Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (7 page)

Allied liaison with foreign underground movements was problematical. For one thing, messages had often to be translated as well as encoded and decoded. For another, clandestine transmitters in Nazi-occupied Europe were easily located by enemy direction-finders. So, to avoid arrest, they had to be portable, and their operating teams extremely mobile. They could only feel reasonably secure if they kept to remote forests and mountains, where their services were in least demand. They were in great danger when sending from occupied cities that were swarming with the
German military: sending time there was usually limited to ten minutes. The most effective of the European Resistance movements – in Poland, Yugoslavia, and northern Italy – were also the furthest removed from Britain. Hence airdrops of equipment and personnel were hard to arrange. The portable sets were not particularly portable. The standard A1 type transmitter, which was built in a factory in Stanmore and dropped by the hundred into Europe behind enemy lines, was popularly known as the ‘Pipstock’. It measured 9 x 25 x 30cm (3.5 x 10 x 12 in), fitted comfortably into a medium-sized suitcase, or, so as not to attract attention, was most conveniently carried in a sack; and it weighed about 10kg (22 lb). It sent out a 10-watt signal on a sky-wave at very high frequencies. To be fully operational, it needed a telegraphist, a cipher clerk, a strong bagman, a look-out, and a messenger; it was dependent on a fixed power supply; and its transformer had a nasty tendency to heat up.

The threat from overheating, however, was no less worrying than that from Gestapo snoopers. Hence, being deliberately designed to emit only a minimal ground-wave, the transmitters could not be used for local communication. This meant that clandestine stations operating on the same network within the same European city could only talk to each other via Barnes Lodge more than a thousand miles away.
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For all these reasons, many of the exiled Governments in London continued to entrust their most vital messages to couriers or to prearranged nonsense statements broadcast
en clair
by the BBC. Advance warnings about the imminence of Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy) had recently been passed to the French Resistance by BBC presenters making magical announcements like:
Je regrette les neiges d’antan.
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Not surprisingly, the occupants of Barnes Lodge had to employ great ingenuity to keep regular contact with their unseen collaborators. Only eighteen of their thirty-nine receivers were of the most modern type, and only two of the forty-six radio towers at Chipperfield were mounted with the most suitable rhomboid aerials. To cap it all, mid-1944 coincided with the low point of the eleven-year sunspot cycle, and incoming signals were frequently interrupted or distorted. Even so, work never stopped. As the surviving Register indicates, Barnes Lodge exchanged 2,522 telegrams in July and 4,341 in August.
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The radio telegraphists were trained to the highest standards: Telegraphists 1st Class had to transmit and receive faultlessly at a minimum of 120 letters a minute, and Telegraphists 2nd and 3rd Class at 80 and 40
respectively. In addition, to save time, especially when signing on and off, they used the large number of internationally recognized abbreviations, such as VVV – ‘hello’, QRK? – ‘how are you receiving me?’, QTCO – ‘I am not sending a message’, and R – ‘understood’.

Britain’s efforts to coordinate Underground activities in the occupied countries of her allies were largely organized by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Formed in July 1940 by the merger of the sabotage section of MI6, the research branch of the War Office, and one of the propaganda departments of the Foreign Office, it had agents and representatives on all continents. Its headquarters were located at a secret address in Baker Street, a short walk from Euston Station and close to the (non-existent) rooms of the fictional Sherlock Holmes. Directly subordinated to the British Chiefs of Staff, it was headed in its early days by a seconded diplomat, Gladwyn Jebb, and from 1943 by a dashing Highland officer born in Yokohama, Maj.Gen. Colin Gubbins. Some 13,000 courageous men and women, all volunteers, formed the core. But the greater part of its agents were foreigners who were trained by SOE experts for secret service in their own occupied countries. Training camps were set up in the remote Scottish Highlands and at Beaulieu House in Hampshire, and overseas at ‘Camp X’ at Oshawa in Ontario, at Mount Carmel in Palestine, and at Singapore. Transport was provided, sometimes reluctantly, by RAF units specializing in parachute drops, and occasionally by Royal Navy submarines. Communications were maintained by an autonomous signals section, which through a series of accidents became the chief channel between London and Washington. Churchill loved SOE. MI6 and the Foreign Office loathed it.
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Armed insurrections were designed as the culmination of Allied plans to undermine Nazi rule. In the early years of the war, resistance had been limited to sabotage, anti-Nazi propaganda, small-scale guerrilla actions, and occasional assassinations. The spectacular, and spectacularly avenged, SOE-assisted killing of
SS-Ogruf.
Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in June 1942 demonstrated both the possibilities and the dangers.
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Yet as the war progressed, and the Allied cause gained strength, both civilian and military subversion were planned on an ever-growing scale. Of course, local circumstances varied enormously. Generally speaking, the Nazi Occupation regimes were far milder in Western Europe than in countries in the East which the Nazis had earmarked for their
Lebensraum
. Generally
speaking, it was less risky to engage in subversive operations in France or Italy than in Poland or Yugoslavia. Even so, the overall trend was unmistakable. As the German forces of occupation came under attack from the Allied armies, they could also expect to come under pressure from organized groups of local patriots and partisans.

Western air power was a crucial consideration in planning risings. For two years past, Bomber Command had been pounding German cities with impunity, and during Overlord tactical air support was the one branch of the battle in which the British and Americans enjoyed marked superiority. By mid-1944, therefore, all would-be insurgents knew that the Allies possessed the capacity to supply them from the air, to bombard airfields, to disrupt enemy troop concentrations, and to deploy reinforcements by parachute. If, as was generally agreed, the resistance were to assist the Allied armies, by the same token the Allies were expected to assist the resistance.

Both sides paid special attention to capital cities. The Germans planned to dig in and to defend the capitals as symbols of their all-conquering supremacy. The resistance planned to seize them in order to emphasize the restoration of national independence. Timing was crucial. If the ill-armed patriots took to the streets too soon, they could not hope to hold out for long against vastly superior German firepower. If they left their risings too late, the chance of striking a blow at the hated Nazis might be missed. The ideal time was the moment when a panicky German garrison came under attack from the advancing Allied armies. With luck, the Underground fighters would only have to hold their capital for two or three days before the Germans surrendered. Rome showed the way on 5 June 1944 – on the eve of Overlord – when the US Army swept into the Eternal City and Ivano Bonomi’s anti-fascist Committee of National Liberation fell on the retreating Germans to seize the reins of Italian Government.
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After Rome, the line-up for further risings was a long one. It included Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Belgrade, Budapest, and Prague. Everything depended on the routes and the rate of the Allied advance. Yet the rest of June and the whole of July passed with no further outbreak.

1 August 1944 was a Tuesday. Anyone reading
The Times
that morning in London – or on the platform at King’s Langley – would not have found any war news that was particularly sensational. Indeed, one could not
have found any war news at all before page 4. Page 1, as always, was taken up by everyday notices of births, marriages, and deaths. Page 2 was given over to Home News. It contained an article about ‘Children in Care’, and a long letter to the editor pointing out that the Balfour Declaration had not promised support for a Jewish state but for a Jewish national home. The weather forecast stated that the hot sunny spell would continue. Page 3 was reserved for ‘Imperial and Foreign’. The largest piece discussed ‘Renaissance Art in Rome’. It was accompanied by other items about ‘Russian Memories of 1914’, the ‘Red Army Mission to Greece’, a ‘Hill-top Affray in Normandy’, and ‘Joy in a Liberated French Village’. The only substantial piece of diplomatic comment concerned the Polish Premier’s forthcoming mission to Moscow – about which as yet there was nothing substantial to report.

The war news on page 4 consisted of half a dozen major reports. The first was headed ‘Americans Clearing the Normandy Coast’. Its optimism contrasted with the dubious column alongside headed ‘More Progress at Caumont’. The third report was headed ‘Severe Air Blows’. ‘Fighter-bomber activity’, it announced, ‘was at first handicapped yesterday by what the Americans call “smog” – a mixture of smoke and fog’. The fourth concerned a ‘Stiff Fight for Florence’. The fifth, which filled the entire right-hand side of the page, described ‘The Red Army’s Rapid Drive on East Prussia’. It consisted of two parts – ‘Street Fighting in Kaunas’ and the ‘Ferocious Battle for Warsaw’. The latter was backed up by a ‘news snippet’ on the following page. ‘Russian forces which are in sight of Warsaw’, it read, ‘are massing on the Vistula, where the line to the south is one of acute danger to the Germans’.

That day
The Times
carried two main leaders. ‘The National Medical Service’ debated one of the current domestic issues. ‘Nearing Warsaw’ debated the latest development on the foreign front. ‘According to German reports’, it repeated, ‘Marshal Rokossovsky’s men were fighting within six miles of Warsaw. Thus the first of the martyred cities of Europe to suffer the horrors of German air bombardment and of National Socialist rule, is also the first to see deliverance at hand.’ The conclusion drawn from this information was confined to military prognosis. ‘The approaching fall of Warsaw,’
The Times
concluded, ‘taken in conjunction with the capture of Kaunas . . . opens up the way for a convergent attack on East Prussia.’

Passing to page 6, the diligent reader could have skimmed the court circular. Businessmen heading for the City could have been most interested in ‘Finance and Commerce’ on page 7. Photographs were reserved for the
top half of page 8. The largest showed troops of Montgomery’s Second Army in the shell-shattered town of Caumont. The others showed scenes from ‘The King in Italy’; one was subtitled ‘The King is seen decorating Sepoy Kamal Ram, 8th Punjab Regiment, with the Victoria Cross ribbon’.

Below the photographs were the daily listings. ‘Broadcasting’ started with ‘Home Service; 7 a.m. News, 7.15 a.m. Physical Exercises’: ‘Opera and Ballet’ was taken up with performances by the two companies at Sadler’s Wells. London’s theatres were showing Noël Coward’s
Blithe Spirit
at the Duchess,
Macbeth
at the Lyric, and
Arsenic and Old Lace
at the Strand. Under ‘Nonstop Review’, the Windmill invited reviewers to the saucy
Revudeville
with its proud slogan ‘We Never Closed’.

No one from Barnes Lodge travelled up to London or to anywhere else on 1 August. The listeners were on duty round the clock. As one of the operators remembered, ‘A feverish atmosphere reigned’.
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They knew that a crisis was approaching. Strategic orders had gone out, and vital replies were awaited at any moment of the day or night. Relays of telegraphists leaned over their machines, tightened their headsets and prepared to grip their pencils. The duty controller stood by to rush the precious pieces of paper to the teletypists who sat nervously, waiting to forward the messages to Headquarters.

Excitement at Barnes Lodge was all the higher through a sensational but puzzling incident which had occurred a week earlier. On 25 July an irregular unciphered message had been received, in the clear: ‘The regiment is surrounded. They are disarming us. They are approaching us.’ A most unusual exchange with Headquarters ensued. The general on duty at Upper Belgrave Street ordered Barnes Lodge over the teleprinter, ‘Ask them who is disarming them?’ When the reply came back, the duty general simply responded: ‘It isn’t true.’ The transmission ended abruptly with the pathetic words ‘Goodbye, brothers.’
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Nothing could have been more unsettling than apparently important messages sent in the clear. The rulebook stated that they should be ignored. They could easily be the work of enemy agents who had recognized the frequency of an Underground transmitter but did not know the necessary encryption procedures. German intelligence was constantly engaged in misinformation schemes.

It was all the more astonishing, therefore, that in the evening of 1 August, Barnes Lodge again received a second apparently vital message in the clear. On this occasion, the circumstances were especially disconcerting. The transmission had opened as expected at a prearranged time from
an operator whose ‘signature’ was well known. It began with a call sign that by agreement had been cunningly altered from the standard ‘VVV VVV VVV’ to ‘VVV VVV VVVE’, thereby eliminating the possibility that the operator had been captured by the enemy and was transmitting under duress. And the message was preceded by the usual sort of heading. Yet the next group of letters, ‘QTCO=’, was totally contradictory. ‘QTCO’ stood for ‘I am sending no messages’ and = stood for ‘start of message’. The receiving operator then recorded forty-six words, which, since they were not enciphered, were immediately recognizable.
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