Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service

by Hector C. Bywater

  The great financial expert of the German embassy, who was also paymaster of the gangsters, had a number of documents that he wanted to send to Berlin. There was an obstacle in the way. He suspected, not unreasonably, that the British government might be interested in those documents, and, as the British Navy maintained a very strict watch on seaborne traffic, the Herr Doctor was compelled to use stratagem to get his papers through the blockade.

  He made arrangements for them to be shipped by a Swedish liner, in the name of a Swedish firm, and to be forwarded to Berlin from Stockholm.

  He laid his plans in the greatest secrecy and with the utmost care. Only three people in his office knew about the papers – himself, Captain von Papen, and his typist.

  This young woman, avowedly a keen pro-German American, was very diligent. She was so energetic that the day before the case containing the papers was to be sent away she would not even leave the office to have her lunch. She had some food brought in to her, and she squatted actually on the precious box itself while she ate her meal.

  Captain von Papen was no less diligent. Neither he nor Dr Albert would allow that case out of the sight of one or other of them. And so, while the typist lunched, Captain von Papen was in the room, too.

  It must not be supposed that he was ‘vamped.’ Indeed, there was no need for feminine wiles. The Captain fancied himself as a ladies’ man, and he proposed to keep in practice by a little flirtation with the typist.

  Soon they were sitting side by side on the precious case, and the lady was coy. Absent-mindedly she took a red lead pencil, and, quite without thinking, drew two large red hearts side by side on the woodwork of the case.

  Pretty conceit! The gallant Captain took the pencil from her and himself drew the arrow to transfix the two hearts.

  Arcadian simplicity!

  All that the searchers had to do when the steamer called at the British port for examination was to look for a wooden case marked in red with two large hearts joined by an arrow.

  They found it.

  But Dr Albert never knew that his own right-hand man had betrayed him, however unintentionally, and had placed at the disposal of the American government priceless documentary evidence to build up the case that led ultimately to the expulsion from America of von Papen and Boy-Ed.

  All through his activities in the United States von Papen blundered egregiously. That list from Albert’s office, containing a long report on German spy efforts in America and a list of payments to various agents all over the country, was only one of the innumerable examples of how he played right into the hands of the British counter-espionage.

  Another of his blunders, or at any rate a blunder in his office, enabled us to decipher one of the most awkward codes that the German secret service used.

  It was a four-fold code. If one part of the communication fell into the wrong hands, it was indecipherable without the other three parts.

  There were four letters involved in the system. Each letter contained certain words, and each was sent to a different address.

  Thus, the first sentence of Letter Number One contained the first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth words, and thereafter every fourth word of the complete document. Letter Number Two contained the second, sixth, tenth, and fourteenth words, and so on.

  An example will make the code clear:

  Letter Number One began, let us say, ‘You letter other are’

  Letter Number Two began, ‘Know is directions coming’

  Letter Number Three began, ‘Whence coming other I’

  Letter Number Four began, ‘This from letters ask’

  If those words are set out exactly over one another we get the sense:

  You letter other are

  know is directions coming,

  whence coming, other I

  this from letters ask.

  Read each column downwards and the words fall into place. Punctuation has been put in to facilitate the reading.

  Von Papen’s office received several letters in that code, addressed originally, of course, to various people in New York who were part of the gang, and the complete groups were kept pinned together in the files. A smart clerk in the office, who by some chance had a lot of friends in the British intelligence service, got them together one day and made some quite interesting discoveries.

  Without claiming too great credit for their cleverness, it is reasonable to say that the British intelligence men in the United States were always masters of their German opponents, and, so far as wiliness was concerned, had them ‘beaten to a frazzle’. And this applies not only to men in the higher ranks of the business. There is the singular case of the marine servant. Only Kipling could tell it as it should be told. Here we cannot do more than outline the story as we heard it, after the war, in the gloaming of a Scapa evening, while with the Squadron that was still guarding the then unsunken German fleet.

  It is the story of how Captain Paul Koenig was doubly hoodwinked by one of our men in New York.

  The British ID man had a modest apartment in one of the less prosperous quarters of New York. He was not officially in America at all, but he had with him his marine servant, who passed for a valet, secretary, chauffeur and companion. This marine was a man slow of speech and heavy of appearance, but with an agile brain behind his bucolic exterior.

  Below the ID man’s apartment lived a young German, and what had taken our agent into that neighbourhood was the fact that this young German was suspected of being an active member (how active was just what we wanted to know) of the German terrorist gangs.

  This young man struck up an acquaintance with the marine. In a slow-witted way the valet let it appear that his master was ‘up to something.’ He also let it appear that he had himself a streak of greediness in him. Money was a grand thing to have, honestly if possible, but still…

  The young German felt his way cautiously. He, on his part, suffered from curiosity. He would like to know, quite innocently, of course, what was the truth about the supply of munitions from American factories to Britain, and what arrangements the British had for protecting them at sea. But most of all he thought it would be thrilling to know who really were the men who were doing secret service work for Britain in the United States.

  And, when the seed had been planted, he watered it with a suggestion of payment.

  The marine undertook to try to find out from friends of his in New York, but he cannily insisted that he must first see the real head of the German secret service in order to satisfy himself about payment. And the Germans fell into the trap!

  The man was conducted by his young friend, after dark, to the office of the Hamburg–Amerika Line in lower Broadway. There was an elaborate ritual of passwords, locked doors, long passages, and revolvers on desks – all the trappings of the Spy King of melodrama, in fact. And ultimately the marine found himself being presented to – Captain Paul Koenig.

  Score No. 1 for our ID! The head of the branch, if not the head of the whole organisation, was found.

  Herr Koenig was very anxious to find out who were his opponents. How did the British ID get its reports? Could the marine give him a complete list of those who worked for the British secret service?

  The marine chewed slowly on the idea, pondering it, and eventually said he thought he might have a try.

  He did – with the help of his master.

  There were a number of young ‘gun-shy’ men of British origin in the United States, who always looked mysterious when they were asked what they were doing for their country, and sometimes went so far as to whisper very confidentially: ‘secret service!’

  Marine and master got them on the list.

  They also had names of the employees of the German and Austrian consulates. Several of these were dropped haphazard into the list for Captain Koenig.

  The marine was conducted to Captain Koenig’s ‘citadel’ again. And the list was duly paid for!

  Score No. 2 for the British ID. Some of the British ‘Cuthberts’ had a most
exciting life for the next few weeks, shadowed everywhere by German secret service agents! And as for the German and Austrian consular employees, life became an absolute burden to them until it dawned on Captain Koenig that he had been sold.

  The comedy of Dr Albert’s attaché case is fairly well known, though it is not always remembered that it was the papers found therein that definitely linked the Germans with the Casement case and the Easter Rebellion.

  Credit for the feat has been claimed for a reporter on the Providence Journal (Rhode Island), a paper that certainly ran a most effective counter-espionage campaign of its own for months before the American authorities really tackled the business. But it has also been ascribed to a man who was working for the British ID. Whoever the hero may have been, it was a neatly planned piece of work.

  The watcher trailed Dr Albert to a leather goods shop, and there found him buying a new attaché case. The bright idea struck him to have one like it, and also to get to know exactly what the initials on it looked like after they had been executed to the Doctor’s order. So the purchase was left at the shop till the next day, until the customer could be shown the finished case for Dr Albert.

  When he saw it, he decided that initials would not improve the appearance of his own case, so he took it away – to another shop, where he had Dr Albert’s initials put on in the exact style of that gentleman’s case.

  A day or two later, complete with attaché case, he followed Dr Albert (also complete with case) into one of the trains on the elevated railway. He started a scuffle in the crowded carriage, and, in the confusion, changed the two cases. Dr Albert went away with an empty one, and at the next station the watcher got out – with a full case.

  The real humour of the situation is that Dr Albert did not appear to realise that he had been tricked, and actually went to the police for help in recovering his missing property.

  But they did not find it.

  As the months went by the British ID gathered and passed to the American authorities a mass of evidence about the activities of the terrorists – how they tried to foment dock strikes to prevent ships sailing, to introduce explosives into munition works, to damage the Welland Canal, the Soo Canal and the Lehigh Valley railway. There were attempts to damage the cables to Europe, particularly those of the Western Union, and a great deal of thieving went on that was not the work of the regular criminal classes. Motor cars and lorries awaiting shipment on the dockside were damaged, and tyres stolen, and men who were caught in the act were described by the police as being above the average intelligence and not ordinary thieves.

  One really curious little incident arose quite by accident. One of our men was asked by an acquaintance (who had no idea of his real mission in the states) if he had ever seen a travelling trunk with secret drawers.

  Our agent pretended not to be particularly interested, but said that, out of idle curiosity, he wouldn’t mind looking at such a thing if it existed. But when the acquaintance tried to arrange for him to see a specimen, difficulties arose.

  After a time, however, and by dint of very careful inquiry, our man found out the factory where these interesting oddities were made. And careful watch was kept on the place to discover the people who were buying them. Two such trunks were traced to a certain gentleman, who was found to have booked a passage to Bergen.

  Then he did a curious thing. He sailed without the trunks!

  Still we watched, and the trunks went down to the docks to be shipped by the next steamer of the same line.

  So we thought it was time the American customs took a hand in the game, and they were advised about the trunks that were to travel alone. Two men came down to the pier and set about embarking the luggage, whereupon customs stepped in and seized the trunks. They were emptied and examined, and the secret compartments were found to be full of confidential papers, with, in addition, a consignment of dental rubber!

  The papers proved to be unconnected with German secret service work, but the rubber was an interesting find, as it indicated another way in which small consignments of badly needed commodities were slipping through the British blockade and examination service.

  CHAPTER 17

  GAMBLING ON ‘THE DAY’

  NO READER OF the foregoing pages will be disposed to underrate the contribution of the naval intelligence department to the Allied victory at sea. It was, indeed, not the least potent of the factors that, collectively, immobilised the German Navy – apart from its U-boats – and, in the end, brought about its demoralisation and defeat.

  We have seen how our intelligence system, operating before the war, safeguarded us from naval surprises that, had they been sprung without warning, might have led to reverses far more serious than those we did sustain. We have seen, too, how the same system, expanded and developed to cope with the manifold and complex problems of war itself, functioned with an efficiency that to those unversed in the secrets of its mechanism seemed to border on the supernatural.

  To intelligence work we owed in great measure the success of our anti-submarine campaign, as also the maintenance of that unsleeping watch on the High Seas Fleet that enabled us to forestall every move it made. Again, without the cooperation of the NID the blockade of the central powers, which steadily sapped their stamina and endurance, would have remained incomplete and largely ineffective.

  It now remains to tell of the part played by intelligence work in circumventing the German Navy’s last and most ambitious scheme of operations, the collapse of which hastened the Revolution and swept the Teutonic war lords from the stage where they had strutted over-long.

  The story of this crowning achievement properly begins in May 1918. Towards the close of that month the German High Command could no longer conceal from the nation, still less from itself, the failure of the great submarine gamble on which it had embarked early in 1917. Millions of tonnes of shipping had been destroyed, it is true, and the U-boats were still exacting a regular toll in the Channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

  But, contrary to the most positive prediction, the Allies had not been reduced to starvation within six months. After fifteen months of ruthless submarine warfare their vital communications remained still intact, they were fighting with unimpaired vigour, and they had been joined by a new and mighty associate whose resources in manpower and material were well-nigh illimitable. Since the entry of the United States was directly due to the U-boat campaign, this weapon might even be said to have recoiled on the heads of those who wielded it. At all events, even the optimists at German GHQ now realised that victory was not to be won by submarines alone.

  Nor did the military situation afford consolation for this grave disappointment. The great offensive launched in March had not achieved the results promised by Ludendorff: the Allied front, though sorely battered and deeply indented, still held firm. Thanks to the influx of American troops, pouring across the Atlantic in unchecked and ever-swelling volume, the manpower of the Allies was rapidly increasing, while that of Germany was steadily wasting away. Ludendorff, it is true, was planning further offensives, but hopes of accomplishing a complete and decisive breakthrough were growing dim. In short, from the German point of view the war position as a whole was already becoming desperate. It was at this critical juncture that the idea of throwing in the High Seas Fleet to redress the balance occurred to the minds of the German war leaders.

  Admiral Scheer had urged this plan repeatedly, but hitherto without success. The Kaiser was still disinclined to risk his precious battleships, while a strong political element continued to advocate the preservation of the fleet as a bargaining asset at the Peace Conference. But in view of the gravity of the outlook, this opposition was weakening. In May, therefore, the Kaiser gave his conditional sanction to the initial preparations for a great naval offensive. As we shall see, however, the naval command eventually decided to flout the Kaiser by ignoring the conditions he had laid down.

  At German GHQ it seems to have been accepted as a matter of course that th
e High Seas Fleet was in perfect fighting fettle. But the British Admiralty had reason to think otherwise. Nearly a year previously our intelligence agents in Germany had begun to report signs of demoralisation among the German naval personnel. In the summer of 1917 these reports were corroborated by actual, if isolated, cases of mutiny at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. They were suppressed with an iron hand, but from the information that continued to come through from our ID men, it was clear that the mischief was only scotched, not eradicated.

  Several causes combined to sap the fighting spirit of the German lower deck. In the first place, the obvious reluctance of the high command to seek another pitched battle with the British fleet was not lost on the men, who naturally and rightly concluded that their leaders felt no confidence in the outcome of such an action. Still officially claimed as a ‘victory’ for propaganda purposes, the Battle of Jutland was now recognised by all ranks and ratings in the High Seas Fleet as an indecisive encounter in which the German forces had narrowly escaped disaster. During the brief period they were in contact with the British main fleet they suffered a merciless hammering that gave them a new respect for the terrible broadsides of the Grand Fleet. ‘Never again,’ was the general verdict, according to Captain Persius – qualified, in the case of the High Command, by a resolve to accept battle again only under the most favourable circumstances, and with the mass cooperation of submarines and airships.

  This plan was actually tried in August 1916, though with indifferent success. On that occasion, so hastily did Admiral Scheer scurry back to his base, on receiving what proved to be an erroneous Zeppelin report of the advance of the main British fleet, that the humblest member of the lower-deck cannot have failed to draw the obvious conclusion. Thus, we may assume, were implanted the first seeds of defeatism which were destined in the course of two years to grow into a upas tree.

  Another factor undoubtedly responsible in great measure for the weakening of morale was the British minelaying activity in the Bight. After two years of war we had at length evolved a thoroughly effective type of mine, and when intensive manufacture had given us the necessary material, we began a systematic and widespread operation for the purpose of mining every channel used by the High Seas Fleet and its auxiliary forces. Vessels of all types, from battleships to submarines and converted liners, were employed in this work. How many mines in all were laid is not known, but the twentieth destroyer flotilla alone – ‘one of the corps d’élite of the navy’, as it was aptly designated by Sir Eric Geddes – dropped over 22,000.