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The south-east coast of England, 100 years ago. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:17 | |
As the Great War began, | 0:00:17 | 0:00:18 | |
one town was turned on its head by a flood of troops and refugees. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:23 | |
With its eddying currents of humanity, it became | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
a hotbed of espionage which helped change the course of the war. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
The Germans couldn't stay in one place for more than a week | 0:00:33 | 0:00:37 | |
before they were bombed. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
'And it became a natural home for the collection of information.' | 0:00:39 | 0:00:43 | |
"Corpses, many of them horribly burnt, even in the trees." | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
Oh, this is amazing stuff. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:49 | |
'For the fruits of the latest spying techniques...' | 0:00:49 | 0:00:52 | |
The mapmaker, it was said, | 0:00:52 | 0:00:53 | |
could write 1,600 words on the back of a postage stamp. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:59 | |
..and for an extraordinary cast of characters. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:03 | |
The fact that he was a fraudster and a liar and a thief somehow | 0:01:03 | 0:01:07 | |
transfers to actually being the guy we want to push forward | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
once he gets out of jail. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
Characters who were ready to risk everything. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
And if they got caught, they were going to get shot. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:18 | |
These are the spies who loved Folkestone. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
We all love stories about spies, | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
and as an author, I've created one or two fictional spies myself. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
But when a country is at war, secret information is a serious matter. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:08 | |
It is the key to victory and hundreds, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
maybe thousands of lives can depend on a few scant facts. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:16 | |
Where armies use brute force, spies use their brains. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:22 | |
They don't call it "intelligence" for nothing. | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
Just before the war started, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:36 | |
Folkestone was an ordinary coastal town. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
A place to enjoy the fun of the seaside. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
But that wasn't to last. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
Thousands of Belgian refugees fled across the Channel. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
In those days, the ferry went from Flushing in neutral Holland | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
to Folkestone. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
Well, they were all pouring into this place. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
Little sleepy Folkestone found itself a hub for soldiers, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:05 | |
for would-be soldiers, for spies and would-be spies. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
We're going to look at some remarkable characters. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
You might call them the spooks of the Great War, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:23 | |
who operated out of Folkestone. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
They could easily be something out of a novel. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
And we begin with the spymaster lurking in the shadows - | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
Major Cecil Aylmer Cameron. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
He was certainly an interesting choice for this particular job. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
The thing about Cecil Cameron was that he had form. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
In fact, he'd been involved in something of a national scandal. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
A few years earlier, his Army career seemed to be going well. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
Good evening, sir, how do you do? | 0:04:03 | 0:04:07 | |
But he and his wife needed money, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
and they hatched a plot involving a string of pearls. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:13 | |
They had rented a pearl necklace worth £6,500. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
-An awful lot in today's money, of course. -Absolutely, in those days. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
And they'd insured the necklace. And then lost it somehow. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:29 | |
They were done for an insurance fraud, basically. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
Cecil Aylmer Cameron and his wife were convicted in Edinburgh. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
They both got three years. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
And that was all happening in Scotland. | 0:04:39 | 0:04:41 | |
And because Aylmer Cameron was the son of an Indian Army hero, | 0:04:41 | 0:04:46 | |
a man who had the VC, the officer class in London | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
decided this was some sort of Scottish stitch-up. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
The fact that he was a fraudster and a liar and a thief | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
somehow transfers, because of this officer-class attitude, | 0:04:56 | 0:05:01 | |
to actually being the guy we want to push forward | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
once he gets out of jail. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:05 | |
Once he was out of jail, about the only option available to him | 0:05:05 | 0:05:10 | |
was the shadowy world of espionage. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
When he first got back to London he was foisted on | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
Mansfield Cumming, who was the head of what we now call MI6, | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
but then was called MI 1c, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
where he completely messed up, he was absolutely useless, | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
and he really, really upset everyone around him. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
But the officer class in the Army still thought | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
he was a first-rate chap. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
So they took him off MI 1c and put him in charge | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
of Military Intelligence in Folkestone. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
And despite Cameron's lack of people skills, | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
he did set up a highly effective spy network. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
Jim Beach from the University of Northampton | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
is an advisor to the Military Intelligence Museum. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
And here they have some surviving agent reports | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
which would have passed through Cameron's hands. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
What we have here are instructions and also reports, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:05 | |
written on tissue paper so they can be easily secreted about the person. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
And also very easy to dispose of the paper | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
if you thought you were at risk of being caught. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
And then what we have from Folkestone itself, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
a sort of typed-up version, | 0:06:17 | 0:06:18 | |
and we see here train movements and it's report CF - | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
Cameron Folkestone - 759, issued on 21 March 1917. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:28 | |
In the Grand Hotel in Folkestone, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
I've enrolled in our very own low-tech spy school. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
Here I'm learning that some spies would smuggle messages | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
using nothing more than a candle and a small fruit. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:47 | |
One of the ways in which secret writing was undertaken | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
was by the use of lemon juice. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
Here's the candle. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:54 | |
-Oh, can I do this? -You can do that. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
Something is happening. Look, letters are forming | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
in front of our eyes. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:00 | |
It says "Meet at the... G-R-A," it looks like. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:05 | |
At the Grand. It's here. Meet at the Grand! | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
So somebody has sent me | 0:07:08 | 0:07:09 | |
a secret message on a bill to meet at the Grand in lemon juice. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
-This is what they used to do in the First World War? -Exactly. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
A German called Carl Muller was caught spying in Folkestone | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
when his letters were found to contain messages... | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
in invisible ink. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:28 | |
One gave details of troops in the town. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:33 | |
So to fight back, what Major Cameron really needed were refugees | 0:07:36 | 0:07:40 | |
who could learn techniques like this and be turned into spies. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
When I wrote a series of books about a teenage spy called Alex Rider, | 0:07:52 | 0:07:56 | |
I never dreamed that there had once been a real-life original. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
But there was. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:01 | |
In 1915, a 17-year-old Belgian refugee arrived | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
in Folkestone Harbour. The boy's name was Leon Trulin. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
As soon as he arrived, he tried to join the Belgian Army in exile, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
only to be turned away because he was too short. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:23 | |
He said, "Perhaps I can offer my services as a spy." | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
Which is exactly what he did. He went back across the Channel. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
He got his friends, | 0:08:31 | 0:08:32 | |
some of them 15 or 16 years of age, to spy on the Germans. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
The were known as the Glorious Teenagers. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
And yet, they were highly effective in bringing back information | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
here to Folkestone. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:43 | |
Him and his child spies, they did invaluable work, | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
and as I say, all brought back to Folkestone, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
collated here and used by the British Army to attack the Germans. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
It was a big adventure, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:28 | |
it was an extremely dangerous adventure because they were going | 0:09:28 | 0:09:31 | |
behind enemy lines, and if they got caught, they were going to get shot. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:35 | |
There are still some remains of Folkestone's secret spying history, | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
if you know where to look for them. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
This building overlooking the harbour was once | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
the German Consulate. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:52 | |
And it had this room at the top with all these windows. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
It would've been perfect for the Germans. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
They would've had an excellent view of the harbour | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
and all the British troop movements going on below. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:03 | |
Sadly for the Germans, but hardly surprisingly, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
the Consulate was closed down when war broke out. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
This building, 8 Marine Parade, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:17 | |
was a fashionable hotel until the end of 1915, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
when suddenly, almost overnight, it vanishes from the records | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and nobody speaks about it again. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
That's because it had become the headquarters | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
of Army intelligence here in Folkestone. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:30 | |
By a strange coincidence, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:35 | |
the building is now owned by a current serving Army officer - | 0:10:35 | 0:10:39 | |
Lieutenant Colonel Martin Neame. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
So here we have the entrance hall to what was a hotel. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
I'm afraid it's very derelict, which is why I've purchased it | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
to turn it into flats. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:52 | |
Presumably, you knew nothing of its history. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
No, nothing - this is all a big surprise. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
It must have had a great contribution | 0:10:58 | 0:10:59 | |
towards the winning of the war, I assume. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
Oh, they say that these spies saved hundreds | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
if not thousands of British lives, absolutely. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
'Inside this building, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
'the day-to-day business of espionage would take place.' | 0:11:08 | 0:11:12 | |
You've got the head of the office, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
Cameron, who was there in terms of direction. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
And then he would've had a series of junior officers | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
working beneath him who are either out of the office, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
doing recruitment and training and liaison. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:27 | |
Then they would also have officers who would be decoding | 0:11:27 | 0:11:30 | |
and sorting out the reporting. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
And what you would also have would be connections and visits | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
from your representatives in the Netherlands | 0:11:36 | 0:11:42 | |
who would then be operating agents on your behalf. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
And being yourself a serving lieutenant colonel | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
in the British Army, just back from Afghanistan, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
that's quite a coincidence. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
How do you feel about owning a piece of British military history? | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
It's fantastic, actually. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:57 | |
I was quite taken aback. I had no idea. | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
I really just looked at the property as being an investment | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
from the perspective of buying and doing it up, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:04 | |
turning it into flats and bringing it back into use. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
But the fact that it has some sort of military history as well | 0:12:06 | 0:12:09 | |
is just outstanding. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
And it's inside this building where one special spy | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
would have been taught the tricks of the trade. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
Not a Belgian refugee this time, but a well-connected French woman. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:25 | |
Her name was Louise de Bettignies. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
Louise de Bettignies was the daughter | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
of quite a well-known family with aristocratic origins, | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
who had fallen on hard times. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
She was from a small town near Lille in northern France. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
She was partly educated in England and spoke several languages. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:57 | |
Lille was invaded by the Germans in October 1914. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
Louise was so devastated when she saw the damage | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
that, as a patriot of France, | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
she decided to do whatever she could to fight back. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
She was passing through Folkestone | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
and, of course, she was spotted straightaway | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
as perfect spy material. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
She was university-educated, she was well-connected, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
she spoke several languages and she was female. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
What could be better? | 0:13:27 | 0:13:29 | |
And so Louise was trained in all the latest spying techniques | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
and was put on a boat straight back to France. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
One of the names she operated under was Alice Dubois, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
and she recruited a ring of female spies | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
called the Alice Network. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
They would, for instance, send information back | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
about where the German military units were sited. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
The Germans couldn't stay in one place | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
for more than a week before they were bombed | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
because all the information was coming back to Folkestone. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
Louise's great nephew is Bertin de Bettignies. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
And of course, the memory of what she achieved | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
is kept alive in the family. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
HE SPEAKS FRENCH | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
One resistance fighter, a Monsieur Sion, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
refused to believe that this rather delicate-looking woman | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
was really working undercover for British military intelligence. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
He wanted proof. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
So he added his own note to the bottom of one of her spy reports | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
that she said was going to be sent back to Folkestone. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
Monsieur Sion Sr wrote, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
"If this person is who she says she is, | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
"could you please bomb a particular place | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
"on a particular day at a particular time." | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
One was a munitions dump, | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
I think that the other was... a gun emplacement or something. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
So she took her message to Flushing and it was taken over to Folkestone. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:17 | |
And at the appointed time, appointed hour, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
hey presto - the bombs fell. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:22 | |
-And they never questioned her again? -They never questioned her again. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:25 | |
One technique Louise used to smuggle secret reports | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
was to stitch tiny messages into her clothing. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
She was lucky enough to have a friend who was a mapmaker. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
Most of Louise's messages that came over here to Folkestone | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
came in the form of this very small writing. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:49 | |
The mapmaker, it was said, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
could write 1,600 words on the back of a postage stamp. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:57 | |
Major Cameron wasn't the only person operating an espionage network | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
out of Folkestone. Another spy turned up with the perfect cover. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:09 | |
After all, who would suspect a priest? | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
Father Pierre Marie Cavrois O'Caffrey | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
was a priest of Irish-French descent. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
He had already been working as a spy in northern France. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
And just like other intelligence organisations, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
he realised that the Flushing to Folkestone ferry | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
could be a vital source of information. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
He sees all these Belgian refugees around him, | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
he suddenly thinks, "Well, actually, | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
"if we had an office in Folkestone, | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
"we could collect intelligence from these guys | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
"and we could send them back." | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
After all, the Belgian refugees knew where all the enemy troops were, | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
because that's what they were running from. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
So O'Caffrey would board all steamers from Holland | 0:16:55 | 0:16:58 | |
asking questions. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:00 | |
And from there, it was a small step to send some of them back | 0:17:00 | 0:17:04 | |
to work as spies for him. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
And so Father O'Caffrey set up his own network of agents, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:12 | |
regularly transmitting very useful information across the Channel. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:17 | |
How do we know this? | 0:17:17 | 0:17:18 | |
Because his files have surfaced here at the National Archives. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
'Phil Tomaselli discovered several large files | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
'relating to the work of O'Caffrey | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
'at the National Archives in Kew in Surrey.' | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
These are the actual field reports that O'Caffrey's spies sent back. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
They should've been kept secret in the MI6 archives | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
but they somehow ended up in the more public National Archives. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
But even then, it wasn't easy for Phil | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
to get some of the documents released by the authorities. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
They normally take six weeks to be opened - | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
they took nine months on this one. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
I kept getting letters, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
saying, "We are having to refer it to another department." | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
So I said, "I know he's a spy, I can prove it. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
"I know he worked for MI6, I can prove it." | 0:18:19 | 0:18:21 | |
And they kept delaying. Eventually, they opened the file | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
and they have taken a couple of pages out, | 0:18:25 | 0:18:27 | |
copied them and carefully blanked the information | 0:18:27 | 0:18:29 | |
they didn't want me to see. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:30 | |
But the pages we're going to look at here have never been seen before? | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
These ones have not been seen before. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:35 | |
-That's exciting. -THEY CHUCKLE | 0:18:35 | 0:18:37 | |
Many of the documents are daily reports coming in about aviation. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:42 | |
So they're telling you what's going on in the various aerodromes. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
How many aeroplanes were flying. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
Where the Zeppelins were at any one time. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
Suggesting targets. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
In Ghent, there's a factory that is repairing machine guns, | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
good idea to bomb that. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:58 | |
'So how was this information getting across the Channel? | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
'Well, back at the School for Spies, | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
'I'm learning that one incredibly simple but effective technique | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
'is to use a template. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
'This seems to be a perfectly innocent letter. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
'But if the writer and the reader both have the same template, | 0:19:15 | 0:19:20 | |
'significant words can be buried inside the writing.' | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
This is interesting. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
Here is Frederick writing to Annette, | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
making reference to Aunt Nancy. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
Ah, but it's not Nancy the name of the person - | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
it's Nancy, the little town in France. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
-I think you're right. -Subtle, very clever. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
So it says "14 reserved division at Nancy, the 20th depleted." | 0:19:39 | 0:19:45 | |
Absolutely. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:46 | |
Presumably, the spymasters knew | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
exactly what was meant by that message. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
And of course, if it meant they were depleted, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
or would be depleted, on the 20th, what a good day to mount an attack. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:59 | |
So at this time, Major Cameron was running a network for the Army | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
while O'Caffrey was running a completely separate network | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
for the Navy. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
But this doubling up was a good thing. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
It works much better to have separate networks | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
where people don't know each other. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:16 | |
So if the Germans roll one network over, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
the other network's still there. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
Some of the reports really do stop you in your tracks. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:25 | |
Like this one about the Germans' new secret weapon - | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
the invisible aeroplanes. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
It says that in Dusseldorf, 30th July 1915, | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
"Yesterday we had an opportunity of convincing ourselves | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
"that the new aeroplanes are practically invisible. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
"The wings of the aeroplane are made of a new substance called Cellon." | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
They must have been really rather worried. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
And it turns out that the reports were actually true. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
But they needn't have worried. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:55 | |
It didn't really work as a camouflage, | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
and the invisible aeroplane, in a sense, disappeared. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
The spies would have to get information | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
from occupied Belgium into neutral Holland. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
But the Germans had built | 0:21:08 | 0:21:09 | |
an enormous electrified fence on the border. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:13 | |
So how do we get messages across that fence? | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
You throw something - tell me. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
You could throw something - what sort of things would you throw? | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
If it was me, I would throw... | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
..hollowed-out vegetables. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:26 | |
Ah! Yes... | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
Possibly some little sack of some sort? | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
I don't know, you tell me. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:32 | |
Because, don't forget, | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
the land on either side of this border, high-voltage fence, | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
was agricultural land. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
-Ah, right. -And British intelligence... | 0:21:39 | 0:21:44 | |
Oh, my God, don't tell me I was right? I was right! | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
-It was a mangelwurtzel - what is it? -A turnip. -A turnip! | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
They would...is one of these hollow? | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
I don't know, is it? | 0:21:54 | 0:21:55 | |
Surely not. I want to tear this open, now. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
They all seem to be completely intact. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
-Oh, dear, that's disappointing. -No, there's nothing unscrewing. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
Tell me, how do we find the message? | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
That's, of course, exactly what we want. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
Had you been a suspicious German policeman | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
and looked at them, you haven't discovered what is... | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
Let's use our pen - it's useful for many things. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:20 | |
Uncork it and pull out... | 0:22:20 | 0:22:22 | |
Oh, to pull it out. This is so great. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:24 | |
And they just threw that over the fence, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
and then collected it, took it home, took out the message. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
And that found its way across Holland to Flushing onto the boat | 0:22:31 | 0:22:37 | |
which brought it all the way to Folkestone | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
where Cecil Cameron would read it. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:42 | |
And back in the National Archives, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
there is one report received by O'Caffrey | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
which seems to leap off the page. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:51 | |
It describes how a British plane attacked a Zeppelin at Gontrode | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
on 7th June 1915 at 2.15am. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:02 | |
"Flames burst out of the airship and were soon seen to envelop it. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
"Two terrific explosions were heard | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
"and the airship, broken in two, was crushed down to the ground." | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
Oh - "Corpses, many of them horribly burnt and charred, | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
"were seen amidst the debris, others on the roof | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
"and even in the trees." | 0:23:16 | 0:23:18 | |
This is amazing stuff. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:19 | |
"It was said that a corpse | 0:23:19 | 0:23:20 | |
"fell right through the roof | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
"of the 'Cafe St Amand' | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
"and was found horribly mutilated | 0:23:24 | 0:23:26 | |
"in the kitchen of that establishment." | 0:23:26 | 0:23:28 | |
-Yes. -Spoilt someone's dinner, I bet. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
"During the day, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:31 | |
"little boys were selling pieces of the wrecked Zeppelin | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
"to the inhabitants." | 0:23:34 | 0:23:37 | |
That's an extraordinary piece of writing for a dry official report. | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
O'Caffrey was gathering intelligence like this | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
in parallel to the work of Cameron's agents. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:46 | |
And of course, given what Cameron was like, the two did not get on. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:50 | |
I know that you write mainly factual books, but the way you talk, | 0:23:51 | 0:23:54 | |
this all sounds like an extraordinary piece of fiction - | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
it does sound stranger than life. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
You've got a wonderful protagonist in O'Caffrey | 0:24:00 | 0:24:04 | |
and you've got a wonderful antagonist in Aylmer Cameron. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
The whole story is just brilliant - you don't even need the Germans. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:12 | |
You've got the hero and villain already. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:14 | |
There's no doubt that all the spies we've encountered | 0:24:19 | 0:24:21 | |
inflicted huge damage on the enemy. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
But what became of them? | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
Louise de Bettignies was arrested by the Germans | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
near Tournai in Belgium on 20th October 1915. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:33 | |
She had been operational for just nine months. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
We think she was tortured. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
I'm sure she was. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:41 | |
But she never gave anybody away, | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
she remained silent and stoical. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
At first, she was condemned to death. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
Then her sentence was commuted to a life of forced labour. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:54 | |
But while in prison, she fell seriously ill. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
She had, first of all, pneumonia, | 0:24:57 | 0:24:59 | |
which developed into pleurisy with an abscess. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
And they refused to let her go to hospital | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
to have the operation, she had to stay in the prison. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
She died in 1918. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
There is a memorial to her | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
in the military cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette | 0:25:15 | 0:25:17 | |
near Lille in northern France. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
The name of Louise de Bettignies is almost completely forgotten now, | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
but she almost certainly did as much to save British lives | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
as any secret agent in the Great War. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
Leon Trulin was caught on the frontier near Antwerp | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
trying to re-enter Belgium. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
Leon was arrested by the Germans and brought to the very spot | 0:25:41 | 0:25:45 | |
where I'm standing now | 0:25:45 | 0:25:46 | |
and executed by firing squad. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
He was 18 years old. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
Leon Trulin wrote to his mother in his last letter, | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
"I forgive the Germans. They did their duty. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
"But they have been very harsh on me." | 0:25:59 | 0:26:01 | |
O'Caffrey went on to work for what became MI6. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
We know that he went to Greece | 0:26:07 | 0:26:09 | |
and got married on a forged British passport. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:11 | |
At the outbreak of the Second World War, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
he rejoined the Navy. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
Doing what exactly, nobody knows. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
No photograph of him is known to exist. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:20 | |
And Major Cecil Aylmer Cameron had a mysterious fate. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:32 | |
Although his work did more to help the war effort | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
than most Army officers, | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
no photograph of him is known to exist either. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
And for reasons that are not clear, he shot himself in 1924. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:44 | |
So would it be true to say that, in one sense, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
what we now call MI6 and modern spying | 0:26:49 | 0:26:52 | |
began in Folkestone? | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
MI6 had existed a little bit before that and ran a few agents. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
But when it comes to running big networks, | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
O'Caffrey's was one of the first. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
So in a sense, yes. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:06 | |
It is the start of MI6's agent networks | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
that spread right the way throughout the world during the war | 0:27:10 | 0:27:12 | |
and which are still there today. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
When we look back at the First World War, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
we think of poppies, muddy fields, the trenches of northern France. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:21 | |
But that's only part of the truth. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
Walking through a town like this, | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
it's all too easy to forget that the war was fought here too. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
100 years ago, Folkestone had a vital part to play | 0:27:28 | 0:27:33 | |
in the secret work done by brave men, women and children. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
And even now, it's impossible to say how many lives they saved. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:43 |