by Len Deighton
I turned the discoloured pages of the dossier. Peterson after capture by the Germans had been approached by two members of the ‘Legion of St George’ (later renamed the ‘Britische Freikorps’). Its members were mostly English or Irishmen who had been in the British Union of Fascists before the war. Many of them had what are now described as personality disorders, and all were of the opinion that England would soon see sense and join a German-occupied Europe on a ‘crusade’ against Russia. The verbatim record said:
PROSECUTOR: You never uttered a treasonable word?
PETERSON: On the contrary, England was much loved. The name of Nelson was invoked on every side, as were the names of all Britain’s heroes.
PROS.: You felt that Britain was being deliberately misled by its leaders.
PETERSON: I did sir.
PROS.: Even though these leaders were elected by public free ballot?
PETERSON: Yes.
PROS.: A ballot which your German masters never thought it expedient to institute in Germany or any of the small nations it conquered.
PETERSON: France wasn’t a small nation.
PROS.: No further questions.
The defence requested permission to offer as evidence the details of Peterson’s task in the Norwegian operation but this was denied. He admitted joining the Britische Freikorps and going to their training unit at Hildesheim. The transcription said:
PROS.: And what were you wearing at this time?
PETERSON: The uniform of the B.F.K.
PROS.: I put it to you that you were wearing the uniform of the Nazi S.S., a uniform that the members of this court have cause to remember with disgust and loathing.
PETERSON: It was …
PROS.: A uniform which had the notorious Death’s Head symbol as its cap-badge, did it not?
PETERSON: Yes, but we wore a Union Jack armband.
PROS.: In other words, you wanted to serve two masters at once, you wanted the best of both worlds. You wanted to be on the winning side — a Hauptsturmführer SS and a Lieutenant R.N.V.R.
PETERSON: No, certainly not.
PROS.: The court will no doubt form their own opinion. I shall be returning to that point later.
Much of the trial dealt with the technical knowledge that Peterson put at the disposal of the German Navy, who came to the frogman and human torpedo scene very late in the war.
The German Navy had first seen a ‘frogman style’ demonstration at the Olympic swimming pool, Berlin, in the spring of 1943. Peterson was screened after his capture and went to a block of flats that the German Navy had in Berlin. There he met Loveless, John Amery, and Joyce (Haw-Haw), ‘but they considered themselves Germans’, while ‘we were loyal Englishmen anxious to convert our fellow-countrymen into allies of Germany’. Peterson was persuaded by Loveless to give his services to the Germans as a frogman-instructor. He said O.K. soon enough to be at Heiligenhafen, at the eastern end of Kiel Bay in the Baltic, when the first of K force (Kleinkampfmittel-Verband: Small Battle-Weapon Force) was formed in January 1944. Peterson translated the British Commando Regulations and other textbooks for them and taught them how to pronounce English swear-words with impeccable accuracy to throw sentries off their guard. By this time Peterson had a German naval officer’s uniform and, since K force had discarded rank badges to foster good relations, he was accepted by newcomers as a German naval officer.
PROS.: I put it to you, that you at this time had become a German naval officer.
PETERSON: No.
PROS.: You were wearing a German naval officer’s uniform. Yesterday you said that the German Navy ‘relied on you’. I am quoting: ‘relied on you in their training of K force’. Did you say that, or didn’t you?
PETERSON: Yes, but …
PROS.: You said it. Very well. As an officer of the Royal Navy you were drawing pay. That is to say that you knew that pay was being credited to you.
PETERSON: Yes.
PROS.: Furthermore, this pay was not just the pay of a Lieutenant R.N.V.R. of the Executive Branch, but included an extra allowance payable to you in respect of the hazard of undersea warfare and the technical nature of those duties.
PETERSON: (No answer.)
PROS.: Is that not so?
PETERSON: I suppose so.
PROS.: The same technical knowledge that your new German masters were so anxious to learn. Knowledge that they ‘relied on you’ to impart.
PETERSON: Yes.
PROS.: What is the name given to citizens who grant reliable aid with the declared aim of overthrowing their own lawful government?
PETERSON: (Inaudible.)
PROS.: Speak up, Herr Hauptsturmführer Pütz, or should I say Lieutenant Peterson?
PETERSON: Traitor, I suppose you mean.
PROS.: That’s right, Sub-Lieutenant Bernard Thomas Peterson, R.N.V.R., it’s called Constructive Treason.
The result was penal servitude and cashiering. I flipped through the accompanying documents; a certified true copy of the sentence signed by the President of the Court; and the confirming officer’s letter after agreeing the sentence.
I closed the file.
About the Author
Len Deighton was born in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.
After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school — first to the St Martin’s School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. His mother was a professional cook and he grew up with an interest in cookery — a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.
Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962, the book was an immediate success.
Since then his work has gone from strength to strength, varying from espionage novels to war, general fiction and non-fiction. The BBC made Bomber into a day-long radio drama in ‘real time’. Deighton’s history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim — Jack Higgins called it ‘an absolute landmark’.
As Max Hastings observed, Deighton captured a time and a mood — ‘To those of us who were in our twenties in the 1960s, his books seemed the coolest, funkiest, most sophisticated things we’d ever read’ — and his books have now deservedly become classics.
Примечания
1
Foreign Office Intelligence Unit, part of M.I.6.
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2
Permanent Secretary of the Treasury: Head of the Treasury and therefore holds the title ‘Head of H.M. Civil Service’.
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3
Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who deals directly with the Prime Minister and directs the Treasury to implement decisions of the Government.
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4
‘Friends’: jargon for employees of M.I.5, which is not run by the military (in spite of the title) but by an offshoot of the Home Office.
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5
C-SICH: Combined Services Information Clearing House. Part of the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Intelligence Agency. It is a funnel through which all British and Commonwealth intelligence matter is sorted, filed, and distributed. The commercial organizations (which have men to steal secrets from their competitors and safeguard their own) furnish a great volume of matter to C-SICH.
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6
Central Register: a collection of dossiers on two million people including foreigners. Central Register is run by M.I.5.
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7
Director of Naval Intelligence.
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8
Construction of the network to ensure that one detected person doesn’t lead to another.
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9
Places where messages are deposited so that collector and depositor do not come face to face.
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10
Method of checking network.
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11
Seat: A Fiat produced in Spain under licence.
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12
See Appendix 4.
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13
Assessment Boards judged the claims of Allied ships and aircraft in the matter of U-boat sinkings. They were remarkably accurate.
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14
Patriotic songs.
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15
Madrid numbers commence with an ‘M’.
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16
All jobs requested have R.I. codes and are then given D of C (Difficulty of Completion) code. A low R.I. (i.e. not very important job) will be attended to if it gets a low D of C (i.e. if it’s easy to do). Similarly a high D of C job requires a high R.I. to get it approved for action.
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17
Rue Valéry: Interpol.
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18
Code translation: Black: third of most urgent priority signals; Student: agent or employee; Flat: dead or presumed dead; Scissors: violence.
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19
D (Defence) notice: censorship directive to newspapers on various security matters.
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20
Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory, Cardiff.
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21
Red glasses were worn by lookouts to accustom their eyes to night vision before they went on watch.
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22
German version of Davis Escape Gear.
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23
See Appendix 1.
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24
See Appendix 2.
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25
In 1956 Ivor Butcher had been a Home Office telephone tapper. He overheard some information which he promptly sold to three different embassies. He was fired from his job, but the laugh had been on the Home Office. In a way it was this incident that revived the Strutton Plan in my mind. Now Ivor Butcher lived by hanging around and offering hospitality to foolish people with access to secret, or semi-secret, information.
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26
Breaking and Entering, i.e. burglar.
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27
Mets (slang): Metropolitan Police.
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28
See Appendix 6 for more detail.
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29
Large numbers (of years in prison).
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30
Treasury Department, U.S.A., controls Narcotics Bureau and Secret Service. In 1959 in Naples, where she lived with her parents (her father was R.N. attached to NATO), she had been recruited into the department. The endless round of parties she attended made her a useful ear for the Narcotics Bureau.
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31
See Appendix 5.
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32
A Portuguese political prison on the equatorial island, Santiago, 300 miles off the coast of Africa.
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33
These buoys were dropped into the ocean by German ships and planes during World War 2. Every twelve hours they came to the surface and transmitted a radio message. The message was a reading from the meteorological gear inside it. In this way the German met. service prepared forecasts based upon a large number of weather reports without sending ships or aircraft anywhere near.
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34
P.I.D.E.: Internal Police for the Defence of the State, i.e. Secret Police.
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35
Sc.Ad.C.: Scientific Adviser to the Cabinet.
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36
Air Pass: interception radar (air-to-air and air-to-ground).
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