Codeword Overlord

by Nigel West

  SOE’s JEDBURGH directive, issued on 20 December 1943, aimed optimistically for the creation of 300 Jed teams by 1 April 1944, and an OSS officer, Henry B. Coxe, and a recently escaped PoW, Anthony Combe-Tennant, were placed in charge of the project. A training programme was devised by the head of SOE’s Training Section, Colonel James Young, and his OSS counterpart, Major John Tyson, and their first Jed team materialised in mid-March 1944. On 27 April the first teams were sent abroad, all to Algiers, accompanied by a US Marine, Major Horace Fuller, in expectation of being dropped into southern France. However, the first insertion into enemy territory was HUGH, on 5/6 June to the Chateauroux area, where it linked up with F Section’s SHIPWRIGHT, headed by René Maingard, and the 1st SAS B Squadron mission BULBASKET.

  At the beginning of July a total of thirteen Jeds had been despatched, of which seven had originated from Algiers. Altogether ninety-three Jeds were deployed, with losses amounting to twenty-one, the equivalent of seven full teams.

  SOE’s relations with the Free French authorities were never good, not least because of the political infighting between the Gaullists and the Giraudists, and the arrest in Lyons in July 1943 of the charismatic Jean Moulin with what was virtually the whole of the Gaullist underground leadership. Yet, despite the conflict between the various factions, RF was able to boast nearly 100 units equipped with wireless immediately after the invasion. Indeed, there were no fewer than nine other quite different clandestine organisations operating in France immediately after D-Day: there were SOE’s regular F Section reseaux, of which there were twenty-five active on D-Day itself; the escape lines run separately by DF Section and MI9; the JEDBURGH parties reporting to SFHQ; SIS’s own networks of agents, supplemented by the SUSSEX teams; squadrons deployed from the four Special Air Service regiments, amounting in all to some 2,000 troops; and the OSS Operational Groups. SOE’s EU/P Section, comprised of Polish émigrés, played no part, although 100 Poles had been trained as part of BARDSEA, a Polish version of the Jeds, to be dropped around Lille, where there was a considerable expatriate community.

  This large build-up in the spring and summer of 1944 inevitably generated a substantial quantity of clandestine wireless traffic that was closely monitored by the Wehrmacht’s five signals regiments deployed across France, all of which experienced unprecedented attention from the resistance during and immediately after D-Day. This was especially true of the unit stationed at Orleans, which suffered unrelenting disruption from HERMIT, SHIPWRIGHT and WRESTLER, so much so that by the time it was evacuated to Germany it had failed to restore any of its major telephone circuits.

  Perhaps of equal long-term strategic significance was the disruption inflicted on the French railways. The intention was to isolate the northern part of the country and prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching the beachhead during the first critical hours of the invasion. No fewer than 950 incidents of sabotage were undertaken during the night of 5/6 June, and confirmation was received that night of 486 specific cuts. The lines continued to be blown, trains derailed and locomotives immobilised throughout the campaign and in consequence the crack 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division took seventeen days to reach Normandy from Toulouse, a journey that ought not to have taken longer than seventy-two hours. The delay was caused by air power and sabotage on the ground, but the cost had been great. By the Liberation, F Section had lost more than forty circuits in France, thirty-one of which had been eliminated by enemy counter-intelligence.

  The Allies were fully aware of the dangers inherent in the elevated level of clandestine operations, and the likelihood of compromise as a result of unavoidable battlefield seizures. On 9 August RSS circulated a decrypt announcing the capture of two British SAS soldiers, complete with wireless sets and ciphers:

  84436 GROUP II/3295

  PARIS Area to Dijon Area

  RSS 171/8/8/44, 357/9/8/44

  GYH on 4926 kcs. 1264/1630 GMT

  KFL No.14 (? Phone-call – text d’ful) OB West on 6/8 that two English parachutists were captured in the area N.W. of BRULON, 30 km. W. of LEMANS on 6/8 II British SAS Bde. Explosives, AFU set, maps, cipher material secured. FELDMANN

  Action by Trupp required.

  One of the principal German objectives, accomplished in large measure, was penetration of SOE’s communications system, part of which involved the broadcasts made by the BBC’s Radio London, which broadcast some 155 different messages personnels during the two-day period 5–6 June, all of which consisted of a single line that had a particular meaning to the intended recipient. The messages were composed of a first part, or alert, which would be transmitted on the 1st or 15th of the month. A second part, amounting to a call for action, meant that the offensive would open within forty-eight hours. One such signal, entrusted to VENTRILOQUIST, had been in German hands for months, and was the first line of Paul Verlaine’s poem ‘Chanson d’Automne’: ‘Les sanglots longs/Des violins/D’l’automne’ (‘The constant sobbing of autumn’s violins’). The broadcast of the second part of the passage, ‘Blessent mon coeur/D’une longeur monotone’ (‘Pains my heart with their monotonous lethargy’) would serve to announce the Allied landings. In the event, the first part was transmitted 200 times on 1 June, and the second part was broadcast on 5 June shortly before the regular news bulletins. By 3 June the RSHA circulated that so far twenty-eight of the alert messages had been intercepted, but did not offer any commentary, perhaps in the belief that the implications were obvious.8

  The messages’ significance was immediately recognised and an alert was swiftly circulated to the headquarters of the 7th Army and the 15th Army. The 7th Army staff took no action, but the 15th Army issued an ‘imminent invasion’ alert down to Corps level, but no further. The German alert was transmitted in an Enigma cipher that was routinely read at Bletchley Park and then circulated to authorised recipients:9

  CX/MSS/T207/105

  WEST EUROPE

  KV 6678

  COMMUNICATION, DATED MORNING 6/6 SIGNED FIELD LUFTGAU WEST FRANCE:-

  ACCORDING TO WARNING MESSAGES FIRST BROADCAST BY THE ENEMY ON 5/6/44 AT 1930 HOURS, ENEMY CENTRAL OFFICES CONTROLLING THE TERRORIST GROUPS IN FRANCE RECEIVED THE ORDERS FOR ACTION ACCORDING TO WHICH THE TARGETS ORDERED RAILWAY LINES, ROADS USED FOR TRAFFIC, CANALS, TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH LINES ARE TO BE ATTACKED WITHIN 24 OR 48 HOURS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PREVIOUSLY PREPARED ORDER.

  ACCORDING TO INFORMATION ON HAND, ACTS OF SABOTAGE ARE ESPECIALLY TO BE EXPECTED IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS: EAST BRITTANY, AREA OF THE SARTHE (RAILWAY) TOURAINE AND LE MANS.

  ---------------------------------------

  REF:CX/MSS/T207/105

  KV6678 IS BEING PASSED WITH T.O.O. 070033/6/442 TO

  SH/AG/FU/fF/TA Z

  FIELD LUFTGAU WEST FRANCE AWARE OF 6TH THAT ACCORDING ALLIED BROADCAST ON 5TH TERRORIST GROUPS IN FRANCE UNDER ORDERS TO ATTACK RAILWAYS. IMPORTANT ROADS, CANALS, TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH LINES WITHIN 24 OR 48 HOURS. APPRECIATED THAT SABOTAGE TO BE EXPECTED ESPECIALLY AREA TOURAINE AND LE MANS. RAILWAY SABOTAGE EAST BRITTANY AND AREA SARTHE, TELEPHONE SABOTAGE THROUGHOUT FRANCE.

  BD/AM/ADY/WO (1)   RFB/M/PCP/M1D  0323/7/6/44Z

  Thus, it is apparent that the Germans fully understood the significance of the messages personels but, in spite of their best intentions, failed to convince the OKW that the warnings should be taken seriously. In his 1973 memoirs Treff Lutetia Paris, Colonel Oscar Reile, formerly of Abt. IIIF in Paris, claimed that, ‘Kieffer of the SD rang me up on 5 June 1944 to let me know that the landing was imminent, asking me in my turn to inform the supreme commander in the west, Marshal von Rundstedt. I telephoned to this superior officer immediately and informed him that the disembarkation was going to begin that night.’10 However, his IIIF colleague in Brussels, Hermann Giskes, had been less confident:

  The riddle of the place and time of the invasion had become the nightmare of the German military leaders, and it was intensified when the number of code messages passed daily by the BBC increased to nearly two hundred
in the last week of May. The increase in the number of transmissions had simply to be taken as a signal that the invasion itself was imminent.

  It is also equally clear from the Enigma decrypt cited above that the Allied intelligence authorities knew that the call to arms had been thoroughly compromised. Be that as it may, there does not seem to have been any discernable negative impact on the degree of surprise achieved.11 One explanation may be the widespread nature of the broadcast, and the sheer scale of hostile penetration of the resistance. For example, one intercepted FHW circular dated 1 July drew attention to a confirmed alert signal received by Belgian circuits that, most probably unintentionally, had the effect of drawing attention to an imminent second invasion:

  REF: CX/MSS/T233/51

  WEST EUROPE

  ACCORDING C IN C WEST ON 2ND THE 44 MESSAGES PERSONNELS PASSED ON FRENCH-BELGIAN WIRELESS AFTERNOON AND EVENING OF 1ST SHOWS REMARKABLE INCREASE IN NUMBERS. IN ADDITION LIVELY TRAFFIC OF FRENCH AND BRITISH MESSAGES TO GROUPS OF PARACHUTISTS INSIDE THE COUNTRY. THESE PASSED IN SAME WAY AS THE ADVANCE WARNING MESSAGES ON 1ST JUNE. ANNOUNCEMENT OF LANDING IN PREPARATION MUST BE ASSUMED. ANNOUNCEMENT DID NOT INDICATE COASTAL FRONT OR AREA. POSSIBILITY OF LANDING ANYWHERE. FOR NEXT FEW DAYS, GREATEST WATCHFULNESS ALARM READINESS, REINFORCED PATROLS. IMMEDIATE INSTRUCTION DOWN TO SMALLEST AUTHORITY AND UNIT. MAKING READY OF ALTERNATIVE SIGNALS LINKS AS PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE, ABOVE TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO REGIMENTS AND GESCHWADER. SECONDLY, FOIC WESTERN DEFENCES INSTRUCTED ALL DEFENCE DIVISIONS AND CONVOY OFFICE ST MALO THAT REINFORCED PATROL DUTY TO BE CARRIED OUT NIGHT 2ND TO 3RD AS ON PREVIOUS NIGHT.12

  In another twist, the FHW issued an alert on 9 June based on a broadcast apparently intended for a resistance group in Brussels earlier on the same day. There were two phrases, ‘Message pour la perite Berte’ and ‘Salomon a sauté les grands sabots’, the first of which was alleged to be interpreted as meaning that the invasion would start on the day after tomorrow (meaning 11 June), and the second was declared to mean that the invasion fleet had already embarked. However, the complication was that this particular circuit was under the Abwehr’s control, and it was suspected that the Allies knew this. Were the messages deliberately intended to mislead the Germans, or had they been sent in good faith by London? The FWH declined to offer an opinion and hedged:

  There is no concrete evidence regarding the beginning of the attack or the objectives of this group of forces. Observations from wireless interplay with the enemy Intelligence Service again point to the area of Belgium and to an early commencement of the attack.

  Post-war research into the origins of this report failed to identify the precise broadcast, or even the intended recipient, so the possibility that this might have been a rare example of the manipulation of SOE for deception purposes remains unclear. The FHW’s reluctance to commit itself on the basis of the messages personnels was understandable because, in some bureaucratic blunder, the BBC had accidentally transmitted a large number of ‘two-week alert’ messages on 1 May, as noted by Josef Goetz and his colleagues, but nothing had happened. That non-event had fueled scepticism in any reliance on the source.

  10

  PHASE II

  ‘We made the Germans believe that there was going to be a second landing in the Pas de Calais under General Patton, which led them to keep five divisions in that area.’

  Bill Cavendish-Bentinck, Chairman JIC

  Having successfully misled the Axis regarding the time and place of the invasion, the Allied deception planners now moved into the second phase, which was the requirement to maintain the enemy’s belief that the D-Day landings were a diversionary feint, and that the main thrust would follow soon in the Pas-de-Calais. With TRICYCLE removed from the scene, the task of perpetuating the FORTITUDE SOUTH charade fell mainly to GARBO1 and BRUTUS.2

  GARBO’s role had been carefully choreographed since his reported rendezvous with his sub-agent CHAMILLUS at Winchester railway station on 30 April, when the NAAFI waiter had disclosed his transfer from the Chislehurst caves to Hiltingbury Camp near Otterbourne, which currently accommodated the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division. That same night, GARBO had relayed to Madrid that:

  all the 3rd Infantry division are concentrated here ready to embark. There are other camps full of troops ready for attack. Have identified the 47th London Division in a camp to the south of mine … it is extremely difficult to leave the camp. They are preparing cold rations for two days, also vomit bags and lifebelts for troops sea voyage.

  Thus GARBO had set up CHAMILLUS with two genuine formations, but imposed a plausible restriction on his freedom of movement, and therefore his ability to report regularly. Indeed, GARBO did not see him again until 22 May, when he was able to travel to London on a twenty-four-hour pass. However, early on the morning of 6 June GARBO described the events of the previous day, explaning how CHAMILLUS:

  has hastened to London, having broken camp together with two American deserters who had arrived in the camp last Sunday. Discovering the plans of these two men, he decided to join them in view of the important news which he would otherwise have been unable to communicate in view of the complete sealing of the camps for the last week. En route, he tried to communicate by telephone, using the password prepared in case of emergency, but found that only official calls were being accepted. He therefore continued his journey clandestinely to London in order to report to me personally. He arrived after a difficult journey created by the steps he took to slip through the local vigilance. He states that he wrote me three days ago, announcing anew the distribution of cold rations and vomit bags, etc., to the 3rd Canadian Division. This letter has not yet reached me due to the delay in the mails. Today he says that, after the 3rd Canadian Division had left, Americans came in, rumours having reached him that the 3rd Canadian Division had embarked. The American troops which are now in the camp belong to the First US Army. The two Americans who escaped with him through fear of embarking belonged to the 926 Signals Corps. The situation of this agent is very compromising for the service because his absence must have been noted owing to the many hours which have elapsed since he left the camp. In order to protect the service I have taken a decision which I think you will approve, which is to put him into hiding, taking advantage of the fact that Seven is here, who says that he can arrange this with absolute safety and without danger of compromise. Therefore, tomorrow, they will both leave for the South of Wales.

  The delay in passing this important news was explained by the fact that GARBO employed his deputy, BENEDICT to encipher his messages, which were then delivered by Mrs Gerbers to ALMURA for transmission. In effect, GARBO was signalling accurately the embarkation of Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, which really had put to sea to land at St Aubin on JUNO Beach in the first wave, and conveniently removing CHAMILLUS from the scene permanently. It had also been calculated that when the enemy took prisoners from the 3rd Infantry, or the US 926th Signal Battalion, the PoW interrogators would extract confirmation of CHAMILLUS’s story that before embarkation they had been billeted at Hiltingbury in Hampshire, thereby enhancing his (and implicitly GARBO’s) reputation.

  The timing of GARBO’s signal was critical as Eisenhower, having agreed that the Germans could be given advance notice of the Normandy landings, had stipulated a limit of just three and a half hours. Accordingly, GARBO’s imaginary timetable had been tailored to conform with the Supreme Commander’s directive.

  GARBO’s transmitter was back on the air later on D-Day with a series of nine signals that described events in London:

  After the crisis last night with CHAMILLUS I was summoned early this morning to the Ministry of Information. I arrived to find the department already in a complete state of chaos, everyone speculating as to the importance of the attack which had started this morning against France. All the sections were handed copies of a directive, distributed by PWE to the Ministry. I find it very significant and more still if compared with the speeches of the Allied Chiefs. I transmit an exact copy of this directive.<
br />
  Special Directive on the Offensive against Northern France. Political Warfare Executive. Central Directive.

  1. The offensive launched today by General Eisenhower forms another important step in the Allied concentric attack on the fortress of Europe.

  2. It is of the utmost importance that the enemy should be kept in the dark as to our future intentions.

  3. Care should be taken to avoid any reference to further assaults and diversions.

  4. Speculation regarding alternative assault areas must be avoided.

  5. The importance of the present assault and its decisive influence on the course of the war should be clearly stated.

  Together with the directive J (3) handed me copies of the speeches which had, at that moment, not been broadcast. After reading these documents I asked him for a further interview and told him that, as a basis for propaganda, I considered that the directive was in complete contradiction with the speeches as it was inevitable that these speeches would be quoted and used as the basis of propaganda by the world press. I pointed out that these speeches gave a latitude which is denied by the directive. For instance, in Eisenhower’s speech, which says: ‘A premature uprising of all Frenchmen may prevent you from being a maximum help to your country in the critical hour. Be patient. Prepare!’ … And still more important, the following: ‘This landing is but the opening phase of the campaign in Western Europe. Great battles lie ahead.’ The Belgian Prime Minister said: ‘Preliminary operations for the liberation of Europe have begun. The first assault is the certain signal for your deliverance.’ And also ‘The moment of supreme combat has not yet come.’ … J (3) told me, in confidence, that I had spotted the one inevitable weakness in the policy which had been directed. He explained that, in the first place, it was essential that Eisenhower should keep the people from rising too early in areas which were yet to be involved in operations but, at the same time, it was equally necessary to try to hide all this information from the enemy. He said he did not think the enemy would be able to draw any definite conclusions from these speeches but he thought that they, nevertheless, constituted such a contradiction to the directives as to create a difficult situation internally. He went on to say that the Director-General had himself raised my point. Nevertheless, he felt that, if the work were done intelligently, he believed it possible to focus public attention on the present attack and thus detract from any other suggestion of future plans, this being precisely the work with which he was entrusted.