The Secret Listeners

by Sinclair McKay

  ‘He was issued with a gun at the beginning of the war and six bullets,’ Mrs Trelfa adds. ‘I’m not sure that he ever even took it out of its holder, but I do remember him saying that he had never put the bullets into the gun.

  ‘He also had a least one girlfriend – a friend who was a girl? – when he was in Egypt, despite being engaged to my mother. My mother often used to tease him about this. According to my mother, this girl was in the ATS and was “very posh, the daughter of a Lord or something”. I love the telegram which he sent to my grandparents when he returned from Egypt. It says simply: “Fatted calf required Monday or Tuesday”.’

  But while some were able to maintain a sense of insouciance, surrounded by girlfriends and favourite books, others in the Y Service in Egypt had a rather more rigorous time of it. Hugh Skillen wrote of the Middle East campaign:

  In the field off-duty there was no recreation, no amusements, no pub, just a muddy field or a scorching desert and the fear of scorpions in your bedroll or in your boots and the incessant distant thunder of guns and the danger of enemy bombers.

  With no respite, not even weekend leave in eight months, it is no wonder that there was even suicide among the young 19 and 20 year old Oxbridge graduates . . . A nervous consequence of concentration on weak signals through ‘mush’ – interference – resulted in operators suffering from deafness and I remember visiting several in hospital in Tunisia when the campaign ended and many of them became temporarily completely deaf.5

  No such reference to suicides appears either in contemporary documentation or the various post-war accounts; but, given the sensitivity of such a subject, that is perhaps not surprising. What did seem to be more obvious, however, was a fractious atmosphere in the Heliopolis Bureau. As various officers struggled for dominance, the tension began to percolate through to the operators. Aileen Clayton wrote of the Y operation in Heliopolis:

  The structure had evolved from a quasi-civilian organisation, but by 1941 it had developed into a heterogeneous assortment of civilians and civilians disguised in uniform, several of whom had little or no sense of military discipline, and even less desire to understand it. They all worked with or under career and conscripted Army and RAF personnel, and this inevitably led to some frictions and misunderstandings.

  These frictions and misunderstandings reached boiling point in the middle of that year; it is instructive that even in the heat of conflict, there was still time for officers to compose lengthy, elegant memos of an increasingly acidic nature. One such man, senior officer Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Scott, was furious about what he was and was not apparently allowed to know about how the codes were being broken and what messages they were revealing. He was also frustrated about the output from the Heliopolis station, and about which officers decided what codes got priority.

  The reply that Scott received from Major Wallace, commanding officer of the Y unit and Heliopolis offshoot known as 5 Intelligence Signals (5 IS), drove him to further heights of indignation. Wallace wrote to him: ‘I recognise that [your] notes are made with a view to seeing what can be done to produce more from the Y resources . . . than you do at present. But . . . priority of work on high-grade cipher is for final decision by the head of the Government Code and Cypher School.’

  Scott appealed to Major Jacob, and in barbed fashion, mentioned ‘muddles’ caused by decryptions from the Heliopolis bureau, alongside an occasion when he was ‘badly let down about the security of map reference codes by the HELIO experts, and on two occasions, our amateur efforts . . . had proved their advice to be wrong’. In other words, this was a face-off between Army codebreakers and their civilian counterparts. Moreover, Scott had been told that ‘my question as to whether research would be done in the UK or at HELIO on a new military high-grade cipher which had just appeared in the Balkans was like a “red rag to a bull” to the Director. I had no right to ask such a question, and it was no business of mine.’ Again, in other words, he had been told that the business of ciphers was above his pay grade.

  The anger felt by the military concerning code-work that appeared to be out of their control, and yet had a direct impact upon their operations, was understandable. So too, however, was the need for such control to be kept as tight as possible. Major Jacob’s smooth reply to Scott’s outburst – in a memo addressed ‘Dear Walter’ – is an attempt to explain both the security constraints and the great ingenuity and expertise which Scott apparently could not see at work. ‘[Major Wallace] is . . . definitely in a position to say, knowing the individual capabilities of his own staff and the intricacies and interconnections of the ciphers themselves, which of his staff should, given new requirements, work on any particular cipher and furthermore, whether it is better to concentrate at Heliopolis or whether to put some of his staff temporarily afield . . .’

  Jacob went on to add, with a dash of vinegar: ‘I do not think that I am likely to prejudice the production of Military, Naval or Air information by using my powers of pooling the staff in an improper manner . . . In my position as Director, it is unthinkable that I should obstruct any one section.’ Quite so.

  The disputes over these and other seemingly small-scale matters were to boil up again a little later in the year, resulting in a flurry of incandescent memos that – incidentally – also throw a good deal of light on the workings of the Y Service. ‘But through the sheer enthusiasm of the staff,’ wrote Aileen Clayton, with silky diplomacy, ‘and their desire to pit their wits against the enemy, somehow the system worked.’

  And possibly one of the reasons it did was that – unlike rainy Leicestershire or Bedfordshire, where young WAAFs were struggling to focus on impenetrable messages while at the same time dealing with the frustrations of basic accommodation and severe rationing of items like cigarettes and chocolate – Cairo was a dazzling world: colourful and intense and overflowing with sensory stimulation. As Aileen Clayton wrote:

  Officers of all the Services who worked on the headquarters staff [in Cairo] lived out in private accommodation – in flats, pensions, and hotels around the city. Until I was able to find my feet, Rowley Scott-Farnie [a wing commander and signals officer] had booked me into Shephards Hotel, which in those days before the great post-war revolution, was sheer Edwardian opulence.

  There seemed to be myriads of Egyptian and Sudanese suffragis flip-flopping around the hotel in their heel-less slippers, clad in white galabiyahs, and red cummerbunds and fezes. The food, after the deprivations of England, was good and plentiful, and the service was so impeccable that it was not difficult to understand why the troops roughing it in the comfortless wastes of the Western Desert referred to the ‘fleshpots of Cairo’ . . . The plentifully stocked shops and the gay night clubs were all a far cry from the battles that were raging in the desert.6

  There was another side to this, as one young woman posted from Bletchley Park in 1941 was to discover. Cherrie Ballantine was twenty years old when she made the voyage out from England; the Cairo that she found, while utterly wonderful and eye-opening, also triggered in her an occasional stab of guilt. She recalled, for instance, that the nightlife in the hotels had its own heightened elegance, and that there were dances that the young people very much enjoyed. But it was also on these occasions that she would think of people back in Britain and throughout Europe; the men who were fighting. As such, it was a life that was extremely difficult to resist yet one that could also leave one feeling just a little queasy.

  But what Mrs Ballantine would also have found were extraordinary social networks; not merely of the smarter kind of person but also literary and artistic types. While the Countess of Ranfurly and her husband Dan were effortlessly plugged in to the military hierarchy and the other aristocrats, people such as Barbara Skelton and novelist Olivia Manning represented the more bookish end of the scale. As an expat society, it was gossipy and close-knit and in a curious way hermetically sealed from the rest of the world.

  Skelton recalled a near hallucinatory social whirl; one glittering figure
was a ‘Coptic playboy’ known as Victor: ‘During one summer leave in Alexandria, he showed me all the class beaches,’ she wrote. ‘The lowest grade consisted of nothing but boulders. Victor had a beach hut among the wealthy Egyptians who never entered the sea but were to be seen lunching on the sands under vast parasols being served by white-robed servants.’

  She also noted: ‘Many old friends turned up in Cairo, including (Feliks) Topolski, in his role as war artist. We made a memorable trip to Luxor and had the tombs to ourselves but for a guide who brought along a donkey that I mounted when overcome with fatigue.’ Ahead of this, though, in the glamour stakes, was the evening she met King Farouk, while dining at a restaurant called the Auberge des Pyramides.

  The king was, according to Skelton, seated at the next table and was in excessively playful mood, flinging coloured pom-poms around his fellow diners. This encounter in turn led to an invitation to some of the embassy staff to attend a royal house party in the desert. Skelton and the other guests were conveyed there by private train, and that night, there was further playfulness as the bewildered guests were summoned to sleep on mattresses on the roof.

  Skelton caught Farouk’s eye; and he had more surprises for her. During the course of this multi-evening party, the King noticed her earrings. When she awoke the next morning (in a bed, this time), she found a jewel box under her pillow. The earrings had been copied in gold and emeralds.

  The nature of this continuing relationship is something Skelton discreetly chooses not to divulge. But their affair caught the eyes of others. She wrote: ‘One day I was summoned by the First Secretary at the Embassy, Bernard Burrows, who said that if I went on seeing Farouk, I would have to leave Egypt. Then Burrows gave me two weeks leave which I spent hitch-hiking around the Middle East.’

  For those stationed hundreds of miles out in the blinding sands, such things would have seemed a world away. For some of the military operators, there was the Experimental Armoured Division; in essence a unit receiving and sending messages and codes while on the move across the desert – and while under attack – in specially designed armoured cars. ‘Each armoured car functioned as a separate unit,’ recalled G.A. Harries. ‘As the interior of the cars was limited, all [soldiers’] kit was carried on the outside, including bedrolls. When I eventually returned to base, I found much of my clothing useless, riddled with shrapnel holes.’

  And despite enemy fire – the booming guns of the tanks, the howl of incoming bombers – the life of a wireless operator had to proceed with full concentration and complete accuracy. As Harries recalled:

  Traffic was usually 5-letter Enigma groups except under battle conditions when messages were sent in a simpler 3-letter code . . . When it was necessary to move at night, which was quite often, we forged across the flat stoney desert just like a naval convoy. One of the operators off watch would stand in the turret to watch for any hazards or obstacles. Incidentally, I found it impossible to operate while on the move, as we were required to do. The operator on watch would be so bounced about at the back of the car that he would have to hang on to the table and I do not think that anything worthwhile was received while the car was in motion. The sets had a rough time too – but seemed to stand up to the arduous conditions.7

  The HRO sets in question were clearly sturdy constructions. Not only was there ‘bumping about’ to contend with, there was also the ubiquitous sand, all those particles whipping through the wind, nightmarishly pervasive for man and machine alike. The fact that the radios withstood this battering suggested they had a touch of indestructibility. It is little wonder these old models are still so adored by ardent radio enthusiasts.

  In April 1941, it became clear that despite the many triumphs of the Y operatives in Heliopolis, there was one weak spot: while they had done a brilliant job of unravelling the Italian codes, they were less successful with the complexities of German radio traffic. Some decrypts had shown quite clearly that not only had the Italians declared war on Greece, but the Germans were preparing for an invasion of that country; however, there had been a concomitant underestimation of Rommel’s plans for north Africa. Added to this was a certain inexperience about handling the sort of information that would prove most effective when passed on to General Wavell and his forces.

  None the less, it was in no small part thanks to the Y Service that some 50,000 Allied soldiers were successfully evacuated from Greece when the Germans’ aerial onslaught began in April 1941. In the weeks before that, a small mobile Y unit had been established there – in essence, a one-man operation carried out by young Edgar Harrison of the Royal Signals. Having joined up in the 1930s and spent time in China, Harrison was an expert in his craft. Yet his mission to Greece was to be unexpectedly hair-raising.

  In the early months of the war, a top secret memo had been circulated around the War Office concerning what was expected of the Y Services in the field – and also, what was not to be expected. ‘In the field and when in contact with the enemy, concentration is impracticable,’ the memo stated. In other words, a secret listener jammed into a car with headphones on while under bombardment was hardly going to be able to pick up much. ‘Interception from the short range stations used by the enemy is only made possible by the provision of interception units in the forward area.’

  But Edgar Harrison’s mission in Greece as a one-man interception unit was all about getting a head start in what was to become a battlefield. And indeed it turned into an extraordinary struggle to stay ahead of the enemy. Harrison was initially summoned to Whaddon Hall and MI8 HQ to be briefed by Brigadier Gambier-Parry and found himself dispatched to the Mediterranean the following day by flying boat.

  After a brief stop-off at the station in Cairo, Harrison joined the British Military Mission in Athens (and Major-General Gambier-Parry, who happened to be the Brigadier’s brother). There, at the Grand Bretagne hotel, Harrison immediately took to the roof and found that it was perfect for his needs. He set up an aerial; within a matter of hours, he was transmitting signals and information.

  Harrison also had at his disposal an equipment-packed vehicle – a Packard. This, according to his memoir, constituted a Special Liaison Unit; by these means, he was able to receive high-grade signals intelligence – both from local sources and from London and Cairo – and pass it on to his field commanders.

  Not long after Harrison established himself, he was informed by his immediate superior, Colonel Casson, that the Germans were poised to attack Greece through Yugoslavia. Just as Harrison prepared to leave the British Army base in the town of Yannina and return to Athens, the Germans launched their strike. The Greek army, which had held out against the Italians, were effectively helpless in the face of the far superior Nazi onslaught; they had no choice but to capitulate. And despite the brave efforts of the RAF, the Luftwaffe could not be held. The British forces had to retreat.

  And in the middle of all this chaos and carnage, Edgar Harrison, the one-man Y unit, took to his Packard and drove at speed from Yannina to Athens – a terrifying journey throughout which the car was bombed and strafed by the planes above. As the Germans moved through the country, it was clear to Harrison that he had one, immediate, desperate priority – to destroy all his radio and cipher equipment, to prevent even a scrap of information getting into German hands. To do this, he would have to move in and out of Athens at top speed.

  According to his own account, when he got there, the city was eerily quiet. There was certainly no one for him to report to. Knowing that he had very little time, he went to his base at the Grand Bretagne hotel; having dealt with the equipment there, he shot across to the British Embassy in order to destroy its wireless sets too. This done, he abandoned the Packard and boarded a train to Corinth. So began a harrowing odyssey south towards the port city of Kalamata, to join other British troops waiting to be evacuated. Only so many vessels could get there in time, though. With the Germans fast closing in and the beaches still full of troops, the full-to-capacity rescue boats that had made i
t through had no choice but to sail off; and the officers and men left behind at Kalamata were left with no option but to surrender to the advancing Nazi forces.

  Except Harrison. Because of the clandestine nature of his SIS work – and the hazard that someone else who knew of it might inadvertently talk – he knew that if he were to fall into German hands, his life, as he put it, would not be worth living. As a result, he had to take himself into hiding.

  With some resourcefulness, Harrison embarked on a fugitive life, moving along the Greek shoreline and sleeping in caves. Before the evacuation, he had taken care to supply himself with enough money so that, even though locals were suspicious of him, he was able to obtain food and water. But these days must have been utterly ragged with fear and apprehension. After a period of moving along beaches, Harrison found a rowing boat. He took the bold decision to put out to sea, with a store of food and water.

  Yet Harrison’s good fortune was to hold. Having spent a night and a day bobbing about on the Mediterranean waves, he and his tiny stolen boat were spotted by HMS Kandahar. The ship’s captain was utterly bewildered by what he saw as Harrison’s act of nautical insanity. But Harrison was amusingly insouciant. ‘I knew the Navy would pick me up,’ he said.

  And so it was that Harrison, safe, sound, and now properly fed and watered, was delivered to his next destination: the island of Crete. This was, of course, to be little more than a breather . . .

  On Crete, Harrison joined up with the Special Liaison Unit, under Captain Mike Sandover. The team was kept very busy with a huge amount of Ultra traffic and Harrison’s proficiency was appreciated in the small team. But just days later, on 20 May, came the almighty – if not entirely unexpected – assault from the skies, as German dive-bombers and other planes launched their assault on the island, the prelude to a vast paratroop invasion. As the relentless bombardment went on, Harrison once again, this time together with his comrades, set to work on destroying the cipher equipment. And as before, there was no possibility of surrendering to German troops, for their secret knowledge would mean they would be subjected to terrible interrogations. Once again, retreat was the only option; Harrison and his colleagues were placed on board a naval vessel and taken to safe harbour at Alexandria, just as Crete finally fell to the Nazis.