moment to tell him that almost overnight his open city of a poem-code had taken on a new dimension of menace.
I'd learned from Dansey that there were soon to be operations, infiltrations and campaigns by the dozen in all the occupied territories, and that an unprecedented event was due to take place by the end of '42: General de Gaulle had given his permission for an Anglo-Free French mission (the first of its kind) to be sent into France to prepare for the Allied landings in '43, and 'our Tommy' was to be the Anglo. Then there was the invasion of North Africa, code-name Torch, which General Elsenhower was planning for November/December '42. SOE had somehow persuaded Ike to allow an SOE mission to accompany the invading forces with its own communications direct to London and France.
There was also a mysterious operation into Norway referred to in whispers by its code-name, Grouse. Whatever Grouse was, it was scheduled to take place any time from the end of September, which was only a few weeks away.
All this new business was a major breakthrough for Baker Street head office but it was potentially an even bigger one for the German cryptographers. The moment they realized that our traffic was becoming important enough to warrant a full-scale blanket attack, the poem-code would provide them with a catalogue of wide-ranging war efforts at bargain prices.
I hurried off to consult the only friend I had yet made in the Signals hierarchy.
His name was Eric Heffer and he was our in-house expert on Ozanne. He was a civilian like myself but had been a captain in the First World War and preferred to be addressed as such. No one was quite sure exactly what his duties were. Occasionally he would leave his office in Norgeby House to wander at his leisure round Ozanne's kingdom, having the effect upon all of us of a walking tranquillizer. Despite the daily crisis which surrounded him, Heffer remained permanently imperturbable. There was no known example of anyone or anything being able to hurry him. The one thing he could do with quite exceptional speed was think—a practice he recommended to me.
Producing each syllable as if it were a cigarette he had just carefully rolled, he explained that Ozanne's real weakness was not so much stupidity as respect for the Establishment. He simply couldn't bring himself to question their judgement. If the Establishment had decided that chamber pots made first-class transmitters, he'd have had SOE peeing in Morse. Almost doing so myself, I asked a) what the Establishment specialized in and b) whether it had a name.
No longer surprised by anything I didn't know, he accelerated to a crawl which served to remind me of my progress. The Establishment was officially called SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) though old hands in SOE invariably referred to the rival organization as 'C' (its Chief's code-name), and its speciality was thwarting SOE.
C had been running the British Secret Service (with emphasis on the Secret) since 1911 and were appalled when SOE received a mandate from Churchill in 1940 to Set Europe Ablaze. Their agents were intelligence-gatherers: ours were saboteurs, and C were convinced that the only thing they'd set ablaze was their agents' cover. SOE was convinced that C resented any organization which threatened its monopoly, and the mutual antipathy had the growth potential of an obsession.
In 1941 control of SOE's communications became a major issue. Our wireless station at Grendon was still being constructed, and we were forced to allow C to handle our early traffic. The station opened in June '42 (the month I joined SOE) and we withdrew the traffic immediately, much to C's annoyance as they could no longer monitor it.
Painstakingly Heffer finally turned to the subject which most concerned me. To C, giving codes to their peacetime agents had been a minor problem: there were so many channels of communication open to agents that poem-codes could safely be used, and this in itself was
I'd learned from Dansey that there were soon to be operations, infiltrations and campaigns by the dozen in all the occupied territories, and that an unprecedented event was due to take place by the end of '42: General de Gaulle had given his permission for an Anglo-Free French mission (the first of its kind) to be sent into France to prepare for the Allied landings in '43, and 'our Tommy' was to be the Anglo. Then there was the invasion of North Africa, code-name Torch, which General Elsenhower was planning for November/December '42. SOE had somehow persuaded Ike to allow an SOE mission to accompany the invading forces with its own communications direct to London and France.
There was also a mysterious operation into Norway referred to in whispers by its code-name, Grouse. Whatever Grouse was, it was scheduled to take place any time from the end of September, which was only a few weeks away.
All this new business was a major breakthrough for Baker Street head office but it was potentially an even bigger one for the German cryptographers. The moment they realized that our traffic was becoming important enough to warrant a full-scale blanket attack, the poem-code would provide them with a catalogue of wide-ranging war efforts at bargain prices.
I hurried off to consult the only friend I had yet made in the Signals hierarchy.
His name was Eric Heffer and he was our in-house expert on Ozanne. He was a civilian like myself but had been a captain in the First World War and preferred to be addressed as such. No one was quite sure exactly what his duties were. Occasionally he would leave his office in Norgeby House to wander at his leisure round Ozanne's kingdom, having the effect upon all of us of a walking tranquillizer. Despite the daily crisis which surrounded him, Heffer remained permanently imperturbable. There was no known example of anyone or anything being able to hurry him. The one thing he could do with quite exceptional speed was think—a practice he recommended to me.
Producing each syllable as if it were a cigarette he had just carefully rolled, he explained that Ozanne's real weakness was not so much stupidity as respect for the Establishment. He simply couldn't bring himself to question their judgement. If the Establishment had decided that chamber pots made first-class transmitters, he'd have had SOE peeing in Morse. Almost doing so myself, I asked a) what the Establishment specialized in and b) whether it had a name.
No longer surprised by anything I didn't know, he accelerated to a crawl which served to remind me of my progress. The Establishment was officially called SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) though old hands in SOE invariably referred to the rival organization as 'C' (its Chief's code-name), and its speciality was thwarting SOE.
C had been running the British Secret Service (with emphasis on the Secret) since 1911 and were appalled when SOE received a mandate from Churchill in 1940 to Set Europe Ablaze. Their agents were intelligence-gatherers: ours were saboteurs, and C were convinced that the only thing they'd set ablaze was their agents' cover. SOE was convinced that C resented any organization which threatened its monopoly, and the mutual antipathy had the growth potential of an obsession.
In 1941 control of SOE's communications became a major issue. Our wireless station at Grendon was still being constructed, and we were forced to allow C to handle our early traffic. The station opened in June '42 (the month I joined SOE) and we withdrew the traffic immediately, much to C's annoyance as they could no longer monitor it.
Painstakingly Heffer finally turned to the subject which most concerned me. To C, giving codes to their peacetime agents had been a minor problem: there were so many channels of communication open to agents that poem-codes could safely be used, and this in itself was
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