Such a thing as a review by the King seemed of little importance on the day of my arrival, so I pass on.
The Q.E. got under weigh about 2am of the 21st. I know it well for the process entailed propping the iron decks just where my cot was swung, involving much hammering. However, I got over it, and slept peacefully on, and, waking at 7am I went on deck and was very much surprised to find that we were now outside May Island, in fact at sea. I bustled along, and when action stations was sounded at 9am, I trotted along with the Secretary and a Dictionary through miles of passages, manholes and ladder, and finally found myself on the signalling bridge where the Admiral had his sea cabin. There was plenty of noise here for the signalling to the whole fleet was carried out from this bridge and when there are a hundred odd ships at close quarters there’s all to be said, by means of searchlights, flags and wireless. At 9.30am the Hun ships wore first spotted about 5 miles away, and then the thrills began. The first lot were the Admiral’s particular pets for he had been close to them, but never had enough time to examine them so closely. Everyone was pointing out features in the ships they had noted - I myself had read much about them, and volunteered entirely inaccurate information which was gratefully received. As the rest of the fleet came along the C. in C. dictated his signal to the Admiralty that he had taken over the German fleet. It was a dramatic signal but he wished he could have wired he’d sunk the lot in fair fight, and he said so, and a lot of other unpleasant things about them. Then the whole British Fleet turned round which made the Q.E. the leading ship, and we proceeded towards the Forth. Once inside the Q.E. stopped, and the climax of the day arrived. Close on the south side of us the Germans passed, led by a small English cruiser, in very good order, but silent and sullen, hardly a man to be seen on deck, their flags flying for the last time, for the C. in C. now made his second-signal that the German flag had to come down at sunset, and not to be hoisted till further orders. On the north side of us ship by ship went the British Float, including the American squadron, which was called the 6th B.S. and was acting as part of the British Fleet. Every ship was dressed, the bands were playing, and as they passed cheered Beatty who stood greeting them from the bridge. The 1st B.S. rounded up the Huns, and bringing them to the fixed anchorage proceeded to examine them. This intimate part I missed, I was sorry but I couldn’t have had both. Then the Q.E. put on full speed, and once again passed the English Fleet full of beans and cheering. At last after mooring the Admiral came down, and this time his own crew rushed to cheer him. As he passed down to his own cabin acknowledging the cheers he cried “I always told you they’d have to come out”.
At 6 in the evening we had the thanksgiving service on the quarterdeck under the huge 15in. guns. It was quite dark all round, but the deck was lit by two arc lamps, and there about 1000 men leaving their work for about half an hour assembled, and did really the most English thing that could be done - a thing I doubt whether any other nation would have done. And that ended “der tag”, the toast of the German Navy ever since its beginning.
“You’ve not come face to face with the Huns,” said the secretary, so he announced to A.C. 1st B.S. who remember was in charge of the show, that I had now completed my duties with the C. in C. and was available. It had been arranged by the latter that the English Battle Cruiser squadron were to accompany the German Battle Cruisers to the Orkneys, and take charge till he, A.C. 1st B.S. should come up with the rest of the Huns. So he transferred me to the Lion, the flagship of the B.C.S., and off I went with joy to this foreign land for a Cruiser is no more like a battleship to live in than England is to France. I found some very good friends there to whom I yarned like a pressman during the frequent periods when there was nothing else to do but yarn.
The C. in C. came on board to say Good-bye an hour before we left and made a speech to the assembled Officers and Men which was never meant to get into the papers, but did in parts. Luckily we have or had then a Censor capable of dealing with not only indiscreet remarks but with those which might better have been left unsaid.
If you know English Naval history at all, you will agree that some rich man should endow a society for the prevention of public and political speeches by Admirals of the British Navy.
One of the most thrilling moments to me was when the 5 German Battle Cruisers weakly and orderly fell into line astern of the lion and proceeded on to voyage to the north. Owing to the poorness of the German coal, and the bad condition of their engines we had to take 16 hours over a trip which normally takes the English Fleet 12.
One Hun, the Dorfflinger, a fine modern ship fell 4 miles astern during the night, but at 8am on the Monday morning escort, and surrendered ships passed through the double ‘gate’ which guards the entrance to Scapa Flow. The ‘gate’ is the mine free passage, which is opened and closed by trawlers, through the mines and nets which keep the submarines out. But a month before a daring U Boat had attempted to get through in the wake of a store ship - but that is another tragedy.
Once inside the enemy had to be taken, or rather had to go to the last home, so with the navigatoring officer, a midshipman and two POs I went on board the German flagship, the Seydlitz, and did her last journey with her. No comfortable companion on board this ship - we had to swarm up a rope ladder with our charts and gear. The Officers who met us were dignified Huns, and spoke their own lingo. However, I insisted we had to see the Commander, so at last he came on deck, and addressed us most correctly in English. Whereupon his other Officers continued in English perfectly well. They insisted on navigating the ships themselves under our instructions, and they did it to the admiration of our navigator, who, he told me, learnt how several things should be done.
I confess I did feel sorry for the senior Officers there. They were keen efficient men, who had learnt their work, and made the German Navy their career, and this was the end of it. We knew that many of them there had fought a gallant action at Jutland, in fact, the Commodore, a fine looking old Norseman with now a very sad expression had been captain of the Seydlitz at Jutland where she had been very badly hit. Only fine seamanship on his part had got her home, and now he had saved his ship for this end. Of a different stamp were two young obviously Prussian lieutenants; as we came into view of the English fleet they heartily damned Erzberger for his folly in signing the armistice. The representative of the Sailor’s Council came up on the bridge as we were steaming along, but he didn’t know why, and looked very self conscious. The captain had a friendly word with him, and he soon mouched off again. The crew, not at work, slouched about, a proper set of rascals they looked. They seemed interested in the scenery of the Orkneys, by now they’d had enough of it to last them for ever! The ship was filthy. No paint, no brass work, no scrubbed decks, a scene of desolation, and a smell of rotten cabbage. Cabbage was apparently their staple diet, there were tubs full of the smelly stuff everywhere. Yet we know well how the ship could, and did fight. The Huns told us their ships were built to fight not to live in, and that is really the story of the German Fleet. It was built for a battle in the North Sea against the British Fleet, and for nothing else. The rest of my stay at Scapa needs no description. It was dull beyond words. One of the most wonderful things our Navy has done in these four years is to preserve an almost unimpaired morale and discipline amid the dullest and most comfortless conditions.
Just remember that probably 60 per cent of the ships end men never saw a hun nor fired a shot at them, but night and day for four years they had to be ready. No leave, constant alarms, and fruitless trips, patrols, and as their base Scapa Flow, a few islands whore they could land, and play football in the mud and heather on the side of a hill for the men, primitive golf, and a little wild shooting for Officers, and that was all. But they won the war, and I am glad it was for them a bloodless victory, at the end for I was with the C. in C. when he said that the whole German Navy was not worth the life of a single English blue jacket.
This is my father’s second report. Two more follow after chapter four. I be
lieve they speak for themselves. Passages of particular interest have been printed here and elsewhere in italics.
CHAPTER FOUR
His Secret Years: Strengths and Weaknesses
What follows is based on a paper I wrote for a scholarly monograph on US/UK approaches to signals intelligence co-operation, published in 1986.
I
The professional career of Alastair Denniston is of more than personal interest as it illustrates three important trends in the development of Anglo-American signals intelligence in the formative years of the Second World War.
The first is that the concept of a total intelligence service provided by GC&CS’s interception and cryptanalysis was developed earlier than some historians hitherto thought.
The second is the continuity provided by the length and consistency of AGD’s working life from watch-keeping in Room 40 OB in 1914 through to the establishment, growth, and development of the Government Code and Cipher School from 1919 into GCHQ’s crucial work throughout World War II.
The third is the priority placed by its management on total trust and maximum information flow between the UK and USA, and this in a context in which secrets of the importance of Ultra would normally be withheld from friends as well as enemies, since allies may change their allegiance, governments may misuse their secret information, and individuals may use their privileged access to further their own career or even merely to impress their friends.
Despite the subsequent post-war MI6 débâcles and understandable fury of the US authorities, the US-UK understanding on secret intelligence mirrored in the Friedman-Denniston correspondence remained, and remains, in force and still plays a part in the crises of the post 1945 world.
Alastair Guthrie Denniston was born near Greenock on the Clyde on 1 December 1881 and died in hospital in Lymington, Hants, on 1 January 1961. His father, a doctor, had died at sea when he was very young, and he had helped his mother to bring up her other younger children on very little money. At school he excelled at classics, languages, and mathematics. He was also a considerable athlete, played hockey for Scotland in the 1908 Olympics and was playing tennis and golf, with a single figure handicap, almost till his death. His professional career in secret intelligence began in November 1914 when he was 33, and it continued uninterrupted until 1 May 1945 - a period of over thirty years during which the significance of British signals intelligence attracted the close attention of most modern historians.
He was not only at the centre of these changes but was himself intimately involved in implementing them. He was recruited as an expert in the German language, having earlier studied both language and literature at Bonn University and taught it at Merchiston Castle, the Edinburgh public school, and at the pre-Dartmouth naval preparatory school, Osborne on the Isle of Wight. It was from here that Sir Alfred Ewing summoned him to the Admiralty at the outbreak of the First World War.
His skills as a German linguist caused his entry into the world of wireless interception and cryptanalysis, but it very soon became apparent that other skills were needed, and he and his colleagues were quick to learn them too. He was one of the original group of German linguists who, on the job with the radio hams and other brilliant and unorthodox personalities learnt the difficult techniques of cryptanalysis, together with attendant lady helpers - one of whom he married and re-employed in Hut 3 at Bletchley Park in 1939 - worked in Room 40 Old Buildings in Whitehall. It was a close-knit group and worked in watches - a practice which continued through both world wars - so that inevitably its members came to know each other very well, and to develop strong camaraderie which, by 1922, involved a closing of ranks and a paranoid suspicion of those politicians who misused the intercepted decrypts.
Signals intelligence, born in the early years of the twentieth century due to the exploitation of Marconi’s great invention of wireless, started in the UK with the interception of radio messages - in morse or via other methods - through a series of intercept stations scattered round the eastern coastline of Britain. These were brought by landline or by motorcycle messenger to Room 40. There was also the increasingly expert analysis of wireless traffic (T.A.) intercepted to indicate where increasing volume might indicate imminent enemy activities; the decrypting and translation of the material; and finally a much more subjective, intuitive assessment of what these messages might mean to the person or department to whom they would then be passed. This in turn required an assessment of the potential recipients, which in due course involved a form of interactional educational process. It also involved a close knowledge of the day-by-day progress of the war, and an understanding of the diplomatic and political sensitivities into which this processed material - its origins completely concealed - might percolate. Churchill was the chief user of signals intelligence thus obtained from 1915 (as 1st Lord of the Admiralty) to 1945, VE and VJ day.
The Zimmermann telegram, received and decoded overnight on 16 January 1917 by a close colleague of Denniston, Nigel de Grey, and William Montgomerie, an Irish Presbyterian German linguist, proved a watershed. It did indeed ensure the entry of the United States into the war on the allied side. But it could not be fully used until a second copy of it had been identified so that the sources of the discovery of the first copy could be protected. Much has been written about the Zimmermann telegram, not only as a classic example of the successful implementation of the total service which a cryptanalytic unit should provide, but also for its historical importance. Recent correspondence has come to light in the files of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade between Denniston and William Friedman, the head of American cryptology, in which as late as 1958 Friedman finally established authentic details of the transaction from Denniston’s memories of the crucial days in which the telegram was decoded and processed. There was never any doubt that the Room 40 group was fully aware of the importance of what they had done and the success which attended Sir Reginald Hall’s handling of it.
Hall himself recalled the moment, at 10.30am when de Grey came in and asked him ‘d’you want to bring America into the war?’ ‘Yes, my boy,’ I answered, ‘Why?’ The deciphered telegram revealed the German decision to wage unrestricted submarine warfare. It was all that was needed to bring America in, and US-UK signal intelligence co-operation in war began. The Friedman-Denniston correspondence further reveals some cryptanalytical successes which would never have seen the light of day but for the mutual regard and trust established in 1941 between the two secret servants.
The camaraderie of the members of Room 40, all of whose names are inscribed on a silver salver which was given to Denniston and his bride on the occasion of their wedding in 1917, was borne out at the end of the war by a now famous pantomime, sung by all present, which was written by Frank Birch, himself one of the original cryptographers who left the secret service for the stage and King’s College after the war. It is a witty and rather moving account of their work; and the statement that clearly emerged from it was that whatever else the other members would do after the war, and whatever happened to the unit which might be broken up, Denniston would go on for ever; he would never give up. And he never did.
After the acceptance of his paper on the importance of continuing his work, he was appointed head of what came to be called the Government Code and Cipher School in 1919, soon after the conclusion of hostilities. The unit, which had been divided into two sections - the naval and the non-naval - was brought together in 1919 under the aegis of the Foreign Office to monitor incoming diplomatic codes and ciphers by means of GPO interception. AGD and his wife went to Versailles for the 1919 conference, quite clearly to spy on friends and former enemies alike - as did experts from France and America. Shortly before he had been sent as official interpreter to Lord Beatty to receive the surrender of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow, where he expressed himself appalled at the indiscretions of the Admiral of the Fleet on that occasion. He was, as we have seen, both shocked at the conditions under which German naval officers and ratings had to live and imp
ressed at their dignified and sailorly behaviour at a time of humiliation and stress. They scuttled their fleet.
AGD’s inter-war career is closely tied up with the varying fortunes of the newly formed GC&CS. The unit itself was underfunded and misunderstood by the Treasury and the Foreign Office, to which it reported, but not to the Admiralty, as the following letter from the First Sea Lord (Winston Churchill) makes clear:
Private and confidential
March 28, 1919,
Dear Lord Drogheda,
I had a few minutes conversation with Lord Curzon yesterday on the subject of the new Cypher Department which it is proposed to establish, and concerning which a memorandum is now in his hands, containing the views of the Admiralty and the War Office.
Lord Curzon told me that he hoped to summon a conference at the Foreign Office one day next week to consider the matter, when I should have an opportunity of stating my opinions, and he asked me to send you in advance a memorandum of the points I wished to raise. I therefore send you herewith the following notes of matters which the Admiralty consider essential in any scheme that may be adopted.
(1) We have in the Section of the Naval Intelligence Department which has dealt with enemy wireless during the war, a great deal of material, some of which is worked out and filed for reference or historical purposes and some of which still requires further study. We have also a small remaining nucleus of the expert staff which has done this work during the war. If the Admiralty is to join the new Department, we regard it as essential that this material and staff should be kept together.
(2) Wherever the new Department may be located in peace time, we should have to stipulate that on the outbreak of war the naval portion of its staff should immediately be mobilised and take up their work in the Admiralty. Our experience has proved that in war the deciphering staff must be in the closest possible proximity to the War Staff. We have had to work day and night all the year round, and as immediate action has often had to be taken in consequence of the information which we have supplied, no avoidable delay in transmitting the information to the Operations Division can be allowed.
Thirty Secret Years Page 5