bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000) — Summer 2000 // Été 2000, pp. 44–45
BETWEEN SILK AND CYANIDE: A
CODEMAKER’S WAR 1941-1945 by Leo
Marks, Harper Collins, Great Britain, 1998
and The Free Press (Simon and Schuster
Inc. N.Y.) 1999, 613 pp.
Leo Marks has written a unique and interesting book about a little understood but very important aspect of the war between Hitler and his several allied opponents.
The book is interesting because of the clear light it sheds on the enormous importance of being able to intercept and ’read’ the enemy’s communications, to use the knowledge thus gained in a timely fashion and to possess codes which could not be broken. For their successful continuation during WW II and thereafter the activities involved had to be shrouded in extraordinary secrecy. As few people as possible were permitted to know about them and only a very small minority had any understanding of their political, strategic and tactical implications or of their astonishing scope.
A quite unexpected bonus for readers is the early realization that Leo Marks was the only son of Benjamin Marks and his wife, the owners of Marks & Co., Booksellers,
84 Charing Cross Road, London, written about so delightfully by Helen Hanff in her best selling paperback 84 Charing Cross Road, (Avon Books, 1974).
At the beginning of World War II, at the age of twenty, Leo wrote to the War Office, the Foreign Office and the Admiralty offering specimens of his home-made codes, hoping that on the strength of them and a loosely constructed curriculum vitae they might employ him. The responses were slow in coming. Impatient, Leo turned to a ’godfather’, Major Jack Dermott O’Reilly, who worked in Special Branch of Scotland Yard and, like Leo’s father, was a Freemason. Although O’Reilly clearly wasn’t much interested in codes, Leo found himself invited to attend an interview at a code-breaking school in Bedford to discuss his ’suitability for certain work of national importance.’
Leo Marks became a codemaker for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) established by the British on 19 July 1940 and, as such, he became privy to a great deal about British/Allied intelligence operations against the Nazis in Europe and across the world. He also became deeply involved in the stupid, unnecessary and sometimes disastrous rivalries between various branches of the British, French and American intelligence gathering organizations. But particularly between the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI.6) and the Special Operations Executive.
His extraordinary knowledge and understanding of cryptology may be too detailed for the average reader’s complete enjoyment but his sometimes lewd prose is delightful, entertaining and informative. The book is rewarding in the way it reveals a brilliant intellect, capable of poking fun at itself while pursuing with tenacity the conviction that SOE’s codes for communicating with its secret agents were seriously flawed thus needlessly putting considerable numbers of them at risk of capture by the Gestapo and death. He tells the story with chutzpah (to use his own word). The accounts of his unusual activities aimed at circumventing the bureaucratic stupidities of various elements of the wartime British intelligence establishment are boisterously funny. He had a brain like quicksilver, the nerve of a canal-horse, the sense of humour of a London barrow- boy and the cunning of a stoat.
A measure of the man is to be found in the cheeky reply he gave to the British army major heading the code-breaking school at Bedford. When asked what were his hobbies Marks replied, ’Incunabula and intercourse, sir.’ The Random House dictionary defines the word as an interest in extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1500, of printing from movable type).
I only regret that I did not meet Marks when I was stationed at Canadian intelligence headquarters in London in 1942-43 when, among other duties, I was charged with seeking out members of the Canadian army who might be suitable recruits for SOE. He mentions a number of those in SOE with whom I had contacts, including Selwyn Jepson, their chief head-hunter who subsequently to my surprise and pleasure, also sought to recruit me, writing to Canadian Military headquarters to obtain my release. I willingly volunteered. However, at the last minute, after a date in 1943 had been agreed for me to join SOE for ’assessment and training’, the transfer was aborted by someone at Canadian Military HQ, for reasons I never discovered. At the time I was angry and very disappointed. However, as Marks makes clear, by that time the Germans already had penetrated a number of SOE’s networks, particularly in France and, had I been accepted as a SOE agent, my chances of survival probably would have been even slimmer than I had believed them to be.
Marks also refers to Kay Moore, signals officer for Colonel Hutchison then head of SOE’s RF section, which had been set up in 1941 to promote some sort of co-existence between General de Gaulle’s BCRA (secret intelligence service) and the Free French National Committee. I believe Kay was Canadian and that she shared a flat in London with Alison Ignatieff (nee Grant), who also worked for SOE, and Mary Grey.
It is a good read, a fascinating, unusual bit of history. But it is much more than history. The lessons to be learned from it can be applied in Canada’s present circumstances. I believe the book should be required reading for all of the Canadian ministers, officials and others whose work requires them to communicate and exchange information securely and mistakenly think they are doing so.
Even more important, however, I believe the requirement to read Marks’ book should be extended to all those responsible for designing and implementing Canada’s cryptological systems.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000) — Summer 2000 // Été 2000, pp. 44–45. Read the rest of this issue →
