he would give me every assistance, as he had been instructed that I was to be at the head of the military section in Holland. He placed a room at my disposal and introduced me to the men with whom I was to be associated: Power,
