Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service

by Hector C. Bywater

  He was inclined to be sceptical at first; but although I was bluffing, the knowledge of my own danger made me feel, and probably look, rather grim. Gradually I could see conviction dawning in his eyes. And this much was true enough: that I was not going to let him out of my sight until I was reasonably sure that his lips were sealed.

  Finally he said that he would not make his confession till the following morning, so that I would have the whole night in which to escape. But I saw through this stratagem, for it was obvious that, unless he could produce me, his story would merely convict himself without securing lenient treatment from the authorities. It was necessary to use more powerful arguments.

  I warned him that betrayal of me at any time would infallibly be punished.

  ‘If the police allow you to go free, it will only be a question of days, perhaps hours, before something very unpleasant happens to you. If you get a prison sentence, no matter how long it may be, my friends will be waiting for you when you are released. Go where you will, you cannot escape them!’

  Then I tried a further bluff.

  ‘And here’s another thing, my friend. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you are more at my mercy than I am at yours? Now that you have shown yourself to be untrustworthy, I am half inclined to give you a dose of your own medicine. I am going to summon one of my colleagues’ (turning to the telephone as I spoke) ‘who will see that you are kept quiet for the next day or two, by which time I shall be out of Germany. You will then be anonymously denounced to the police as a spy, and conclusive evidence of your guilt will be placed in their hands. If you try to implicate me you probably won’t be believed, and in any case it won’t help you. You will be safe for ten years, and, as you know, the prison people have orders to make things specially severe for men convicted of Landesverrat. Yes, that is by far the best plan.’ And I made as if to lift the telephone receiver.

  The bluff had undoubtedly worked. Schneider was now in a more pitiable state of terror than before. He saw that my threat could really be put into execution, and he capitulated without further ado. He swore that he would not go to the police, promised to do anything I told him, and, as evidence of good faith, there and then produced some information that was really valuable.

  But still I was not satisfied. In his present state of agitation he was not to be trusted. So I determined to keep him with me all night, hoping that by morning he would have recovered his nerve. It was a long and trying night, and more than once I had to make play with the revolver to keep him quiet.

  After certain forms of moral suasion had been employed, he drew up, in his own handwriting, a full confession of the work he had done for me – giving dates and all details – and signed it. This I put into an envelope and addressed it to the Chief of Police, Berlin.

  ‘Now, Schneider,’ I said, ‘if in the future I have any reason to doubt you, this envelope goes into the post at once. You must see that there’s no escape if you ever attempt to give me away.’

  He obviously did see it, and I began to feel more confident. In the morning I called a taxi and drove him to his rooms in Charlottenburg. He was pretty much of a wreck by then, but the nervous crisis was over, and he was quite subdued. I had paid him off, and privately decided not to employ him again. I had also settled my bill at the hotel and brought my bag away. As Schneider was getting out of the cab I told the driver to go to the Friedrichstrasse station, but when we had covered a short distance I re-directed him to the Anhalter, as I was going south.

  After a wearisome cross-country journey, broken at several points to make sure I was not being followed, I got to my headquarters late at night. Although Schneider had not known this address, I deemed it wise to move elsewhere. As weeks passed and nothing happened, it became evident that he was holding his tongue. I never saw or heard of him again.

  It was always a risky business dealing with such people, for a man who will sell his own country will, as a rule, make nothing of selling those for whom he works. Yet, strangely enough, none of the men whom I employed ever gave me away, though several threatened to do so. No doubt they knew that even turning Kaiser’s evidence would not save them from a sharp sentence.

  You ask, ‘What about the agent provocateur?’ Well, I came across three or four members of that tribe, and can only say that they would not have deceived an intelligent infant. They almost invariably gave themselves away at the first interview.

  Only one ever proved troublesome – a certain Konrad Schumacher, or so he called himself. He was instrumental in causing the arrest of an agent who was working on behalf of a certain government – not the British. This agent had done splendid work, but he must have been simple to have walked into the trap that Schumacher laid.

  Shortly afterwards I myself came into contact with the wily Konrad, and passed on some information about him to a friend, who was connected with the government in question. In due course a snare was set. Schumacher was lured across the frontier to meet a high foreign officer who proposed to do a little intelligence work in Germany, and was anxious to have the agent provocateur’s assistance, for which he offered a tempting bribe. But the visit was never made. When Schumacher arrived at the rendezvous he was promptly arrested as a German spy, and on being searched he was found to be in possession of some most incriminating documents.

  He swore by all the Teutonic deities that he had never seen them before. In that case one wonders how they found their way into his pocket! His protestations did not save him, and he got six years’ rigorous imprisonment. In dealing with one of his kidney you cannot afford to observe Queensberry rules.

  CHAPTER 10

  UNRIDDLING THE SANDS

  THE IMPERIAL GERMAN Navy possessed twenty-four fortified bases, stations, and depots in its home waters. Nine were situated on the North Sea coast and thirteen in the Baltic, while the remaining two were inland – Neumünster, in Holstein, being the naval wireless headquarters, and Dietrichsdorf, near Kiel, the principal ammunition magazine for the fleet.

  By many critics the number of bases was deemed excessive. Not only were they costly to maintain, since most of them had elaborate defences manned by Matrosen-Artillerie, i.e. seamen-gunners, but it was feared that they might exert an enervating influence on the fleet in time of war. For the same reason the Spartans disliked walled cities.

  When a commander is conscious of having a safe line of retreat he will be less inclined to fight to a finish. History teems with examples of this, and the Great War contributed not a few. There is little doubt that the German fleet would have accomplished much more than it did had there been fewer defended positions to which it could retire when hard pressed. On the other hand, we must not forget that as the German Navy was originally conceived as a coast-defence force, its first battleships – Siegfried class, laid down in 1888–92 – having been built expressly for the protection of the Kiel Canal, there was a traditional tendency to exaggerate the value of brick-and-mortar defences as a naval asset.

  For obvious reasons, the British secret service was chiefly interested in the German North Sea coastline. It stretches some 220 miles from the Ems estuary to the Danish frontier. Shoals and sandbanks make it difficult of approach, and thus form a natural defence. Even under ordinary conditions navigation in these waters is difficult and hazardous. In wartime, with coastwise lights extinguished and channel buoys removed, the most skilful pilot would hesitate to trust himself within this labyrinth of shifting sand. To ships of deep draught it is inaccessible save by certain channels in which the dredgers have to be kept continuously at work. When to these natural barriers were added minefields and powerful batteries, the German western littoral became an impregnable rampart against which the mightiest fleet would have spent its strength in vain.

  In the light of a fact so manifest it is strange that the Germans were unable to rid themselves of the nightmare of a British naval assault on their coast. It was partly this obsession that paralysed the High Seas Fleet during the early months of the war and left the Brit
ish Navy in undisputed command of the sea at a period when the mere hint of a challenge to its supremacy would have caused the Allies grave embarrassment.

  There was, however, this much excuse for the caution, which the German Navy carried to extreme lengths: a descent upon one or more of the German offshore islands and their seizure as advanced bases for operations against the mainland did actually form part of the British plan of war strategy, though it was ultimately decided to abandon the project. The secret, such as it is, has already been revealed by Mr Winston Churchill in his second volume of The World Crisis.

  Borkum was chosen as the principal objective because it was furthest from the great naval base of Wilhelmshaven, and might thus be successfully attacked before a relieving force had time to arrive. With Borkum in our hands it might have been feasible to land troops at Emden, and, if not to thrust an invading army into Western Prussia, at any rate to create a diversion that must have seriously disorganised German military strategy. The naval expedition against Borkum was to have been led by Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly. Unfortunately the sinking of HMS Formidable by a German submarine, while that battleship was attached to his command, momentarily clouded his reputation, and for this and other reasons the plan was shelved.

  Perhaps it was as well, for the venture would have been a desperate one. That Borkum might have been seized by a bold coup de main is likely enough; but that it could long have been held against the violent counter-attacks that the Germans would certainly have launched without delay is exceedingly doubtful. The outstanding merit of the plan was that its execution would, in all probability, have speedily brought about a great fleet action, ante-dating Jutland by more than twelve months, and possibly fought in circumstances more advantageous to the British fleet.

  It will readily be understood, therefore, that our naval intelligence department was anxious to learn all about Borkum and its defences. And despite the redoubled vigilance of the Germans after the Brandon–Trench affair, the information desired was duly forthcoming.

  Contrary to widespread belief, we were not particularly interested in Heligoland. It is true there were optimists at the admiralty who believed that we could conquer and hold this island, which would, it was assumed, give us virtual command of the German Bight itself; but the navy as a whole regarded the plan as impracticable, and shortly after the outbreak of war it was rejected by Admiral Jellicoe after a conference with the admiralty chiefs. But since it is wise to prepare for every contingency, our pre-war secret service by no means ignored Heligoland. It was, in fact, pretty thoroughly surveyed, and held no surprise for us.

  The insignificant island of Wangerooge was considered to be much more important, for it lies only 20 miles north of Wilhelmshaven, the High Seas Fleet’s war base. Long-range guns firing from these wind-whipped sand dunes would completely dominate the fairway leading from the great naval port, thus bottling up the fleet inside.

  The Germans were slow in apprehending this danger, for it was not until 1910 that they began to fortify Wangerooge. Then, however, they made a thorough job of it.

  Another place in which we were interested was Sylt, Germany’s northernmost island in the North Sea.

  It would be possible to fill this chapter with complete and minute details of every German naval base and sea fortress that existed in 1914, all supplied by our intelligence agents before that date. Needless to say, the collection of this mass of data involved a great deal of hard work and personal risk, but today its interest is mainly historical. But some of the methods by which it was obtained deserve to be indicated. As told in an earlier page, reliable maps of Borkum showing the position and strength of the defences were in possession of the British Admiralty three years before the war. Here is the story by the man who provided them:

  After the very gallant exploits of Brandon and Trench in 1910, the Germans kept a much keener watch all round the coast, and every foreigner became suspect. At every large port the local police were reinforced by detectives who had received special training in counter-espionage work. These men did their best, no doubt, but they had very little success, beyond rounding up dozens of quite harmless people. In one month they arrested four persons at Heligoland, three at Kiel, and two at Indem, all of whom proved to be entirely innocent of espionage.

  The first important mission I undertook was an investigation of the defences of Emden and Borkum.

  Emden had only recently come into prominence as a naval base, though we had always regarded it as one of the potential jumping-off points of a German invasion of England. In 1910 our attention was attracted by the extensive harbour works that had been started there, the scale of which seemed out of proportion to the ordinary shipping requirements of the port. The channel, 2.5 miles in length, which leads from the estuary up to Emden, was deepened sufficiently to take vessels drawing 30 feet of water. Adjacent to the harbour itself a huge basin was excavated, large enough to contain a fleet of big ships. The wharf frontage was equipped with up-to-date gear for handling heavy weights, and between Emden town station and the new basin there were quadruple railway tracks.

  Several hundred acres of reclaimed land westward of the town had been purchased by the state, and at the time of my visit large barracks and other military buildings were being erected there. The small local shipbuilding yard, Nordsee-Werke, had just been bought by a syndicate in which Krupps held the controlling interest. It was being enlarged and equipped with new plant, and the management announced that it would soon be in a position to build or repair ships of any dimensions.

  This activity at Emden was so pronounced that suspicion was aroused in England. No conviction was carried by semi-official articles in the German press, explaining that Emden’s assured future as a great commercial entrepôt necessitated the provision of adequate port facilities. On the contrary, everything indicated that Emden was being developed as a base for oversea military operations. It was admirably situated for this purpose. Screened from observation by the chain of Frisian islands, it would have been possible to assemble a fleet of transports in the Ems with absolute secrecy, while the excellent railway communications between the port and military depots inland would enable large bodies of troops to be concentrated and embarked with great rapidity.

  Delfzyl, a Dutch town on the other side of the Ems, had been suggested to me as a convenient base for intelligence work in the Emden district; but having heard that the German authorities kept an eye on foreigners coming from the Dutch side, I determined to make my headquarters at Leer, some 15 miles distant from Emden. As the morning and evening trains between these places were always crowded, there was very little risk of becoming conspicuous.

  But to make assurance doubly sure I was careful to wear German-made clothes. This was a simple but effective disguise, as all who are acquainted – for their sins – with German ‘reach-me-downs’ will readily understand.

  I did not carry a notebook or any documents other than those that purported to reveal my identity, for I rigidly abstained from making notes under any circumstances when engaged in this sort of work. With a little practice it is easy to memorise quite copious details, so long as one is familiar with the technicalities of the subject and knows what to look for.

  I had timed my visit to coincide with a ‘surprise mobilisation’ of the Borkum-Emden defences, hints of which had been allowed to appear in the Hamburg papers. These exercises were held about twice a year, their object being to determine how soon it was possible to land powerful reinforcements for the Borkum garrison.

  Incidentally the experience gained on one such occasion in midwinter, when ice in the Ems held up the transports, resulted in a decision so to strengthen the garrison of Borkum as to render it more or less independent of aid from the mainland.

  The widespread publicity given to certain phases of German naval and military manoeuvres – in striking contrast to the absolute secrecy observed as a general rule – may have puzzled some people, but it was easily explained. When the government wanted money fo
r fortifying some point on the coast, they staged a sham attack that, of course, met with complete success. The newspapers then came out with scare articles expatiating on the defenceless state of the ‘vital’ point in question, and the temptation it offered to a would-be invader – these articles being sent out from the press department of the German Admiralty. ‘Public opinion’ having been mobilised in this way, the Reichstag usually voted the requisite funds for building new coastal defences.

  I reached Emden a few hours before the troop trains began to arrive. They came from Munster, headquarters of the 7th Army Corps, and brought about four battalions of infantry, a few companies of engineers, and four batteries of field artillery, with several machine-gun detachments.

  The trains passed over the new tracks leading down to the harbour and ran alongside the three steamers berthed there. So quickly were the troops and batteries embarked that all three ships were able to cast off in less than an hour.

  The voyage to Borkum was accomplished in two hours, and the disembarkation took just seventy-five minutes.

  Thus, from the arrival of the trains at Emden to the landing of the last man and gun at Borkum hardly more than four hours had elapsed. It was a smart piece of work, and the clockwork precision with which everything had been carried out spoke well for the staff organisation.

  The whole operation was conducted quite openly. Crowds watched the troops embark at Emden, and, when the transports sailed, an excursion steamer followed in their wake, lying off the island while the landing was in progress. From this steamer I was able to watch the entire proceedings. The excursionists got ashore soon afterwards.