Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service (11 page)
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Authors: Hector C. Bywater,H. C. Ferraby
Tags: #Autobiography, #Military, #World War I, #Memoirs, #True Crime, #Espionage, #Engineering & Transportation, #Engineering, #History, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Naval, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Politics & Government, #Specific Topics, #Historical
CHAPTER 9
E
LSEWHERE IN THIS
book allusion is made to the frequent and severe epidemics of ‘spionitis’, or spy fever, that ravaged Germany in pre-war days. There is no doubt that the bacilli were cultivated and sowed broadcast by the government, which found these recurrent espionage scares very beneficial to their grandiose naval plans. The newspapers, with a few honourable exceptions, did their utmost to create the impression that Germany swarmed with foreign spies, the majority of whom were working for England; yet, as we have seen, the actual number of British agents regularly doing naval intelligence work in Europe was very small. They could have been enumerated on one hand, leaving a finger or two to spare at that. These men must not be confused with the amateurs – both officers on leave and civilians – who tried to pick up naval and military information on their visits to Germany.
It is a noteworthy fact that not one of our permanent intelligence men was ever caught by the German authorities in peacetime. One or two of them had narrow escapes, as we shall see; but in no case could sufficient evidence be gathered to justify an arrest. This circumstance speaks volumes for the discretion with which they carried out their duty. Although infinitely more circumspect than the German emissaries operating in England, they nevertheless garnered ten times as much information of real value. The comparative immunity they enjoyed reflects no small credit on the methods of the British secret service as a whole.
Incredible as it may sound, the life was often monotonous, and even boring. An agent might spend days or weeks following up a promising clue that eventually turned out to be worthless; or, having picked up in an hour some item of news that seemed of vital importance, it might take him a month of travelling and tedious investigation to verify it, for mere rumours or doubtful information were not welcomed at ID headquarters. Only facts were wanted there, facts that would bear the test of expert scrutiny.
In this, as in every other profession, the zealous beginner was apt to take his calling too seriously.
Unless of very exceptional calibre, he spent the first few months discovering mares’ nests, traversing ground of which his predecessors had explored every inch, and filling the capacious waste-paper baskets at headquarters with reports that would have been obsolete a year back. But this phase soon passed, and with it any incipient temptation to emulate the stage effects of the ‘shilling-shocker’ sleuth.
There was no scope for histrionics. Disguises were sometimes
worn, but only as an extreme measure. The one indispensable piece of camouflage was a legitimate occupation that could be made to account for every overt form of activity that the real work in hand might entail.
In addition to the technical knowledge that was a
sine qua non
, a command of the language of the country was essential. The best agents were of necessity good social ‘mixers’, for this quality enabled them to mingle freely with all sorts and conditions of people, and thus gave them many opportunities of picking up news that they would otherwise have missed.
Steady nerves were, of course, a great asset, for the secret service man was liable at any moment to find himself in an awkward situation that demanded perfect coolness and presence of mind if the coils were not to close round him. Yet the very nature of the work imposed a constant strain on the nervous system. One of the best men we had in Germany suffered badly from neurasthenia, but still contrived to carry on and, indeed, to perform several daring exploits while his malady was at its height. He found excitement an excellent palliative while it lasted, though the reaction was always severe.
Secret service is a popular theme with writers of fiction, but since none of these appears to have had personal experience of the subject, their impressions are more diverting than instructive. We have been fortunate in persuading a former member of the service to give us, in outline, an account of his work in central Europe over a period of about six months. This we believe to be the first authentic narrative of its kind ever published. Our informant, it should be added, was in quest of naval intelligence only. Actual dates are omitted, but the year was 1912. We present the story in his own words.
On returning from London to my
pied à terre
in Germany, I spent some days on paper work, and then proceeded to Danzig, which had not been visited for some time.
Information was wanted about the battleship
König Albert,
building at the Schichau yard, and the battlecruiser
Ersatz Kaiserin Augusta
(
Lützow
), on the stocks at the same yard; the submarines in hand at the government dockyard, and seaplane trials at the Putzig naval aerodrome.
It was cold as only Danzig can be. I put up at the ‘
Reichshof
’, and spent the first day in paying one or two genuine business calls, being careful to let the desk people know where I was going.
On the second day the usual batch of mail arrived for me. This further established my respectability with the hotel people and, of course, with the police, who in every German seaport were known, at that time, to take a special interest in English visitors.
A word of explanation about this ‘usual batch of mail’. I made it a practice, before paying a professional visit to any city, to arrange for the forwarding of certain letters that both outwardly and inwardly confirmed the ostensible purpose of my visit. If those letters were intercepted or otherwise tampered with, their effect would be to dispel any suspicions that may have been harboured by the authorities. It was a very simple precaution, but I always found it effective.
To gain access to the Schichau yard was easy enough. I went in with Jacobs, a Pole, whom I knew to be trustworthy. He was an electrical fitter, and was then working on board a cargo steamer that had been built by the firm. I was able to make a close inspection of the
König Albert
. She had her guns in position, but was less advanced than we had believed.
The battlecruiser was on the main building-slip, having been laid down in the previous autumn. She had been reported to us as
being almost a replica of the
Derfflinger
– of which we had pretty full details – and her appearance, although the hull had not been entirely plated up, confirmed this.
Altogether I spent three hours in the yard. The risk of detection was small. At that time the shipyard staff numbered nearly 3,000, as a large amount of work, both naval and mercantile, was in progress.
I did not notice any special precautions against unauthorised sightseeing. Every workman was supposed to show a card on entering the gates, but nine-tenths of them ignored this formality.
Access to the government dockyard was more difficult. Situated north of the city on the western bank of the Vistula, it is rather isolated. There is a ferry service between the dockyard and the ‘
Kaiser-hafen
’ on the opposite bank, but I thought it unsafe to use this. A general view of the yard could be obtained from the little steamers that run between Danzig and Neufahrwasser, but the submarines, which I particularly wanted to see, were built on covered slipways roofed with glass.
Eventually I did get in, and had a good look at four submarines on the stocks and two that were in the fitting-out basin; but it was exceedingly risky, and I cut the visit as short as possible.
The facts I memorised on this occasion cleared up a number of points on which our people had been doubtful. Some confusion as to the actual number of boats completed and building at any given date was caused by the practice of sending to Danzig dockyard, to receive confidential items of equipment, boats that had been built and engined at the Krupp-Germania yard in Kiel. Conversely, Danzig-built submarines were sometimes sent to the Germania yard for machinery overhaul. But from January 1913 we had a system by which the number of ready and building submarines could be checked once a month.
I next went to Zoppot, a pleasant bathing-beach north of Danzig. On the outskirts of this place was the Putzig naval flying station. I saw six seaplanes exercising, and made notes on the hangars, shops, and oil tanks. By this time I had been long enough in the district, and judged it advisable to cancel an intended visit to Elbing, where the Schichau firm had another big yard that specialised in destroyer construction. So I returned to Berlin and spent a couple of days in collating my notes and writing reports. The memorandum on the submarines was much appreciated at headquarters.
A special journey to Munich, to meet a man – a Czech – who was employed at the big Skoda plant in Pilsen (Bohemia), which made all the guns and armour for the Austrian Navy. This man had been named to me as a likely correspondent. Our negotiation was satisfactory, and I provisionally engaged him. He turned out to be a treasure, for besides sending in good reports himself, he put me into touch with a friend at Pola who was very useful when I visited that Austrian naval base.
From Munich I went to Düsseldorf. The attraction here were the Ehrhardt gun shops, which were building 3.4-inch and 4.1-inch guns for new cruisers, besides some experimental light guns for submarines.
There were absolutely no precautions here, and I not only visited the shops, but also obtained some exact details of the work – partly from the workmen’s bench cards, and partly by other means.
From Düsseldorf to Essen. Here I had a bad disappointment, for a correspondent whom I had deemed reliable failed to turn up at the rendezvous. He had promised to accompany me to the Krupp shops where the new 12-inch fifty-calibre guns were being machined. After waiting an hour, I thought it best to leave Essen
at once, as his absence was suspicious. I never heard from this man again, but as there were no unpleasant developments, it was probably a case of ‘cold feet’. However, I avoided Essen for several months after that.
As the weather was now warmer, I went to the neighbourhood of Kiel. Stayed there a fortnight, but not in the town itself. Visited the Howaldt and Krupp-Germania yards, getting a glimpse of new submarines at the latter, but found the government yard too closely guarded.
This trip was undertaken mainly with the object of securing submarine data, and in this respect it was most successful. I found a delightful spot a few miles north-west of the entrance to Kiel harbour, where the U-boats came out to do diving practice. Several days were profitably spent here.
I discovered, among other things, that the German boats were sluggish in diving compared with ours, and took nearly a minute longer to submerge. The boats appeared to be handled with extreme caution, probably due to the scare that had been caused by the sinking of
U-3
in January 1911. It was clear that submarine training was being conducted on ‘safety first’ principles.
The Kiel visit provided material for a very long report.
My next journey was to the North Sea coast. I saw the battleship
Grosser Kurfürst
at the Vulkan yard at Hamburg, and inspected a sister ship, the
Markgraf
, on the stocks at the Weser yard in Bremen. These inspections, I may add, always revealed interesting points, but they would not interest non-technical readers.
At the Blohm and Voss yard in Hamburg a very thorough survey was made of the battlecruiser
Derfflinger
, the first of the 12-inch gun type.
Passing this yard in one of the excursion steamers that do the
‘
Hafen-Rundfahrt
’ trip, I had a mildly humorous interlude. Our guide was a large, pompous person who declaimed in a loud voice on the marvels we were witnessing. When the
Derfflinger
came into view I pointed at her, and innocently asked ‘whether it was a torpedo boat’.
The guide nearly had apoplexy:
‘
Ein Torpedo-boot! Herr Gott
! Why, that’s a battlecruiser, the largest in the world!’
He was so appalled at my ignorance that from then on he insisted on giving me details of every ship we saw. Unfortunately, they were all wrong. But I did not enlighten him.
An excursion from Hamburg to Cuxhaven resulted in material for a good report on the local minesweeping flotillas. The battlecruiser
Von der Tann
was anchored off the port, and I determined to visit her, though the risk was considerable.
By a stroke of luck I found that a local shipping man, to whom I had a letter from a mutual friend in Berlin, knew several officers of the ship, and had visited them on board. He was going again, and by very tactful manoeuvring I got him to invite me to accompany him. We went across in a launch, but on arriving at the ship’s ladder I remarked to my companion that, being a foreigner, I might not be welcome on board. He then spoke to the officer of the watch, who was one of his friends, explained who I was (or, more strictly speaking, who he thought I was), and I was promptly invited to come up. We spent two hours in the ship, and saw nearly everything except the inside of the gun turrets and the engine room.
Judged by British standards she was terribly cramped. The mess decks were low, stuffy, and overcrowded. Lieutenants and junior officers berthed four to the cabin. Every piece of furniture in the ship was made of metal. It was easy to see that she was very
strongly built. Each of the 6-inch guns was completely isolated, and could only be knocked out by a direct hit. I memorised all the important details, and subsequently wrote an elaborate report on the ship. This was the first German battlecruiser to be personally inspected by a British secret service man.
From Cuxhaven I went to Heligoland, then back to Berlin to meet two correspondents who brought ‘highly important’ news. On examination I found that we had known it six months before.
My next journey was to Vienna, where I wished to make certain contacts before beginning a tour of the Austro-Hungarian bases. Called at the headquarters of the Austrian Navy League, and was not surprised to find the principal organiser a German.
Then to Trieste, to look at the battleships building at the Stabilimento Tecnico. Here there were no precautions whatever, and I spent two days in the yard.
From Trieste to Pola, the chief naval harbour. Here things were run more on Prussian lines: sentries all over the place and dockyard strictly guarded. Admiral Anton Haus, the Minister of Marine, was convinced that there were two hundred Italian spies in Pola. I met a correspondent of strong Italian sympathies. He was a shipwright, and gave me a mass of information about the four Austrian dreadnoughts,
Viribus Unitis
class. According to him, they were of inferior design and deficient in stability; moreover, the workmanship put into them was bad. I was inclined to doubt this at the time, but it may well have been true, for in the last year of the war the
Szent Istvan
of this class foundered after being hit by one small torpedo.
I got some interesting impressions of the Austro-Hungarian naval personnel. The bluejackets were a heterogeneous crowd, speaking half a dozen tongues or dialects, Italian predominating.
They did not make a good appearance, and were lacking in discipline. The absence of
esprit de corps
could almost be felt.
The officers were more like military men than sailors – very arrogant towards their men. I did not need to be told that cases of insubordination on the lower deck were very frequent. After observing these conditions at first-hand, I was not surprised when the
Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine
soon began to crack under the strain of war. On the other hand, many of the officers were fine fellows, Admiral Horthy, in particular, being a leader of whom any country might be proud.
This trip was extended down the Dalmatian coast to Cattaro, where the fortifications were inspected. This was the base from which, during the war, the Austrian cruisers raided the Otranto barrage. It was also the headquarters of German U-boats working in the Mediterranean.
Back to Vienna and Berlin, and thence to England on a fortnight’s leave. The rural peace of the West Country was a much-needed sedative for frayed nerves.
Broke the return journey at London for a conference, at which I received further instructions.
Kept an appointment in Berlin, and then proceeded to Kiel, for inquiries into submarine engines and other matters.
Then to North Sea coast again for a tour of the islands – Sylt, Heligoland, Wangerooge, Norderney, and Borkum. The incidents of this trip would make a story in themselves. As it was undertaken at a time when Germany was in the throes of spy fever, and the islands in question were considered to be of great military importance – ‘the fatherland’s natural rampart against English attack’, as the German Navy League phrased it – the utmost care was necessary to avoid suspicion.
In the foregoing brief account of six months’ work I have said nothing about thrilling episodes. But from time to time they did occur.
On one of my trips to Berlin I kept an appointment with a correspondent who had previously given me a considerable amount of useful information. Although German by nationality, he had a Polish mother. He was highly intelligent, but most excitable, and I had always foreseen trouble with him.
On this occasion he came to the meeting place in a state of extreme nervous tension. The police were on his track, he assured me, and he had been shadowed for several days. He also believed that his correspondence was being opened. He lived in fear of arrest at any moment. He could not sleep, and he was drinking too much. So he had made up his mind to go to the police and confess.
By implicating me he expected to get off lightly, as he knew the authorities would consider me a valuable catch. It was something in his favour that he had come to warn me of what he proposed to do. Had he gone to the police first I should have been caught red-handed, for they would naturally have instructed him to pass incriminating documents to me before they came to make the arrest.
Even as things were, it was an awkward situation. Schneider, as I will call him, was in that condition of extreme fear that makes the veriest poltroon take desperate risks if he sees the faintest chance of saving his skin. I argued with him for a long time, assuring him that his fears were baseless, and pointing out that even confession would not save him from a stiff term of imprisonment. But it was all in vain. He was going straight to the police, and no one should stop him.
