The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills, commonly known as intelligence, is invaluable in all walks of life. It is of particular value in political and military affairs. Military intelligence on its own does not win or shorten wars but it does help to shape their course and in unusual ways. It provides information which may improve the ‘number of chances’ at a commander’s disposal.1 E.T. Williams, head of intelligence for the 21st Army Group during WW2 noted that:
Perfect Intelligence in war must of necessity be out-of-date and therefore cease to be perfect. We deal with partial and outmoded sources from which we attempt to compose an intelligible appreciation having regard to the rules of evidence and our soldierly training and which we must be prepared constantly to revise as new evidence merges. We deal not with the true but with the likely. Speed is therefore of the essence of the matter.2
Intelligence, in a military sense, aims to minimise uncertainty about the enemy and at the same time, maximise the efficient use of one’s own resources. So the challenge for intelligence services is to provide current, reliable and effective information which commanders in the field can add to their own knowledge. This information typically emerges from an intelligence chain, which starts with the interception of the enemy’s communications or signals. This is followed in turn by decryption, translation, analysis, distribution and action. This process can be flawed at any point in the chain and pieces of intelligence are usually fragmentary and controversial, with their value never entirely clear. They can generate debate as much as information, and inferences drawn from a number of messages have to be combined into an assessment which can then generate a strategy for action. In the end, its effectiveness depends on a military organisation able to exploit it.
During WW1, the intelligence branch at General Headquarters (GHQ) in Iraq noted that ‘the mass of information received by GHQ almost always came in in disconnected fragments of very varying value, fragments were the general rule, and the bulk of intelligence work at any GHQ really consists in putting together a gigantic jig-saw puzzle from innumerable little bits, good, bad and indifferent.’3 Commanders wished to gather information on all aspects of the enemy. However, their most fundamental needs were to determine the intentions and movements of their enemy. Walter Kirke, a senior member of the intelligence branch at GHQ in France during WW,1 termed this ‘the bed-rock of all intelligence work’, to uncover the enemy’s order of battle, that is, the locations, strength and organisation of its troops.4
William Frederick Friedman was arguably the leading American expert in the field of signals intelligence during the first half of the twentieth century. In a series of lectures, serialised in the NSA Technical Journal from 1959 to 1961, Friedman attempted to define the various components of signals intelligence and its historical origins.5 In his view, signals intelligence (Sigint) has two main components: communications intelligence (COMINT) – information derived from the organised interception, study and analysis of the enemy’s communications, and electronic intelligence (ELINT) – information obtained from a study of enemy electronic emissions such as homing or directional beacons, radar, recording data of an electronic nature at a distance. Not only do most countries seek to obtain Sigint even during peacetime, most also invest heavily in protecting their own communications. Friedman defined this latter activity as communications security (COMSEC) – the protection resulting from all measures designed to deny to the enemy information of value that may be derived from the interception and study of such communications. A few other definitions are needed at this time: cryptology is the science that is concerned with all of these branches of secret signalling, cryptography is the science of preparing secret communications and cryptanalysis is the science of solving secret communications. So in summary, Sigint involves the interception of messages, traffic analysis – the study of unencrypted information contained within the messages such as the identity of the sender, recipient, etc. – and the solution of codes and ciphers.
All messages sent through a communications system start off life in so-called plaintext, usually the language of the sender. They are converted or transformed by following certain rules, steps or processes to disguise them. For the purposes of this book, the conversion or transformation is called encryption and the reverse process, decryption. In general terms, the resulting disguised text can be called a cryptogram. This terminology is often confusing for new readers because some authors prefer to use encode or encipher instead of encrypt and decode or decipher instead of decrypt. The reason for this is that encrypting and decrypting are achieved by means of codes and ciphers which lay at the heart of Sigint and COMSEC systems. It is important to understand the difference between the two. In cipher or cipher systems, cryptograms are produced by applying specific rules, steps or processes to individual letters of the plaintext. These types of cryptograms can be said to be in cipher text. In code or code systems, cryptograms are produced by applying specific rules, steps or processes generally to entire words, phrases and sentences of the plaintext.
The earliest reliable information of the use of cryptography in connection with an alphabetic language dates from about 900 BC. Use was made of a device called a scytale, a wooden cylinder of specific dimensions around which was wrapped spirally a piece of parchment or leather. The message was written on the parchment, unwound and sent to its destination by a safe courier. The recipient would have the same device to wind the parchment on, thus bringing together properly the letters representing the message. However, exact details of how this device worked in practice are unknown.
There are number of examples of ciphers in the Bible and one of the more interesting ones involves the mention in Jeremiah 25:26 and Jeremiah 51:41 of a place called Sheshakh. This was unknown to geographers and historians, until a coding system was discovered using the Hebrew language. If you write the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in two rows, letters 11 to 1 in one and letters 12 to 22 in another, you have a substitution alphabet where you can replace letters with those opposite. This is called ATHBASH writing where aleph, the first letter, is replaced by tech, the last letter; beth, the second letter by shin, the next-to-last, etc. This revealed that Sheshakh actually translates as Babel, the ancient name for Babylon.
However, the world of signals intelligence that Alastair Denniston would serve for thirty years really began in 1653. The first regular interception and cryptanalytic organisation in Britain was born with the establishment of the postal monopoly and the Secret Office in 1653. In 1657, Parliament passed the first Post Office Act and the separate Inland and Continental postal offices were united into a General Post Office. This provided a legal basis under which the power of the Secretary of State to issue warrants was recognised, and authorised the Postmaster General to open and examine correspondence. Postal rates were fixed and John Thurloe6 became the first Postmaster General. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Post Office transmitted, collected and created intelligence. This was achieved by the simple expediency of opening, detaining and copying correspondence and then sending it on to the Secretaries of State. The Post Office Act of 1711 guaranteed a regular source of material from the Post Office’s monopoly of the mails, supplemented by occasional captures of documents in war time, or from the activities of secret agents.
Inland post was examined in the Private Office while foreign post was examined in a special office known as the Secret Office. The Private Office of the Secretary of the Post Office was responsible for the execution of warrants to intercept inland mail in connection with political and criminal investigations. The Secret Office was tasked with opening, reading, copying and re-sealing letters and dispatches, and sometimes deciphering those in simpler codes or ciphers. It was located in Post Office premises but was responsible to the appropriate Secretary of State. Eventually, it dealt almost exclusively with foreign mail and was responsible to the Secretary of State for the Foreign Department. It had no official existence and was headed by the Foreign Secretary. Its first manager was Isaac Dorislaus,7 who was known intriguingly as the Secret Man. The Foreign Secretary was responsible for supervising the opening and copying of foreign correspondence and sending it on to the Secretaries of State in packets marked ‘Private and Most Secret’. Those in plain text were sent directly to the King while those in cipher were passed on to another department known as the Deciphering Branch.
The Deciphering Branch was responsible for cryptography and translation and, from 1762, also undertook experimental work. It had no specific location, formal organisation or head. However, one of its most successful operatives was Dr John Wallis, a famous mathematician who can lay claim to being the father of British cryptography.8 Wallis’ assistant was his grandson, William Blencowe, an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford. On Wallis’ death in 1703, Blencowe became the first official Decipherer. The branch was staffed by two or three experts working on their own as research specialists to investigate new ciphers and, if possible, solve them. From a staff of around five or six in the early years, it eventually grew to about twelve in number.
There are numerous examples of the Post Office’s intelligence work helping to guarantee the safety of the British Empire. One example was intelligence which warned the British forces at Philadelphia of the arrival of the French fleet in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. Foreign correspondence from many countries was read, including that of the courts of France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Spain, Sardinia, Holland and Sweden, and intercepts averaged two or three per week. The Hanoverian government which ruled the United Kingdom from 1714 to 1837 maintained a ‘secret bureau’ of openers and deciphers at Neinburg (a district in Lower Saxony, Germany). Interceptions were sometimes obtained from agents or foreign postmasters in Brussels, Danzig, Hamburg, Leyden and Rotterdam. The security of the Post Office’s intelligence operation depended on the skill of its operatives, restricted knowledge, loyalty and the absence of Parliamentary criticism. The distinction between the Private Office, Secret Office and Deciphering Branch, along with a short distribution list of intelligence, helped to maintain secrecy. A system of recruitment and training was put in place, based on patronage and nepotism. This served to provide suitably motivated and reliable individuals from a small number of family dynasties for both the Secret Office and the Deciphering Branch.
In June 1844, the Government faced criticism as some of its intelligence activities became known. At the end of June, it stopped the interception of diplomatic correspondence in the Secret Office. This was done on the basis that the act of 1711 only authorised express as opposed to general warrants for the opening of post. However, the Home Secretary of the day, Sir James Graham, had signed a warrant for the interception of the correspondence of Giuseppe Mazzini. He was an Italian nationalist living in Britain and the Austrian Ambassador was concerned that he was conducting subversive activities. Mazzini’s letters were intercepted between March and June 1844 and sent to the Foreign Secretary. Mazzini discovered that his letters had been intercepted and complained to a Member of Parliament. The issuing of general warrants could not be defended by the Government and in February 1845, the Home Secretary announced the department formally maintained in the Post Office by the Secretary of State for the Foreign Office had been abolished and that no similar establishment was maintained by the Home Office. As public opinion against such activity mounted, in August the Government abolished the Secret Office and in October, the Deciphering Branch. The last official Decipherer was Francis Willes, who worked alone apart from an assistant from 1825 until the branch was abolished. The Private Office gradually became less important, as the attitude of the day was that England ‘does not stand in need of such expedients for her safety’.9 It was abolished along with the Deciphering Branch in 1844.
Under the Hanoverians (from George I in 1714 to the end of Victoria’s reign in 1901), British Sigint provided technical assistance in opening and re-sealing dispatches, provision of staff, and a service of deciphered product from the King’s Hanoverian Sigint organisation. It had considerable success in solving the diplomatic ciphers of many European countries and provided a service of decrypts of the diplomatic dispatches for the King and his most senior ministers only, providing support to managing affairs of state and the conduct of diplomacy.
It does seem that the British Sigint organisation was broken up and abandoned in 1844, and the expertise lost, much to the detriment of British cipher security. While telegrams could legally be intercepted, this could be done only by individual warrants to investigate political or criminal matters. Remarkably, most Victorian statesmen maintained strict moral codes of gentlemanly conduct and there appears to be no evidence in either GCHQ or other archives of British Sigint activity between 1844 and 1914.
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The telegraph was first developed by Samuel F.B. Morse, an artistturned-inventor who conceived the idea of the electric telegraph in 1832. Several European inventors had proposed such a device, but Morse, working independently, had by the mid-1830s built a working telegraph instrument. In the late 1830s, he perfected Morse Code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages. In May 1844, Morse inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with the message ‘What hath God wrought’, sent from the US Capitol to a railroad station in Baltimore. Within a decade, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable criss-crossed the country. The rapid communication it made possible greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
The idea of a transatlantic communications cable was first raised in 1839, following the introduction of the working telegraph by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. Morse threw his weight behind it in 1840, and by 1850, a link had been laid between Britain and France. The same year, construction began on a telegraph line up the far north-east coast of North America – from Nova Scotia to the very tip of Newfoundland. Cyrus West Field, a businessman and financier from New York City, took up the idea of extending the east-coast cable across the Atlantic to Britain. In 1857, after several attempts had failed, two ships, the USS Niagara and HMS Agamemnon, met in the centre of the Atlantic on 29 July 1858, and attached the cables together. This time there were no cable breaks, and the Niagara made it to Trinity Bay in Newfoundland on 4 August, and the Agamemnon arrived at Valentia Island off the west coast of Ireland on 5 August. Over the following days, the shore ends were landed on both sides using a team of horses, and tests were conducted. On 16 August 1858, the first message was sent across the Atlantic by telegraph cable, reading ‘Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men’. The transmission marked the culmination of nineteen years of dreams, plans and hard work, bridging the economic and political systems of both the UK and the US. The reception across the cable was terrible, and it took an average of two minutes and five seconds to transmit a single character. The first message took 17 hours and 40 minutes to transmit. On 3 September 1858, the cable failed. In an attempt to increase the speed of transmission, the voltage on the line was boosted from 600V to 2,000V, and the insulation on the cable couldn’t cope. It failed over the course of a few hours, and it would be another six years before the capital was raised for another attempt. By the end of the nineteenth century, the British Empire was self-sufficient in its cable infrastructure. All parts of the Empire could be reached with British-owned cable with sufficient redundancy built in.
By 1869, telegrams were treated like letters and could be legally intercepted if political or criminal activity was suspicious. However, there was really no Sigint in the UK before 1914 and the Royal Navy and Army had given it little, if any, thought. During the Victorian era, some analytical activity was carried out, but on an ad hoc basis. There was no permanent intelligence infrastructure in place, despite there being a legal framework to permit it. Countries such as France, Russia and Austria-Hungary did have effective Sigint operations in place before 1914. Russia regularly read British diplomatic ciphers between 1854 and 1917. Around 1890, a UK cipher committee was formed to consider the use of new cryptographic machines.
Technological developments which would shape Sigint through two world wars came to fruition before the end of the nineteenth century. It had been claimed that either the British physicist Oliver Lodge or the Soviet scientist Aleksander Popov invented wireless radio. However, it was the Italian Guglielmo Marconi who arrived in England in 1896 and filed his first patent on wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s work was timely because on 5 August 1914, in the early days of WW1, Britain sent the General Post Office Cable Ship Alert to cut five German telegraphic cables. These ran down the English Channel to connect with France, Spain, Africa and North and South America. Later in the war, missions by the Cable Ship Telconia and other ships eliminated the remainder of Germany’s cable network. In some instances cable was reeled in and relaid for use by Allied powers. Britain also destroyed the German cable station in Lome in West Africa and the remaining German cable link, the German-American line to Liberia and Brazil, was cut in 1915. Germany retaliated with troops raiding a number of British and French cable stations, ones on the East African coast and Baltic Sea and also cutting cable links to India. While the cutting of German cables in 1914 was probably for strategic reasons unconnected with Sigint, when Sigint did start up again it was not in the Foreign Office, but in the Admiralty and War Office, which provided the true forebears of the Sigint organisation of today. The Army did maintain an interest in cryptanalysis after the invention of wireless radio and for the Navy it at least became a practical proposition. Both had an interest in exploiting captured documents.
Modern signals intelligence would be born during WW1 when Sigint techniques started to become more sophisticated. This was due to the emergence of wireless radio as the main form of communication and the ability of countries to intercept and read messages. However, no army really appreciated the cryptological consequences of using wireless radio and they expected effective field communications to be maintained through telegraph, telephone and dispatch riders. Sigint would prove to be a constant battle between codebreakers and codemakers, the latter continually having to balance security and usability.10 During WW1, armies tended to prioritise usability, which was understandable given the problems posed by the systems at their disposal. In one instance in 1918, experts using the British Army’s ‘field cipher’ spent thirteen minutes in enciphering and deciphering a fourteen-word message.11
In military conflict, commanders deploy techniques which aim to create confusion in the mind of the enemy. Signal security, surprise and deception play a crucial role in achieving this objective. Each side needs to conceal its order of battle and movements at an operational level to achieve surprise. Enemy traffic analysts can be thwarted by effective security and misleading information can be disseminated through deception. According to the historian John Ferris:
Although in 1917 all armies sought to improve their signals security, it seems that only those of Britain and Germany seriously linked this practice to one of deception. Throughout the last 18 months of the war these two belligerents alternately led the world in this endeavour, with the scales of the technical balance between them wavering continually, first towards one and then the other. Their techniques became increasingly sophisticated; indeed not until 1943 would any army in the world begin to surpass the quality of the British and German policies of signals deception of 1918.12
So, as in day-to day-life, intelligence affects all human endeavours. It can be used for good and for bad and can influence world events. Sigint would play a vital role in affecting the outcome of two world wars and Alastair Denniston would be destined to play a defining role in its evolution over thirty years.
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John Denniston was a farmer who worked on Devol Moor in Kilmalcom, a village and parish in the Lower Ward of Renfrewshire in Scotland. His grandson, Archibald, was born in 1814 and eventually settled in Greenock, a historic industrial town by the Firth of Clyde, 25 miles west of Glasgow. Archibald’s son, James, was born on 5 June 1854 and after studying at Edinburgh, he moved to Glasgow where he was awarded an M.D. degree in 1875. He found it hard to get into the smart practices in Edinburgh and became an impoverished country doctor in the Argyll seaside resort of Dunoon. He first mooted the idea of erecting a cottage hospital there and, after working tirelessly on the project, the new hospital was opened in October 1885 by H.R.H. Princess Louise. He was also on the staff of the Stafford House Committee which sent doctors, nurses and supplies to war stricken Turkey. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, he was one of the surgeons sent out by Lord Blantyre and attached to his sections in Asia. He became the chief surgeon of the British Hospital in Erzurum, treating wounded Turkish soldiers who were fighting their ancestral enemies, the Russians. He was present at the siege of Erzerum working under Red Crescent Movement13 auspices for the civilian and service wounded. He received several honours14 from the Sultan and had a street named after him in Erzerum. His heroism was acknowledged by colleagues as he had to deal with thousands of sick and wounded patients under terrible conditions.
James Denniston began courting Agnes Buntin Guthrie before going abroad and continued his courtship through letters after he arrived in Turkey in late 1877. He returned to London in May 1878 and Agnes and he were married in 1880. He acquired the practice of Dr Reid in Dunoon where he worked as a general practitioner. In the following years, the Dennistons had three children who were raised and educated in Dunoon. Alexander Guthrie was their first born on 1 December 1881, followed by another boy, William (known to family as Bill), and a girl, Elizabeth (known to family as Biddy), born in 1890. James had contracted tuberculosis as a result of his work with wounded and dying Turkish soldiers and his health suffered from the damp Scottish climate. Much to his regret and that of his family, they moved to Bowden, Cheshire, and apparently a better climate. He was even advised to take sea voyages for his health and travelled as a ship’s doctor across the world. He died from pneumonia during one of these voyages in 1892, on board the Royal Mail Steamer Tongariro on its homeward-bound trip from Australia. His wife Agnes, a notable cook, was left to raise their children.
His son Alexander was known as Alastair and in later years AGD, which is how he will be referred to for the rest of this book. AGD went to Bowden College, Altrincham, where he won numerous prizes before moving on to London University, where he was awarded a BA in 1902. He enrolled as a student of philosophical sciences at Bonn University on 28 April 1903 and remained there until he received a certificate of departure on 30 July 1904. He also seems to have spent some time studying at the Sorbonne, but little is known of his days at these European universities. However, Bonn University records show him taking courses in old high German languages and literature, middle high German, middle English grammar, history of the German language, German art and literary history as well as the sounds of German and French. The experience clearly strengthened his abilities in the classics and languages, particularly German and French. After returning to the UK he took a post as a Modern Language teacher at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh in 1907 under the headship of George Smith, a graduate of Edinburgh and Oxford Universities. The school had been founded in 1883 in Merchiston Castle15 as an academy for boys and AGD took an active part in the school’s games programme. This was not surprising as he was a talented athlete and had played field hockey for Scotland. The team competed in the first Olympic field hockey tournament in the 1908 Olympics and shared the bronze medal with Wales. He had a single-figure handicap for most of his golf-playing life. Six years after winning his Olympic medal, AGD’s career in intelligence would be launched by the man who ran the Admiralty’s training programme.
In January 1903, Alfred Ewing,16 a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge University, was invited by the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Selbourne, to become Director of Naval Education. Selbourne and Admiral Fisher,17 the Second Sea Lord, had just launched their New Scheme of Naval Education, under which all naval cadets were to receive, as an essential part of their training, a serious grounding in the principles and techniques of engineering. Ewing took on the role of adviser and inspector of the educational work in the training establishments, the dockyards and the Fleet. He was based in the Admiralty and after investigating the method of naval selection, both Osborne and Dartmouth were established under his direction. Osborne was intended to serve as a ‘junior’ college for the first two years of cadet training before they moved on to Dartmouth for a further two years.
The Royal Naval College at Osborne, Isle of Wight, opened in September 1903 with seventy-four cadets beginning their studies there.18 The minimum age was twelve and a half years initially but was increased to twelve years and nine or ten months in 1906 and eventually, in 1913, to between thirteen years and four to eight months to bring it in line with the age of entry to public schools. While its focus was on practical science and engineering, Ewing stated that ‘During these four years the boy receives a broad and liberal education in the subjects of a modern side at a public school.’ However, he went on to say that ‘not only does the curriculum include a certain amount of teaching in seamanship and navigation, but the boys are under naval discipline and breathing a naval atmosphere throughout their course’.19 So while Osborne was very much a naval training establishment, it was providing a more general education which would require non-naval academic staff to deliver it. Shortly after his appointment, Ewing began recruiting staff for Osborne, and a senior science master at Harrow School, Cyril Ashford, was appointed headmaster. Captain Rosslyn Wemyss was appointed overall head of the college and when the first cohort of cadets moved on to Dartmouth, Ashford and Wemyss moved with them to ensure continuity.
Ashford was replaced at Osborne by the mathematician Charles Godfrey and Wemyss remained in overall command of both colleges. Upon opening, Ashford had a staff of nine masters under his command. Building work was not complete so the civilian masters had to ‘live out’ although they did have a common-room next to the headmaster’s office. As the College expanded, more staff was needed and among the recruits in late 1909 was twenty-one year old Alastair Denniston. His name first appears both in the Osborne and Navy Lists as a Modern Language Master in January 1910.20 He was welcomed to the college in the Editor’s Notes in the September 1910 edition of the Osborne Magazine.21
AGD’s linguistic talents were put to good use at Osborne. The subject of the examinations which were held over two days in December, March and July give a clear indication of the emphasis on languages, with papers on English, French, German and Latin. They were prepared by the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Examination Board, and the French and German examinations included ‘an oral examination to which importance will be attached’.22 Cadets were grouped in ‘tutor sets’, each of which was associated with a particular master who advised them in all aspects of their study. AGD was expected to tutor up to twenty cadets at any one time and he taught French, of which he was a fluent speaker, and German.
Given his own athletic prowess, AGD enjoyed the various sporting activities undertaken by cadets during the afternoon. Officers and Masters (O. & M.) frequently took part in team sports alongside the cadets, as well in teams of their own. AGD showed himself to be an allrounder at cricket, frequently batting, bowling and taking catches. In a match against the Staff College Camberley he scored forty-eight runs and took four wickets in a winning effort. He turned out for the O. & M. rugby team, surprisingly, given his size, as a forward. Given his field hockey prowess, it is not surprising that AGD featured as a halfback in the O. & M. hockey team. He played fullback for their football team and at 10st 7lbs, rowed at stroke for the rowing team. AGD also took part in the college’s annual Christmas pantomime. The Osborne College magazine lists him featuring as a Pirate Boatswain named Dick Deadeye in the 1910 production, as one of two villains called Francis in the 1911 production of Dick Whittington and as Count Zogitoff, The King’s Chamberlain, in the 1912 production of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Apart from the civilian masters such as AGD, naval officers acted as Term Lieutenants, and their Engineer Officer second-in-command taught the cadets seamanship and oversaw their engineering education. Petty Officers acted as cadet mentors and physical training instructors. Experience of working with naval officers on a day-to-day basis would serve AGD well through two world wars. A 1912 Education Inspectors’ Report noted that the thirty-four civilian masters were on the whole ‘extremely competent’ and the average teaching skills were ‘high’; several were ‘brilliant’.23
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On 4 August 1914, Admiral Oliver, Director of Naval Intelligence Division (DID) and a friend of Ewing, showed him a number of telegrams sent via wireless radio in cipher by Germany from German ships and land stations. These had been intercepted by listening stations belonging to the Navy, the Post Office and the Marconi Company. Ewing had previously talked to Oliver about his interest in mechanical methods for enciphering and deciphering messages. Oliver asked Ewing to see whether he could make any progress with them and eventually Oliver arranged for all such messages to be sent to Ewing, numbers sometimes exceeded 2,000 per day.
Ewing proceeded to examine code books held by Lloyd’s, the General Post Office and the British Museum. He also contacted the manager of the Marconi Company to arrange for more systematic interception of enemy signals. He agreed to set up a new ‘section’ in the Admiralty and began recruiting staff, placing an emphasis on people with both a good working knowledge of German and discretion. One of his first ports of call was the Naval Colleges at Dartmouth and Osborne, and one of his first recruits, initially on a temporary basis, was AGD. Other Osborne and Dartmouth schoolmasters, such as the Headmaster of Osborne, Charles Godfrey,24 were recruited and served until the colleges restarted towards the end of September 1914. Other early recruits included R.D. Norton, an ex-member of the Foreign Office and company promoter, of whom little is known, and Lord Herschell, son of one of Gladstone’s Lord Chancellors. Staff numbers were small in the early days, although some help was provided by naval instructors Parish and Curtis and by Professor Henderson, a scientist and mathematician from Greenwich Naval College. The majority chosen were classicists, the exceptions being Ewing, Henderson, Russell Clarke and Hopkinson, who had mathematical minds. Less skilled people were added who knew German, such as ladies with a university education and wounded officers unfit for active service. Typists were also essential with skills in sorting, filing and analysing.
AGD and a few of the other early recruits quickly identified one distinct class of messages; military messages using transposition ciphers, suitable for use in the field. The German Navy used code books and one signal book for ordinary fleet signals and confidential orders. Different keys25 were used with each and they dominated the traffic sent to Ewing. With a small number of staff now in place, collaboration was established between Ewing’s section in the Admiralty and the War Office and Ewing sent AGD over as his representative and to act as a liaison officer. The first elements of a real cryptographic section within the War Office began to emerge and AGD, Norton and Herschell were seconded to this section as watchkeepers.26 At this stage, AGD had been working without pay during his vacation but as the amount of work increased, he obtained leave from Osborne. Eventually the War Office informed the Treasury that he and several others had been employed in the general intelligence section of the Directorate of Military Operations and that it may be necessary to at least cover their out-of-pocket expenses.27
Ewing’s staff now consisted of Naval Instructors Parish and Curtis, and Professor Henderson when their other duties permitted them, and, as watchkeepers doing night duty in the War Office, AGD, Hershall and Norton. According to AGD: ‘The first three knew something of mathematics and little of German; all six were singularly ignorant of cryptography, but they were becoming expert analysers, filers and translators of German military telegraphese.’28 They had to use Ewing’s small office in the Admiralty as their base and move to his secretary’s even smaller office when Ewing held meetings in his capacity as Director of Naval Education. The first six weeks were devoted to research without any results, and work was confined to messages being sent from the German high power station at Nauen to German West Africa and elsewhere. The staff had little expertise in wireless telegraphy (W/T) but with the help of the manager of the Marconi Company, Mr Bradfield, they began to identify enemy call signs.29 They were able to collect the code books of German commercial firms but little was learned other than that Germany was communicating with its representatives abroad and others. The Army section was also having little success and military cipher messages were often confused with naval codes. After a few weeks, codes and ciphers could be separated and with the help of the French, who provided the key and method of the German military cipher, real decryption work became possible for the first time by the War Office’s naval secondees in their role as the ‘War Office Watch’. AGD would later write that ‘the signs of jealousy were not absent even in this small section of men drawn from many branches of civil life’.30
It is unlikely that when AGD accepted Ewing’s offer of some work without pay during his vacation, he could have imagined that it would set him on his career path for the next thirty years. However, events in continental Europe would soon put him on that path.