Secret Warriors Read online

  Also by Taylor Downing

  Night Raid

  The World at War

  Spies in the Sky

  Churchill’s War Lab

  Cold War (with Jeremy Isaacs)

  Battle Stations (with Andrew Johnston)

  Olympia

  Civil War (with Maggie Millman)

  The Troubles (as Editor)

  SECRET WARRIORS

  The Spies, Scientists, and Code Breakers of World War I

  Taylor Downing

  For my grandfather

  William Forward John Downing

  Who operated a Vickers machine gun in the First World War

  and survived

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 New Century, New World

  Part One – Aviators

  2 The Pioneers

  3 The New Science

  4 Observing the War

  Part Two – Code Breakers

  5 Room 40

  6 The Great Game

  Part Three – Engineers and Chemists

  7 The Gunners’ War

  8 The Yellow-Green Cloud

  9 Breaking the Stalemate

  Part Four – Doctors and Surgeons

  10 The Body

  11 The Mind

  Part Five – Propagandists

  12 The War of Words

  13 The War in Pictures

  14 Masters of Information

  Epilogue – The First Boffins

  Who’s Who of Secret Warriors

  Acknowledgements

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Illustrations

  Prologue

  Soon after midnight in the early hours of Tuesday 5 August 1914, the captain of the CS Alert, a cable-laying ship moored at Dover harbour and owned by the General Post Office, received the special coded telegram he had been expecting. He immediately ordered the Alert to slip out of harbour and head north-east. In the early dawn, the captain drew up the Alert in the grey waters of the North Sea a few miles off the German port of Emden, near that country’s border with Holland. It was only about six hours since Britain had formally declared war on Germany at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Berlin. Having taken up his position, the captain of the Alert ordered the ship’s grappling equipment to be dropped into the murky waters. The crew of the 1000-ton cable ship were highly skilled in laying and maintaining the undersea cables which, since the mid-nineteenth century, had crossed the bed of the oceans to link continents via telegraphic and, more recently, telephonic communications. They knew exactly how to find the cables to repair them. But this time the vessel’s mission was destructive. Although the Alert was a civilian ship, the captain was about to engage in an act of war.

  After a short period of dredging along the bottom of the sea, the grappling hooks were hauled to the surface bringing with them giant strands of thick, insulated cable that flailed like giant, underwater snakes. Dripping with water and covered in mud and seaweed they were dragged on to the deck of the Alert. The crew sawed and hacked the cables, breaking through them, and then tossed them back overboard into the sea. They then repeated the whole process on four further cables, dragging on board and cutting each one before throwing the ends into the sea. The operation, which took about four hours, was fraught with danger for the unarmed British vessel. The captain and lookouts scanned the horizon for any sign of German ships coming out to see what was going on. As the dawn became brighter the sea grew rougher and a heavy rain squall passed over the ship.

  The captain of the Alert was carrying out Britain’s first offensive act of the First World War. The five German cables that ran across the North Sea and down the English Channel linked Germany with France and Spain and then went out into the Atlantic to Africa and the Americas. They were now severed. Germany could no longer send telegrams or cables to its colonies or to the United States. Cut off from the US and much of the rest of the world, the country’s telegraphic links were now limited to its immediate neighbours across land borders. Berlin had lost its top secret communication link with the new world. From now on, any communication would have to be via radio. And there was one major problem with sending signals by radio. Anyone with a receiver could also tune in and listen to them. This would have significant consequences as the war progressed.1

  Just over a week later, at dawn on 13 August, another group left Dover. On this day it was the turn of the aviators of the recently formed Royal Flying Corps. For the first time, Britain was sending aircraft to war to accompany its ground troops. It was a chance for the youngest addition to the military to prove itself. Among the small group of fliers gathered was Captain Philip Bennett Joubert de la Ferté. Just twenty-seven years of age, he was typical of the first wave of military fliers. He had been in the artillery when he heard about the formation of the Royal Flying Corps and was one of the first officers to join. He had to pay to learn to fly himself (with his father’s support) as the army did not then have funds available to train pilots. Joubert quickly took to flying, although the aircraft were so light and fragile that they needed a lot of care. Most flying took place in the early dawn before the wind had got up and Joubert, like most pilots, had experienced the embarrassment of actually being blown backwards when trying to fly into a strong wind. On one flight he had ended up seven miles behind his point of take-off. When war was declared, Joubert was in command of ‘C’ Flight in 3 Squadron, flying a French aircraft built by the Blériot company.

  For the journey, Joubert, like most of the other pilots, was accompanied by his mechanic. It was the quickest way of transporting to France the men who were essential to keep the aeroplanes flying. Joubert was briefed at about 5.30 a.m. and given maps of France and Belgium and sealed orders. When he opened them, the orders contained details of his destination. Along with the others, Joubert was given a revolver, a set of field glasses and a spare pair of goggles. The mechanics were issued with a tool kit. Emergency rations of biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a pack of soup concentrate were handed out in a haversack. Advance parties at Dover had acquired a large number of cast-off inner tubes. Each man carried one of these, to be inflated if the aircraft came down into the sea and used as a makeshift lifebelt. But the pilots’ instructions were to ascend to 3000 feet before starting their Channel crossing so if an engine failed they should have enough height to glide across the Channel. There was no planned sea rescue.

  The people of Dover cheered as Joubert and his fellow pilots climbed into their aircraft on the hills above the cliffs dominating the town. The contraptions they climbed into consisted of wooden frames held together with wire and covered in linen canvas, powered by large combustion engines that sat imposingly near the centre of the structure. Today they look as ancient as the dinosaurs, but to the crowds gathered on that August morning these craft were the very cutting edge of modernity. Only five years before, Louis Blériot had made the first Channel crossing by air. Now Joubert and the other pilots in their flying machines were planning to carry out a similar journey and to take up their position alongside the British Expeditionary Force.

  Soon after 6.25 a.m. on what proved to be a beautiful, clear August day, the first aeroplanes taxied across the grass and soon got up to speed. One after another the pioneers in their Blériots, BE2s, BE8s and Henri Farmans took off and rose high into the sky to reach the planned altitude. Then, in a line, each aircraft, powered by an engine that could only muster a few horsepower, headed off across the Channel at roughly two-minute intervals. Their course was to hit the French coast at Boulogne, fly down the coast to the Somme estuary and then head inland to Amiens. Not everything went to plan. A few aircraft were damaged when they came down in a ploughed field. One pilot got los
t and had to land and ask an astonished passer-by where he was. On landing in France, another pilot was arrested by officials who could not understand what language he was speaking and thought he must be a spy. It took three days to get the pilot released from prison. Yet another aircraft was delayed as its pilot flew around the Cap Gris-Nez lighthouse and tried to drop his inner tube, like a quoit, on to the spiky top, as though in a fairground.

  For Joubert, the flight from Dover to Amiens took just two hours. The aerodrome at Amiens was a simple affair, just a cut grass field with a few large sheds known as hangars at one end. At this point, the RFC had almost nothing in the way of ground transport, were desperately short of spares and had barely any reserves. Having made the journey, Joubert and the pilots of his squadron came to rest along the side of a field as there was not enough hangar space for all the British machines. As the morning passed an enthusiastic crowd gathered, waving flags and shouting ‘Vive l’Angleterre’. The French had been doubtful as to whether the British would join them in their war against the Germans. But here they were, and the Gallic reception included throwing flowers and even fruit in a tremendous welcome. That afternoon, Joubert and his fellow aviators received another visitor, General Sir John French, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force. A cavalry man who traditionally relied on scouts riding on horses for reconnaissance, he had little idea how effective this new fighting force would be in a similar role, but he wanted to come and see the men and their machines. French was reassured by the sight of forty-nine aircraft from three squadrons lined up along the side of the aerodrome. There was a sense of excitement and jollity about the whole event.

  That night Joubert was put up at one of the best hotels in Amiens, the Hotel Belfort. Not expecting billets with comfortable beds and fitted sheets, he had brought no pyjamas with him. Along with several other pilots, he had to borrow a nightdress from the hotel owner. It was the last time for many months that these men would need pyjamas. And as they cavorted along the hotel corridors in borrowed nightdresses down to their ankles they did not look much like a group of men who represented the very latest in the science of war.2

  The late autumn sun shone brightly through the tall sash windows in the splendid first-floor meeting room of the Royal Society in the East Wing of Burlington House. Wood-panelled and lined with shelves of books, the meeting room overlooked the courtyard just off London’s busy Piccadilly with its continuous bustle of motor traffic. But the room was surprisingly quiet as the clock struck eleven on the morning of 12 November 1914. Precisely on the last stroke, a clerk opened the large, heavy door and the President of the Royal Society led into the room a procession of ten distinguished gentlemen, the youngest of whom was in his forties, the eldest in his eighties. First behind the President was John William Strutt, Baron Rayleigh, a Fellow of Trinity College, Chancellor of Cambridge University, a previous President of the Society and one of the most distinguished scientists in Britain. Famous for his work on optics and acoustics, as a young scientist he had come up with an explanation for why the sky is blue, while as a physicist at Cambridge he had helped to determine the absolute values of the ohm, the ampere and the volt. He had been awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery of argon, an inert gas. He was close to government and served as chair of the explosives committee of the War Office and as president of a key committee on aeronautics. He was in his seventies but still lively and energetic, and he saw the war as an opportunity for scientists to demonstrate how their work could assist in bringing victory.

  Rayleigh and his colleagues looked immaculate in their suits, waistcoats, wing collars and ties. One of them was in the full dress uniform of an admiral. The group included several more of the most eminent men of science in Britain. Two were leading physicists and four were prominent chemists. One of them had discovered thallium, another helium. One had pioneered wireless telegraphy at sea. Among them were two engineers, a mathematician, and the Director of the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. Seven were knights and Rayleigh was a peer of the realm.

  The Royal Society was the leading organisation of scientists in Britain. It had been founded in 1660 by Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Evelyn and other prominent ‘natural philosophers’ as a forum to witness and discuss scientific experiments. Two years later the Society was awarded a Royal Charter by Charles II. It had gone into a decline during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when it became little more than a gentlemen’s debating club, only about one-fifth of whose members were active practitioners of science. But in the second half of the nineteenth century the Royal Society had transformed itself into an influential professional academy of four to five hundred Fellows, all of whom were distinguished scientists.

  When war had been declared over the early August bank holiday, the widespread feeling was that it would be a quick war, fought by professional armies on distant fields, possibly with a naval engagement at sea and that without doubt it would all be ‘over by Christmas’. But by the time of the November meeting, it was clear that this was no longer the case. News reports from the front were strictly censored, but Rayleigh and his fellow scientists could see that the European armies were lining up for what would be a much longer war than anyone had expected. Accordingly, these men of science had agreed with Rayleigh that they must make some gesture of support, some indication that the scientific establishment was ready to rally behind the war effort.

  Sitting at the central meeting table, Sir William Crookes, the President of the Royal Society, took the chair. As the others fell silent, Crookes began to speak. After the President, Rayleigh spoke and a few others joined the discussion. In less than twenty minutes they had reached unanimous agreement that they should form a committee that would be known as the War Committee of the Royal Society. Its purpose would be to organise assistance to the government and the armed services with any scientific questions that arose. With their prominent connections across the universities of Britain and within the manufacturing and technical industries of the nation, the senior members of the Royal Society would be supremely well placed to know whom to approach, what to ask and how to help.

  After a short further discussion, it was agreed that the Secretary of the new War Committee should write to the War Office, the government department from where the British Army was governed, to the Admiralty, the department of state that ruled the Royal Navy with the largest fleet of warships in the world, and to the Board of Trade, the government department that was closest to industry. The letters should express ‘the readiness of the Committee to organise assistance to the Government in conducting or suggesting scientific investigations in relation to the war’. It was further decided to form two sub-committees so that the men of science could immediately start to investigate possible scientific applications relevant to the war. The first would look into the new technologies of telephony and wireless telegraphy, and into the broad field of ‘General Physics’. The second would investigate the field of chemistry, and would send letters to the directors of the chemical laboratories at every university and college in the country, inviting their assistance in undertaking the manufacture of chemicals, most especially drugs or other medicaments, ‘the supply of which is inadequate in consequence of war conditions’.

  There being no further business, the date of the next meeting was set for the same time exactly one week later. The chairman declared the meeting closed and the committee members stood and followed him out of the meeting room. Some of them, like Lord Rayleigh, had urgent business elsewhere. Others settled in the reading room for an hour or so before heading off for lunch. The meeting had been a low-key affair, but it marked an historic step. For the first time, the nation’s leading scientists had come forward to offer the support and assistance of the entire scientific community to the government and the armed forces. It was already clear to Rayleigh and his colleagues that in the twentieth century a war would have to be fought drawing on all the advances that physics, chemistry, medicine and mathem
atics could offer. This war would be conducted in laboratories and scientific workshops, as well on the battlefields and across the oceans of the world.3

  These three scenes illustrate in very different ways how the conflict that would become known as the ‘Great War’ would involve the world of science and the scientists of the day. Thanks to the cutting of undersea cables, the German government had to use wireless telegraphy, radio, for much of its long-distance communications. The Germans’ use of code would challenge the Allies, first to find a way to intercept the signals and second to decipher the intelligence they contained. This demanded the application of new technologies and the development of new code-breaking techniques. After the first aircraft went to war in 1914, the new science of aviation would advance in leaps and bounds over the next few years as each side tried to outdo the technology of its enemy. In four years’ time, aircraft engines would be unrecognisable in their power and output and aircraft designs would have advanced beyond anything imaginable in 1914. Finally, the fact that the most eminent men of science were offering to assist the army, the navy and the flying corps was a recognition of the vital role science would play in a modern, industrial and technological war.

  Much writing about the Great War concentrates on the troglodyte world of the trenches that made up the 450 miles of battle lines known as the Western Front. This extended from the English Channel, through the western tip of Belgium, across the industrial north-east of France and down through the chalklands of Picardy, then ran east through the Champagne district and circuited the great fortress defences of Verdun, finally turning south into the Vosges mountains and the Alps on the Swiss border. The First World War is often seen exclusively as a war fought by armies of millions living in the subterranean world of the trenches, slogging it out in human wave assaults and being slaughtered in dreadful numbers. The Western Front in which the French, British and Commonwealth armies faced the German army dominates the popular image of the war, although much fighting took place on other fronts and against other enemies.4