In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father’s famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of … the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. This stunning memoir, often funny, always gripping and acutely sensitive to the human cost of each operation, provides a unique inside picture of the extraordinary SOE organization at work and reveals for the first time many unknown truths about the conduct of the war.
SOE was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze.” Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form secret armies in preparation for D-Day. Marks’s ingenious codemaking innovation was to devise and implement a system of random numeric codes printed on silk. Camouflaged as handkerchiefs, underwear, or coat linings, these codes could be destroyed message by message, and therefore could not possibly be remembered by the agents, even under torture.
Between Silk and Cyanide chronicles Marks’s obsessive quest to improve the security of agents’ codes and how this crusade led to his involvement in some of the war’s most dramatic and secret operations. Among the astonishing revelations is his account of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland. He also reveals for the first time how SOE fooled the Germans into thinking that a secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke the code that General de Gaulle insisted be available only to the Free French. By the end of this incredible tale, truly one of the last great World War II memoirs, it is clear why General Eisenhower credited the SOE, particularly its communications department, with shortening the war by three months. From the difficulties of safeguarding the messages that led to the destruction of the atomic weapons plant at Rjukan in Norway to the surveillance of Hitler’s long-range missile base at Peenemünde to the true extent of Nazi infiltration of Allied agents, Between Silk and Cyanide sheds light on one of the least-known but most dramatic aspects of the war.
Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and wry wit without ever losing touch with the very human side of the story. His close relationship with “the White Rabbit” and Violette Szabo — two of the greatest British agents of the war — and his accounts of the many others he dealt with result in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.
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I was surprised that some one who had lived it felt it was ok to write it even if though it was years later. Normally those involved in cryptography and supporting intelligence gathering behind the scenes then transmitting the information have become so accustomed to keeping secrets that they say nothing. their secretive makeup becomes so engrained that they take it to their graves. The story of what they did dies with them.
Marks was Britain’s top cryptologist, and this book is extremely well-written. Leo’s incredible humor explains why he ended up in Hollywood as a screenwriter.
The book begins with Leo Marks going off to war—to codebreakers school. He spends too much time trying to find shortcuts, so his instructors decide he’s not quite good enough for Bletchley Park (where the British are busy breaking German codes), but maybe a new outfit called SOE can use him. On his first day, he’s given a coded message and told to decode it. Everyone seems to think he should be able to accomplish his task within a half hour, so when it takes him until tea-time, he’s convinced he won’t be asked to stay. As he’s slinking from the room, someone asks him to leave the code.
“What code, sir?”
. . . “The code you broke it with!”
“You didn’t give me one, sir.”
. . . “How did you decode that message if I didn’t give you one?”
“You told me to break it, sir.”
. . . “You mean you broke it . . . without a code?”
So begins Marks’ SOE career. He’s eventually put in charge of agents’ codes, and spends the war trying to make them more secure. Marks doesn’t fight on the front lines and he never enters Nazi-occupied territory, but he has his battles. Some of them are with rival British intelligence organizations. Others are spent trying to convince the bureaucracy that the old coding systems aren’t secure and that the traffic coming from Dutch agents is highly suspicious. In a memorable moment, he tells the Free French (who were usually at odds with the British French section run by Buckmaster) that he doesn’t care if the French agents vote for or against de Gaulle after the war, as long as they’re alive to vote at war’s end.
Marks is young during the war, in his early twenties. He can’t tell his doting parents or their friends what he’s really doing. Several anonymous acquaintances send him white feathers throughout the war, assuming he’s a shirker. The long hours trying to break codes and get needed materials when everything is in short supply wear on him, as do the deaths and other mishaps in the field. Perhaps because of his age, his frequent unauthorized actions, and the personal growth Marks experiences, the book had a slight coming-of-age feel to it.
The writing is excellent. It’s a memoir, and Marks wrote plays and screenplays post-war, so he has an eye for a story. I laughed out loud nearly every chapter, which is kind of rare in a history book. The information is interesting—covering numerous aspects of WWII, but from a different angle than what I’ve read before. The only thing I would have liked better is a more complete epilogue. I guess I’ll have to go find books on Yeo-Thomas and the Grouse team and some of the other agents who wandered through the pages to learn more details of their missions and their lives post-war.
Highly recommended if you have any interest in WWII intelligence operations. It may also interest readers who simply enjoy British humor.
This is a book about the spy war in WWII that could not have been written until the secrecy was officially lifted. Leo Marks was a clever lad who failed to qualify for the team that was tasked with breaking the German’s Enigma machine. As a consolation prize, he was assigned to manage the group that trained Allies spies in how to code their wireless transmissions from NAZI-occupied Europe during WWII. Unfortunately for the spies, they often accidentally miscoded their messages, resulting in gibberish at the other end. The Gestapo was able to intercept and triangulate the spy transmissions, so every retransmission of a message shortened the life of a spy. To avoid the need to retransmit a coded message, Marks innovated ways to decode how the spy had miscoded their message and then taught them to his decoding team. Despite his and their best efforts, all but a handful of Allie spies survived their experiences in NAZI occupied Europe. The stories of the heroism of the best of them is one important thread of this informative, compelling, well-written narrative.