He began by stripping the problem back. In the purest sense it involved a human being moving through the air who wants to measure his distance from static and invisible points below. Pyke spun this around. He pictured a static human on the ground trying to measure invisible atmospheric conditions above. The outline of a solution now emerged. Meteorologists on the ground measured atmospheric conditions using a ‘ballon sonde’, a miniature balloon with a wireless device attached which was sent up into the sky, whereupon it relayed a signal with details of the surrounding weather conditions. By doing the same in reverse, surely one could measure the drift of the aircraft. Rather than use a balloon to send the device up, allow gravity to take it down. Once it had reached the ground it could send up a signal to the plane’s radio operator. The difference between its position and that of the plane, given its speed, would allow for a calculation of the drift. ‘Prof J. D. Bernal FRS of the Ministry of Home Security, etc. etc. etc. thinks I have solved the problem,’ Pyke enthused to Mountbatten, ‘so does a Squadron Leader of the R.A.F.’
But he did not stop there. Pyke’s style was to develop his fantasies in full before paring them back. He went on to imagine what would happen to this reverse ballon sonde after it had served its primary purpose. How should it be disguised? What would a German farmer make of it? How long before the enemy designed one itself? Was it possible to drop dummy versions over England to see how long it would take before concerned members of the public handed them in to the authorities, to get a sense of their likely fate in Germany? As well as allowing his fantasies to play out in extenso, Pyke understood the value in innovation of conducting as many small-scale experiments as possible.
When not dealing with other people’s problems, Pyke took on questions regarding his proposed force. One of these was about how this unit could strike the oilfields near Ploesti in Romania. It was typical of Pyke that this not only triggered a flood of ideas, but that he wanted his colleagues at Combined Operations to understand how he had arrived at them. Rather than circulate a précis of his proposals he had a long diary-entry typed up and passed around. Few people in Combined Operations had ever read anything like it. His paper was described as ‘ingenious’, its ideas ‘an advance on any other means known to us’ and it was agreed that ‘energetic and immediate support’ should be given to them and that a full-time Planning, Research and Development body should be established to investigate these suggestions further. This diary included plans for training St Bernard’s dogs to take alcohol up to bored sentries, exhausts fitted to snowmobiles in order to sound like barking dogs and guerrillas who would enter oil refineries disguised as firemen who would carry hoses capable of propelling explosive elements as well as water. There were references to detective stories, thrillers, humorists, lawyers, a short film Pyke had recently seen, an Admiralty handbook, the endemic fondness for dogs in rural Romania and, of course, there were references to the works of Shaw. What this text also provides is a complete example of what Pyke meant by his ‘auto-Socratic’ technique.
This was when Pyke tackled a problem by conducting either on paper or in his head a conversation between two voices. One was imaginative and full of fantasy, the other more considered, polite and wise – the Socrates figure, who rarely interrupted and would try to allow each fantasy to play out in full, always asking what was right with the idea before moving on to what was wrong. It was a difficult trick, but one which seemed to unlock Pyke’s creativity and, now that he had a receptive audience for these thoughts, new ideas came tumbling out of him as never before.
By late March 1942 Pyke was ‘bombarding all of us’ with proposals and ‘if he couldn’t get us to listen by writing formally in the ordinary way, he’d write a memorandum or a letter that would compel your attention because it was so damned funny and so damned serious at the same time’. Of these the most widely read was almost certainly ‘Mr Pyke’s Second and Third Thoughts. A Recantation’, soon to be known as: ‘Latrines for Colonels’.
Pyke protested that this paper ‘was not as it unfortunately appeared to some a jeu d’esprit, but was a desperately serious attempt by an amateur to work out a solution to a military tactical problem. The appearance of levity is due to two beliefs still to be disproved: (i) that a certain lightness of thought often enables one to jump over obstacles [. . .] (ii) that the Germans are on their guard against everything but the undergrad spirit.’
That ‘military tactical problem’ was how many troops each of his snowmobiles should carry. Pyke had initially suggested three – two to perform the act of sabotage, one to guard the vehicle – only to see that he had made a ‘colossal blunder’.
Let us visualise the situation. Our third man, our sentry is to guard the machine. Guard it against whom? Germans. German soldiers. Now if no German soldier does in fact appear we have wasted about 3 dwt [deadweight tonnage] of carrying capacity of the machine, a corresponding amount of aeroplane capacity, etc. etc. Should German soldiers come across our machine what would be the situation? They will see a man. They will think him a fellow soldier, a Norwegian, or an enemy. There are no other possibilities. By custom and duty they will at once challenge him. They will flash a torch on him. Whatever our men wear as a white covering there can be no question to my mind that they must wear uniform. In a few seconds, therefore, our ‘guard’ and ‘sentry’ will be discovered as an enemy.
Now what are the alternatives to having our machine guarded while our ‘sappers’ are on the job? Obviously to leave it unguarded. But that is not enough. We can largely discount the consequences of the machine being discovered by a Norwegian. For he will think it a German machine. This, I submit, is a clue to a solution, and our efforts should henceforth be largely devoted to its perfection. The solution is:- We must make the German sentry think it is a German machine. The principle by which this force fights must be: ‘Never take to Norway any man or machine to perform a function which we may be able to make the enemy perform for us.’
So how to make the German sentry believe that the snowmobile was German?
He must be told that it is German. A hierarchical civilisation tends to encourage passivity of mind and to inhibit scepticism expressing itself in action. He must be forbidden to touch the machine or to attempt to investigate it. He must be induced not to report and if possible not to talk about what he has seen.
The obvious solution might be to place a tarpaulin over the machine with a sign which said ‘VERBOTEN’, or something like:
Gestapo Research and Development Institute
SPECIAL DEATH RAY DEPARTMENT
Any soldier happening on an installation of the Gestapo Research Institute who makes any mention of it will be relentlessly dealt with with true National Socialist ruthlessness.
Countersigned: Gottfried Hecht, Commandant Gestapo.
There are two ways of procuring silence. One is to make a thing so extraordinary, so terrifying that no one dares mention it; the other is to make it so ordinary as to make it not worth mentioning.
Perhaps they should erect a canvas tent over the vehicle with a sign saying:
OFFICERS’ LATRINE
For Colonels only.
Latrine Accomodation for other Ranks is provided 2km. to the South.
We now have two tentative solutions: the Secret Research Insititute Death Ray Department, and the Latrine. Can they be combined?
Easily. Put one inside the other. If a sentry was brave enough to venture inside this Colonels’ latrine he would find an object covered with a tarpaulin marked ‘Death Ray Installation’. His response, surely, would be to exit the tiny structure immediately, chuckling perhaps at the cunning of the Gestapo.
To prove the principle, they could erect similar tents in Britain, cover each with two layers, one prosaic, the other forbidding, and see how long before they were entered by placing a telephone number inside which should be called on discovery.
If we are to beat the Germans we must, I submit, either be overwhelmingly more powerful – ten of everything to their on
e – OR we must be at least a little novel in our methods. That, I submit, is principle number One. To achieve the latter we must accept ancestral ways of doing things only after scrutiny, and only because this re-examination shows them to be the ways most suited to the specific occasion, and never because we have been influenced unconsciously by ancestor worship in the design of action.
You can sense here something of the mission Pyke felt himself to be on. ‘Ancestor worship’ was, for him, doing things in a particular way because that was how they’d always been done. He was not just providing answers in Combined Operations but imparting principles. ‘I can teach anyone how to devise schemes for latrines for Colonels, only if they are sufficiently young-minded.’ This was all he asked of his new colleagues.
Whether or not he was in contact with a Soviet handler, passing on information, or trying to influence policy along Soviet lines, Pyke was also determined to awaken these military minds. At Malting House School his guiding principle had been that each of us is born inquisitive and rational. In Richmond Terrace he wanted to reconnect the men around him to their instinctive curiosity. One must ‘never, NEVER let up in the attempt to insinuate into the minds of our elders that nothing is so cheap, and nothing so profitable as a good idea. They may ask for authority for this improper remark. Let them ask Hitler. Or General Jodel. Or let them ask our Russian Allies, who starting from scratch only 20 years ago, are able now to be aggressive to the Germans because for so long they have been aggressive towards the unknown.’ In Whitehall, he complained, it was as though in every room the writing was on the wall, not ‘mene, mene, tekel, upharsin’ but ‘nothing should ever be done for the first time’.
After just ten days in Combined Operations Pyke distilled his concerns about this military attitude towards new ideas into a paper called ‘New Ideas for the Army’. ‘There is, at present, ample evidence to show that the Army lacks many of the right types of technical weapons necessary to conduct a successful campaign. There has never been any shortage of new ideas, but the fact remains, that practically the only progress made during the first 2½ years of the present war, has been a belated imitation of the Germans. The object of the following notes, is to try and show in the case of the War Office and the Ministry of Supply, why new ideas are impeded and how this extremely serious position, which threatens our very existence, can be speedily rectified.’ He called for Development Boards to oversee the production of weapons prototypes, greater autonomy for junior officers, a more constructive attitude to problem-solving, more civilians in positions of executive responsibility and a greater emphasis on looking for ideas beyond the military. ‘It would be contrary to common sense and to the experience of the Russians to believe that among civilians mine is the only head into which good ideas may fall.’
‘Much is very true,’ responded Mountbatten. Inspired by this, less than a fortnight later he asked a senior government scientist, Sir Henry Tizard, for the names of two scientists to join his staff. Tizard suggested Solly Zuckerman, the Oxford primatologist, and Pyke’s old friend J. D. Bernal. Pyke’s ideas were being acted upon faster than ever before, and in this case his suggestion had brought into Richmond Terrace two men who would make crucial contributions to the planning of D-Day.
J. D. ‘Sage’ Bernal
Solly Zuckerman
A leading crystallographer and jack of many scientific trades, Sage Bernal was known to friends and lovers alike for his ‘beautiful, humorous, hazel eyes’, his distinctive mane of hair and – to some – for his early advocacy of free love. ‘Three in a bed, even when it is two beds placed close together, is always a complicated matter,’ began one memorable diary entry for 1924. Bernal and Zuckerman were both cosmopolitan and ambitious, they had grown up on the cultural periphery of the British Empire – Bernal in Ireland, Zuckerman in South Africa – and like Pyke each one was either Jewish or of Jewish ancestry, as well as openly left-wing. Bernal had for many years been a member of the Communist Party.
During the early years of the war Bernal and Zuckerman had been carrying out experimental work together at the Research and Experimental Headquarters, part of the Ministry of Home Security, where they measured bomb impacts using shelters occupied by themselves or some of Zuckerman’s monkeys (none of whom were injured). By early 1942, when they received the call from Mountbatten, they had become, according to Bernal’s biographer Andrew Brown, ‘the boffin equivalent of Gilbert and Sullivan’.
Both were deeply disillusioned by the failure of the British military to make adequate use of the country’s scientific talent. After several impressive turns on the Brains Trust, a new BBC discussion programme, Bernal wrote an article on this in which he bemoaned the reluctance of the ‘British ruling class’ to ‘press things unduly, they will not take risks, they will not demand the impossible’. He was promptly struck down by the commentator’s curse. Mountbatten, a prominent member of the ruling class, offered him the role of Scientific Adviser at Combined Operations. Bernal accepted, on the condition that Zuckerman came too. Unknown to him, an identical letter had already been sent to his friend.
Soon Bernal and Zuckerman were installed at Richmond Terrace, and along with Pyke these three became known as the ‘Department of Wild Talents’. For one of Mountbatten’s biographers ‘it is a reasonable assumption that a scouring of the free world at that time could not have turned up a more valuable trio’.
Mountbatten was soon telling stories to his cousin, King George VI, about his Department of Wild Talents. The King’s ‘two favourites were a long-haired Irishman and a bearded Jew [Bernal and Pyke]; indeed so familiar did these characters become that the King would refer to them by gesture – either sweeping his hand through his hair or stroking an imaginary beard – as his cousin regaled him with their latest madcap activities.’ The monarch was intrigued. Eventually he paid Richmond Terrace a visit. ‘Mountbatten introduced us each in turn describing our activities in a fairly flippant manner,’ recalled Sir Harold Wernher. Zuckerman was introduced as ‘Monkey man’. Pyke was away, yet Bernal was present and with his hair in a state of characteristic disarray.
‘Where in the hell did you come from?!’ enquired the King.
Bernal was taken aback by this and began to stammer.
This had the effect of setting off the King, which in turn made Bernal’s stammer worse.
For a moment the two men were caught stammering at each other, as if communicating in human Morse code, before Mountbatten intervened.
While most in Combined Operations were bemused by the Department of Wild Talents, some were wary. Bernal, Zuckerman and Pyke spoke differently from their colleagues, dressed differently, laughed at different jokes, had few friends in common with anyone else in the building and were evidently of the Left. It was partly their presence which encouraged Evelyn Waugh to describe a fictionalised Combined Operations as a blend of officers, ‘experts, charlatans, plain lunatics and every unemployed member of the British Communist Party’. All three members of Mountbatten’s ‘Department of Wild Talents’ had Personal Files at MI5, and, unknown to anyone in the building, just days after all three were in place, one of this trio was placed under surveillance by MI5.
From 18 March this individual was followed to work each day by two ordinary-looking men, ‘watchers’ from MI5’s B.6 section, who lingered outside Richmond Terrace until the end of the day. They never went inside, nor did they ask about their subject’s job. Instead their task was to follow this man through London’s public spaces and observe the people he met, where he went and any suspicious behaviour.
Their reports were dispassionate and precise but far from exhaustive. In 1951, after the defection of the Soviet agent and ‘Cambridge Spy’ Guy Burgess, an insider’s account of a secret meeting in Combined Operations was found in Burgess’s flat. It had taken place just days after the MI5 observation had begun and was attended by two members of the Department of Wild Talents. This raises the possibility that one of these three might have been passing intelligenc
e to Moscow.
The meeting in question was on 19 March 1942 and had been called to discuss further details of Pyke’s project. It was chaired by Mountbatten and included representatives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and each of the three services. Bernal was there, along with Pyke, who, before his presentation, had asked for blackboard, chalk and ‘the largest physical map of Norway which you have got. Ditto Europe. Ditto Arctic Russia’, as well as ‘say 6 copies of the table of gradients’ and ‘umpteen drawing pins’. Everyone present was sworn to secrecy before Pyke gave an account of his idea and what had happened to it so far.
There followed a lengthy discussion in which it was agreed that the idea remained ‘desirable and practicable’ and that the force should be ready for the winter. Sub-committees were formed to develop the vehicle, study weather conditions in Norway and Romania and design suitable explosives; this last sub-committee included representatives from SOE and MD1, also known as Churchill’s Toy Shop on account of the strange – and often deadly – devices that it produced. But there were some on these sub-committees, and elsewhere, who had begun to worry that this force would not be ready by the end of the year.
On Saturday, 28 March, the morning after a heroic Commando raid on the dockyard at St Nazaire, Mountbatten and his wife went to Chequers. At some point over the next few days the CCO told the Prime Minister about Pyke’s project. Churchill leapt at it.
As Pyke recalled, he ‘displayed his real qualities by his immediate and enthusiastic acceptance of the Plan. I think his reaction should go on the record. He saw the strategic significance of the Plan in a flash. He no more cared what sort of machine did the trick, than I did.’
Almost everything about the idea appealed to the Prime Minister. It echoed T. E. Lawrence’s Middle Eastern campaign during the last war – Churchill had described Lawrence as ‘one of the greatest beings alive in our time’ – and its focus was Norway, which for him represented unfinished business following the defeat of British forces there in 1940. He wanted ‘to roll the map of Hitler’s Europe down from the top’, which meant starting with Norway. Pyke’s plan was also emphatically Churchillian: brains would save blood, to borrow from one of his speeches. Yet for all his enthusiasm the Prime Minister could not change Britain’s strained industrial capacity. Pyke’s plan made sense, but there seemed to be insufficient British resources to have it developed.
Churchill's Iceman_The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy Page 25