by Leo Marks
‘These are for your mother. Tell her they’re from you as they bloody well should be.’ He then insisted that Muriel took them away and put them in water, as they couldn’t survive the whole day in my stinkhole of an office. He then settled down to the less serious business of Periwig.
‘You’ll be sorry to hear that your friend Schiller has met with a fatal accident – they’ll have found the codes on him by now so get a move on with those dummy messages. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.’ I felt the singe of his number-two glare. ‘I suppose you know that I’m leaving this place?’ He didn’t actually say stink-hole but his expression conveyed it.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course you do! – damn stupid question. Barry is taking over, and he’ll be getting in touch with you. Help him all you can. You’ll find him a lot easier to deal with.’
I didn’t comment.
‘There are two questions I’ve been meaning to ask you but never got round to … But you’re under no obligation to answer them, is that understood?’
I was too touched by the flowers to do anything but nod.
‘The first concerns Holland. I’ve heard many versions about what went wrong there. I’d like to hear yours. You have my word it’ll go no further.’
That was good enough for me.
I began with Ebenezer’s stip-step-stapping, explained the significance of the total lack of coding mistakes and ended with Plan Giskes, but made no reference to my battles with SOE, as I felt he understood.
He thanked me for making things clear to him and then said that his other question was personal. ‘But I repeat – you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to – is that understood?’
I nodded.
‘What made you become a cryptographer?’
I had a stock answer for this but it wasn’t the moment for it. I described how I’d broken 84’s code at the age of eight, and he listened with the hint of a smile while I synopsised the consequences.
He then quietly informed me that all his military books had come from 84, and that he’d probably met my father. ‘Short chap. Writes very quickly … a bloody good salesman.’
‘That’s Dad.’
‘One of his oldest customers used to be a pal of mine. His name’s Clarence Hatry. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of him?’
I hoped for Periwig’s sake that his other suppositions were better founded.
I knew so much about Hatry that even in Templar’s presence I could think of little else …
Hatry was a financier who’d defrauded the City of London of £2,000,000, which in the early thirties was a significant achievement. Most of his vast library had come from 84, and he walked into the shop in the middle of a major slump, told Father that he knew times were difficult and apologised for having to ask him to make an offer for his library.
Although books for which Dad had paid £1,000 would no longer fetch £100, he knew Hatry needed to raise money for his trial at the Old Bailey and told him that he had ‘a bit of good news for him’. He was able to offer him a profit on his books – ‘a small profit, mind you, but a profit’. Despite his partner’s protestations he bought Hatry’s library for three times what it was worth but, being Dad, he didn’t leave it at that.
When Hatry was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, he contacted the prison governor (a fellow Freemason), and Hatry was made the prison librarian. When he was finally released, he bought a well-known bookshop, used it to raise capital for his other operations and made another million pounds …
‘Yes, sir – I know a bit about Hatry.’
‘He’d have done a damn good job for SOE – especially in the finance department.’ He glanced at his watch, and I wondered how to say goodbye to him.
He had his own way of saying it to me. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his fountain pen and carefully laid it on the Periwig code book. ‘I caught you looking at this with more respect than you’ve ever shown me. Hope you’ll make better use of it than I do.’
I was at a loss for the words which I hoped the pen would one day write.
He allowed me a moment to recover. ‘I’ll say this for you, Leo – you’ve been a new experience – and I’ve had a few in my time, I can tell you that.’
I stood up when he did. ‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, sir.’
His final words echoed round the room. ‘Stop playing games.’
He played a few himself in the years which followed: by the mid-sixties he was Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templar, head of the Imperial General Staff. His nickname amongst those who understood his achievements in the war against Japan, and the one he most savoured, was ‘the Tiger of Malaya’.
To me he would always be Periwig.
I wrote the first draft of Peeping Tom with his fountain pen.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Serial Number 47685
April’s good news came first and could hardly have been better. Hitler had committed suicide and Tommy had escaped from Buchenwald!
I knew the Führer’s destination but had no idea of Tommy’s until I learned from Colonel Dismore that though he’d been ‘tortured beyond belief and was barely able to walk’, he’d reached the American forces at Chemnitz, and was ‘hell-bent’ on making his way to Paris, regardless of German patrols. He was too choked to say more.
I also learned that Violette Szabo had been executed at Ravensbrück and Noor Inayat Khan at Dachau.
Vera Atkins subsequently confirmed that neither girl had died alone. Violette had knelt down, holding hands with Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch, and been shot in the back of the head. Noor (perhaps remembering her Jataka Tales) had also knelt down, and Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Eliane Plewman had crossed the bridge with her. Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden and Andrée Borell had been given lethal injections at Natzweiler, and Yvonne Rudellat had been buried at Belsen.
The list of male agents who’d been executed was still coming in.
So were rumours that the war was ‘on its last legs’, and that SOE must prepare for dismemberment. Unhappily for some of us, the latter part of this rumour had no foundation.
Although our traffic had been reduced by 80 per cent, so had the girls’ vigilance, and I had to remind them that the code war hadn’t ended with Hitler’s death and that until the new German supremo, Admiral Doenitz, had signed a promissory note called a peace treaty none of them must relax. The admiral knew better than to keep them waiting.
War-weary Baker Street, dispirited by the losses and aware of its mistakes, was revitalised by the details of Tommy’s survival which began coming in.
Despite the torture he’d suffered at the hands of the Gestapo in Paris, he’d maintained his cover story that he was Squadron Leader Dodkin, serial number 47685, and the Germans knew him as such when he arrived at Buchenwald. He’d escaped from the camp by convincing the German officer in charge of injecting prisoners with typhus that if he allowed him and twenty-one other prisoners to escape he’d testify on his behalf at his war-crimes trial.*
He’d been injected with a harmless liquid instead of the deadly typhus and was smuggled out of Buchenwald. He was then sent to other camps, but on 16 April escaped from a train bound for Czechoslovakia when it stopped to dispose of the 170 bodies to which his own was about to be added.
When he finally reached Chemnitz (after being captured by a German patrol and escaping once again) he gave his American interrogators details of all the German troops and battery locations which he’d seen en route and was disappointed that they wouldn’t let him take part in the mopping-up operations.
He set out for Paris in a car driven by two friends, and although they were fired on by German patrols, with typical Tommy timing he arrived there on VE Day.
But that wasn’t all he’d achieved. Whilst still in the typhus block expecting to be executed, he’d managed to smuggle three messages out of the camp. Two were farewell letters to Barbara and Dismore, the third was an official report which he’d encip
hered in his Sea-Horse code with his security checks correct.
The report gave details of the experiments in bacteriological warfare being carried out in Buchenwald and stated that he and his fellow prisoners would try to secure records of them until the arrival of airborne forces on or before the German capitulation. He asked for the message to be acknowledged by iodoform du moineau au lapin and sent his love to Barbara.
The report finally reached London via the Americans, by which time he’d escaped.
On 8 May he flew back to England.
Colonel Dismore and Barbara were waiting on the runway. They’d been warned about his appearance.
A few weeks later I was writing a report for Nick when I heard the door open. Thinking it was Muriel, I didn’t look up, and then became aware that she’d been silent for far too long.
An old man was watching me from the doorway. I was about to ask if he had an appointment, but realised in time that he’d never needed one.
I knew that sixteen of Tommy’s friends had been suspended from hooks in the Buchenwald crematorium and been killed by slow strangulation. They were hanging from his eyes.
‘Fuck ’em,’ I said.
‘I did my best …’ His voice was a quaver.
I shook hands with him in the time-honoured way – by producing the cigar which I’d been keeping in my desk.
His smile hadn’t changed, though it seemed to hurt his lips. ‘Haven’t smoked one for a while,’ he said. ‘Better keep it for the moment.’
I lent him my cigar case.
‘Hope the report I sent came out easily. The light wasn’t too good …’
‘It was up to your usual lousy standards.’
He refused the offer of refreshments as he couldn’t stay long, then asked how my parents were.
I told him they’d celebrated VE Day by going to the synagogue for the first time in twenty years but had forgotten most of the passwords.
‘It happens to the best of us.’ He glanced at the pile of codes on the desk. ‘Still at it, I see. Won’t keep you now … just looked in to say hello … I’ll probably call in one night for a chat.’
‘I’ll be here.’
We shook hands in silence.
I waited until his footsteps had shuffled away and was then violently sick on behalf of mankind.
Note
* A promise which he honoured despite the opposition of the authorities, as he’d given the word of a British Officer.
SEVENTY-NINE
For Services Rendered
By the end of June the code department had been reduced to a skeleton staff and its head to a skeleton.
I’d made the mistake of trying to say goodbye to each girl individually and been dismembered in the process. I’d found it impossible to thank them and was astonished when some of them thanked me. When the question of their decorations arose I suggested to Heffer that they should all be made Dame Commanders of the British Empire.
‘They’ll be lucky if they get MBEs. Prepare a list, but limit it to twelve.’
Before I could protest he said that honours for members of technical departments like Signals were causing SOE problems. The difficulty was that outstanding performers could hardly be given honours higher than those awarded to their superior officers and that to save embarrassment decorations would be awarded according to rank. He added that it was just possible that one day the question of an honour for me might arise.
I assured him that in that unlikely event there’d be no problem as I’d accept no honour higher than the ones SOE gave the girls. ‘Just think what that would make me. I’d be the first male Dame Commander of the British Empire.’
Although I’d have loved to enable my parents to dangle a bit of ribbon in front of the neighbours who’d sent their only child white feathers, I’d already been given the chance to shake hands with agents who’d returned from the field, and no other reward was comparable.
A month later Churchill was ousted as prime minister in the July elections and was replaced by Attlee. Nick (a Conservative in everything but Signals) was appalled that the man who’d ordered us to ‘Set Europe Ablaze’ had himself been extinguished.
Perhaps he identified with him, because he picked up a piece of paper which he’d kept on his desk for the past two months. It was a copy of a message which Eisenhower had sent to Gubbins when SFHQ in France was about to be dispersed. The message praised SOE’s ‘high achievements’ in the battle against Germany and included a phrase which most of us in Signals knew by heart: ‘Particular credit must be due to those responsible for communications with the occupied territories.’
Glancing at the face of the man who most deserved the praise, I wondered what Nick’s future would be when SOE closed down.
On 5 August the Americans announced that they’d dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.
On the 9th they dropped another, and a few hours later Heffer dropped one on me.
He said that Japan was certain to surrender within the next few weeks and that SOE would be disbanded by the end of the year. He then disclosed in confidence that Gambier-Parry (head of C’s Signals) had asked Nick to find out whether I’d be prepared to work for C as soon as my present job was over.
I’d sooner go to Hiroshima and my expression must have shown it.
‘I’m telling you this now to give you a chance to think it over before Nick puts it to you officially.’ He added that at least a dozen senior SOE officers had been invited to join C and that most of them had agreed.
‘Merde alors to the lot of them. I never want to see another code when SOE packs up, but thanks for the warning.’ I hurried from his office.
I knew the pressure the bastards were capable of exerting; I had to leave SOE as quickly as I could.
But I had one major job to do before SOE would release me: Gubbins required all department heads to write comprehensive reports of their department’s activities. The code department’s would be a massive task which would take me several weeks to complete, and I hadn’t even begun. I told Muriel I wanted no calls or interruptions and tried to settle down to it.
An hour later a catastrophe occurred. I thought of a code which would be suitable for agents in peacetime.
The idea was so novel that I wanted to rush in to Nick with it, but I realised just in time that it might interest C. I also realised that it might be useful to our enemies in peacetime, if we had any apart from ourselves.
The purpose of the code was to enable agents to communicate freely with each other in any language they chose, even though they didn’t speak a single word of it. Suppose two German agents were working in England, and their sole means of communicating with each other was by post. They could write to each other in English, though neither understood a word of it, and every letter they exchanged would contain a secret message of one-time pad security.
They would first write out their secret messages in German, using figure one-time pads and code books. They then had to turn these figures into colloquial English, of which they understood ‘nichts’. To achieve this they would refer to a sheet of silk which had English phrases printed opposite every number.
Suppose the first number to be concealed were 9: he’d copy out the phrase opposite 9.
0 You’ll be glad to know
1 I hope you’ll be glad to know
2 You’ll be happy to know
3 You’ll be very happy to know
4 You’ll be pleased to hear
5 You’ll be very pleased to hear
6 I’m glad to tell you
7 I’m very glad to tell you
8 I’m delighted to tell you
9 I can’t wait to tell you
His letter would therefore begin: ‘I can’t wait to tell you’.
Suppose the second figure to be encoded were 0. He’d refer to the next column of his silk and copy out the phrase opposite 0.
0 that after all this time
1 that after such a long time
; 2 that after all this while
3 that after all this delay
4 that at last
5 that at long last
6 that finally
7 that in God’s good time
8 that eventually
9 that despite the difficulties
His letter would therefore begin: ‘I can’t wait to tell you that after all this time’, and he’d continue to chat away about what had happened for as long as the code groups demanded.
His correspondent’s reply must appear to answer this letter. Suppose the first number to be concealed were 5: he’d copy out the phrase opposite 5.
0 Of course I’m glad
1 Of course I’m pleased
2 Naturally I’m glad
3 Naturally I’m pleased
4 I’m glad to hear
5 I’m damn glad to hear
6 I’m delighted to hear
7 I’m relieved to hear
8 I’m thrilled to hear
9 I’m happy to hear
His letter would therefore begin: ‘I’m damn glad to hear’.
Suppose the next figure to be concealed were 1:
0 that after trying so hard
1 that after all your efforts
2 that after trying for so long
3 that after trying so hard for so long
4 that you’ve finally managed to
5 that you’ve at last managed to
6 that you’re now able to
7 that you’re finally able to
8 that you’ve at last managed to
9 that you’ve finally been able to
His letter would therefore begin: ‘I’m damn glad to hear that after all your efforts’ and would continue to use as many phrases as he needed (they’d all make sense).
The basic idea could be put to other uses, but I did my best to abort them and tried to start my report. But I was stuck for an opening (a good phrase for a letter?) because ‘other uses’ kept cropping up, and I made no progress whatever.
