Evening Star Newspaper, December 8, 1929, Page 114

18 - SRS s The Sea-Dewil’s Ta THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 8, Count Felix Von Luckner, “By-Joe,” Hero of the German Mystery Ship and Com- merce Raider Secadler, Spins Some Excit- ing New Yarns of Undercover Work by the I ar Spies. HEN the war came on, then was the time for tricks, dirty tricks, by Joe. Everybody was trying to think of some clever way to do damage to the enemy. There was plenty of straight open fighting and campaigning in the war, but there was n!su plenty of secret plotting, ruses and conspiracies to strike at the enemy somewhere, the place where he would least suspect, far behind the lines maybe, at home or in some neutral sountry. I did some secret service for -Germany, be- cause I knew Norwegian like a native, and Nor- way was one of the most important neutral countries, where all, kinds of spy work and underhand work was going on. ‘There was a small war on the side between the secret service forces of both parties, and it was a mean, bad war, by Joe. In the neutral countries of Scandinavia and Holland one im- portant thing was this—we got from them many supplies that we absolutely had to have, most of which were transshipped by them from other countries, the United States, for instance. The British were trying their best to stop these streams of goods that were being diverted to us, and they did it by finding out what firms were buying supplies supposedly for themselves and then sending the material on to us. Such firms were put on,/the black list, and thereafter all cargoes for them were stopped angd held. The neutral people that were deal- ing with us were as secret as they could be; they did not want to get onto the black list. The British spy system had an army of agents who turned in information for filling up the black list. These agents were doing a lot to stop neces- sary materials from reaching us. Our own Spy system put out agents to fight the British agents, and so it was war between the two secret service forces in the neutral countries north of Germany. It was war to the knife, because one of the best ways to stop a secret agent’s work is to kill him. SUPPOSB the German agent finds a British agent getting important information for the black list. Well, one mealtime the British agent is in a restaurant. His overcoat is hanging on a rack. The German agent comes in and hangs his overcoat beside that of the British agent. ‘While doing this he manages to slip a fountain pen in the pocket of the British agent’s over- coat. After a while, maybe that night or the next day, the British agent finds the fountain pen. He looks at it. By Joe, that is a splendid pen, the best make. He opens it and at that moment there is a tremendous explosion—and the British agent has been removed. The Russians had terrible tricks. They sent Bibles, wonderful German Testaments, into Germany to the Russian prisoners in the prison camPs. The prisoners succeeded in passing the Bibles on to Russian secret service men outside. They were beautiful books with soft leather covers, and inside there were pages, not of paper, but of guncotton. Each had a harmless- looking bookmark, but in reality it was con- nected with a mechanism in the binding, and when the string was pulled the intricate and delicate mechanism was set going and in half an hour it exploded the guncotton. The Russian secret service men would get one of these Bibles into the possession of a man they wanted to kill. A Bible is the most inno- cent-appearing thing in the world, and you will tak> one without suspicion. The secret service men would have the string pulled and the mechanism working, and half an hour later, when the German had the book under his arm or in his pocket—bang, and he was blown to Ppieces, In that way they killed one of our greatest war-time scientists, the man who invented the long-range gun that bombarded Paris. He was blown to pieces, and it is believed that he ac- cepted one of those Bibles from a Russian agent and put it in his pocket. HAD a secret agent’s assignment in Norway. I know the Norwegian language well enough to pass for a native. The British were short of ammunition, explosives. They needed saltpeter for the manufacture of gunpowder. Our laboratory wizards had devised a way of takitng nitrogen from the air and of manufac- turing saitpeter Somehow the British got that formula. In Norway there is much water power, a good place to put up factories for taking nitrogen out of the air. So the British had much of their saltpeter manufactured in Norway. Shiploads went constantly to England. This was bad for us, because every shipload meant thousands of men killed. We of the secret service were ordered to do what damage we could do to this saltpeter trade. We got jobs in the dockyards where they were loading the saltpeter ships. I worked for weeks as a long- > shoreman, working hard, getting stuff aboard and stowing it in the holds of ships. The Norwegians knew the Germans would try some tricks with those ships, and they were very careful. Every man was closely searched before he went to the docks. He was allowed to come in contact with nobody outside during the day, so that nothing dangerous could be passed to him. Only his wife was allowed to see him, when she brought him his lunch, and then they were careful to see that she passed him nothing. But, by Joe, we found a way to get around that. I had with me in Norway a German girl who could pass for a Norwegian, and she was supposed to be my wife, and every day she brought me my lunch in the usual kind of a dinner pail that workingmen use. Then one day she would bring my lunch in a special pail, which looked exactly like the other pail, but was a little different. The bot- tom of ‘it unscrewed, and this disk was a pow= erful time bomb. We could eat our lunch in the hold of the ship in the usual way, and while the other men were eating or taking a nap I would unscrew the bomb, set it, and put it somewhere be- tween the cargo and the side of the ship, Pretty soon the ship would put to sea, and when she was well off the coast—bang! That bomb would blow a big hole in her side and she would begin to sink. The men would take to the boats and row to shore. Another ship gone, and the Norwegians and British would think she had been torpedoed by a submarine or had struck a mine. Nobody would guess that there had been any bomb trickery at the dock, I HAD a secret agent’s job in Sweden, and that was a cunning trick. I was near the Rus- sian border, where they shipped supplies across into Russia. Among the supplies was much necessary lubricating oil for the Russian rail- roads. We had devised in Germany a most tremen- dous kind of corrosive acid. It was so good for terrible tricks that after the war we de- stroyed all we had. I was one of the men ordered to get this stuff into the lubricating oll before it reached the Russian railroads. There on the Finnish border the barrels were ““After @ while he finds the fountain 1929. s ] e ——— les of the Secret Service “Then one day she brought my lunch in a special pail. It contained a powerful time bomb.” lined for loading on the Russian trains. At night I would go from one to another of these barrels. I had a drill that would make a very fine hole, too fine for the thick oil to leak through; too fine to be seen. Through this I would inject, a shot of this powerful corrosive. It was so strong that not very much was needed for a barrel of oil. Fine. The oil goes its way and soon is used to lubri- cate Russian cars and locomotives. By Joe, what’s the matter, what’s wrong? ‘The cars and locomotives are out of business, The cor- rosive has eaten the metal axles and machinery, and ruined things completely. The Russian railway service carrying troops and ammuni- tion to the front—well, it never was too well organized and now it is worse off than ever. These were things I did or saw or heard about in the secret service, and they point out the fact that the wars are not merely fought in trenches and between fighting ships at sea. pen in his pocket. He looks at it, opens it, and at that moment there is an explosion. The agent has been removed.” Much of the World War was fought in diae bolical fashion behind the lines—dangerous, Secret tricks behind the lines, SOME of the trickiest things of the war took place in the campaigns of the submarines, There were all kinds of dodges on both sides. And that reminds me of the King of England’s solid gold watches. * At the beginning of the war, when submarines were first becoming active, the British ad- miralty staff gave an order: “If a steamer sights a submarine it will immediately make full speed and ram. The skipper of any mer- chant ship that rams a submarine will get a gold watch from the King.” You could see the fat old skipper when he reads this. Every sailor loyes a gold watch, and the prospect of a fine gold watch from the King is enough to make almost any stout- hearted British sailor go full speed ahead and ram a dreadnaught or even a munition ship. With us this gold watch business was different. or at any rate it was for our sub- marines. It is an awful feeling for a subma- rine to get rammed. We thought, “By Joe, we will give those old steamship skippers some- thing to make them happy.” So we got up an awful trick. We made hundreds of dummy floating periscopes and under each one was a big mine. ¥ “By Joe,” we thought, “these will be some- thing for these skippers to ram. They will be fine to take the place of those gold watches from the King. It will do us good. It will make the skippers nervous about ramming.” Submarines took the dummy periscopes and turned them loose in the North Sea. Now you see the old skipper on his bridge—a fat skip- per with his red face and his cap pulled down over one eye. He is thinking, “By Joe, if I could only see a submarine and could have a chance to ram it and get a gold watch from the King.” Then, “By Joe, there's a periscope, Full speed ahead. I hope she doesn't dive before we ram her.” And full speed ahead he goes, “What a stupid submarine! He is not diving. We have him. He can't escape. We will surely ram him.” And so the steamer rams—bang! The mine blows up and tears away the fore part of the ship. She begins to sink. The crew take to the boats. “Pull sailor, pull, pull for the shore.” The old skipper is happy. By Joe, he is happy. He lost his ship all right, but he still will get a gold watch from the King. Because he thinks he really has sunk a submarine, He thinks he hit a torpedo just as it was coming out of the tube, and that was what blew him up. When they land they are heroes. Every man of the crew gets his share of the prize money and a good dinner. And the skipper gets a solid gold watch from the King. By Joe, he is happy. NOW that business of sinking submarines and getting blown up at the same time kept on happening. One day five heroes came in, five skippers that had rammed submarines and been blown up. They called the King out of bed—five solid gold watches for five heroes, The British navy men thought it was funny, They were no fools. They suspected some- thing was wrong, and pretty soon discovered the trick. And now it was known that those heroic skippers had rammed not submarines, but mines. But the skippers didn't belleve it. Continued on Twenty-first Page