by Leo Marks
‘Now, Mr Marks …’
It didn’t feel right being called ‘Mr’ by an officer in the RAF.
‘I’d better tell you a bit about our set-up …’
‘A bit’ was a considerable overstatement, and he disclosed as little about his unit as I had about ISRB. But he did admit that he was allowed a fairly free hand in running it.
‘However, Mr Marks … there are limits to what I can do on my own authority.’ He couldn’t even consider photographing two hundred a month unless he had a formal request from someone high in ISRB – Air Commodore Boyle perhaps?
‘Would it be a help if the request came from someone higher?’
‘The higher the better.’
I explained that the person I had in mind was named Heffer, and he was responsible for certain policy matters I wouldn’t want to weary him with.
He nodded gravely, and said that ‘If, repeat if’ he was allowed to take on two hundred a month he hoped that Mr Heffer would provide the silk.
‘He will, Squadron Leader.’
Please, Lord – start softening up the ‘hard men’.
He softened up the squadron leader instead. ‘Look here,’ he announced, ‘let’s stop iffing about. You said this stuff might have to be used in “rather trying circumstances!” – message received! So get me that letter to protect my back and one way or another we’ll photograph two hundred a month starting three weeks from now – good enough?’
‘Thank you, Squadron Leader. Good enough.’
We shook hands on the deal.
He then signed my pass, though I was no longer the same person.
I was a civilian when I entered his office.
I was a code-group captain when I left it.
I was demoted to corporal when I gave Heffer a verbatim account of the historic conversation.
He upbraided me for taking his name in vain, but agreed to sign the request on condition that I obtained a few yards of silk for his wife. He then asked who was going to supply it.
‘I’m going to talk to the “hard men”.’
He looked at me as if we mightn’t meet again. ‘God help you’, he finally said, ‘if you try iffing them about.’
And God help the agents if I didn’t.
Note
* He broke his leg in a practice jump and never left for the field.
THIRTY-THREE
The ‘Hard Men’
SOE’s special strength, and one of the few edges it had over C, came from the bankers and industrialists Sir Charles Hambro had introduced into Baker Street. They were the sanitised section of the dirty-tricks brigade, and most of them drew on their experiences as City moguls to implement Churchill’s concept of ‘ungentlemanly warfare’.
None of them did so with greater relish than two tycoons-turnedsoldiers named George Courtauld and Tommy Davies, otherwise known as the ‘hard men’. Courtauld was a major, Davies a colonel, which in no way reflected their real status.
Courtauld was a director of the giant textile concern his family had founded and a shipping magnate in his spare time. He’d introduced many of his former colleagues (including Tommy Davies) into SOE and was one of Baker Street’s senior headhunters. Davies, allegedly the softer of the ‘hard men’ (which meant he was made of granite), was a member of the Executive Council, head of the Research, Development and Supply directorates, and monitored the Camouflage Station in his spare time.
Such protocol as existed in SOE required Nick to arrange my appointment with them and preferably accompany me to it. But after a few searching questions he decided that I should ‘go it alone’, as he was certain I’d been up to something he preferred not to know about – a well-founded suspicion which didn’t prevent him from assuring Courtauld and Davies that I had his full backing.
I was summoned to Courtauld’s office at ten minutes’ notice, but due to a combination of April showers and perspiration I arrived at the royal enclosure looking like a puddle of dubious content.
Courtauld was a gaunt, pale and exceedingly fragile-looking ‘hard man’ who seemed to have barely enough energy to muster a nod. But his eyes sparked more warnings than a smoker’s cough.
Tommy Davies, who sat a few feet away from him, was a large florid Welshman – but not a Dylan Thomas/Emlyn Williams pit-boy Welshman. I sensed that the only pits on this boyo’s mind were the ones he’d dug for his opponents.
The ‘hard men’ made a concerted effort to put me at their ease.
‘Colonel Nicholls says you have an interesting problem for us,’ said Courtauld in a resonant voice.
‘Take your time,’ said Davies, glancing at his watch.
They listened with the incomparable receptivity of trained minds hearing something new while I explained the importance of WOKs and LOPs, keeping the technical details to a minimum. There wasn’t a problem in sight until I tried to skirt over the arrangements I’d made with the squadron leader and the brothers.
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Courtauld. ‘You say they’ve agreed to use their own silk?’
‘Yes, sir – but only until their stocks run out.’
‘Which will be …?’
‘In about three weeks’ time, sir.’
He considered this carefully. ‘Then what happens?’
‘That’s what I’m here to discuss, sir.’
‘What exactly did you say to them?’ asked Davies suspiciously.
‘That ISRB would supply the rest of the silk, sir.’
‘Did you, by God?’ said Courtauld.
‘Who gave you the authority to say anything of the sort?’ thundered Davies.
‘No one, sir.’
‘Does Colonel Nicholls know what you’ve promised these people on SOE’s behalf?’
‘ISRB’s behalf, sir; SOE wasn’t mentioned.’
‘Does he know?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You acted entirely off your own bat?’
It was hard to imagine Davies on a cricket pitch unless he was the roller.
‘Entirely, sir.’ (With a little help from low-levels like Joan Dodd, Ince and Heffer.)
‘Preposterous,’ said Courtauld. ‘There’s no other word for it.’
Davies nodded so hard he almost lost a jowl.
The only sounds were Courtauld’s breathing and April cleaning the windows.
‘Since you’re here,’ Courtauld said wearily, ‘you’d better explain why these lollipops or whatever they’re called have to be on silk.’
If I’d had a lollipop I knew precisely where I’d stick it. In lieu of such a luxury, I leaned forward and, before Courtauld could stop me, or I could stop myself, ran my hands rapidly over his tunic, beneath his armpits and as far down his abdomen as propriety permitted. In case he took this personally, I hastily explained that the Gestapo and the Vichy police cordoned off entire streets without warning and searched everyone in sight. If he were a Frenchman carrying a code, wouldn’t he prefer it to be on silk which groping hands couldn’t feel rather than on sheets of paper hidden inside a portable object which they might have time to examine?
His mouth was so wide open that I feared he’d have a stroke. There was an extraordinary sound from somewhere on my right.
It was Tommy Davies laughing. ‘Point taken,’ he said before I could offer him the same facility. ‘It’s clear that silk has its advantages.’
I returned hastily to my still-damp chair and awaited reprisals.
Courtauld cleared his tunic of all traces of trespass. ‘How long have you been in SOE?’ he asked quietly.
‘Since June forty-two, sir.’
‘As long as that? And before then?’
‘Code-breaking school.’
Two specks of red appeared on his cheeks. ‘You came here straight from school?’
‘Yes, sir.’ I didn’t add that I was straight when I arrived but was now bent as a corkscrew.
Davies finally broke the silence. ‘I presume, Marks, that you’ve brought some figures with you?’
/> This was the moment I’d been dreading. I’d prepared some estimates for them, but Hitler’s fortune-teller could have done a better job.
‘Well? Have you brought them or haven’t you?’ demanded Courtauld.
‘Yes, sir.’
I lifted the estimates from their rain-sodden envelope. They’d been typed by Muriel as if they were a royal proclamation, but each page was covered in manuscript corrections and the ink had run. Wishing I could join it, I gave the drier copy to the Gestapo (Courtauld), and surrendered the other to the Vichy police.
Watching them cordon off the rest of the world while they searched the pages for concealed common sense was a lesson in concentration I wished I could have shared with all coders.
They reached the last page without complaining about the ink blots (there were enough for a Rorschach test), then exchanged glances like gauleiters at the door of a torture chamber.
The Cairo/India/Burma estimates were the first to be stomped on. Glaring at them with jackboot eyes, Courtauld said they were based on the extraordinary assumption that paramilitary operations in the Middle and Far East faced the same obstacles as our clandestine operations in Europe, which was nonsense.
He then gleefully pointed out that Special Forces in jungles and deserts didn’t have to fear random street searches like their European counterparts or executives in Baker Street, and that the only use they’d have for silk codes would be to swat tsetse flies with them.
Exchanging smiles with Davies, he announced that the estimates for these theatres must be cut by 90 per cent, and drew two heavy lines through them.
Until he did this, SOE had been the only jungle I’d known. But the finality of those heavy lines gave faces to the figures, and for the sake of the paramilitaries, who were no longer remote, I had to challenge his judgement before it was too late: ‘There’s something you’ve overlooked, sir.’
He glared at me like the captain of one of his liners whose concentration had been interrupted by the hooting of a tug while I reminded him that paramilitary traffic was just as liable to be intercepted as clandestine, that the codes it was being passed in were highly insecure and that if paramilitaries didn’t need WOKs and LOPs on silk then they must have them on waterproof paper, which could be destroyed after each message to protect the back traffic.
‘We’re here to discuss silk,’ snapped Davies, ‘not waterproof paper.’
‘But you’ll be able to get that as well, won’t you, sir?’
‘As well as what?’ thundered Courtauld. ‘We’re still trying to make sense of these figures.’
They ploughed through the European estimates with growing despair. Courtauld then gave me a brief lecture on how they should have been prepared, which was probably priceless and which I pretended to understand.
Then Davies took over. ‘What the devil’s this?’ he enquired. ‘ “Contingencies, various”, with none of them stipulated.’
‘Perhaps they’re too confidential to share with us?’ suggested Courtauld.
Another mistake. In attempting to keep the document to containable length, I hadn’t considered what would be important to them. I rattled off a few of the ‘contingencies, various’ – how many agents would lose their codes? … how many replacements would go astray? … how many WOKs and LOPs would secret armies need?
Davies interrupted sharply. ‘Have the country sections agreed to use the bloody things?’ he asked.
‘They will, sir. Colonel Nicholls is going to talk to them himself.’
‘And you’ll have a word or so to say, I don’t doubt,’ commented Courtauld.
‘Only to fill in the details, sir.’ I began explaining why the ‘bloody things’ would make so much difference to our agents.
‘We’re not questioning their merits,’ said Davies, ‘but the reality of getting silk. There’s a queue a mile long for it.’
‘You have an excellent case,’ said Courtauld quietly, ‘but so have all the others.’
How many people with excellent cases have sat in this chair asking them to use their influence to produce the unobtainable?
Davies glanced impatiently at his watch. Courtauld gave a barely perceptible nod. ‘Well now,’ said Davies, ‘if you’d like to leave these figures with us …’
I tried to spot the waste-paper basket, but I was the only one in sight.
‘Unless you feel there’s something you should add,’ said Courtauld.
‘Yes, sir. There is.’ I wondered how to convince them that silk codes were more than just another ‘excellent case’.
The ‘hard men’ – whom I finally recognised as responsible men seeking hard facts – waited expectantly. What would jolt them into jumping the queue for the sake of the agents queuing to jump?
I decided to stake the future of our codes on a loaded question. ‘Will SOE be allowed to know the date of D-Day?’
They looked at me in astonishment. ‘Why the devil do you ask that?’
‘Because at some stage in the invasion the agents will have to be sent instructions from London.’
‘What of it?’ demanded Courtauld.
‘It would be safer for SOE to use Courtauld’s code than the present system.’
Courtauld sat motionless. Davies rose from his chair. ‘What do you know about Courtauld’s code?’ he thundered.
‘That it’s a variant of the commercial code and you use it to minimise the high cost of international cables.’
‘Who told you about it?’ he persisted.
I’d seen a copy in Dad’s shop. ‘Do I have to answer that, sir?’
‘No,’ said Courtauld heavily. ‘We’ve more important matters to dispose of.’ His other half continued to glare at me.
I waited to be disposed of.
‘We’ll help you all we can,’ said Courtauld, ‘though the final decision won’t rest with us.’
‘Far from it,’ said Davies.
‘It will be made by a certain person who has very little time to spare.’
‘Very little indeed,’ confirmed Davies.
‘It would be a great help to him – and to us – if you could put down on half a sheet of paper the difference silk codes would make to our agents.’
‘Half a sheet at most!’ echoed Davies.
‘I think it could be done in a phrase, sir!’ But what?
‘Oh?’ said Courtauld. ‘We’d be interested to hear it.’
‘It’s between silk and cyanide.’
There was a pause.
‘Is it now?’ said Courtauld softly.
Davies stared at me in silence for the best part of a fortnight. ‘How old are you?’ he finally asked.
‘I’ll be twenty-three in five months, six days and a quarter of an hour, sir.’ It was a chance to test his arithmetic.
‘What did you do in peacetime?’
‘I didn’t have enough of it to find out, sir.’
Courtauld smiled as if he understood his colleague’s drift, and then addressed me in his brusquest tones yet. ‘That’s all for now,’ he said. ‘You’ll hear from us shortly through Colonel Nicholls.’
‘Thank you, sir. And thank you for seeing me …’ I turned to the door.
‘Marks …’ It was Tommy Davies, determined (like any true Welshman) to have the last word. ‘Shortly doesn’t mean five minutes from now! Or even five hours! Nor does it mean September the twenty-fourth [he’d worked out my birthday]. You’ll have to wait for at least a week. So forget about us and push on with your work …’
*
It was exactly a week before Nicholls sent for me. Heffer, at his most inscrutable, was standing beside him.
Nick shook hands in silence, then showed me a memo from the ‘hard men’.
Ten minutes later I telephoned Commander Hogg and told him that SOE was assured of sufficient silk to reproduce two hundred LOPs a month and a further fifty on waterproof paper. I added (though it wasn’t strictly his business) that we were also in a position to produce two hundred WOKs a month.
<
br /> Long pauses from quick thinkers should be prohibited by law.
‘I’ll require confirmation of this from General Gubbins,’ he finally announced.
‘It’s on its way to you by despatch rider.’
‘Then you can expect your first pads within forty-eight hours.’
I may have been mistaken but just before he replaced the receiver I thought I heard him chuckle.
THIRTY-FOUR
Judicial Review
Distrustful though most of us were of anything in Baker Street which looked like progress, some events had taken place while I’d been importuning printers and photographers which even the most cynical of us recognised as landmarks. I’d been privy to most of them, made a contribution to some of them and properly absorbed not a single one.
It was essential to look back at them without being distracted by the rigours of code-birth.
On 1 March the Dutch directorate was drastically reorganised. Bingham became head of N section and his predecessor Blizzard (described by Heffer as ‘the lesser of two weevils’) was transferred to the Italian section. Killick continued to be communications officer and on 8 March wrote a long letter to the Signals directorate which had the distinction of requiring an answer.
Ozanne (still in charge of Signals, though seldom of himself) passed the screed to Nick, and it was waiting on my desk when I dropped back from the City.
At a reluctant first reading it seemed a pristine example of a new regime testing its strength on a directorate renowned for not having any. But even to City-glazed eyes it soon became apparent that there was much more to it than that:
FROM NT [KILLICK] TO MS [OZANNE]
8TH MARCH 1943
A Dutch wireless operator [Netball] will be going to the field to a reception committee in about a week’s time. On the WT forms which I submitted in respect of this agent I requested that sufficient spare plans and code-poems should be given to him to cover his needs for six months. The choice of the period of six months is, of course, purely arbitrary. I was informed by DYC/M [me] this morning that OC Station 52 [Major Byrne] objected to providing this man with spare poems on the grounds of security. I would now like to confirm my conversation with MS/A [Nick] on this subject in which I pointed out:
