The Spy Net (5 page)

V
AN BERGEN AND
his organisation had been arrested by the Germans, and although Morreau’s train-watching posts at Brussels, Namur and Liège were then still functioning, together with some other independent posts of ours, we had to replace our losses and also increase the number of our posts, as we knew that the span of life of each of our organisations was strictly limited. The Germans kept making arrests and each agent was in continual danger of the firing-squad.

When, therefore, directed by one of our frontier agents, I received the visit of an emissary from Belgium under the assumed name of St Lambert, who said that he represented
a large group of patriots in the interior desirous of organising an espionage service in the occupied territory, my enthusiasm knew no bounds. Here was half the work done; I only had to supply the
tuyaux
, or passages at the frontier, furnish the money, and send the necessary instructions in as to the kind of information required.

The more we talked, the more enthusiastic I became. It was explained to me that the group in the interior was made up of intellectuals: college professors, professional men, bankers, and a sprinkling of the Belgian nobility. Already in my imagination I could see this super-service working. I was getting ready to dismiss St Lambert with instructions to meet me again in the afternoon, when suddenly he shot at me, ‘There is one condition however; they insist on being enrolled as soldiers before they commence work.’

I looked at him in blank amazement, even though I could understand the desire. Every agent in the interior was serving his country, incurring even greater risks than the soldiers in the front line; they were facing danger alone, without the beat of drums, without any means of self-defence, without uniforms, without even the pageantry and excitement of war. But, for the moment, the demand seemed quite impossible. How could the War Office make British soldiers out of Belgian subjects? How, even, could the Belgian authorities do it, when it would be far too dangerous to send the names out across the frontier? Above all, how could either of them make women soldiers? – for there were several women in the group.

I was on the point of voicing my sentiments openly, when I noticed the look of expectation and determination on St
Lambert’s face. I parried by asking him how he thought it could be done, and how he thought the oath of allegiance could be administered?

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘The War Office will have to find the formula. My instructions are to take the matter up with the Belgian authorities in Havre, if I cannot get satisfaction from you.’ I knew that even if the Belgian military command were to accede to their request, the Belgian secret service could not supply them with a safe means of communication at the frontier. I doubted whether the Belgian service was getting any information at all out of Belgium at that time.

Never in my life have I been afraid to make a rapid decision. I have ever been a gambler, ready to take a risk if there is something big to gain by it. I knew that here was the chance of building up the organisation I had dreamed of, but that I would have to make a promise which, perhaps, I couldn’t keep, or which, perhaps, would get me into trouble. I told St Lambert that I would communicate with the chief in England, and that within a day or two, I would give him a reply.

It was useless for me to refer the matter to higher authorities; I knew that even if the War Office was willing to grant their request, it would be necessary to get the consent of the Belgian government, and that many useful months would be lost. The next day, at peace with my conscience, I told St Lambert that their request had been granted, and that he could write a letter to this effect, which I would cause to be delivered to any address he indicated in Brussels or Liège.

After the Armistice, it took a great fight to make good my promise. Later on, it will be told how this was achieved. Their
eventual militarisation was a just reward for the splendid services they rendered.

St Lambert, an engineer and executive in one of Belgium’s biggest engineering works, was an intelligent man. There were many questions he could have asked me; he could have embarrassed me by demanding guarantees or an official letter from the War Office. He was a practical man, however, whereas he had told me that the leaders of the group in Belgium were idealists. I think he realised the audacity of their demands, and having obtained a favourable reply from me, he was glad to let the matter drop. He wrote the letter I requested, gave me two contact addresses, and left for Havre to place his services at the disposal of the Belgian government. He kept the promises I exacted from him; he never mentioned the matter to a soul until after the war.

Our first message contained St Lambert’s letter, instructions as to the sort of information required, suggestions as regards organisation, and the sum of £500 for preliminary expenses. We instructed our courier to make his own arrangements with the letter box, or contact man, in regard to the days and the time he should pick up the reports.

We received a prompt reply, containing some military information and a promise of train-watching posts at Liège, Namur, and Brussels. We were also informed that the organisation would be called
La Dame Blanche
, after the legendary White Lady whose appearance would herald the downfall of the Hohenzollerns. The name was appropriate, for they certainly did their share in contributing to the defeat of the German Army, and ultimately to the abdication of the Kaiser.

The organisation developed rapidly. In a brief time, there
were close upon 200 agents enrolled in this organisation. At its head were two leaders: one Walthère Dewé a brilliant engineer, formerly in the employ of the Belgian government, and the other Herman Chauvin a college professor. There was no need to tell these men how to organise. They had lived in contact with the Germans for nearly three years, and knew the danger they were running. They realised the importance of organising their service on our basis of independent and isolated nests. They studied the methods and movements of the German Secret Police, and were able to outwit them at every turn.

With Belgium covered so efficiently by
La Dame Blanche
and our other organisations, it was not long before we were established in the occupied territory in France. For two years, none of the Allied services had received any reports from this area so close behind the Front.
La Dame Blanche
did their work well, and soon the first reports on the important Hirson–Mézières artery commenced to come in. Colonel Oppenheim was elated; it thrilled me, too, to read the copy of his telegram to GHQ reporting the first troop movements through Hirson. Once again, we got a telegram of congratulations from GHQ, which we transmitted in code to the interior.

We now had three independent passages at the frontier connected with
La Dame Blanche
, and these we safeguarded night and day. The electric wire, the German sentries, and the German Secret Police – these were the enemies we were ever watching, watching so that we could slip the reports through right under their noses. We were handicapped by the fact that at the frontier of Belgium, we were forced to use Belgian peasants of a mental capacity far inferior to our agents in the interior; the Germans
would have been suspicious of any other type, and besides, the peasants in tilling their soil, had an excuse to approach the wire. But the difficulties we faced made the game more exciting; it was a case of the fox and the hounds.

La Dame Blanche
organisation was ever growing in size; like a great octopus, it was spreading its tentacles over the whole of the occupied territory, including both Belgium and France. Its need of money kept growing. The train-watchers and other agents had to be on duty night and day, and most of them had families to support. We were now sending in to
La Dame Blanche
about £10,000 each month, not counting the
tuyaux
, or men at the frontier, whom we paid separately. This money was sent in chiefly in the form of 1000-mark bills, but even in this large denomination, it meant passing 200 bills each month; this meant bulk, and bulk meant danger, when one ran the risk of being searched at any moment. There was a danger, too, of tempting the peasants at the frontiers. We were entirely in their hands: if they chose to steal the money, we had no means of redress; they could even plead innocence, blaming one of the many others through whose hands it had to pass. But the loss of the money was the least annoyance; we were afraid that because of theft the
tuyaux
men might cease working. We were very fortunate, however; we knew most of the money got through, for
La Dame Blanche
acknowledged receipt of each sum.

Our three
tuyaux
functioned smoothly for almost a year; then, suddenly, the men at one of them were arrested. They had probably aroused suspicion by approaching the wire too often. We were able, however, to warn
La Dame Blanche
in time, so that their courier could be kept from making contact with the
tuyau
,
and as his identity was not known to the frontier men, no further arrests were made. The Germans captured the last batch of reports, which were at the frontier ready to be passed. This meant no direct danger to
La Dame Blanche
, as everything compromising was in code, but by the bulk of the reports, it warned the Germans that there was a huge organisation functioning in the interior, and this meant increased surveillance.

By far the biggest annoyance to us was the fact that most of the money had been sent in through this particular tuyau.
La Dame Blanche
immediately proposed to us that for the time being, they should borrow money in the interior from a banker who was one of their members. Once again, I took prompt action; without referring the matter to London, and thereby avoiding a waste of valuable time, I told them to go ahead. £30,000 was borrowed in this way before we could send money in regularly again. As with the militarisation, the chief in London, once again, helped me to fulfil my promises after the Armistice. He transferred the money to me in Brussels, in 1919, and I was able to write a cheque out to them for the sum, repaying in full the amount borrowed.

A few months before the big German offensive in 1918,
La Dame Blanche
added one more extension to their organisation – the development of a group of agents in the Valenciennes section of occupied France. Here an old Allied service had functioned in the earlier stages of the war, in 1915, but had lost contact with Holland. It was now resuscitated, and was able to send us train-watching and
promeneur
reports of the greatest value during the last stages of the war.

The final development in the
Dame Blanche
service was an attempt at establishing telephone connection with us in Holland.
But for the Armistice, this would have been achieved; it would have been a crowning triumph added to the already brilliant successes of this magnificent organisation. One of the chiefs, a professor of physics at one of the Belgian universities, knew, from his familiarity with electricity, that if the earth is used as a return circuit in a field telephone installation, messages could be intercepted by another similar installation, with its connecting wire running parallel to that of the first. He had also discovered that in the Maastricht sector of the Belgian–Dutch border there was a spot on the river separating the two countries where, because of the water, there was very little surveillance; 100 yards of wire could have been run underground between two cottages on the Belgian side; and on the Dutch side opposite there was a big estate owned by a man who was very pro-Belgian, and who was willing to allow the second line and set of apparatus to be installed there, with prying eyes kept away from it.

I knew the installation would work, for we had intercepted German messages in this way at the Front, when the distance between our trenches and those of the Germans was much greater than the distance between the proposed two wires. Furthermore, our lines would be parallel, an ideal arrangement for interception. No time was lost in developing this scheme, and telephone apparatus had already been dispatched to us from London, when the Armistice brought an end to hostilities.

No account I can give can render adequate justice to the splendid achievements of
La Dame Blanche
. They were
undoubtedly
the finest espionage organisation created in the occupied territory. The information they sent us was of priceless value to the Allies; again and again telegrams of congratulation from GHQ
bore this out. Prior to the big German offensive, which broke in March 1918, their train-watching posts, over fifty in number, gave all the troop movements through all the junctions in Belgium, and through many in occupied France. Their
promeneurs
, especially those of Fabry in the Avesnes area, signalled the massing of troops in their neighbourhood – proof positive, to my mind at least, as I identified division after division, detraining there, and marching there from other sectors, that it was from this sector that the big German offensive was to be launched.

La Dame Blanche
owed its success, first of all, to the genius of its two leaders, a professor and an engineer; secondly, to the discipline which it was able to secure through its militarisation; and finally to the splendid calibre and intelligence of its agents drawn from the Belgian intelligentsia. After the Armistice, the two chiefs, Dewé and Chauvin, were decorated with the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire), military division, and the remaining 1,000-odd agents received lesser awards from the British government.

I cannot close this chapter without some reference to Dieudonne Lambrecht, hero and martyr, whose organisation in the early months of the war was the nucleus around which grew
La
Dame Blanche
, or the ‘White Lady’.

On a hill-side which dominates the city of Liège, lies the suburb of Thier-à-Liège. Here in one of those small brick houses with low, violet-tinted, slate roof, and diminutive garden, so typical of the area, Dieudonne Lambrecht was born on 4 May 1882 and grew to manhood.