He also wrote a long letter to Kühlenthal marked ‘strictly personal’. In it Garbo questioned the usefulness of the new weapon. The bombs were causing minimal damage, he said, while the lowering of morale had only been temporary. Now, almost a week since the first V-1s, far from being afraid of them, Londoners were actually ridiculing them. They were proving ineffective both as a military and a propaganda weapon, he said.
The letter was sent on 26 June. In the meantime Harris and Pujol managed to stall some more by informing Kühlenthal that there were no ‘ordinates’ on the Stanford’s map, so the plan to make it square up with the Pharus one would not work. Further vague reports about the bomb sites were also included in the messages to buy more time.
On 27 June Kühlenthal instructed Garbo to get hold of a Baedecker’s Guide to London.
I do not think it would be dangerous to purchase. It can probably be found in secondhand bookshops.
The Germans themselves obviously had a copy of the same guidebook, with its own maps of the city. The time for stalling was coming to an end. A more permanent solution was needed.
The V-1 reports were not the only pressure on Garbo. Real Allied divisions which had supposedly been part of General Patton’s FUSAG, poised to attack the Pas-de-Calais, were about to arrive in Normandy. Once German troops encountered and identified them, Garbo could expect to be asked all manner of questions. It was a further potential threat to the Garbo operation, one which, like the flying-bomb reports, could lead to the Germans becoming suspicious of their chief spy in London.
The answer to both these problems was neat and ingenious – and typical of Pujol. Getting himself arrested had worked the previous summer to pacify Araceli. Now the same ploy was acted out for the benefit of Kühlenthal.
In early July Garbo sent through a couple of reports about flying-bomb damage based on information which he himself had gathered by travelling to the specific sites. The locations were given along with casualty numbers and time of impact – although the last details were deliberately inaccurate.
Then, on 4 July, there was no evening transmission to Madrid.
The following day Pedro, Agent 3 – Garbo’s deputy (the role played by Harris) – signalled to Madrid that Garbo had gone missing, that he had not appeared the previous day, nor had he been at the regular morning meeting. He was worried, he said, that his chief had been hurt in a ‘bomb accident’. He was therefore sending ‘the Widow’ – Mrs Gerbers – down to Taplow to see if she could shed any light on the matter.
But the word the following day from the Amerden Priory Hotel was even more alarming: Mrs Garbo told the Widow that she did not know anything about the whereabouts of her husband. She had thought he was in London with Pedro.
Clearly anxious, Pedro asked Kühlenthal what he should do. ‘His wife is in a terrible state.’
Kühlenthal, obviously worried that something untoward had happened to his spy, the man whose valuable information was keeping him safe from Nazi persecution, advised that for the time being Pedro should ‘keep calm and quiet’.
On 7 July Pedro radioed again to explain what had happened. Garbo had been arrested! The Widow had just told him, having heard the news from Mrs Garbo. The police had been round to see her that morning to pick up her husband’s Spanish Republican identity papers.
The Garbo operation – with Pedro at its head and prompted by Kühlenthal in Madrid – was now on red alert. All contact with the sub-agents had to be stopped, while emergency measures had to be taken in the eventuality of the network being blown by the British authorities.
There was no word about Garbo’s fate, or why he had been arrested, but the implication was clearly that it had something to do with the reports that he personally had been preparing on the V-1 damage.
The Germans themselves had forged Garbo’s Spanish Republican papers. If the British discovered they were fakes there was every reason to suspect that his whole operation would begin to unravel.
The Garbo operation went off the air. After the intense labour of the past few months, Harris and Pujol had bought themselves a much-needed holiday. Harris travelled to the countryside, where he picked up his easel and painted at the house of Sarah Bishop’s parents.
Radio silence could not be maintained for too long a period, however. If Garbo were detained for anything more than a few days the Germans might suspect that he had confessed to being a spy, or even worse that he had turned double agent on them. So on 12 July Pedro sent a message reporting that Garbo had been released on the 10th and that he was safe and well and back in his hotel. Despite looking ‘worn out’, according to the Widow, his cover was still secure, he said. In the light of events, however, he had decided to give the radio operator a ten-day break and had ordered Pedro back to Glasgow to keep his head down for a while.
Meanwhile he would send a letter to Kühlenthal explaining what had happened.
The letter was duly written on 14 July. Garbo explained that while he was investigating a flying-bomb site in Bethnal Green a policeman had become suspicious of him and taken him to the station. Garbo had tried to swallow a piece of paper with some incriminating notes on the way, which only made the policeman even more inquisitive.
Garbo had insisted on his innocence the entire time, he told Kühlenthal. Then, when his Spanish Republican papers proved his identity, and his boss at the Ministry of Information vouched for him, he was able to clear the matter up.
The Home Secretary himself intervened in the affair, sending Garbo a letter apologising for what had happened and for the zeal of the policeman who had arrested him. This letter and the documents relating to his arrest – which had both been forged by MI5 – were included with Garbo’s missive as further proof.
Kühlenthal was delighted that his man in London was safe. Not only that, he could still function as a spy – despite being arrested, he had managed to talk his way out of trouble.
It was clear, however, that investigating the sites of the V-1s was too hazardous a task. It had already brought the Arabal undertaking close to disaster. There was no reason to carry on. Its own survival was the most important thing. From now on no agent in the network was to endanger the operation by having anything to do with pinpointing the bomb sites.
Garbo had pulled it off again. Now he could carry on with the important business of fooling the Germans without having to get sidetracked by the flying bombs.
There was to be one more surprise, however. On 29 July Kühlenthal told Garbo that Hitler himself was awarding him the Iron Cross. He pointed out that the medal was given ‘without exception’ only to front-line combatants. ‘For this reason we all send you our most sincere and cordial congratulations.’
Garbo’s reaction was characteristically grandiloquent:
I cannot at this moment, when emotion overcomes me, express in words my gratitude for the decoration conceded by our Führer to whom humbly and with every respect I express my gratitude for the high distinction which he has bestowed on me for which I feel myself unworthy as I have never done any more than what I have considered to be the fulfilment of my duty.
Pujol was obviously very proud, and it was proof of the success of the Garbo operation. Yet he was aware that he had not been able to achieve this on his own. There was praise as well for his German spymaster Kühlenthal, whom he called ‘Carlos’.
I must state that this prize has been won, not only by me, but also by Carlos and the other comrades, who, through their advice and directives, have made possible my work here and so the congratulations are mutual.
Perhaps secretly Pujol was thinking of Harris as well when he wrote these words, the man who had orchestrated the Garbo project. His final comments, however, were for those for whom all this – the lying, the deception, the masterful storytelling – was intended.
My desire is to fight with greater ardour to be worthy of this medal which has only been conceded to those heroes, my companions in honour, who fight on the battlefield.
‘Alaric’
referring to the troops of the Wehrmacht? Or Pujol thinking of the Allied soldiers now struggling to push on deeper into Normandy? It may have been deliberately ambiguous.
Garbo-Alaric-Pujol – the lines dividing the various characters that he played were becoming gently blurred.
PART EIGHT
‘History has shown that the loss of Paris always means the fall of the whole of France.’
Adolf Hitler
31
Normandy and Belgium, 8 June–18 July 1944
‘MONKEY’ BLACKER SPENT D-Day with the 23rd Hussars in Aldershot waiting for orders to move out. His tank force, intended specifically to tackle the German Panzer divisions, would be needed in the subsequent wave, once the bridgeheads on the French coast had been established. On 8 June, D+2, the word came – they were to join the rest of the 11th Armoured Division and set off for Normandy. The first Allied troops had landed. Now it was the turn of the reinforcements to sail over and take part in the breakout operations – pushing the Germans deeper into France as the area of liberated territory was expected to grow.
The US troops were at the western end of the invasion front. The assault on Utah beach had been successful and Allied gains had been considerable. Omaha beach had been the scene of the heaviest fighting and casualties on 6 June, but now, a few days later, the American positions were consolidated and they were beginning to push inland.
British and Canadian troops had landed at the eastern side of the invasion area, on the beaches code-named Gold, Juno and Sword. Here the fighting had been relatively lighter on D-Day itself, but they now faced some of the toughest German fighters in Normandy – the boys of the 12th SS Panzer Division ‘Hitler Youth’. Often no older than sixteen, these soldiers had been trained, and were being led, by commanders transferred from the 1st SS Panzer LAH – Jochen Peiper’s comrades. Already the British and Canadians had learned what these lads and their superior weaponry were capable of.
The name Caen comes from an ancient Gaulish word meaning ‘battlefield’. Montgomery’s objective had been to capture the city by the end of D-Day itself, but this had not been achieved. The Germans were putting up tougher resistance than the invasion planners had foreseen. Now, as the Americans gradually conquered more territory to the west, the British were becoming stuck around Caen, trying to encircle and capture it. In return the Germans were throwing some of their best divisions in to hold them back.
True to its name, Caen, burial place of William the Conqueror, was becoming another killing ground.
Blacker landed on Juno beach on 13 June. The first thing that he saw was a destroyed Sherman tank like his own that had been hit during the first wave on D-Day. There was a large hole where the armour plating protecting the driver was meant to be.
‘They don’t seem very frightened of these, then,’ Blacker’s own tank driver – Sam English, a former London bus driver – commented.
The tank crew spent the first few days living and sleeping as a group, digging holes in the ground and placing the tank over them as shelter at night from the Normandy rain. There were stories that a tank crew somewhere had done this one night and then never woke up as the tank sank in the soft earth and crushed them: Blacker’s men always made sure the ground was hard enough to take the tank’s weight.
In Bayeux, the first Norman town to be captured on D-Day, they gorged themselves on butter and Camembert cheese – unthinkable luxuries in ration-book Britain – filling the tank with more supplies to take with them as they pushed further inland.
Then, on 26 June, they properly entered battle for the first time. ‘Operation Epsom’ was the first Allied attempt to go around Caen and outflank the German defenders.
Blacker was in command of C Squadron, his Sherman tanks moving in behind in support of the 15th Scottish Infantry Division as it pushed forward on the morning of the battle. As the tanks started out, they kicked up large amounts of dust and dirt that made for poor visibility, while giving the enemy a clear idea of their positions.
The first things Blacker saw as his company moved forwards were piles of dead bodies: initially of Norman cows caught in the crossfire, their legs pointing stiffly towards the sky; later of Scotsmen from the infantry division that had gone in ahead of them, mown down by German machine guns.
Finally the Shermans came head to head with Tiger tanks, with their formidable 88mm guns. A shell from one of these soon landed directly on one of Blacker’s units and the Sherman went up in smoke. Four of the five men inside managed to get out, but the driver, Lance-Corporal Hogg, was the 23rd Hussars’ first fatality.
Other tanks were now being hit, and Blacker’s company retreated. They were learning from experience why Sherman tanks were referred to as ‘quick brewers’. The Germans were more direct, calling them ‘Tommy Cookers’.
The Sherman’s short 75mm gun was practically ineffective against the thick armour of the Tiger, particularly at the front, where the Allied shells simply bounced off. A few Shermans had been fitted with larger 17-pounder guns, but even these were only effective if they hit the Tiger at the side, or the turret. Panther tanks, with their sloping armour, were equally hard to take out.
The following days brought more hard lessons. Charging through the village of Mondrainville, Blacker came upon a hill with a small wood growing on the summit. It was clear that whoever controlled the point would have a command of the surrounding area. On his map it was referred to as Hill 112. Blacker was about to suggest that his tanks take the point, but in the fog of battle his plan could not be carried out.
The Germans had also spotted the hill, however, and by the next morning the tanks of the 12th SS Panzer Hitler Jugend had taken up positions there. It would take a month to remove them and Hill 112 would become one of the best-known landmarks in the entire Battle of Normandy, its name etched in the memories of the thousands of British soldiers who fought over it.
On this first day, a detachment of tanks led by Bob Clarke was ordered up to try to dislodge the enemy. ‘Cheerful and likeable’, Clarke was a former corn-merchant who had recently married a racehorse trainer’s daughter from Newmarket. Now he charged into his first battle operation with unfortunate and inappropriate courage.
‘He motored up the hill as if on exercise,’ Blacker described, ‘and innocently allowed his tanks to drive too far over the ridge and expose themselves.’
The result was a disaster: all the Shermans in Clarke’s squadron were immediately hit and destroyed by the German Tigers, suffering heavy casualties. A few moments later, manoeuvring his own squadron in an attempt to outflank the SS troops, Blacker caught sight of Clarke lying on the ground. His first thought was that his body looked shorter than usual, until he realised that Clarke’s legs had both been cut off below the knee. He died a few minutes later.
Soon afterwards the 23rd Hussars were relieved and pulled out of the battle. In three days they had suffered eighty casualties – around half of them fatal – a figure that constituted 20 per cent of their strength.
Bloodied yet exhilarated at still being alive, Blacker and his men had no idea that their worst day in Normandy was yet to come.
Although on high alert for an imminent Allied invasion across the narrowest part of the Channel, the 1st SS Panzer Division LAH enjoyed its stay in northern Belgium. The city of Bruges offered the usual entertainments for fighting men away from the front, and despite a ban on leave, the officers of Jochen Peiper’s armoured regiment would often head off for quick trips to the bars and brothels.
The last party was on 16 June. Werner Wolff was Peiper’s former adjutant and was now an Obersturmführer – equivalent to senior lieutenant – in command of the 7th Tank Company. The 16th was the date he had arranged to get married. Owing to the state of alert, however, Wolff was unable to leave his post to join his bride-to-be, and Peiper had arranged for the girl to be brought over from her home in the Baltic states and smuggled over the Belgian border to the chateau of Knesselare for the wedding ceremony.
Th
e castle was bedecked with a giant black SS flag as well as the Nazi swastika flag. An LAH officer married the couple following the quasi-pagan SS rites, the bride touching bread and salt as symbols of life, and the groom touching an SS sword in his role as protector of the family. A flame burned in an urn while the couple swore oaths of loyalty and exchanged SS rings. A copy of Mein Kampf was then taken out of a wooden casket decorated with runes and handed to the groom before they passed out through an arcade of saluting SS officers.
At the dinner, Peiper gave a speech at the head table. Then the serious drinking began as the wedding festivities continued into the night.
The next morning, however, on 17 June, the LAH received orders it had not expected.
Thanks to the intelligence reports from its spy network in Britain, German High Command still considered the threat to the Pas-de-Calais to be real and imminent, but a crack force like the 1st SS Panzer Division would not be kept out of the fighting for ever. On the coast further west the Allies were establishing a powerful bridgehead which needed to be crushed as quickly as possible. It was time once again to move out, to where they were meant to have gone a week before.
It was time to go to Normandy.
Had they gone at the start, the journey would have been much quicker and shorter. In the intervening days, however, much had changed in northern France. Bridges over the Seine had been knocked out, making the crossing slower and more difficult. Then there was the Allied air superiority to deal with. RAF Typhoons, with ground-attack rockets, were particularly effective at slowing columns of German tanks from moving around in the hours of daylight.
The Spy with 29 Names Page 22
