Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service (13 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
In these circumstances there was but one thing to do – leave the island as quickly as possible, if it were not too late. True, there was no evidence that I had been engaged in espionage, since I had not entered any of the batteries or taken notes or photographs; but I was carrying identity papers that would not bear too minute a scrutiny. If these were found to be irregular, that fact, coupled with my presence in a fortified zone, would be quite sufficient to ensure my being detained, pending further inquiries; and if my movements during the previous fortnight were traced – as probably they would be – the authorities would have convincing, if only circumstantial, evidence of what my activities connoted.
The position looked critical, and I set my wits to work. If I attempted to leave the island while the detective remained suspicious he would probably detain me, in which event I should certainly be taken to the mainland to face a searching examination by higher police officials. On the other hand, to remain at Wangerooge would be purposeless. The third alternative was to attempt a bluff, which, if it failed, would leave me in no worse case than before. So I retraced my steps to the village, made for the nearest café, and ordered a beer. In a few moments my faithful shadow appeared, took his seat a few tables away, and ordered a similar refreshment. The time had come to try my bluff.
Glass of beer in hand, I crossed over to the detective’s table, and, with a polite ‘
Sie gestatten, mein Herr
?’ seated myself opposite.
He grunted permission, watching me with puzzled eyes. He did
not seem over-burdened with intelligence, but I was not going to fall into the error of under-rating my opponent.
‘Pray forgive me,’ I began, ‘but I have an idea that you are interested in me. May I ask why?’
This direct attack disconcerted him. He was momentarily at a loss, and continued to stare hard at me without speaking.
Then he said gruffly, ‘Your papers, please.’
I had been hoping for this, and at the same time fearing it. I handed them over in silence.
He glanced through them, then put one or two questions that showed he had missed the one or two vital details that, to a mind more acute, would have suggested a doubt as to the genuineness of the papers. My relief was great, though the ordeal was not yet over.
‘They seem to be in order,’ he remarked, still retaining the papers. ‘But the hotel clerk thought you were a foreigner.’
‘That’s not surprising. I have lived abroad for a great many years, and am now on a holiday before settling down again in the fatherland.’
At this juncture my companion condescended to accept a drink – a good sign. He was gradually thawing, but, as I could see, was not yet entirely satisfied. I discovered that he belonged to the Hamburg police. He frankly admitted that he was at Wangerooge to keep a look-out for spies.
‘Have you caught any yet?’ I inquired blandly.
‘We keep our eyes open,’ he answered evasively. ‘It doesn’t do for visitors to be too inquisitive in a fortified place like this. We don’t want any Englishman spying round.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you haven’t answered my first question. Why were you particularly interested in me?’
‘I had reason to be when the hotel man said he thought you were
a foreigner, although using a German name. Foreigners are not welcome here, and if they choose to come they cannot complain if we see they don’t get into mischief. All this coast is infested with English spies.’
We talked for half an hour quite amicably, but at the end of that time I was still not sure that his suspicions were allayed. I could do nothing more, and finally left him, saying that I wanted a walk before catching the steamer back to Harle. This sailed at 6.30 p.m., but I knew that the NDL boat from Norderney to Bremen called at Wangerooge about 4.30 p.m., and had privately determined to leave by that – always assuming I was permitted to do so.
Calling at the hotel to collect my rucksack, I mentioned that I proposed to catch the Harle steamer. Then I set out for the beach again, and, once clear of the village, increased my pace, keeping parallel with the shore.
Having gone about a mile, I stopped and glanced back. There were several people near, but my friend the detective was not among them.
The pier was now only a mile away, and the Bremen boat was not due for another hour. So I remained where I was until the last fifteen minutes, still seeing no sign of my ‘shadow’, and then walked briskly towards the pier. Five minutes after I got there the steamer came in, and I went on board with a crowd of passengers. The boat did not cast off at once, and the ten minutes she remained alongside were rather trying. But the detective did not make his appearance, nobody took the slightest notice of me, and eventually we were off.
At Bremerhaven, which we reached after dark, I had another mild scare, for there were two policemen on the dock when the gangway was lowered. But apparently they were not there for any
special purpose, and did not attempt to come on board. We arrived at Bremen towards 11 p.m., and I just caught the last train to Hamburg, feeling safer in that great city, with its large transient population.
I have no doubt that the Wangerooge detective went to the pier to see me off by the Harle boat, and that when I did not show up all his former suspicions were re-awakened. But whatever steps he may subsequently have taken were ineffectual, for I was not interfered with in any way. Nevertheless, he had interrupted my programme and forced me to withdraw from the coast.
Three months later I was back again, and this time made a thorough job of it, visiting Wilhelmshaven – the main German naval base, with a dockyard four times as large as that at Kiel; Heligoland, where I obtained a close-up view of the four double 12-inch-gun turrets and the mortar battery on the
Oberland
, besides inspecting the new harbour works and naval establishments; Cuxhaven, with its naval station at Groden, the sea forts of Neuwerk, Kugelbake, and Grimmerhorn, and the batteries at Neues Fort and Döse – most of which were within plain view; Brunsbuettel, at the North Sea entrance of the Kiel Canal, to see the gigantic new locks then in course of construction, the new 6-inch gun battery, and the near-by fort of Neufeld; Geestemünde, a big submarine mining depôt at the mouth of the Weser; and, finally, the island of Sylt.
I am revealing no secret when I say that our war plans visualised an attack on Sylt, either as a feint in the hope of enticing out the German fleet, or as a serious assault intended to give us possession of the island for use as a base for military raids into Schleswig-Holstein.
I spent a week at Sylt, and was able to make a detailed report
not only on the defences then existing, but also on those that were projected. Indeed, reports compiled from the data on the German North Sea coastal defences, which I collected that summer and autumn, made up a respectable volume that, if it were published, would even today cause a sensation in Germany and lead to violent heart-searchings on the part of many German officials – assuming them still to survive – under whose very noses this mass of information had been gathered.
CHAPTER 11
N
EXT TO THE
Dreyfus affair, the outstanding cause célèbre connected with espionage in modern times was undoubtedly the Brandon–Trench case of May 1910. Many other incidents of the same kind occurred in Germany during the four years just preceding the war, but none caught the public interest to an equal extent.
At that time a violent epidemic of spy mania was raging in Germany, and it is probably safe to say that not one in a dozen of the suspects who were arrested had any association with British intelligence work at all. Yet these unfortunate people served England well, if inadvertently, because while the German security department was occupied in tracking these quite unimportant visitors it was overlooking the men who really mattered to us.
At their trial before the Supreme Court at Leipzig in December 1910, Captain Bernard Trench, RMLI, and Lieutenant Vivian Brandon, RN, admitted freely that they visited Germany with
the intention of collecting information on military matters and communicating the results of their investigations to the naval intelligence department at the admiralty.
That is a point that is often forgotten in connection with the trial, and a legend has grown up that the two officers were innocent victims of spy mania.
Their own story, as told at the trial, quite disposes of that idea.
Captain Trench, speaking German quite easily, said that he had been seconded for a period in Copenhagen to study Danish. He had then been joined by Lieutenant Brandon, and between them they had planned a tour in Germany, visiting Kiel, Cuxhaven, Bremen, Heligoland, Norderney and other islands of the same group, and finishing up at Borkum.
The arrangement was that they should meet at Brunsbuettel, at the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal. At that place Captain Trench received from his companion a list of questions, which he answered, with regard to certain small quick-firing guns. On his way to Bremen
via
Bremerhaven he inspected the position of the fortifications at the mouth of the River Weser and then proceeded to the island of Sylt. Subsequently he spent two or three days in Norderney and thence visited Wangerooge.
‘What was interesting there?’ asked the presiding judge.
‘There is a church tower at the end of the island, which seems curious, as that part of the island is uninhabited,’ Captain Trench answered.
He and Brandon visited Borkum together, and on the way to inspect the searchlight station they became separated. Captain Trench entered one of the batteries without hindrance. When he came out he met Lieutenant Brandon, whom he told to go in and have a look. This the lieutenant did, and was arrested.
Captain Trench was not detained at that time. The two officers were allowed by the police to meet. They talked, it appeared, about the battery and how the information they had gained was to be passed on to ‘Reggie’. Furthermore, incriminating papers were seized in Trench’s room at a hotel in Emden, whereupon he, too, was arrested.
Several mysterious figures were referred to in the course of the evidence, of whom ‘Reggie’ was one.
Lieutenant Brandon said that this was not his friend’s real name, but Captain Trench admitted that ‘Reggie’ was connected with the intelligence department of the British Admiralty. (It may be mentioned as a curious coincidence that the director of naval intelligence during the war was Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, but his nickname in the navy was not ‘Reggie’, but ‘Blinker’.)
Although neither of the accused would disclose the actual identity of ‘Reggie’, they were very frank about him in other ways, admitting that his private telegraphic address was ‘Sunburnt, London’, and that they had asked him to meet them at Delfzyl, just across the border in Holland, at the end of their visit to Borkum.
Another mystery figure was ‘Charles’, whom Lieutenant Brandon claimed was himself, while a ‘John Birch’ mentioned in their correspondence was claimed by Captain Trench as his own alias.
One of the disclosures that caused most sensation in Germany was a statement by the accused that the British Admiralty possessed a ‘Naval Baedeker’. This book was stated to be a private compilation, available only to naval officers, containing information about the German coast and coastal defences.
Some idea of the class of information contained in it was disclosed in the course of the evidence.
Thus, Lieutenant Brandon was, admittedly, a surveying officer in the British Navy, and he had with him at the time of the visit to Germany photographic and surveying instruments. Captain Taegert, IGN, the expert called for the German government, said that the notes found in the possession of the accused contained information about the length and width of landing stages and depth of water at Sylt, Amrum, and other islands. Notes made by Captain Trench were read out in court, but with certain figures and names omitted. One memorandum read as follows:
Breakwaters, coal sheds, coal stores here. There are no cranes. Railway lines by bridge. Bridge x yards long x yards wide. Cement wall all round promenade. Wells in all villages. Indifferent roads. White reefs not visible at flood tide.
In regard to Wangerooge there was a note in Lieutenant Brandon’s writing:
Landing piers x high, x long, x broad. Milk and eggs come from the mainland. Only five buildings on the west side. Seen no building that can contain mines. The beacon furthest out is occupied and has telegraphs.
An interesting point developed in regard to Wangerooge. The German expert declared that the notes on the fortifications there were a most serious matter, as they were treated with the utmost secrecy officially. Lieutenant Brandon countered this by claiming that his attention was drawn to the subject by an article in a German paper, which he had read in London.
Captain Taegert also pointed out that at Cuxhaven the accused
had taken angles from a dyke, with two churches on the mainland and the position of the fortifications entered on the map in accordance with these observations. Captain Taegert added that he had examined the measurements and found them extraordinarily accurate.
On the sketches dealing with Heligoland, he continued, the quick-firing battery was marked, with measurements of the distances between some of the gun positions. The distances from the extremities of the batteries to the lighthouse were also measured. Further, the gun positions on the south-east and north-west were accurately sketched.
The contention of the defence was that the soundings taken around Sylt and other Frisian Islands were intended for public admiralty charts, issued for the use of pinnaces and other small craft belonging to British warships that visited German North Sea ports in time of peace.
Captain Trench said that his report on Cuxhaven was actually compiled in England from the ‘Naval Baedeker’, and Lieutenant Brandon stated that he had a list of questions to answer with regard to that place. It was not compulsory to answer any of the questions derived from the ‘Naval Baedeker’. Officers who travelled could answer them or not as they chose.
To this defence the prosecution replied, through Captain Taegert, that English warships had never entered those waters in time of peace, and consequently there could be no object in compiling notes for the purpose alleged. In landing operations, he declared, Sylt would become of prime importance as a
point d’appui
, and the landing stage on the island had been measured and photographed in great detail by the accused. They had, moreover, noted the shallows while bathing.
Counsel for the defence suggested that the measurements of depths made in this way could be of no importance, as the tides were not taken into account. Captain Taegert could not agree, pointing out that the measurements were not merely estimated, but were actually taken.
From the final speeches for the prosecution it became clear that the idea that all this information was collected with a view to facilitating a sudden British naval attack on the German North Sea coast had been impressed on the court during one of the sittings held in camera. For political reasons, most of the proceedings took place in public; indeed, the imperial prosecutor had asked at the first session that this should be so. But on the morning of the second and last day of the trial there was a lengthy secret sitting, at which military and general staff experts gave evidence.
It was noteworthy that the prosecution throughout treated the accused with marked mildness, and did not press for the full rigour of the law. Indeed, in his final address to the court, Dr Zweigert, the imperial prosecutor, said that the fact of the prisoners being foreigners who had acted in the interests of their own country, under the direct orders of the intelligence service, might be regarded as extenuating circumstances. The accused had denied the imputed connections, but counsel thought they had done so from honourable motives.
The circumstance that they had never sought to induce Germans to assist them, and had made a partial confession, also mitigated the gravity of the charge. He therefore asked that Captain Trench and Lieutenant Brandon should each be sentenced, not to penal servitude, but to imprisonment in a fortress for six years, two and a half months of the time during which they had been in custody to be included.
The fifteen judges – all robed in long purple gowns with velvet facings, and wearing quaint round purple velvet caps – retired, the president, Judge Menge, leading the way. He was a man of patriarchal appearance, with a flowing snow-white beard.
They were absent for two hours considering their judgment. Dusk was falling in the crowded courthouse as they filed in again. A single chandelier suspended from the high ceiling was the only source of light in the court room as Judge Menge announced judgment and sentence.
The verdict was guilty, and the sentence four years’ detention in a fortress.
It is important to note the difference between penal servitude (a criminal sentence) and fortress detention (an officers’ punishment that involves no professional dishonour). The German law provides that either form of sentence may be inflicted in cases of espionage. That the Leipzig Court chose the milder way, as suggested by the imperial prosecutor, showed that diplomatic considerations had prevailed in the case.
There was a certain significance, too, in the comments of the German papers at the time. On the day after the trial, for example, the
Berliner Tageblatt
said:
The two Englishmen only committed an offence that is regularly committed by numerous officers of all countries, and apart from this their bearing in court left an extremely favourable impression on every one. Having had the misfortune to be caught, they took no trouble to deny what was evident; while at the same time they frankly refused to say anything that would compromise a third person or cause any embarrassment to their own naval authorities. Their attitude deserves all respect. We hope the two gentlemen
will not be obliged to remain in a German fortress too long … and that at some suitable opportunity –certainly not later than King George’s coronation – the remainder of their sentence will be remitted.
This prophecy, if it were not inspired, was certainly a signal instance of intelligent anticipation on the part of the editor. The actual pardon by the Kaiser was delayed until May 1913, and was then granted on the occasion of the visit of King George to Berlin to attend the wedding of the Kaiser’s only daughter.
They had then served two years and five months of the sentence, Captain Trench at Glatz and Lieutenant Brandon first at Wesel and subsequently at Königsberg.
Both officers were actively engaged during the war. For part of the time Major Trench was base intelligence officer at Queenstown, busily occupied in the work of tracking German submarines at sea.
Captain Brandon, as he came to be, was assistant director of naval intelligence at the admiralty in 1918.
There was a world of difference between the Brandon–Trench affair and the next famous ‘espionage’ case in Germany – the Bertrand Stewart episode. In the first-named case the German authorities may be said to have stumbled quite accidentally across the accused. In the second, the alleged spy was the victim of a deliberate plot to entangle him. He was betrayed to the Germans by an
agent provocateur
specially detailed for the work, and, as is made evident by the published judgment of the court that tried him, no actual case was ever proved against him. Mr Bertrand Stewart himself always protested his innocence. Nevertheless, he was condemned and sentenced, remaining in confinement
for rather more than a year before he, too, was pardoned by the Kaiser at the same time as Brandon and Trench.
The Stewart case is a striking example of the perils that surrounded the intelligence agent who was working in Germany. It exposed to public gaze the network of counter-espionage that the German authorities had built up, and it showed how vitally necessary it was for the intelligence man to work almost wholly on his own. If he made any use of outside assistance, if he took information from other people at all, he had to be absolutely satisfied of their good faith before entering into any sort of negotiations with them.
The story of the Stewart case was summarised so clearly in the court’s judgment that it cannot be better told than in these words:
The first thing that concerns us is that he procured the exact address in a small place of a man whom he used as agent for his espionage purposes. He promised this man £100 if the latter declared himself ready to act as agent in the transmission of news, and prisoner eventually adopted a false address where his correspondence could be delivered.
On the evening of 29 July 1911, the accused travelled from London and sought out this agent in Germany. He had a long conversation with him, in the course of which the prisoner handed over to the agent a first payment – namely, £5. On a later occasion he gave him a further sum of £10…
After the agent had again returned to Bremen, on 31 July, about five o’clock in the morning, the prisoner held a long conversation with him in the waiting room, and the agent made him an exhaustive report. Next day the prisoner left Hamburg and visited
Cuxhaven, was also in Heligoland, and then returned via Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven to Bremen.
At Bremen, on the night of 1 August, he had another long conversation with the agent in a waiting room of the railway station. The agent, who likewise had been making inquiries in the meantime, submitted to the prisoner on this occasion a drawing that provided information relating to the preparedness of the German fleet in the North Sea. The prisoner took this report, read it through, and then tore it up and threw it aside.
Shortly after this the prisoner was arrested in Bremen.
Nothing more has been proved against the prisoner in the course of the trial. There has been, in particular, no confirmation in the trial of the rumours that suggested that the prisoner, acting under the orders of the English Information service, had collected important secrets in Germany by bribery. The prisoner’s journey and his transactions were rather the result, as he himself has submitted, of his own initiative…
As far as the verdict is concerned, it may be left an open question whether the prisoner or his agent would in reality have succeeded in determining the disposition of the ships in the North Sea in the summer of 1911. It may also be left an open question what really were the contents of the agent’s report that the prisoner tore up.
