Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service (17 page)

‘In that way,’ Sir Alfred said,

Sir Alfred Ewing also referred to the fact that we took in Schwieger’s triumphant message from
U-20
announcing the sinking of the
Lusitania
.

‘Besides intercepting naval signals,’ he added, ‘the cryptographers dealt successfully with much cipher to Germany’s agents in Madrid, North and South America, Constantinople, Athens, Sofia, and other places. One group of deciphered messages threw useful light in advance on the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, and another on the German intrigues in Persia.

During the war our efforts to decipher enemy codes were facilitated by captures from German ships. The first piece of luck came our way when the German cruiser
Magdeburg
ran ashore in fog on the island of Odenholm in the Baltic. She had to be abandoned by her crew, and measures were taken to blow her up. But, for some inexplicable reason, her confidential books, including signal books and ciphers, were not destroyed. This
could not have been overlooked in the haste of abandoning ship, for the
Magdeburg
’s captain, Commander Habenicht, declined to leave the ship, and was captured by the Russians.

Anyway, the code books fell into the hands of the Russians, who promptly communicated their contents to the British Admiralty, thus enabling us, for some time at any rate, to decode German wireless messages without any trouble.

German submarines now and again sank in water shallow enough to allow of salvage operations. In their case the possibility of destroying the confidential books was small, as will be realised, and from the wrecked hulls we now and again extracted useful papers.
UC-44
was a case in point.

So far as naval intelligence work was concerned, the last three years of the war were almost exclusively concerned with the submarine campaign. Tracking the U-boats was the province of the base intelligence office, but there was also work for men who operated less officially in neutral countries, keeping track of the German agents who were working in the neutral ports to assist the U-boats.

Presumably by this time the venerable legend about secret dumps of petrol is dead, but, lest it should still survive, let us put on record here that all the German submarines from
U-19
onwards were driven by heavy-oil engines, the German Admiralty having obtained as far back as 1911 a satisfactory four-stroke engine from the Augsburg works.

True, the earlier U-boats had Körting engines driven by petrol, but they were soon in a minority in the fleet, and were always disliked on account of the fumes that revealed their presence. Indeed, Spiess says of
U-9
that her exhaust pipes glittered with sparks, and even with flames, which betrayed her presence at
night. Moreover, so far as cruising endurance was concerned, these petrol boats in the winter of 1912–13 had stayed at sea alone for eleven days, without mother ships or fuel ships. So there was never the slightest need for hoards of petrol, in two-gallon tins, in secret islands or lonely coves on neutral shores, for the use of the U-boat captain. And since a moderate-sized submarine carries anything from 50 to 75 tonnes of heavy oil, it will be obvious that a dump of half a dozen barrels would not be any great help. It may be taken as a fact that no secret hoards of petrol for German submarines ever existed: consequently our intelligence officers had no adventures in looking for them.

Von Tirpitz seemed to be under the impression that such secret bases were suspected, and that his agent in Sardinia was interned because he was supposed to be running such a base. But the reason for that gentleman’s internment had nothing to do with petrol. (In the course of the extravagant proceedings in the Aegean and the wild-cat adventures of the self-styled ‘secret service men’ who were let loose on that unhappy area, certain stories about U-boat petrol bases appear to have been circulated – perhaps fomented would be the better word. They were unworthy of the inventive ability of any novelist, and a poor testimony to the professional knowledge of the foreign naval officer concerned in the propaganda.)

On the other hand, supplies of spare parts to replace damaged machinery became indispensable as the U-boats’ radius of action increased. A boat damaged somewhere in the south of the Bay of Biscay, and consequently unable to dive, could hardly hope to get back to her base in the Bight of Heligoland. Repairs had to be effected somehow. Under international law a warship in need of repairs to make her seaworthy may shelter in a neutral
port for twenty-four hours, but no longer. This meant that an efficient shore staff had to be available to lend a hand in getting the work done, and the maintenance of a fairly wide range of spares for any emergency.

We knew where all these repair depots were situated just as well as the U-boat captains, and we, too, had an efficient shore staff ready to lend a hand – to prevent the repairs from being made.

Here is one typical case.

A U-boat operating well out in the Atlantic had a breakdown in the engine room. While the damage was not fatal, it was crippling to her activity, especially if she were harassed by enemy craft and compelled to keep down for too long. The captain and the crew both knew, from experience, what they would have to face on the long journey back, and they could not afford to make too wide a detour, lest the supply of oil fuel ran out. Their expenditure had been calculated to a nicety.

Consequently, unless repairs could be effected the outlook was gloomy. So the submarine stood in towards the neutral coast and wirelessed her needs to the local German agent. The submarine expert on the spot knew exactly what was wanted, but he had not got that particular spare part in stock. Nor could he procure it anywhere in the port. It would have to be sent from another German depot in another part of the country.

It was useless for the submarine to come in under the plea of stress of circumstances unless the repair could be carried out within twenty-four hours. So, after much wireless conversation, it was arranged that the U-boat should remain off shore for a few days until the required parts could be obtained.

All this time our intelligence men in the port were on the
watch. They knew something of what was toward, and they guessed most of the rest. Their essential task was to keep in touch with the German submarine expert ashore and to learn what he was doing. By means that need not be detailed, this was soon known to us. The problem then before us was how to trap the submarine.

Two days later the German submarine came into harbour, where her captain formally applied for permission to remain twenty-four hours, to effect the repairs necessary to make her seaworthy. He was rather surprised at the coldness of his reception. The local authorities had a reputation for being pro-German, or so the German agents had always reported. What he did not know was that the chief of the port had received very urgent instructions from headquarters, forbidding on this occasion any deviation from the strict rule. And those instructions had been originated by diplomatic pressure from the British side.

There was perturbation at the German headquarters at this development, for the submarine commander had come into harbour twelve hours earlier than they had expected him. In point of fact his crew had got more than a little nervous at remaining in the same area so long, for they quite expected to be attacked by some of the Allied patrol craft, or possibly blockaded in the neutral port.

What had happened was that the German repair party had arranged for the wanted parts to arrive that afternoon by train, and they had not looked for the submarine until next day. It was going to be a strenuous business to get the work done, even if the train came in punctually.

Actually, it arrived two hours late. Then there was a great scurrying of the German agents to get their goods unloaded.
They had previously used a great deal of palm oil to facilitate matters.

But the vans with the precious parts were not on the train!

The air was thick with guttural curses as the Germans tore frantically up and down the train, cross-examining employees of the railway. The head of the British intelligence branch in the port, who happened to be passing that way – quite by chance, of course – smiled to see the commotion, and went back to his office quite satisfied with his after-lunch stroll.

It was a most hectic afternoon for the Germans. They made telephone inquiries all up and down the line, but could not trace the missing wagons. These had apparently vanished into thin air.

A very crestfallen group sat in conference on board the U-boat that night. It was impossible to replace the missing fittings within the fifteen hours that remained. The crew could not face the trip home without the security of being able to dive and stay under when emergency arose.

In the end the U-boat captain went to the port commander and told him that, as the repairs could not be completed within the specified twenty-four hours, he would have to offer himself and his boat for internment. And interned they stayed for the rest of the war.

What had become of the missing wagons?

It was quite simple. Knowing as we did what the wagons would contain, it was necessary to see that they did not arrive. So, while the train was being made up in the goods yard of the town from which the parts were being despatched, two British agents, with a thorough knowledge of the customs and regulations of that railway line, were working there. They found the two wagons – and rubbed out the destination marks they bore. Then
they chalked other destination marks on the wagons, and those destinations were right away on the other side of the country.

The goods-yard superintendent in that distant port was puzzled at receiving two wagons that he knew nothing about. He shunted them into a siding, and then began a correspondence about them that may be going on to this day.

That same country, though not the same port, was the scene of another railway comedy.

In the tower of a house near the seaboard, the German secret service had a wireless installation that they used quite openly to communicate with their submarines. We repeatedly made formal protests to the local authorities, but without effect. There were many influential German sympathisers along that stretch of coast. The officials were quite polite to us, but they professed themselves unable to do anything. At last, however, we persuaded headquarters to move. The local people were peremptorily ordered by the government to dismantle this wireless station forthwith, in view of the evidence received as to its existence and purpose.

The Germans were quite unmoved by the decision. They had l aid their plans to meet just such an emergency. All they had to do was to despatch the entire equipment by train a little further along the coast, into another province where a fresh set of local authorities would be concerned – and the game would begin all over again.

But they had reckoned without the British intelligence service.

The wireless station was dismantled and the parts loaded on the train for despatch, according to plan. The train left the goods yard according to timetable. And that was the last ever seen of that German wireless equipment. As the train rumbled
on through the night, two British agents who had hidden themselves on board broke open the crates and scattered the gear all along the lines, in the ditches and the fields and the ravines through which the railway ran.

It is to be feared that they also dealt in the same unceremonious way with the body of the German who was travelling in charge of the gear. When the need arose, secret service work was not conducted in kid gloves by either of the opposing parties.

That much is made evident by another story, this time from the United States.

Before America came into the war it was, of course, the business of her authorities to see that none of the interned German ships got away to act as a commerce destroyer. But we were able to give them a good deal of help in the work, owing to our specialised knowledge of the personnel and methods of the Teutonic war organisation ‘behind the lines’ in the United States.

Of the score or more of German liners that had voluntarily interned themselves in New York Harbour on the outbreak of the war, at least six proposed to get away if they could. Arrangements had been made by German agents for these vessels to meet, at a rendezvous off Virginia Capes; a camouflaged German ship would supply them with guns, ammunition and other requisites for their mission as commerce raiders.

In point of fact, none of those German ships ever did leave the Hudson River until they were impounded by the United States in 1917.

It is popularly supposed that the reason why this great fleet of German liners lay quiescent in American harbours for more than two and a half years was the presence of British cruisers off the North American coast. That those ‘distant, storm-battered ships’
of the King’s Navy were partly responsible for the immobilisation of Germany’s large potential fleet of commerce destroyers is indubitably a fact; but while the outer seas were held by our cruisers, there was an inner guard, invisible but unsleeping, which kept the imprisoned ships under constant observation.

It would have been perfectly easy for any one of those liners to get to sea at night or during foggy weather, but for several inhibitive factors.