The Forgotten Spy

by Nick Barratt

  One person who did not share the public confidence was the new Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, who on the eve of the conflict thought that it would last for at least two or three years – hence the need to recruit more men, provided they were properly trained. Unfortunately, Kitchener was proved right. Both French and British forces were surprised by the sheer number of German troops massing in front of them. The various assaults over the first six weeks of the war, known collectively as the Battle of the Frontiers, failed to repel the German invasion and resulted in a general retreat. The British Expeditionary Force fought its first major engagement at the Battle of Mons on 23 August, suffering over 1,600 casualties and was similarly forced to retreat beyond their defensive lines even though they inflicted far greater damage on the enemy.

  An offensive campaign quickly turned into a rearguard action. By October, remaining British units were involved in a frantic race to halt the German advances to the coast which would have cut off British supply lines and effectively curtailed their involvement on the Western Front, possibly ending the war as quickly as some had predicted. With the line stabilised, thanks to little known but crucial actions such as the defence of Gheluvelt, a new pattern of war developed around defensive trenches and artillery bombardment. Although they were not to realise it at the time, the troops on the Western Front had dug in for the long haul.

  Increasingly bad news from the front, coupled with growing casualty numbers and a realisation that the war would not end quickly, punctured public optimism. As a result, the number of volunteers gradually tailed off so that by the middle of 1915 there was a crisis in recruitment. On 11 October, the Prime Minister appointed the aforementioned Earl of Derby as the Director General of Recruitment and five days later he unveiled a new scheme to enforce a form of moral conscription, encouraging men to voluntarily register their name. They were then placed into a group according to their age and marital status with the promise that this group would only be formally enlisted to a service battalion when needed. Perhaps it was the stipulation that bachelors would be called up before married men that made Oldham rather reluctant to come forward.

  A poster issued in November 1915 made it clear that time was running out. Voluntary attestation into one of the groups had to be made by 11 December, with rumours that conscription was on its way. While Ernest Oldham doubtless wished to play his part for King and country, he left it very late to do so. On 10 December 1915, aged 21 years and 2 months, he walked out of the Foreign Office building to enlist at the Whitehall recruitment centre. He signed a short service attestation form, agreeing to serve ‘for the duration of the war’ after which he would be ‘discharged with all convenient speed’.31

  Oldham had elected for deferred recruitment – class A – whereby he was recruited for a nominal day’s active service before being immediately placed with the army reserves and sent back to resume his civilian duties until the time came for his call up to the colours. He was placed in group 4 – single men born in 1894.

  Five days later, the Derby scheme was abandoned, deemed to be a failure because only 215,000 men were directly recruited for immediate service as class B – although around 2.75 million were placed on the reserve list as class A. Oldham’s group was called up for service between 20 December 1915 and mobilised on 20 January 1916 but under the deferred scheme he was one of the staff for whom Tilley secured an exemption from service. By stepping forward, Oldham had acted in the nick of time; conscription was introduced in January 1916 under the terms of the Military Service Act.

  Although initial efforts were made to keep as many staff within the service as possible, by the end of 1915, the need was less intense.

  At a later period of the war the number of telegrams fell off, negotiations being less necessary as more and more of the neutrals became allies; two shifts from 8.00 am to 4.00 pm and from 4.00 pm to midnight were thus enough. Eight hours was as much as any eyes could stand at a time of this sort of work. A minor difficulty was that of sending home the typists who worked for the Cipher Department till midnight. Trams and omnibuses had sometimes stopped and those who lived in the suburbs had to be sent home by car.32

  Now that Oldham was on the reserve list and business was less frantic, coupled with the impact of the new intake of staff, his position within the Foreign Office was less secure. As with many other occupations, once the men started to be called to active service it was natural for women to step in to take their place. It must be said that this phenomenon was not wholly appreciated by the powers that be in the Foreign Office, as Tilley reflected afterwards:

  In addition to the men whom we took in from outside, we engaged gradually a great number of women. Of these, many were naturally amateurs; some had difficulty, according to their male colleagues, in acquiring habits of precision and in the registries were said to be apt to think one number on a paper as good as another. Others were hard to persuade that, once engaged, they could not go off at once when their mothers and aunts and children were sick or otherwise in need of their help.33

  With this rapid turnover of staff and the presence of women in the corridors of Whitehall, a major concern was that the Foreign Office would be infiltrated by a spy. Anti-German feeling was running at an all-time high, with German businesses attacked and people forced to flee their homes before mobs. Internment had been introduced shortly after the outbreak of war, given the large number of Germans living in the country, and there was a genuine fear amongst the population at large that enemy agents would try to gather intelligence on British soil. This was fuelled by popular publications such as The Riddle of the Sands (1903) and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) which included lurid – and wholly fictional – accounts of German espionage. Yet men from Oldham’s section of the Foreign Office had been directly involved in spy-catching, such as honorary King’s Messenger, Sir Park Goff:

  During the war he was closely associated with the Intelligence Service and made his reports to the responsible authority after each journey and was responsible for at least two spies being shot in the Tower.34

  The phrase ‘intelligence services’ masked a rather nebulous collection of agencies, including naval and military intelligence departments, separate units in the War Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. In 1909, an attempt was made to bring some clarity to operations and a decision was taken to create the Secret Service Bureau, which would give rise to both MI5 (the home Security Service) and MI6 (the foreign Secret Intelligence Service).

  The Secret Service Bureau initially comprised only two officers, Commander Mansfield Smith-Cumming (Royal Navy) and Captain Vernon Kell (Army). Its founding was a response to growing hysteria that a well-developed German spy network was operating in places such as Essex, planning for an invasion that never materialised mainly because no such network ever existed. Nevertheless, a number of suspected German agents were arrested in the years prior to 1914 and a further 21 people were seized as spies in the hours following the outbreak of war. Further clampdowns on enemy aliens and the possibility of going so far as to impose martial law made people feel a lot more secure. Certainly, Tilley expressed confidence that the Foreign Office was an impregnable fortress and remained safe from espionage throughout the conflict.

  Neither among men or women was there any instance of anybody in the nature of a spy finding his or her way into the office as any novelist would certainly have expected. One woman was found to have doubtful connections and had to leave.35

  Yet by 1916, Oldham was keen to depart this safe haven for more exotic climes, possibly on account of the exciting tales of derring-do told by the King’s Messengers as they returned to the office. A Royal Commission on the Civil Service reported in December 1914 and a key recommendation was the removal of the £400 private means income bar that had prevented candidates like Oldham from entering the Diplomatic Service. Tilley expressed the concern that:

  The feeling persisted among possible candidates that, whatever might be said, private means were
almost essential. Possibly also there still remained the old idea that existence in the Diplomatic Service was that of a social butterfly, in which men without a taste for society would be out of place.

  At the same time, diplomats ought obviously, if they are to make a success of their profession, to be able to make friends with any sort or kind of people who may be a useful source of knowledge, not by any means necessarily secret, about their country. To many Englishmen even this is difficult when it comes to dealing with foreigners and doubtless life in a big public school, particularly so big a one as Eton, and in a university, makes it seem easier.36

  Despite his background, Oldham was certainly not deterred – indeed he was probably heartened by his ability to fit in at the Foreign Office. So towards the end of 1916, he sought a place as part of the diplomatic corps. He clearly demonstrated sufficient skills to receive the required recommendation from the Secretary of State to proceed, with the endorsement that ‘in view of your knowledge of language and your suitability in other respects for an appointment in HM Consular Service, the Selection Board nominated you to compete for a post in that service.’37 Clearly, Oldham had been having lessons to brush up on his French and had added other languages too.

  It may well have been with his future career as a diplomat in mind that Oldham took the difficult decision to activate his enlistment and join the army. He sought permission for his temporary release for military service, which was granted, and Oldham duly reported for duty at the Old Drill Hall, 17 Duke’s Road – the headquarters of the 28th County of London Battalion, also known as the Artists’ Rifles, just off Euston Road – on 9 February 1917.38

  He wanted to train as an officer, although he was initially enlisted as private EH Oldham, No 765905, in the second sub-battalion. He first underwent a medical examination, where his height (5 feet 5 and a quarter inches), weight (126 pounds) and chest measurement (34 and a half inches) were dutifully recorded, along with the fact that he had been vaccinated in 1914. The examination also revealed that Oldham suffered from myopia so he was given prescription glasses from the Royal Army Medical Corps ophthalmic centre to correct his vision.

  The regiment was perhaps a natural option for him. It had formerly been the unit of choice for volunteers from the artistic community who wished to join a territorial force – men such as Paul Nash and Wilfred Owen passed through its ranks – but by the time Oldham enlisted it was primarily set up as an officer training corps, attracting professional classes from public school and university backgrounds such as lawyers and architects. This was the sort of social grouping that Oldham now considered himself part of. It was an environment in which a civil servant from the Foreign Office would not feel out of place, even as a humble private.

  Oldham was attached to B Company and, like Wilfred Owen before him, was sent to the Hare Hall camp in the grounds of Gidea Park near Romford. His new accommodation was hut 35, which may actually have been slightly more spacious than his small bedroom at home in Edmonton. The building was part of a complex of purpose-built dormitory huts catering for the growing number of cadets.

  The camp was close enough to Squirrel Heath and Gidea Park station to catch a train to Romford and back into London for a trip home but many of the young men chose to stay locally, frequenting the Unicorn or Ship pubs in Hare Street, joining the bustling crowds in Romford market or strolling through Raphael Park, where many a dashing young officer cadet caught the eye of one of the local girls who congregated there. Oldham would have been given his cadet’s uniform, had his hair cropped short and issued with a swagger cane.

  The training regime was tough, especially for those used to the more sedate pace of life in an office environment. Drill and marching would often take place from early in the morning to late at night in order to whip the new recruits into shape. Marches often took place through the local streets, much to the excitement of local school children who never failed to cheer as the cadets went past. Other activities, such as bayonet practice, took place in the grounds. Food and refreshments were issued in the large and spacious refectory hut – a far more civilised place than anywhere they would encounter on the front.

  On 24 February, Oldham formally applied to join an officer cadet battalion with a view to a temporary commission in the regular army for the period of the war. He had initially selected the option of joining a territorial force but crossed this through on his application form in favour of ‘regular army’, knowing full well that this would almost certainly mean a posting abroad. His preferred choice of regiment was the King’s Liverpool Regiment, for which there was no obvious family or geographical connection.

  As part of the application process he was required to provide evidence of his background, standing and education – as well as confirm that he was ‘of pure European descent’. The certificate of his moral character during the previous four years was meant to be provided by the head of his school but was signed on 26 February by Thomas Henry Skinner, ‘clerk in Holy Orders’ at St Michael’s Church, Edmonton – the longstanding family friend who had known Oldham since he was a boy. Skinner also stepped in to sign the certificate that proved the candidate had attained a standard of education suitable for commissioned rank – a leaving certificate from the Royal Military College, passing an army entrance examination or passing the matriculation examination of a university. Oldham had none of these and should at least have passed the certificate to the headmaster of his secondary school to sign. However, these were desperate times and Skinner’s recommendation that ‘I certify from personal knowledge that Ernest Holloway Oldham has attained a standard of education suitable for commissioned rank’39 was deemed sufficient.

  Finally, permission was granted from his employer on 27 February and any doubts over Oldham’s education history were brushed aside when no less a man than the Chief Clerk himself, Sir John Tilley, stated, ‘Mr EH Oldham, who has been employed in this Office since 1 April 1914, having been passed for general service, is hereby given permission to make application for admission to an Officer Cadet Unit’.40

  Next up was Oldham’s medical, which took place on 29 March at the camp. An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps examined him, taking further measurements of his height, weight and chest – all of which, incidentally, were larger than in early February and suggested that the physical training had paid off.

  Finally, Oldham was assessed by an officer and was found to be suitable on 9 May. He was instructed to join No 19 Officer Cadet Battalion based at Pirbright, a small village in Surrey, not far from Guildford, on 5 July 1917. Here, up to 600 officers at a time were trained on courses lasting between three and four months. This was nowhere near the recommended full training offered at facilities such as Sandhurst for cadets who would become regular commissioned officers, but it was long enough to learn basic officer skills such as tactics (both Allied and enemy), drilling and training of one’s men and, of course, to undergo plenty of physical exercise.

  Given the changing nature of warfare, important briefing sessions were provided on the latest techniques in trench warfare, sniping and bayonetting, weapons’ maintenance, field engineering, musketry (including the new Lewis machine guns) and – a topic that would have brought home the grim reality of the Western Front – how to enable a junior officer to ‘come with confidence through the frequent gas attacks he will meet overseas’.41 Added to these field skills were background lectures on the geography of the theatre of war, military law and administration – of which there was also plenty.

  At the end of his training, Oldham successfully completed a final examination and attended a passing out inspection. On 30 October 1917, he was granted a temporary commission as a second lieutenant and posted to the 5th Battalion of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, part of the 42nd Infantry Brigade, 14nd Division – ironically one of Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ divisions, then embroiled in the Third Battle of Ypres. Oldham had a month to say his farewells to friends, colleagues and family.

  Oldham se
t out on 29 November to join his regiment in France, a note being published in the London Gazette. He met up with his new charges the following day at Eecke, after they had departed from Ypres, and was assigned to D Company. Once rifles and equipment were inspected, Oldham underwent another medical plus training with the box respirators, serving to remind him of the constant threat of a gas attack.42

  On 3 December, D Company marched across the border into Belgium, billeting in huts far smaller than Hare Hall, in the small hamlet of Brandhoek. Over the next week or so, Oldham oversaw working parties that repaired roads and transport lines to the front, under the constant menace of hostile aeroplane activity. His first experience of the trenches came on 12 December 1917, when the unit was ordered to relieve the 10th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry in the front line north of Passchendaele. They took up a position on the left of the line and remained there for three days. Although enemy artillery was fairly quiet during this period, when the time came for the battalion to be relieved the bombardment increased, leading to several casualties. The muddy terrain also added to the difficulty of the relief operation.

  A steady routine was set for the remainder of the month. They witnessed occasional aeroplane battles – the first time many of the new men had seen such technology in action. One dogfight led to the crash of a British observer plane near Capricorn camp where they were based. Both pilot and observer were killed – the fate of so many young aviators on the front. Oldham’s first encounter with gas shells came on 22 December during a particularly heavy bombardment, but no casualties were incurred. The following night several bombs were dropped by hostile aeroplanes, resulting in repair works on Christmas Eve. Oldham spent Christmas Day 1917 on duty, dodging shells, before his unit was relieved and marched back to St Jean station. The unit boarded a train for Wizernes, where they were given hot cocoa and biscuits. Then, at 9.00 pm, it was time for a one-hour march to cover the 1.8 miles to their new billets at Longuenesse. The rest of the month was spent conducting parades, doing physical training and practising bayonet technique, before the men were moved on New Year’s Day 1918 to St Omer station. They caught the 7.20 pm train to Edgehill, arriving at 9.20 am the next morning. Cocoa and biscuits were served once again to bolster strength before a gruelling 18-kilometre march to Suzanne. It was a source of great pride to the commanding officer that no men fell out during the march.