The Codebreakers: The True Story of the Secret Intelligence Team That Changed the Course of the First World War Read Free Page B

developed to speed up the exchange of telegrams between businesses), ‘which discharged goods into a basket with a rush that shook the nerve of any unwitting visitor and much disturbed the slumbers of the nightwatchman’.
    Night duty in those first few months was a lonely time. There were no washing facilities and it was ‘no good bringing pyjamas’. Instead, the night shift consoled themselves with ‘plenty of sandwiches’.
    Intercepted German wireless transmissions would provide Room 40 with the bulk of the material it analysed. This relatively new technology was available to the navy through its close contacts with the Marconi Company. Before August 1914, it already had wireless telegraphy (WT) interception masts at sites in Stockton, Chelmsford, Dover and London, plus access to Marconi’s stations, and had begun to pick up German communications; in the opening days of the war, a steady stream began to accumulate.
    Considering the secrecy shrouding Room 40 – only a handful of top brass knew of its existence – it’s hardly surprising that nobody thought to provide it with the messages that were coming in. Instead, it took the intervention of two well-heeled amateur radio enthusiasts to join the dots and connect Room 40 to its key source of intelligence.
    Very few people in Edwardian England had the resources needed to own or construct a wireless set; those who did formed a socially exclusive club of hobbyists tinkering with primitive valves, amps and transmitters. One of these was Russell Clarke, a barrister, who began obtaining German intercepts. Quick to grasp their importance, he approached Sir Alfred Ewing, titular head of Room 40, and offered his services.
    This was a fortunate chain of events, given the regulations laid out in the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), which placed a plethora of restrictions on citizens’ rights, including the right to own a radio. Police forces across the land were ordered to ensure that no domestic wireless appliances remained in operation. Quite how Clarke evaded these conditions is unclear; Denniston speculated ‘that some rash official had tried his best on Russell Clarke and had been forced to retire worse for wear’. Clarke was soon joined by another radio ham, Bayntun Hippisley, who had also picked up signals ‘obviously of Hun origin’. Clearly there was a rich seam to be mined, and interception apparatus was installed at Hunstanton coastguard station in Norfolk.
    Clarke soon realised that ‘he could intercept hundreds of … messages daily on short waves, which, if read, would give the daily doings of the German Fleet’. But Room 40 was still unable to make sense of them. Then the gods smiled on the codebreakers, not once but three times.
    At 00.14 on 26 August, the
Magdeburg
, a German battle cruiser patrolling the Baltic, ran aground. Her captain ordered the destruction of two of her three copies of the
Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine
(the Signal Book of the Imperial Navy), or SKM, leaving one available if they needed to signal for help. However, explosive charges that were meant to scuttle the vessel went off prematurely, and the crew began to abandon ship before the code books had been dealt with. At 04.10, the Russians showed up, and after three hours of inconclusive skirmishing, it was all over.
    All three copies of the SKM were retrieved by the Russians, one from the ship and two from the sea. Exactly how this was done has never been conclusively established; Churchill, always ready to use poetic licence when the facts were lacking, wrote that ‘the body of a drowned German … was picked up by the Russians a few hours later, and clasped in his bosom by arms rigid with death, were the cipher and signal books of the German navy’.
    The SKM was an immense tome containing 300,000 three-letter codes, each one referring to a plain-language word, phrase or name. Its covers were lined with lead, making it too heavy to hold in your hands. It had been in use