ON THE NIGHT OF 7—8 April 1941, a German seaplane deposited Tor Glad and John Moe into a dinghy off the Banffshire coast in Scotland. The two spies were Norwegian, although Moe had British citizenship through his mother, and spoke English with a Lancashire accent having spent holidays with his grandparents in Ashton-under-Lyne. Both men had no intention of working for the Germans and had decided to give themselves up on arrival in Britain.
Landing near Crovie, on the Moray Firth, in the early hours, the two agents went to a nearby fisherman’s cottage and bashed on the door with the butt of a pistol. When the occupant eventually answered he was surprised to see two armed men at the doorway. When Moe told him they had just been landed by a German aircraft, the fisherman slammed the door shut in their face and telephoned the police. The two men went off on bicycles and eventually flagged down the police car that had been sent to investigate the fisherman’s call. The two men immediately offered themselves into custody, claiming they had been landed as German spies.
At Banff police station they were treated well enough, offered cups of tea and before long became the object of curiosity among a number of local visitors. When the local chief constable arrived he contacted someone in Aberdeen and was told to put the spies into isolation — too late, as it turned out.
By 6pm a security officer, Major Peter Perfect, arrived from Edinburgh and took control of the situation. He was annoyed at the chief constable for having allowed the two men to speak to so many locals, and demanded a list of names of everyone who had visited them. In turn all these people were tracked down and had the frighteners put on them — they had definitely not met any German spies that afternoon.
The security officer sat the two Norwegians down and began a preliminary interrogation. They told him they had been recruited by the Abwehr in Oslo and had undergone the training specifically to get the opportunity to travel to Britain, where they could join the Allies. They outlined their mission, and showed Major Perfect their equipment, including a set of detonators concealed inside a hairbrush.1
Despite spending a night in a cell, the two Norwegians were still treated hospitably on their trip south to London the next day. That is, until they
Arrived at Camp 020 in the back of an army truck. As the tarpaulin cover opened, a captain screamed at them: ‘Get down, you bloody spies!’ John Moe began explaining that they were not really spies, but was met with a barrage of abuse by the seemingly hysterical captain: ‘Shut up, you bastards! Nazi pigs.’ At this point the two Norwegians began to realize that perhaps everything was not going to work out as smoothly as they had anticipated.2
The two men were taken to separate cells and submitted to the full works. First up for Moe was a visit to Dr Harold Dearden, the camp’s often-maligned resident psychiatrist. After a physical examination, Moe was examined by a dentist who searched his mouth for items hidden in dentures, including suicide pills. Following the examinations, he was taken to face Commandant Stephens for the first time.
Moe describes walking into a huge dining room with a table at one end. Behind the green baize-covered table was seated a group of men whose faces were obscured by the light of two large windows behind them. To the side he noticed his radio set had been brought into the room. It suddenly dawned on Moe that this was a court martial and he was about to be tried for espionage. His discomfort increased when he asked the panel of seated men if they wanted him to show them how to work the radio. One of the panel, probably Stephens, yelled at Moe: ‘Come here! And in future only speak when you are spoken to.’3
Eventually Moe managed to establish his identity through his grandfather, a colonel in the 9 th Manchester Regiment. The panel checked this information and appeared to relax somewhat. A chair was brought for ‘Mr Moe’, who proceeded to tell the panel everything he knew about the Abwehr in Oslo. Next up for a grilling was Tor Glad. What neither Moe nor Glad had any inkling of was that their arrival was not unexpected, but had been revealed by ISOS.4What the panel at 020 was doing was checking their version of events against the information provided by the Bletchley decrypts.
Whereas Moe appeared to be genuine, the panel were suspicious that Glad had worked for Nazi censorship in Norway. Although some suspicion remained against Glad, the two Norwegians were handed over to B1a and taken out for dinner.
Moe recalled meeting a group of civilians in plus-fours, checked socks and tweed jackets with leather trim who introduced themselves as Charles, Jock and Bill. They were then joined by a Danish-speaking man who could understand Norwegian and were taken out for dinner at a restaurant called L’Ecu, near Piccadilly. After a full meal, followed by drinks and cigars, the two Norwegians were taken by tube to Earls Court, where MI5 kept a safe house in Argyll Mansions.
All the while the Norwegians were being entertained they were also being interrogated by the secretary of the Twenty Committee, Charles Cholmondeley, and ferried around by Jock Horsfall. On 10 April, the day after their night out in Piccadilly, Liddell recorded his verdict on the new arrivals. His concern was that Moe appeared ‘under the thumb’ of Glad, who had joined the Germans very soon after the invasion of Norway. Although Glad said he had helped a lot of his countrymen to join up with the Norwegian forces, Liddell was not sure about him.5
By the end of April the two agents were very much set up. They had been unkindly codenamed Mutt and Jeff after the cartoon characters whom they were thought to resemble. Like the cartoon duo, Moe (Mutt) was short and stout, while Glad (Jeff) was tall and lanky. They were installed in a safe house at 35 Crespigny Road, Hendon, and assigned Christopher Harmer as their case officer. Living next door with his wife and son was radio expert ‘Ted’ Poulton who would supervise their transmissions.
Although Mutt appeared to be completely genuine, suspicion over Jeff continued. In attempt to loosen his tongue, one of the pair’s minders took Jeff out on a pub crawl. It was a disastrous move. While Jeff could hold his drink, his minder Philip Rea entirely lost control of himself and started telling the Norwegian all about daredevil exploits he had performed for MI6. In the end Jeff had to carry Rea back to Crespigny Road. He was very quickly transferred out of MI5.
The end for Jeff came when, bored at the relative inactivity, he broke his curfew by spending the night with a nurse called Joan. He then upset the authorities by trying to sell his brand new Leica camera to a local photographic shop. This version of the German camera was new and unavailable in Britain and so the shopkeeper became suspicious and reported the matter to the police. On 16 August Jeff was taken by Harmer to John Marriott, who informed the Norwegian that he was unreliable and could not be used. However, because of the secrets he knew, he had to be interned for the duration of the war. From that point on, Jeff’s messages would be sent by an MI5 substitute.
World History
