The Hornet's Sting (4 page)

Tommy had to think quickly. He could give Meinicke false information about the sea depths around Fanoe and Esbjerg, but this could easily be checked and he would soon be found out. If he wanted to solve the mystery of the installation, he would have to cooperate. Besides, it wouldn’t be much of a betrayal. The so-called secrets of the channel could be found in any copy of
Danish Harbour Pilot
, the bible of the Danish Navy, so Sneum was sceptical that the Germans had encountered any navigational problems: he strongly suspected this was a test; and if it was, he didn’t intend to fail. But he still felt uncomfortable as he studied the map and finally opened his mouth.

‘The trick is to approach from here,’ he said, pointing to a specific coordinate. ‘Only start to sail east when you reach this point. The channel is deep enough there to take even the biggest of your vessels.’

‘Just draw it for me, would you, Sneum?’

Feeling like salt was being rubbed in his wounds, Tommy duly obliged, trying to think of the intelligence he might one day glean in return for his cooperation.

‘Well, now we know, Flight Lieutenant,’ said Meinicke with some ambivalence. ‘Thank you. I’m sure that will make life much easier.’

Both Sneum’s character and the waters around the west coast of Denmark suddenly seemed much easier for Meinicke to fathom. So he suggested that his young Danish friend might want to meet some Abwehr (German Intelligence) officers, who were now firmly established in Copenhagen’s Hotel Cosmopolit. Tommy didn’t know how to react as Meinicke penned a note of introduction. The German explained that it amounted to a reference and could open doors in the capital, should Tommy so desire.

Most Danes with Allied sympathies would have come up with an excuse to steer clear of such a snake pit. ‘But I always liked to do what was least expected of me,’ Sneum explained years later. So, within a week, he travelled to Copenhagen for an informal meeting in the bar of the Hotel Cosmopolit. He quickly persuaded the occupiers that his loyalties were now firmly with them, and that he was keen to be of service. Over a casual drink, he was asked his opinion on a number of issues, including the strategic importance of various airfields in Denmark. Tommy defended his actions later, insisting:

As the evening gathered pace, Tommy took his new acquaintances to an illicit drinking den he knew, hidden away in the cellar of a nearby tobacconist’s. Ove Petersen, who owned both businesses, illegal and legal, took Sneum aside and told him in no uncertain terms that he feared the consequences of this impulsive visit. Now that Tommy had shown the Germans his secret bar, right across the road from their Intelligence Headquarters, Petersen was worried that he would either be closed down by the occupiers or branded a traitor by the locals. Sneum assured him that neither would happen, since the Germans were far too fond of their beer to eliminate such an inviting option. He also argued that it would be perfectly patriotic for Petersen to welcome the occupiers, because he intended to mislead them on certain key issues. Tommy told his friend that if the Abwehr officers seemed interested in someone as a potential source of intelligence, he would raise questions about the contact’s sympathies. Meanwhile, if a loyal Dane’s behavior had aroused suspicion, he would allay the Germans’ fears.

Although Petersen understood the logic, he still looked relieved when they all left in the early hours, with the drunken Nazis barely able to climb the stairs. And he was not too thrilled to see the process repeated several times in the following weeks, until the sudden appearance of Germans in his little den became almost routine.

Later Tommy revealed that throughout this time he was walking a tightrope with his new acquaintances: a single verbal slip could have led to his imprisonment, deportation or worse. He insisted: ‘I kept conversation down to small-talk. I was never so inquisitive that they could be suspicious. I just talked and talked. Now and again I came in with a question that could mean nothing but could mean a bit. You had to show the Germans you were pro-German. Once I had done that, some of the Abwehr even told me where they were going and where their troops were.’

After a few weeks of these exchanges, Tommy returned to Fanoe and took a stroll one summer’s evening down the Western High Street of Nordby, with Meinicke and his adjutant walking on either side of him. They were spotted by two of Sneum’s friends from childhood, Hugo Lee Svarrer and Jens Nielsen. Tommy smiled as they passed. The Danes’ greeting was not so warm: ‘They spat at me,’ Tommy revealed later. ‘And one said to the other: “That fucking German-loving swine.” When you hear something like that, it hurts.’ At the time, Tommy was too shocked to react. Though they probably hadn’t understood the Danish words, the Germans were certainly left in no doubt about the sentiment, and they remained silent for some time. Then Meinicke gently began a conversation on more trivial matters, almost as though the incident had never happened. But Sneum would never forget the exchange, and he vowed that one day those former friends would have to apologize for what they had done. He recalled when that moment finally came: ‘Soon after the war, I was at a hunting-club dinner and they came up to my table and said: “We feel terrible about what we said that day. We didn’t know any better.” I forgave them.’ At the time, however, there was nothing Tommy could do but play up to his new reputation for treachery. ‘Some of the Germans took me around the port of Esbjerg not long after that incident, and I went drinking with Luftwaffe officers. I think many more Danish people despised me when they saw that.’

But eventually, after all the abuse and accus, Tommy struck gold. ‘I got to know an
Unteroffizier
—a sergeant major—who was very fond of his beer; a big, friendly fellow. He used to go to a restaurant near the ferry port in Nordby. I went down there, bought him a drink and we started talking.’ After several bottles of beer and some meaningless chat, Tommy saw that his drinking partner was sufficiently relaxed to allow the conversation to be steered in a specific direction. What followed stuck in his mind for the rest of his life.

Sneum asked: ‘Are you afraid of the British coming here, bombing us, because of the installation?’

‘They’d never reach us,’ said the
Unteroffizier
with another swig. ‘We’d be able to see them coming from far away if they brought ships.’

‘Surely you can’t see them any further away than the normal range of binoculars,’ replied Sneum, as innocently as he could.

‘Yes, we can. We’ve got special technology,’ said the German, with a touch of arrogance.

‘Does that mean you can also see aircraft?’ asked Tommy, knowing he was taking a bigger risk with every question.

‘Naturally,’ replied the
Unteroffizier
casually.

Sneum thought he had better express relief at this news, though that was far from what he was feeling. ‘My heart was beating very fast after what I had been told,’ he said later. ‘I knew that the British had to try to put this new technology out of action. Because, if the Germans were to be warned by the installation at Fanoe about British planes coming their way, that same warning would immediately go out to all the stations in southern Denmark and northern Germany. Nothing would be able to come in unobserved.’

B
Y THE END of the summer of 1940, Else Sneum knew she was pregnant. She was only twenty-three, and her striking features were lit by a new excitement. The pretty brunette clearly felt ready for motherhood, though she was much less willing to accept some of her husband’s new habits. Hunting by day and boozing by night, Thomas Sneum seemed far less attentive than he had been before they were married. Else told him that his priorities would have to change now that she was expecting their first child.

When the couple had tied the knot on April 17 and walked down the steps of Copenhagen’s spectacular Radhus (Town Hall) to cheers from friends, Else had known that their life together would be far from perfect. The blend of Italian Renaissance and medieval Danish architecture had provided a dramatic setting for the ceremony; but with the Nazi occupation barely a week old, there would be no honeymoon. Else accepted that, and she didn’t even seem to mind living with Tommy’s parents on Fanoe for a while, although the arrangement afforded the newly-weds little privacy. But she wanted Tommy at least to try to act like a loving husband to compensate for the awkwardness of the situation. Thus far, he hadn’t done so.

And, as her pregnancy progressed, Else gradually realized that he never would. For Tommy was rarely in the family home in Nordby long enough to make t relationship feel like a true marriage. He didn’t want to feel married, and craved the freedom he used to enjoy. The idea of being a parent at such a young age didn’t thrill him either. Only the war captured his imagination; and to get involved in that war he needed to be out and about. Back at the house, his father Christian did little to help ease the family tension: ‘My father liked Else because she flirted with him. My mother disliked Else intensely for the same reason.’

But it was Else’s father, Carl Jensen, who had created many of the problems they now faced, for he had forced Tommy to go through with the wedding in the first place. Jensen, a good-looking salesman of newspaper advertising space, was never going to give Sneum an inch once he realized the young couple were sleeping together. ‘He was a fucking shit,’ his son-in-law said, still bitter half a century later. Jensen had reacted with horror when a tearful Else had told him, the day after the invasion, that Tommy was already talking about trying to escape to England so that he could fight against the occupiers. Confronting Sneum hours later, Jensen warned him that he wasn’t about to allow a flashy flight lieutenant to leave his daughter in the lurch and make a break for the bright lights of London.

Sneum recalled:

‘Her virginity?’ I asked.

‘Oh Christ, yes!’ responded Tommy enthusiastically. ‘Anyway, Else’s father told me this: “I don’t like you. I think you’ve led my daughter astray and I don’t want you in my family. But you’ve compromised her and now you’re going to make a respectable woman out of her. If you don’t ... well, the consequences for you don’t bear thinking about.” So I married his daughter,’ concluded Tommy simply.

There were some advantages to this arrangement, though. At least the marriage would briefly take Tommy’s mind off the humiliation of having been a member of an armed service that had refused to fight. It also gave him some cover because the Germans would be less likely to suspect a newly married man of planning to escape to England.

Jensen probably thought he had won the battle of wills with his son-in-law through basic blackmail. Sneum knew differently: ‘The wedding didn’t make any difference. I had made up my mind to go to England and I didn’t think I would ever be back, so it was all the same to me. Otherwise, I would never have married Else, because we were getting tired of each other. It was her family who put enormous, stupid pressure on us both.’

Even as Else had made her way down those Radhus steps on April 17, her new husband had been distracted—although, unusually for him, not by another beautiful woman. He noticed uniformed Germans in the Radhuspladsen, moving confidently among the wedding guests, as though this were their own capital. The cheers for the bride were almost drownut by Nazi propaganda as Danes sat silently on benches and listened dutifully. Tommy hated what he saw. The Radhus, with its 350-foot tower, was an impressive venue, but there had been more romantic weddings in Copenhagen’s history.

Five months later, with his wife now pregnant, Tommy felt that everything was moving too quickly. Though the couple had enjoyed some good times, he knew he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with Else. He loved all women, not just one, and most seemed to love him in return, even though he was too short to be considered classically good-looking. And he had sought the company of women long before his father acknowledged his adolescence by trying to teach him the facts of life. ‘I’ll never forget his opening line,’ remembered Tommy, smiling affectionately at the memory. ‘He began: “I suppose you have heard some dirty stories.” And I had, so it wasn’t too bad a start. He went on to tell me that I should always please the woman before I pleased myself, and I think that was a good lesson to learn.’