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London Cage

Page 6

by Helen Fry


  Identifying a prisoner’s rank and the markings on his uniform could tell an interrogator his situation and enable him to work out the German order of battle. This would be presented to the prisoner during interrogation, before he had time to adjust to his new status, and he might be deceived into inadvertently giving away more information. One of the key areas to ascertain was what a prisoner knew about new technology. This helped paint a picture of the broader military capability of the German armed forces. Also crucial was any information on developments in the manufacture of tanks, U-boats, planes, weapons, mines and industrial chemicals. Interrogators often worked with technical experts and scientists who were drafted in to help on matters relating to technology. These technical officers received a short training course at the London Cage before being deployed to other cages to aid interrogations. They also had to sign the Official Secrets Act and not disclose the nature of their work or location.

  Prisoners were interrogated about their service history, battle campaigns and geographical aspects of their country, including the locations of industrial plants, so that the interrogator could identify potential bombing targets: railways, bridges, industries, factories and ships. In the end, few refused to cooperate, though it could take up to nine days for them finally to talk.

  A combination of aerial photography from the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces, captured documents, enemy propaganda and prisoner-of-war interrogation all fed into the intelligence picture and provided the Allies with a far-reaching appreciation of the enemy’s situation during the war.

  The ‘actors’

  The chief ‘actors’ among the interrogators at the London Cage were Major Randoll Coate, Major Antony Terry, Kenneth Morgan, Captain Ryder, Theodore ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff, Lieutenant Hepton, Captain George Sinclair, Captain W. Kieser, Captain Hay, Captain Egger and Captain Cornish. They were aided by Warrant Officer Michael Ullman, who took statements from the prisoners. Biographical information on many of the interrogators is very sketchy.5 Few personal details are known about Captain George Sinclair, except that he was drafted into the Intelligence Corps and served at the London Cage from 2 October 1941 until 11 August 1944. Similarly, little is known about Captain W. Kieser, who had been a schoolmaster in civilian life. Kieser was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps on 14 May 1942 and transferred to the London Cage. He was described as a ‘careful and reliable interrogator especially on technical subjects, his all-round knowledge of German [making] his services particularly sought after as an interpreter’.6

  Interrogator Randoll Coate, who had a quiet flair and sense of adventure, suggested to Colonel Scotland that at least one interrogator should accompany the clandestine commando night raids into coastal areas of France and Norway, so that any prisoners could be interrogated for swift ‘hot’ information while they were still disoriented and in shock from capture. He was successful in persuading his superior, and so all the now-legendary major raids and their diversionary actions had at least one of Scotland’s interrogators attached to them. These interrogators were an integral part of the perilous night raids on the Lofoten islands (1941), Vågsøy (1941), Bruneval (1942) and Saint-Nazaire (1942), and the German prisoners captured during them were taken back to Britain to undergo detailed interrogation at the London Cage or the CSDIC sites run by Colonel Kendrick. These were high-risk ventures: Antony Terry was captured and remained a prisoner of the Germans for most of the war; later released from a German POW camp, he returned to work as Scotland’s deputy at the London Cage.

  Randoll Coate

  Randoll Coate served as an interrogator from the beginning of the London Cage in 1940 until 1944. Born in Switzerland in October 1909 to British parents, he was educated at the Classical College in Lausanne and Oriel College, Oxford, where he read French and German. He was fluent in German, French, Dutch and Italian and travelled widely in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. By profession he was a journalist and commercial artist. After the outbreak of war, the Coate family sold the house in Lausanne and returned to Britain. Coate noticed an advertisement in The Times for people fluent in languages and replied. He subsequently turned down a job in Romania and trained at the officer training unit at Weedon. Although he was offered a commission in the Tank Corps, he declined and was commissioned on the General List instead, ‘specially employed’. He joined No. 8 War Intelligence Course at Swanage and then transferred to the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section at No. 2 Eastern Command cage at Hounslow.

  On 15 July 1940, he joined the Intelligence Corps and was posted for interrogation duties at the London Cage. Coate accompanied the commandos on a number of raids and was able to question prisoners shortly after their capture. In December 1941, he took part in Operation Archery against the German garrison on the island of Vågsøy as a Combined Operations raid by the Marine Commandos, Royal Navy and elements from the Norwegian forces. Their aims were to capture enemy troops and equipment, destroy industrial plants (including fish oil factories), seize documents and codes, and arrest collaborators. Several ships were successfully sunk and a number of shore facilities destroyed. At least 98 prisoners were taken, 64 collaborators captured and 154 enemy killed. The commandos suffered 17 dead and 54 wounded. On return to the home port, the main priority for Coate was to make sure he disembarked with the prisoners quickly, to avoid any delay in interrogation that could reduce the intelligence value of any material or prisoners captured.

  The following year, in April 1942, Coate was selected to take part in Operation Myrmidon, an abortive raid on the Adour estuary in south-western France.7 He sailed with his group of commandos to the mouth of the Bordeaux estuary. Their objective was to sail up to the town in landing barges, inflict as much damage as possible on the German garrison, take prisoners for interrogation and return to ship. A major Naval Intelligence mistake meant they did not realise that the sandbar at the mouth of the river was so high at that time of year that the naval destroyer could not cross it, and even the troop landing craft could go no farther. The operation had to be abandoned.8

  By 1943, Coate was busy interrogating prisoners at the London Cage, lecturing to various army groups on interrogation and the morale of the German forces, and attending intelligence meetings at the War Office. His advice and analysis were based on the results of interrogations of over 10,000 German prisoners of war by MI19 at various cages around Britain. In 1944, he was posted from the London Cage to the Middle East Forces, where he was tasked with acquiring intelligence on the German presence in Greece; it is now thought that he was working for SIS. While Coate was in Cairo, it was decided that he should be sent to Bari on a parachute course. He obtained his parachute wings, but his first operation into Greece was by boat. After landing, and unsure of who he was, the partisans nearly shot him as a German spy; with the aid of a small Greek medallion, he was able to convince them otherwise.9 Later, Coate was posted to Rome and was eventually discharged with the rank of honorary major in April 1946.

  Maurice Cornish

  Captain Maurice Frank Cornish was described as ‘a sound interrogator and successful with the difficult sort of prisoner of war’.10 According to records at the Military Intelligence Museum, he served with the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), MI19 (Prisoner of War Interrogation Section) and possibly the Special Operations Executive. He was commissioned on 7 June 1941 and ‘specially employed’ with MI19 from 1942 as an interrogator with a mobile unit of the CSDIC in the Western Desert. On 29 June 1942, he was captured by the Germans in North Africa. It is possible that he managed to escape, because he was mentioned in records in 1943, again as ‘specially employed’. Nothing else is recorded about his wartime activities, except in an account by Colonel Scotland in his book The London Cage about how Cornish was sent to Moscow to interview Nazi war criminal Scharpwinkel about fifty Allied prisoners of war who had escaped from Stalag Luft III and who had been summarily executed by the SS and Gestapo after their recapture. On the recommendation of the director of the Politica
l Warfare Executive, Cornish was decorated with an MBE in 1946 for ‘gallant and distinguished service whilst a prisoner of war’.11

  Hans Kettler

  Born in Germany, Hans Kettler arrived in England in 1925 and studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge. On 2 March 1942, he was commissioned into the Pioneer Corps. Six months later, on 20 September 1942, he transferred to the Intelligence Corps and was posted to the London Cage as an interrogator. In the summer of 1944, he was listed as a captain on a regular emergency commission, still at the London Cage. Matthew Sullivan, MI19 interrogator at Latimer House and Wilton Park, wrote:

  No one was physically touched [at the London Cage], but it could be a traumatic experience for a burly submarine petty officer or an SS corporal to be confronted hour after hour by the diminutive Major Kettler, with his slightly deformed body, boring into him with his quick mind and dynamic energy.12

  The prisoners nicknamed him der Giftzwerg – ‘the poison-dwarf’. The toughness of certain prisoners was matched with equal toughness on the part of Kettler. Facing a prisoner who had clicked his heels and proudly saluted ‘Heil Hitler!’, Kettler responded: ‘Jetzt sind Sie der Amboss, und ich der Hammer’ (‘Now you are the anvil, and I am the hammer’). Strong, die-hard Nazis were said to quail before him. Kettler had great professional pride and ‘would rather break his heart and his larynx than fail to break a man’.13 When Kettler finished an interrogation, he apparently threw off the seriousness with a flippant laugh, leaving a subdued – if not bewildered – prisoner staring after him.

  After the war, he was promoted to the rank of major, on a short service commission to the sister interrogation site at Bad Nenndorf in Germany. He was granted the rank of honorary lieutenant colonel in 1954, when he relinquished his commission. Kettler was regarded as ‘outstanding in his rough treatment of prisoners’.14 As a historian and writer, he published a book in 1943 called Baroque Tradition in the Literature of the German Enlightenment, 1700–1750.

  Theodore ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff

  Theodore Xenophon Henry Pantcheff, known to his contemporaries as ‘Bunny’, was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps on 7 March 1942 and was ‘specially employed’ from the following month. His wartime career thereafter was relatively unknown and shrouded in secrecy until the London Cage files were declassified. He was described as a naturally gifted investigator.15 He probed the planned mass escape of prisoners from Devizes, the murders at Camp Comrie, the Channel Islands atrocities and the Wormhoudt massacre. Following the liberation of the Channel Islands in Operation Nestegg (1945), Pantcheff was involved in investigations into civilian collaboration with the Germans. From 1948, he was employed by SIS.

  Antony Terry

  Antony Frederic Aime Imbert Terry, nicknamed ‘Afie’, was born in north London in 1913. A journalist, he had spent most of his life outside Britain, growing up in pre-war Berlin where his father was attached to the British Embassy. This gave him an invaluable knowledge of pre-war Germany, as well as of the inner workings of the Nazi military and civilian regime.

  Terry was commissioned on the General List in July 1940. British intelligence files described him as ‘bi-lingual German with good French, a highly efficient interrogator, a first-class office organiser and gets on well with all contacts’.16 A rather enigmatic man, Terry was of slight build and was known for his nondescript dark suits; these features enabled him to blend into a crowd. It is unclear when he transferred from the General Service Corps to the Intelligence Corps, but from the London Cage he was temporarily attached to Combined Operations for the raid on the dry docks at Saint-Nazaire on 28 March 1942.17 Terry was reported missing afterwards. His bravery in action meant that he was immediately awarded the Military Cross in absentia.18 The citation was signed by Lieutenant Colonel A.C. Newman, VC, military commander of forces at Saint-Nazaire. Part of it read:

  Capt. TERRY started with the very definite disadvantage of taking part in an operation in which all ranks had been very highly and strenuously trained, whereas he had had no training whatsoever. To say that he stood up to the very gruelling operation without flagging would be an understatement; for his actions from the moment of setting foot on French soil until taken prisoner, some ten hours later, were outstanding. Captain TERRY displayed courage, great initiative and was, at all times, of great assistance to me. On one occasion during the street fighting in the town of SAINT NAZAIRE, Capt. TERRY went off alone to find out what was the position with regard to the enemy in the adjacent streets. At great personal risk, armed only with a revolver and showing total disregard for his own personal safety, he carried out this reconnaissance, bringing back the most valuable information of the actions and whereabouts of the enemy. It was only when all ammunition had been expended and with a great many seriously wounded, the Headquarters Party, with Captain TERRY, were taken Prisoners-of-War.19

  As a prisoner of the Germans, Terry was sent to a POW camp for three years where he put his journalistic skills to use running a clandestine newspaper and keeping the whole camp informed of developments in the war. On his release from captivity at war’s end, he was posted back to the London Cage with the rank of major. There he became Colonel Scotland’s deputy and interrogated high-ranking Nazi war criminals, compiling evidence for the war crimes trials.

  Kenneth Morgan

  Born in Gloucester on 30 March 1912, Kenneth Morgan was fluent in French and German, having obtained an MA in Modern Languages from Cambridge. On 1 September 1940, he transferred to the Intelligence Corps and attended the nineteenth security course at the School of Military Intelligence at Matlock, Derbyshire. From October 1940 until February 1942, Morgan served in 21 Field Security, attending four months of officer training at Sandhurst. He then attended a one-month German interrogation course in Cambridge. From 15 December 1942, he was ‘specially employed’ and transferred to the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section with the rank of lieutenant, later captain. Morgan looked steelier than he was, being ‘the gentlest of the London District Cage interrogators’.20 An insight into what Morgan felt about his job at the London Cage is offered in former MI19 interrogator Matthew Sullivan’s book Thresholds of Peace:

  I found it harder to get my blood up than ‘Scottie’ [Colonel Scotland] who was motivated by past experiences or Kettler who had his own reasons for enjoying these battles. A whole submarine crew would suddenly arrive, just fished up out of the sea. Living comfortably in London, it was a real emotional strain to make oneself hard, to work oneself up into the required state of anger or annoyance. Fortunately for me, other methods were also necessary: jigsaw work on the small details picked up in an interrogation or scrutinised out of the prisoner’s papers; or playing on some factor like a man’s family situation or his Christian background, appealing to something sentimental in his nature.21

  Campbell Macintosh

  Captain Campbell Dundas Macintosh was commissioned into the Intelli-gence Corps in October 1940 and began work with MI5 at Camp 020, the camp for captured German spies.22 His work involved interrogation and eavesdropping on prisoners’ conversations,23 and he was particularly engaged in the case of Dutchman Charles Albert van den Kieboom, a German spy who landed with three other agents near Dungeness in September 1940. Van den Kieboom was taken to Camp 020, where he refused to be ‘turned’ as a double agent and was hanged at Pentonville prison on 17 December 1940.24

  In October 1940, while with B8L,25 Macintosh interrogated another German agent, Karl Theo Druecke, one of three agents who had landed on the coast of Banffshire the previous month. He also refused at Camp 020 to become a double agent, and he and another member of the party were hanged on 6 August 1941 at Wandsworth prison.26 From Camp 020, Macintosh transferred to the London Cage as an interrogator.

  Arthur Ryder

  Major Arthur Ryder was attached to the London Cage as an interrogator from 12 January 1945. He already had a distinguished record as a military security officer in the period leading up to and during the campaign in north-western Europe, includin
g work in Belgium. He played a considerable part in assisting the Belgians to establish their security services by providing training and advice, which led to him being honoured as Chevalier of the Belgian Order of Leopold II with Croix de Guerre and Palm. He was also mentioned in dispatches in November 1945.27 He was ‘a painstaking interrogator who is successful with the more ready and willing prisoner’.28

  Working with the Americans

  After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941, America entered the war on the side of Britain. It was just a matter of weeks before US personnel began to arrive in England, and with them officers of the newly established intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA). They were posted to a number of clandestine sites run by British intelligence and assisted in the interrogation of enemy prisoners of war.

  By 1942, the Joint Intelligence Committee and MI19 had agreed to share intelligence with the Americans, including interrogation reports. They liaised directly with Mr Whitney Shepardson and Mr Maddox of the OSS.29 Colonel Scotland was responsible for training US interrogators, and he used a pool of his interrogators as instructors across various sites. But his treatment of Allied personnel was just as brisk and efficient as his treatment of prisoners. A team of American intelligence officers arrived with their commander at Wilton Park, Beaconsfield, another MI19 site. The loyalty of the American commander, who was of Italian-American origin, came into question when he was overheard informing Italian prisoners that they were not to give any information to British officers. Word got back to Colonel Scotland, who immediately left for Wilton Park and called the American commander to a meeting. Scotland did not mince his words as the commander stood before him, refusing to give any explanation for his action. ‘I shall dispense with your help,’ Scotland told him. ‘You can take back your troops to wherever they came from.’30 The American intelligence officers were paraded before Scotland, instructed as to why they were being sent away, and ordered to ‘Quick march!’ That was not the end of the matter, though. Scotland’s unauthorised dismissal of the American unit led to his being hauled before Colonel Conrad, commanding officer, for a dressing-down. But age and experience as a soldier carried little weight with Colonel Scotland, who ignored the reprimand.

 

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