The Battle of the St. Lawrence (39 page)

J. H. Barrett

R. Chatson

F. G. Coulson

T. H. Cummings

H. H. Elkin

D. C. Glover

W. P. Howse

A. W. Jones

L. E. Legge

C. M. McCaroon

D. L. Mitchell

M. N. Oiring

G. W. Parker

E. A. Thistle

L. William Truesdale

E. G. Walker

R. Watson

W. B. Wilson

US Personnel

J. C. Abernathy

E. T. Bothsa

J. M. Burns

J. C. Elzer

E. Hand

R. M. Penfield

E. G. Shultz

J. Waldman

Civilians

Mrs. Ada Allan

Caroline Allan

Constance Allan

Claus Bang

Baby Girl Bernard

Mrs. Harriet Bernard

Charles Berry

Mrs. Pearl Beswick

Robert Butler

Harold Chislett

Albert Coombs

Preston Cowley

William Carteret Freeham

Louise Gagné

Mrs. Katherine Gardner

William H. Garth

Myrtle Gilbert

Hugh B. Gillis

Gerald Hammond

Wilfred Hathaway

Mrs. Maggie Hedd

Miss Myrtle Kettle

Edgar Martin

Harold McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy

George Penham

George Pike

Mrs. Elizabeth Randell

John Ronan

Margaret Rose

William Ryan

John Sheppard

Mrs. Blanche Short

Basil Skinner

Mrs. Kathleen Skinner

Nancy Skinner

Mrs. Gertie Strickland

Holly Strickland

Myrtle Strickland

Nora Strickland

Donald Tapper

Mrs. Hazel Tapper

John W. Tapper

Lillian Tapper

Catherine Walsh

Patrick Walsh

Mrs. Helen Wightman

Mary Young

HMCS
Magog
(October
14, 1944)

Ted E. Davis

Gordon T. Elliot

Kenneth J. Kelly

HMCS
Shawinigan
(November
25, 1944)

Stewart W. Anderson

William J. Anderson

Robert O. Armstrong

Haddow F. Baird

Howard C. Barlow

Joseph F. A. Beauchamp

Joseph B. A. Benoit

Ronald W. Bernst

Douglas J. Blaylock

Robert A. Brett

Joseph Y. P. Breux

Gordon O. Brown

Arthur H. Butler

William F. Callan

Alexander H. Campbell

James Campbell

George A. Chalmers

Eric M. Chisolm

Alfred E. J. Clayton

Harry C. B. Cole

Cyril W. Conners

Robert J. L. Cook

Ronald J. Dupuis

Alfred H. Duval

Ralph N. Earp

Clifford Eppler

David M. Evans

John J. Evans

Lewis B. Evans

Edgar L. Fiander

Leo H. Fougère

Donald F. French

Dudley M. Garrett

Robert G. Grant

Arnold S. Hibbard

John W. Hodgson

William Hughes

Roy S. Hunter

Harold J. Hird

John L. James

Maurice W. Johnson

William J. Jones

Arthur E. Kemp

Robin D. H. Kendall

Wilmette R. Kennah

Joseph A. La Barre

Leslie B. Langfield

John C. Lawrence

Thomas E. Lawrence

Walter J. Lloyd

David A. MacArthur

William C. MacEachers

Gordon MacGregor

Vernon E. MacLanders

Jack MacWilliam

Donald T. C. McDougal

Donald B. McNeil

Patrick A. Mitchell

Ewan Morrison

David J. Morrow

Cecil R. Moss

Glenn S. Murray

Michael B. O’Gorman

John Ossachuk

Howard N. Parsons

James G. Phillips

Michael J. Piathowski

Robert F. Rayner

Clifford L. Rea

John J. Rigby

Edward E. Ritzer

Frank N. Roy

Alfred T. Savoy

Walter B. Sealey

Gerald J. Smith

William R. Smith

Stanley L. Smithson

Anthony Smrke

Arthur D. Snyder

George L. S. Stefiuk

Dirk C. Swart

Roger C. Thomas

Hugh L. Todd

Frank R. Trenholm

Eldon G. Vincent

Spencer Wallington

Wilfred Watson

Conway J. Watt

Clayton L. White

Arthur J. Whitehead

Milton E. Whymark

Harold G. Woods

Requiescat in pace

O
n May 14, 1942, two days after Karl Thurmann’s U-553 sank SS
Leto,
U-213, commanded by
Oberleutnant zur See
Amelung von Varendorff, became the first of three U-boats to land on Canada’s shores. Two, Varendorff’s and
Kapitänleutnant
Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann’s U-518, landed spies; the other, U-537, commanded by
Kapitänleutnant
Peter Schrewe, landed a weather station in Labrador. Neither of the two spies,
Leutnant
(M. A.) “Langbein” and Werner Janowski, operated in Canada as intended by their German handlers. And though set up without incident, the weather station, called Kurt, failed to supply BdU with weather information because a German radio station jammed the wavelength on which the weather station’s radio broadcast.

After living in Canada between 1928 and 1932, working in both Alberta and Manitoba, the man known as Langbein returned to Germany prior to the outbreak of the war. After being mobilized, he was chosen for espionage training; his first mission was to Romania. Then, recognizing his ability to blend into Canadian society,
Abwehr,
Nazi Germany’s military intelligence branch, sent him back to Canada on an intelligence-gathering mission.

Landed from U-213 at 3 a.m. on May 14, 1942, near the village of St.
Martin, New Brunswick, Langbein immediately buried his transmitter and some other equipment and assumed the identity prepared by German intelligence. His national registration card was prepared in the name of Alfred Haskins and gave his address as
183
Younge [sic] Street, Toronto. He was also supplied with some $7,000 in large US bills and either $12 or $13 in Canadian bills; surprisingly, none of St. Martin’s shopkeepers noticed that the bills this stranger used were out-of-date dollars.

Given his prior knowledge of Canada, his ability to speak English and what one historian records as his “likeable character,” Langbein should have been a valuable spy. What his handlers did not know, however, was that Langbein had become disenchanted with Nazi Germany and saw his mission to Canada as a chance to escape.

Langbein hitchhiked to Montreal, where he was able to cash his larger US bills in some of the city’s less reputable establishments. Later, he was caught in a raid on a whorehouse. His identity was preserved, however, because, like the other patrons caught
in flagrante delicto
in such establishments, he was booked under an assumed name and then allowed to pay the fine.

A month after landing in Canada, Langbein settled in Ottawa, staying at the Grand Hotel, which stood at the corner of Sussex and George streets. The hotel’s bar was, according to the
Ottawa Citizen
in a 1952 article on Langbein, “a favourite spot for the members of the armed forces and civil servants employed in the [now demolished] Daly Building across the street.” Langbein did not, however, make use of this happy coincidence, preferring to live off his ever-diminishing bankroll. In 1943, probably to conserve funds, he moved from the Grand Hotel to a boarding house.

On November i, 1944, Langbein walked into the Naval Intelligence Directorate on Sparks Street and informed an incredulous official that he was a German spy. The RCMP did not believe his story until, with Sergeant Cecil Bayfield watching, he dug up the transmitter and other equipment he had buried over two years earlier. The RCMP quickly established that “Haskins” had not engaged in espionage. He was interned until the end of the war, after which he was repatriated to Germany.

Werner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski had also lived in Canada prior to the war. He married an Ontario woman in 1932. Over the next six years, before he deserted his wife and went back to Germany, he toured the province to take pictures and paint waterfront scenes. He may have joined the French Foreign Legion and may have served with the German army at Dieppe. What is known for certain is that on November 9, 1942, U-518 landed him on the beach a few miles from New Carlisle, Quebec.

Unlike Langbein, Janowski buried only his naval uniform. He carried his two large suitcases (one containing a transmitter) into town. The suitcases, according to historian Michael Hadley, were “obviously of German manufacture.” As it had done with Langbein, German intelligence supplied Janowski with a great deal of cash: $4,994 Canadian and $1,000 in US twenty-dollar gold pieces. His national registration card was issued in the name of William Branton of 323 Danforth Avenue, Toronto. As well, he carried a 1940 Quebec driver’s licence. One of the two paperbacks he carried, likely to use as code books, was a 1939 edition of Mary Travers’s
Mary Poppins,
published in Leipzig; imprinted on its cover were the words, “Not to be introduced into the British Empire or the USA.”

Janowski attracted attention almost immediately upon presenting himself at a hotel in New Carlisle owned by Earle Annett and asking for a room in which he could bathe and shave before lunch. Annett’s suspicions were aroused first by the strange man’s “submarine smell” (the smell of musty clothes and diesel oil) and by the fact that the patron told him that he had just arrived in town by bus; the first bus would not arrive in town until noon.

While Janowski ate lunch in the hotel’s dining room, Annett searched his room. He didn’t find
Mary Poppins.
However, he did find several matches that he knew were manufactured in Belgium, with which, of course, Canada had had no trade for over three years. The bills Janowski used to pay for his room and meal, Annett recognized immediately, had been withdrawn from use several years before the war. Annett knew that Janowski planned to take the afternoon train to Montreal, so he sent his son to warn the Quebec Provincial Police.

The QPP acted quickly. Constable Alphonse Duchesneau, posing as a radio salesman from Toronto, took the train seat next to Janowski. After
some conversation, during which Duchesneau noted to himself Janowski’s German accent, he informed Janowski that he was a police officer and demanded that Janowski produce his identification. All but one of Janowski’s papers were in order. His national registration card was printed in English on one side and French on the other, as they were in Quebec; Ontario cards were printed in English only.

Duchesneau demanded that Janowski open his luggage so he could search it. At that point Janowski declared, “I am a German naval officer. I landed from a submarine last night, and after landing, decided that I would desert. I therefore changed into civilian clothing and buried my naval uniform on the shore near the spot where I had landed. I insist on being allowed to recover my uniform and being given the treatment laid down for prisoners of war by the Geneva Convention.”

Janowski led police to where he’d buried his uniform. Several days later, he demanded of RCMP Inspector C. W. Harvison, commissioner of the RCMP, who had come to interview him in a local jail, that he be “permitted to don his uniform and that he be treated as an officer and a gentleman.” In 1967 Harvison recalled—with, no doubt, much understatement—that “my reply may not have been in the best military tradition, but as least it startled and served to deflate the prisoner,” who had entered the room clicking his heels like a Nazi on parade. “Nuts,” said Harvison. “I believe you are spy. Sit down and keep quiet until I speak to you.”

Harvison then set out to “turn him around”—that is, to turn him into a double agent who would feed disinformation to German intelligence. The commissioner pointed out to Janowski that his handlers back in Berlin had not shown any great regard for his safety, the old-style bills and mistaken identity card being his evidence. “Those goddamn Gestapo,” Janowski exclaimed after one of Harvison’s men told him that some of the $20 bills had been poorly counterfeited. “The money was secured from them, and they have framed me. They wanted me caught and executed.” Janowski then asked, “If I am executed, you think it will be by hanging?”—a question that told Harvison of Janowski’s inner debate. Seizing the moment, the commissioner replied, “Most probably,” after which his prisoner again fell silent for a moment before “sobbing and banging the desk while he repeated over and over again, “I will not be hanged, I will not be hanged.”

Harvison waited and then told Janowski that he, Harvison, would be leaving the next morning and he would have to have Janowski’s answer by then. Later that day, Harvison had Janowski brought back into the interrogation room, where the erstwhile German naval officer agreed to be a double agent.

Janowski’s RCMP handlers kept watch on him for the remainder of the war. From December 1942 through November 1943, Janowski fed his handlers in Hamburg disinformation produced by special intelligence committees concerning the armed services units in and around Montreal and even Quebec City, the types of ships in port and anything he could learn about submarine nets. No record exists of Janowski’s fate after the war; however, it is assumed that he was repatriated.

Named for its builder, Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer, the weather station called Kurt was the only German “base” established in North America during World War II. Similar automated weather stations, all manufactured by Siemens, were established in arctic or subarctic regions, including at Spitzbergen, in Greenland, and in the Barents Sea north of Norway.

The automated base consisted of twelve 1 x 1.5 metre cylinders, most weighing some 220 pounds, which had to be manhandled out of U-537’s hold onto rubber dinghies, floated to shore and then carried 140 yards inland and up a 170-foot-high hill. Nine of the cylinders contained nickel-cadmium and dry-cell high-voltage batteries. One contained a sophisticated mechanism that recorded the temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity and barometric pressure, and then encoded this information in Morse code. The two other parts were the radio aerial and a tripod upon which were mounted temperature, pressure and wind sensors. Kurt broadcast at 3940 kHz with enough power to be picked up at stations in northern Europe. To throw off the suspicions of any hunter or fisherman who happened to find Kurt, each cylinder was stamped with the name of the official-sounding (but non-existent) Canadian Weather Service; the Germans also left Canadian cigarette butts and, for good measure, a few empty emergency-ration cans.