HOW SPIES WORK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1939, Page 4

HOW SPIES WORK

MEMORIES OF THE GREAT WAR WATCHING GERMAN TRAINS. ELABORATE SYSTEM BUILT UP. An attack of measles turned Captain Henry Landrau from an artillery officer in to a Secret" Service agent, states an article in “John o’ London’s Weekly.” Probably it saved his life, too. On the day he was to return to the front after a spell of leave he was taken ill. During his convalescence he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps, and a few weeks later his battery was wiped out on the Somme, every officer being killed. In “Spreading the Spy Net” (Jarrolds) he describes how he was given his orders by a naval officer at Whitehall Court: — “I know all about your past history,” he said. “You are .just;-the man - we want. You are to join T. in Rotterdam, leaving tonight via Harwich and the Hook. Our train-watching service has broken down completely in Belgium and in North-eastern France^—we are getting 'absolutely nothing through. It is up to you to reorganise the service. I can’t tell you how it is to be done — that is yOur job . . . ”

So Captain Landau found himself in Holland, engaged on important work—for train-watching was important work. This was the reason: —

The use of trains by the Germans meant the movement of German troopsand the movement of troops often pres,aged a mass attack. On our information often depended the Allies’ hope of preparing to defend a position or to surprise an attacking force. The Germans never did have enough troops to initiate an offensive on both fronts at the same time, and so each offensive was always preceded by a large transfer of troops from one front to the other.

It was this train-watching system that Captain Landau had to rebuild. He was so successful that during the last two years of the war over 2,000 agents were employed in Belgium and north-eastern France. Between them they accounted for all German east-to-west and west-to-east train movements. Even though there was often a delay of three or four days before the' reports reached Captain Landau in Holland, this was of no importance, because it took weeks for the Germans to concentrate for an offensive. “WHITE LADY” IN ACTION. Brave men and women were needed not only to watch the trains and gather other information, but also to get the reports through to Holland. For a tong time one of the most successful organisations was known as the ‘White Lady.” It was run on military lines, with three battalions centred at Liege, Namur, and Charleroi. Each battalion had a number of “letter boxes” in patriotic houses from the secretariat to the frontier where reports were deposited: — These “letter boxes” and the couriers serving them were kept as completely. isolated as possible. They knew nothing about the service except their own'particular duties; it was forbidden them to try to discover the identity of any member of the service. Each battalion had a secretariat where the reports picked up at the battalion "letter box” were typed out, after they had been scrutinised by the battalion commander. Special couriers carried the reports } 'rom the secretariat to the frontier ’letter box” —the most dangerous of the organisation. Here the duties of the British Intelligence Service began; '.hey had to convey the reports from the ‘letter box” across the frontier —guarded by electric wires—into Holland. There were three chief methods used: “Passeurs,” who could go back and forth across the electric wire on dark lights by means of india-rubber gloves and socks; boatmen, who, though under strict surveillance of the Germans, were allowed to ply their barges all the way from Rotterdam to Antwerp; and farm labourers, who had fields under cultivation bordering the frontier, and who could toss messages across the wire when the sentry was not looking. RIDE ON A TROOP TRAIN. One of the most daring of the "White Lady” agents was Dieudonne Lambrecht. On one occasion, noticing that a large westward movement of troops was in progress, he jumped on to the buffer of a passing troop train, and accompanied it through the night

until he had definitely established its destination: — In addition to this hazardous work, he often acted as his own courier, the most dangerous role in wartime spying. Slipping past the frontier guards at night, and avoiding the revealing rays of the searchlights, he carried the precious reports, written with a mapping pen on fine tissue paper, and sewed into the interior of the cloth buttons on his clothes, through to Holland. Another agent, fearing that his frequent meetings with a confederate, which usually took place during the luncheon hour, would attract attention, eventually handed over his courier duties to his wife: — In her profession of midwife, she had an excuse to travel. The Germans never suspected, as she hurried out on her frequent calls, that the delivery of deadly spy reports, cunningly wrapped around the whale-bones of her corsets, was her special vocation. PATRIOTIC NUNS. A’ number of the best and keenest agents were priests and nuns. Twc nuns stationed at the German military hospital at Chimay often picked up valuable information. There was, for instance, the case of the officer of Prince Eitel Friedrich’s staff, who fell from his horse and broke a leg:— It was while lamenting that he was laid up for “the big push” that he gave away that the great German offensive of March, 1918, was to be launched in the Albert sector . . . This information was valuable corroborative evidence of what we had already deduced from our train-watching posts. On another occasion a gunner, wounded in the hand, was boasting about what the Germans would be doing when they had several hundred guns of the type that had just started shelling Paris: — Soeur Marie-Melanie was immediately all attention. “It seems hardly possible that they can shoot so far,” was her quiet reply. The gunner, seeing no possible harm in this peaceful nun, quickly retorted that he himself had seen the gun in the Laon sector. This was a vague enough indication for the emplacement of a gun, but it was sufficient for the nimble-minded sister .... She passed the news on to a colleague, along with another scrap of information she had picked up from a French refugee from the village of Crepy-en-Laonnois; he had heard rumours of concrete gun platforms and ammunition pits. A man was sent there, saw the monster gun hidden at a farm —and three days later Captain Landau received the news in Holland. INFORMATION FROM DESERTERS. Captain Landau also gained a good deal of useful information from German deserters who made their way across the frontier. One man nervously offered a copy of the latest edition of the German Field Post Directory. I grasped the book, not believing my ears, and hardly trusting my eyes. lam sure that my hand shook as I thumbed its pages. Here was a complete list of every unit in the German army. It was of vital importance to the Allies to know what new regiments, batteries, aeroplane flights, and other units were being formed from time to time; knowing this, they could make an exact estimate of the Germany army. Captain Landau paid the deserter £lOO for this valuable book,