Authors: Nick Barratt
The Forgotten Spy (6 page)
Inside the Foreign Office there had been a similar eagerness to sign up, particularly amongst the King’s Messengers, who had traditionally come from a military background. At the outbreak of war there were four majors on the army reserve list who were keen to re-enlist so that they could ‘do their bit’. According to their colleague, Victor Wheeler-Holohan, the senior staff at the Foreign Office had other ideas:
They were all liable to be called up, but the Foreign Office had the prior claim on their services, and at once communicated with the War Office with regard to securing their exemption from mobilisation.
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It was not just prior experience of active military duty that made the King’s Messengers such a valuable commodity – their familiarity with Europe and the various diplomatic networks around the world made them prime candidates for other work:
Custance promptly reported to the War Office for duty, and was sent down to Falmouth for Military Intelligence duties... However, the Foreign Office was soon after him and on 10 August he was ordered back. His request to serve on with the army was refused, for in view of the fact that in addition to the usual languages he spoke Spanish and Portuguese fluently, he was too valuable and he was sent out to South America for intelligence work. At the same time he was laden with over 50 new and secret ciphers which had to be distributed all over the place.
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King’s Messengers were not the only personnel that the Foreign Office hierarchy were keen to retain, given the anticipated volume of work that the outbreak of war was likely to cause. As Chief Clerk and therefore holding responsibility for personnel, Tilley recalled:
There was some divergence of opinion as to releasing any of our own men for military service. Crowe, for whom the office came very much first, would have liked to keep everyone. Others were inclined to think that we should let the younger men go but there was a special difficulty in this because the second division clerks had come in at about the age of 18 whereas the diplomatic clerks had come in at 22 to 25, so that to take all the youngest men first meant to take all second and no first division men.
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This meant that there was no immediate pressure on men like Ernest Oldham to enlist – although the perception that they were essential to the continued running of the Foreign Office was soon dispelled:
On the other hand, the second division men were more easily replaced by women. It was a considerable time before it was arranged to let anyone go, but in the end a certain number of both categories were released, though many more second division than first. Of the second division clerks several died gallantly.
30
Underpinning the initial public enthusiasm for war was a belief (if not actual downright confidence) that the stalwarts of the British Army – the Old Contemptibles – would prevail, sweeping the Hun aside and delivering a quick success within months. At the time of mobilisation, the strength of the army stood at 710,000, of which there were only 80,000 trained regulars, with the remainder in the Territorial forces – many of whom were simply not ready for front line action. Nevertheless, the British Expeditionary Force was sent to France on 7 August to halt the German advance.
One person who did not share the public confidence was the new Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, who on the eve of the conflict thought that it would last for at least two or three years – hence the need to recruit more men, provided they were properly trained. Unfortunately, Kitchener was proved right. Both French and British forces were surprised by the sheer number of German troops massing in front of them. The various assaults over the first six weeks of the war, known collectively as the Battle of the Frontiers, failed to repel the German invasion and resulted in a general retreat. The British Expeditionary Force fought its first major engagement at the Battle of Mons on 23 August, suffering over 1,600 casualties and was similarly forced to retreat beyond their defensive lines even though they inflicted far greater damage on the enemy.
An offensive campaign quickly turned into a rearguard action. By October, remaining British units were involved in a frantic race to halt the German advances to the coast which would have cut off British supply lines and
effectively curtailed their involvement on the Western Front, possibly ending the war as quickly as some had predicted. With the line stabilised, thanks to little known but crucial actions such as the defence of Gheluvelt, a new pattern of war developed around defensive trenches and artillery bombardment. Although they were not to realise it at the time, the troops on the Western Front had dug in for the long haul.
Increasingly bad news from the front, coupled with growing casualty numbers and a realisation that the war would not end quickly, punctured public optimism. As a result, the number of volunteers gradually tailed off so that by the middle of 1915 there was a crisis in recruitment. On 11 October, the Prime Minister appointed the aforementioned Earl of Derby as the Director General of Recruitment and five days later he unveiled a new scheme to enforce a form of moral conscription, encouraging men to voluntarily register their name. They were then placed into a group according to their age and marital status with the promise that this group would only be formally enlisted to a service battalion when needed. Perhaps it was the stipulation that bachelors would be called up before married men that made Oldham rather reluctant to come forward.
A poster issued in November 1915 made it clear that time was running out. Voluntary attestation into one of the groups had to be made by 11 December, with rumours that conscription was on its way. While Ernest Oldham doubtless wished to play his part for King and country, he left it very late to do so. On 10 December 1915, aged 21 years and 2 months, he walked out of the Foreign Office building to enlist at the Whitehall recruitment centre. He signed a short service attestation form, agreeing to serve ‘for the duration of the war’ after which he would be ‘discharged with all convenient speed’.
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Oldham had elected for deferred recruitment – class A – whereby he was recruited for a nominal day’s active service before being immediately placed with the army reserves and sent back to resume his civilian duties until the time came for his call up to the colours. He was placed in group 4 – single men born in 1894.
Five days later, the Derby scheme was abandoned, deemed to be a failure because only 215,000 men were directly recruited for immediate service
as class B – although around 2.75 million were placed on the reserve list as class A. Oldham’s group was called up for service between 20 December 1915 and mobilised on 20 January 1916 but under the deferred scheme he was one of the staff for whom Tilley secured an exemption from service. By stepping forward, Oldham had acted in the nick of time; conscription was introduced in January 1916 under the terms of the Military Service Act.
Although initial efforts were made to keep as many staff within the service as possible, by the end of 1915, the need was less intense.
At a later period of the war the number of telegrams fell off, negotiations being less necessary as more and more of the neutrals became allies; two shifts from 8.00 am to 4.00 pm and from 4.00 pm to midnight were thus enough. Eight hours was as much as any eyes could stand at a time of this sort of work. A minor difficulty was that of sending home the typists who worked for the Cipher Department till midnight. Trams and omnibuses had sometimes stopped and those who lived in the suburbs had to be sent home by car.
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Now that Oldham was on the reserve list and business was less frantic, coupled with the impact of the new intake of staff, his position within the Foreign Office was less secure. As with many other occupations, once the men started to be called to active service it was natural for women to step in to take their place. It must be said that this phenomenon was not wholly appreciated by the powers that be in the Foreign Office, as Tilley reflected afterwards:
In addition to the men whom we took in from outside, we engaged gradually a great number of women. Of these, many were naturally amateurs; some had difficulty, according to their male colleagues, in acquiring habits of precision and in the registries were said to be apt to think one number on a paper as good as another. Others were hard to persuade that, once engaged, they could not go off at once when their mothers and aunts and children were sick or otherwise in need of their help.
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With this rapid turnover of staff and the presence of women in the corridors of Whitehall, a major concern was that the Foreign Office would be infiltrated by a spy. Anti-German feeling was running at an all-time high, with German businesses attacked and people forced to flee their homes before mobs. Internment had been introduced shortly after the outbreak of war, given the large number of Germans living in the country, and there was a genuine fear amongst the population at large that enemy agents would try to gather intelligence on British soil. This was fuelled by popular publications such as
The Riddle of the Sands
(1903) and
The Thirty-Nine Steps
(1915) which included lurid – and wholly fictional – accounts of German espionage. Yet men from Oldham’s section of the Foreign Office had been directly involved in spy-catching, such as honorary King’s Messenger, Sir Park Goff:
During the war he was closely associated with the Intelligence Service and made his reports to the responsible authority after each journey and was responsible for at least two spies being shot in the Tower.
34
The phrase ‘intelligence services’ masked a rather nebulous collection of agencies, including naval and military intelligence departments, separate units in the War Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. In 1909, an attempt was made to bring some clarity to operations and a decision was taken to create the Secret Service Bureau, which would give rise to both MI5 (the home Security Service) and MI6 (the foreign Secret Intelligence Service).
The Secret Service Bureau initially comprised only two officers, Commander Mansfield Smith-Cumming (Royal Navy) and Captain Vernon Kell (Army). Its founding was a response to growing hysteria that a well-developed German spy network was operating in places such as Essex, planning for an invasion that never materialised mainly because no such network ever existed. Nevertheless, a number of suspected German agents were arrested in the years prior to 1914 and a further 21 people were seized as spies in the hours following the outbreak of war. Further clampdowns on enemy aliens and the possibility of going so far as to impose martial law made
people feel a lot more secure. Certainly, Tilley expressed confidence that the Foreign Office was an impregnable fortress and remained safe from espionage throughout the conflict.
Neither among men or women was there any instance of anybody in the nature of a spy finding his or her way into the office as any novelist would certainly have expected. One woman was found to have doubtful connections and had to leave.
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Yet by 1916, Oldham was keen to depart this safe haven for more exotic climes, possibly on account of the exciting tales of derring-do told by the King’s Messengers as they returned to the office. A Royal Commission on the Civil Service reported in December 1914 and a key recommendation was the removal of the £400 private means income bar that had prevented candidates like Oldham from entering the Diplomatic Service. Tilley expressed the concern that:
The feeling persisted among possible candidates that, whatever might be said, private means were almost essential. Possibly also there still remained the old idea that existence in the Diplomatic Service was that of a social butterfly, in which men without a taste for society would be out of place.
At the same time, diplomats ought obviously, if they are to make a success of their profession, to be able to make friends with any sort or kind of people who may be a useful source of knowledge, not by any means necessarily secret, about their country. To many Englishmen even this is difficult when it comes to dealing with foreigners and doubtless life in a big public school, particularly so big a one as Eton, and in a university, makes it seem easier.
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Despite his background, Oldham was certainly not deterred – indeed he was probably heartened by his ability to fit in at the Foreign Office. So towards the end of 1916, he sought a place as part of the diplomatic corps. He clearly
demonstrated sufficient skills to receive the required recommendation from the Secretary of State to proceed, with the endorsement that ‘in view of your knowledge of language and your suitability in other respects for an appointment in HM Consular Service, the Selection Board nominated you to compete for a post in that service.’
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Clearly, Oldham had been having lessons to brush up on his French and had added other languages too.
It may well have been with his future career as a diplomat in mind that Oldham took the difficult decision to activate his enlistment and join the army. He sought permission for his temporary release for military service, which was granted, and Oldham duly reported for duty at the Old Drill Hall, 17 Duke’s Road – the headquarters of the 28th County of London Battalion, also known as the Artists’ Rifles, just off Euston Road – on 9 February 1917.
38
He wanted to train as an officer, although he was initially enlisted as private EH Oldham, No 765905, in the second sub-battalion. He first underwent a medical examination, where his height (5 feet 5 and a quarter inches), weight (126 pounds) and chest measurement (34 and a half inches) were dutifully recorded, along with the fact that he had been vaccinated in 1914. The examination also revealed that Oldham suffered from myopia so he was given prescription glasses from the Royal Army Medical Corps ophthalmic centre to correct his vision.