REAL SPY STORIES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 161, 2 April 1919, Page 7

REAL SPY STORIES

—. —* SOME ALLIED EXPLOITS. The agent in practice and tho spy of sensational theory are poles apart. How did tho enemy get' some of his principal information about us in an eastern theatre of war Via some fair cosmopolite with irresistible powers of seduction over general officers commanding, and oarrying a brace of pigeons in her piuff? Not a bit of it! He got it via a Levantine bar-tender, who, by grnoiously condescending to mix a new cocktail in honour of every fresh division arriving in tho country, and christening each cocktail numerically after the division in question, managed to keep up a complete order of battle of our forces in that theatre. I was standing in the bar one night when a young officer came in "and called for "a number ten. 1 '

The 10th Division had landed in the country but a day or two before. Through the indiscretion of a woman practically the whole of an Allied spy system collapsed like a pack of cards in the spring of 1916. The Huns arrested in all sixty-six agents, and military operations were, very■ seriously influenced as a result

"The man who discovers a system of communicating across the lines, since we can no longer communicate ,'ound them, will have won the war as much as any one man ever can win a war," proclaimed a famous general. It wao then that our Boyal Air Force stepped in. One night shortly before the battle of the. Sonime opened, our first spy-pilot flew off carrying a male agent—a Belgian—and a basket of pigeons. The plan was for the pilot to alight on the outskirts of a wood near Ghent, in answer to signals flashed up a chimney by one of our resident a.gents there, anil for him to fly home again as soon as his passenger had been safely landed. The latter v. as then to collect his information and liberate his pigeons accordingly, with messages attached. These messages were to be in clear, not ic code, which could not be trusted across the lines.

Unfortunately on landing the pilot crashed and killed his passenger.- He himself was pinned unde_r the wreckage with a. broken leg. The basket of pigeons lay a yard or two away, out of reach. The Germans would arrive at r.riy moment. Obviously the first thing they would do. would be to take the pigeons to headquarters, whence they would. presently be liberated with messages bearing falsa intelligence—the worst conceivable thing that could happen. The pilot grasped all this and started shouting. Happily he was heard—by an old Belgian woman, who proceeded to release the pigeons. To one of them was attached a staccato version of the tale now. related.

Quite the most interesting spy exhibit must be a copy of the "Etoile Beige," dated early in August, 1914-. It is all covered in grease as if butter had been rolled in it, and the whole centre of it is burned away. It arrived wrapped around a pair of boots carried by a Belgian "refugee" into this country, in the first-weeks of the war.

. Written in invisible "lemon" ink acres all its grease, and carefully leaving off where tho burned hole began and carrying on where it ended is a complete record of all the Hun troop trains, with complement, that passed through Liege up to August 22, 1914.

Its heroic compiler had lain day after day hidden in a culvert by the side of the line, noting his observations.

Picture Point C of the Russian Red Cross on the frozen Bznra in front of Warsaw. Point C consisted of four trains permanently drawn up a mile or so from the line, plus a few tents, and for frigid cheerlessness of natural setting the place stood apart even for desolate Poland. In one particular marquee, known as "the death tent," would ho placed the hopeless, unconscious, dying cases. For the moniik simply refused to die, and wounds that would have proved fatal in the West outriglit often kept victims in the East'lingering for hours and even days. .

On the day of which I write the death tent was packed, most of the forms on the stretchers, emitting 'low, moaning, shivering groans such inter.-, vals bscomiiig longer and lonuer till moans'would bo missing altogether, one by one. Bent over the stove, in the centre of the tent, sat a sister, nun-like, readin" a prayer bnok by the flicker of a solitary lamp.- It was 5 a.m. "Here's some wood, sister. All alone?" :The girl gtfancect a welcome. "Sit down. Yes; always all alone. And thev always give me the death tent. The thanklp-s, awful death tent! Gott!" ■The speaker buried her head in her hands, sighed, then went on: "It's too terrible to think you can do nothing for these poor,tmen. ... I don't believe it! . . . And they won't-let me nurse the others because they say I'm a German." "You are, aren't you At least they always speak it to you." "When they condescend to speak to me at all. Yes,. I suppose, I am German. Anyway, I was born at liiga. There are lots of Germans there, but under Russia. My brother joined the German Army. My father and im'Hier have both been sent to Siberia as 'German hearts.' They wouldn't send me, though I asked to go. They sold up all our home and I had to do something. So I became a nurse. They've made ire the guardian of a morgue, as you see." Just then a particularly long-drawn-out moan echoed across the tent. My companion rose, want ever to the stretcher in question, then slowly shook her head. "That's his last. It goes on all night like this.". ,T\vo months later this German girl was shot for communicating, via a Russian deserter, with her brother in the Death's Head Hussars on Eitel,Fritz's staff opposite, at Lodz. I have a photograph before me of her grave at Point 0. "Major Frnncks*' will be known to most .of the Army in Palestine. "Major Franclcs" was n German officer speaking English, of the English. His mode of operation was simple.

In Palestine the opposing armies were not locked together in trench warfare; rather was it comparatively easy to cross from one line to the other, or, better still, to go round the Hank which ended, "in the air," in the desert. "Trnucks" took full advantage of the fact, and used to spend a fair amount of his time riding about behind our Jiiics, seein? and notina everything and even messing in the distant desert messes.

Once.' when challenged, he put two Australian soldiers under arrest, then rode on.—P.T.