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Escape briefing

A different kind of secrecy, one we were to share in common, was about to be imposed on us. One morning all the operational crews were assembled in the forward hold of Bonaventure, which had been converted into a kind of temporary lecture room. When I went in, I was astonished to see two army officers at the far end, standing by a table on which a whole variety of objects was stacked. My sense of inter-service rivalry was at once aroused: I resented their presence, deeply. Why should they be let in on our secret? How far could we trust them to understand the extreme need for confidentiality? As I took my seat, I studied them closely: could they be in the pay of the enemy, not real army officers, but frauds? But they stood in that square-shouldered way army officers so often seemed to affect, and brushed their flowing moustaches.

One of the senior naval officers from Bonaventure stood up to speak.
'No doubt you'll all be wondering what the army's doing here,' he began. 'The answer's simple. They know something we don't. This morning we're going to learn about it from them. About escape.'
My first thought was of escape from the X-craft, through the wet-and-dry. But that was nonsense: we, the divers, were the experts there.
'Both of these officers have been prisoners-of-war, and have escaped from enemy hands. More important, both of them made their way across hundreds of miles of Germany before being picked up by the maquis - that's the name of the French resistance movement. And that didn't mean they were safe. There was a lot of walking by night, and holing up by day, and much living rough in danger, before they finally made it to the Spanish frontier.'
I looked at them with new eyes, and had to believe what I had heard. Yet they bore themselves with such assured panache that I found it hard to imagine them scruffy, living rough, sneaking by moonlight into the corner of a potato field and grubbing up a few spuds to keep themselves alive.

'These officers come from a special unit set up by the army to brief commandos and similar services on escape techniques. They have drawn together information from all escapees, as well as from those who failed in their attempts - how this was possible you'll be able to piece together from what they have to say. Just one more thing: they know what our targets are, but not how we are going to get there. They know the German units lie in north Norwegian fjords; they know therefore the kind of terrain lying between that coast and the safety of neutral Sweden. They don't know exactly how we propose to attack, nor when - apart from its being some time this month. They don't know more that and don't want to either.'
The officers - a major and a captain - nodded vigorously.
'One more point, and then I'll hand you over to them. You'll notice that the doors are firmly shut, and that only the operational crews are present. That’s done intentionally - on the need to know basis - as it is for our two visitors from the army. Security is the key to this whole operation.'

Some of my resistance to having the army in on the act had been dispelled by this address; but much remained. The major spoke first, and began with the trek across country from Kaa Fjord, where the Tirpitz lay, to the nearest point of the Swedish frontier. It was clear he had no direct experience of those northern latitudes, and was speaking from second or third-hand knowledge. He couldn't describe how much snow would be lying in September, nor what the terrain would be like in any detail. He knew there wouldn't be much in the way of forests to hide in, and spoke of how to hole up by making yourself a kind of igloo of snow, a cave in the snow with a small opening to allow for replenishment of air. These, he maintained were invisible from the air, and kept out the wind, which was more of a danger in lowering body heat than the snow itself. He assured us that we wouldn't meet any polar bears, but couldn't say what other wild animals we might come up against.

The Captain then took over. 'Your main problems, if you should have to abandon your craft, and make your way across country, will be cold and hunger. Now you've been issued with kapok-lined clothing to keep you warm; you'll have noticed how high the trousers come, up over the rib-cage. That's to keep your waists particularly warm, where so many of the vital organs lie. Against hunger we have these survival rations.' He held up a flattish box about twice the size of a tin of sardines. 'You can carry this in a deep trouser pocket, and it's got enough food value in it to keep you going for three or four days.'
I strained to see what there was in it, then found that several other tins were being passed round for us to inspect their contents. Everything was in highly concentrated form, we were told, and much had to be diluted in water to become edible or drinkable.
'Where do we get the water from?' someone asked.
'Should be plenty of mountain streams about,' the major replied.
'Might be frozen by then.'
'Break up the ice with your heel.'
'What do we dissolve it in?'
‘The cover to the box forms a flat pan; you can see the handle folds out.'
'What about heat, then?'
'There are fuel cubes and matches in the pack.'
'And what's all this food made of — it all looks greyish-brown to me.'
'Soups, broth if you like; pemmican - that sort of thing.' The captain held up a cube of pemmican concentrate, so I tried licking it: the box happened to be with me at that moment. It tasted of ancient peppery ham. I glanced across at Bob and made an appropriate grimace.
'Any food to be got locally?'
'Not a lot, I imagine ... You see, the most heavily guarded area is bound to be round the fjord, and the adjoining coastline, plus the villages within ten or fifteen kilometres. Best to get away from them as soon as possible. Increase your chances of getting clear away. Move south all the time - we're giving you a compass too,' he held a small package up in the air, 'and a map for good measure ... We may as well give them out right away.'
When mine reached me, I found that the compass was tiny, and the map printed on silk, on both sides. Much of the north of Scandinavia was shown, with roads and settlements marked in very small print. The fineness of the material meant you could fold it up and hide it in a very small space.
'Supposing we get lost? Don’t suppose the roads are marked, no more than there are now in England, or Scotland.’
‘Do we try to find someone to ask? Are the natives friendly?'
It was the captain who spoke in reply. 'Most of the Norwegians are whole-heartedly for the allies. There are very few Quislings. But there are many who fear to give any kind of help, unless they are sure they haven't been seen doing so. So don't approach anyone, or any group of people, unless they are the only ones in view. Single persons are always better than twos or threes or larger numbers. But my advice would be to avoid all human contact, and keep off the roads. Move in a southerly direction s much as the terrain will let you; and don't move in a bunch. If one of you is seen, then the others may not be. I would guess that in that part of Scandinavia you won't meet anyone once you have left the coast - maybe a few Lapps. Don't trust them any more than the Norwegians themselves. Keep going as hard as you can. The aim is to get into Sweden - and the frontier is unfenced and largely unguarded - just fell and tundra as far as you can see. Keep on higher ground all the time, and make any valley crossings swiftly at night if you suspect there are settlements about. Preserve bodily warmth, and set yourselves intermediate goals - to reach that crest before nightfall, for instance. Keep each other's morale up.'

We were all paying more attention, now. Here was a man who knew how to compress the essential information into a few telling phrases.
'What about if we get captured on the way - or even in Kaa Fjord?'
‘Usual drill,' answered the major. 'Name, rank, number. Then keep your mouth shut. Geneva Convention, that sort of thing.'
'But will they recognise us as armed forces? Might they not think we are to be considered as saboteurs, in league with the resistance.'
'Best to be wearing some article of uniform. Get things off on the right foot.'
'If we get taken, I suppose we could be taken on board the Tirpitz - if she's still there. What could we expect then?'
'Interrogation, certainly. 'There's bound to be a number of officers on board, or up in the North of Norway, who know enough English to question you, though they may not be trained interrogators. Those are the johnnies you've got to watch out for - lull you into a false sense of confidence, then spring the trap. You may not even realise you've fallen into it.'
'But if we stick to name, rank and number, surely we'll be all right?'
'Most people find it's very difficult to do that - to resist a remark about the weather for example. But just that could betray, through some reference to the last few days, for example, where you have been, since weather variations can be quite localised. Or some reference to food and drink; that might tell an interrogator whether you've made the passage direct from Britain, or called in somewhere in Norway en route, or been supplied from a British warship, or even the truth about how you reached those northerly latitudes.'
'So innocent remarks are loaded?'
'Yes. And there's another factor that plays into the hand of an interrogator. Exhaustion. There are two kinds: the bone weariness you feel after long periods .of strain, just after capture, for instance, and the kind they induce by depriving you of sleep. The first one is especially dangerous, because you haven't got accustomed to being vigilant, and holding your tongue. The other wouldn't be likely to occur till you get to Germany.'
'Where would we be put, some sort of camp?'
'Might be a purpose built camp, wooden huts on a heath. Or else a castle, stripped bare of all its furnishings. An Oflag, they call it, for officers.'

Secret code

The younger officer now seized his cue, and began to explain that if we got to a POW camp in Germany we would be allowed to write a postcard each week to family or friends - not more than fifty words per time; these would be routed via the Red Cross in Switzerland to England. But the important point to remember was that this gave us an opportunity to send secret messages about the operation back home - by code. An unbreakable code system had been devised: each man chose one word that would be his personal key, known only to the boffins in the Admiralty. If for example he chose DAD, then this would mean that the fourth, fifth, ninth, thirteenth, fourteenth, eighteenth letter and so on — based on the numeral order of the letter in the alphabet, taken serially - would spell out the letters of the secret message.

'So it's the duty of any prisoner of war,' the captain concluded ' to use this system to pass home information under the very nose of the enemy. No one can break this code without the key word. Before I leave the ship this afternoon, I want you to have written out on a piece of paper and sealed inside this envelope the key word you have chosen.' He waved paper and a small buff envelope about in the air. 'I shall take them under secure conditions to our headquarters, where they will be held in a safe until needed. Of course,' he added rather unconvincingly, 'I hope that won't in fact be the case after this operation, but our job is to prepare you for all eventualities.'
'Should the word be long or short?’
'A short key word like Dad is easier to remember, but harder to work with, because you have so little space between the letters that make up the message. But that's only so if you choose letters from the beginning of the alphabet. If you took Mum, the message would come only every thirteenth or twentieth letter - or something like that. But then you can say that much less in the fifty words you're allowed.'
'Aren't words like Dad and Mum too obvious? Mightn't the Jerries be on to them? What about some odd-looking word like ...'
'Squeegee,' a voice volunteered. There was a ripple of laughter at the incongruity.
'Lots of e's in that,' someone else remarked. 'Too regular.'
'I think I'll take a word I can remember, like whisky.'
'No, no,' broke in the army man. 'You mustn't say what you choose. The whole point is to have absolute security, so as not to be forced to give the Boche someone else's word, under torture.' Some of us began shifting uneasily. The exercise was taking on the quality of boyish adventure stories. I was getting tired of this young officer's ways, and looked across at the senior man.
'It's good to have a key to use when you need to,' he commented quietly. At once I got the impression he was speaking from experience. 'You can use the code to send messages home to your people too, the sort of thing you can't put in the sort of stilted language the Germans expected POWs to use. Tell them how you're really feeling, how they're treating you. We'll process the message and send it on, confidentially. All you need say is, for instance: FOR DAD or TELL SUE. You can write the name and address of the person you want to send messages to on the same piece of paper as carries the code key you decide on today.'

The mood had changed, and it was time for the meeting to break for lunch. As we stood up, I was thinking of a word to fox everyone. Maxie Shean announced his openly: NAN - so much for the security-mindedness of the younger officer. An hour later I had chosen mine: GNOMIC.

I was surprised at the way several others copied Maxie's example and stated openly the code word they had chosen: the code could be broken by forcing anyone in the know to blab, if we were taken prisoner. So throughout lunch I kept my mouth shut; but as I worked things out in my mind, I realised that the word I'd taken (and it had already been registered by one of the army officers, in a sealed envelope) would make for relatively little message in quite a long text. The letters N,O and M were all in mid-alphabet, so the message letters would be widely spaced out across the words in the open letter. A word like DID would have been more economical. But by then it was too late.

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