Peder
Well-Known Member
Double Entendre (Updated)
Preface to updated edition of book originally published as Double Entendre by Carol Alanson
The walls of secrecy with respect to Soviet and German special services operation finally having come down with the fall of the Berlin Wall, new information regarding the cloak and dagger activities of all parties to WW II has become available as intelligence services have opened their files. One sees once mysterious classified operations with greater clarity as important details can now be filled in. Double Entendre, a story published by Carol Alanson after the War, and based on her own investigative reporting, is one such story that can now be brought to date.
The current book contains the original text of Double Entendre, plus an epilogue containing the new information that has been gleaned through careful research into newly opened files.
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Double Entendre
by
Carol Alanson
So the story of Carl Williamson might have ended, except for a small notice in the obits of the local newspapers that he had committed suicide, living alone eight years after the end of the war. My investigative reporter's curiosity was piqued, wondering why such an untimely suicide, and what the recently declassified files of the RAF might contain that would fill out his story.
It turns out that, upon his retirement, Williamson was awarded an RAF Medal for Devoted Service during the course of the entire war. Early on, he had briefly held many different positions, in the more dexterously-demanding compass and bomb-sight assembly departments, but was finally was transferred to oxygen-mask assembly and final inspection, more in keeping with his aptitude rating, where he never missed a day and devoted himself assiduously to his work. One of unsung many now living in obscurity, whose devotion and endurance through the air war contributed to the final win over the Axis.
His personal papers and keepsakes contributed little to the story until toward the end I came upon his one keepsake directly related to his war years - his well-worn black lunch box - tucked in the back of an upper closet shelf behind a jumble of hats and scarves. It was full of papers, mostly official looking, and he clearly had used it as his strongbox. Birth certificate, outdated drivers licenses, RAF memos of commendation through the years, and so on through a long life.
Until, at the bottom, under a thick layer of slips of paper with the tail numbers of the aircraft oxygen packs that he had worked on, another offcial document appeared, a commendation printed on crisp paper -- and unmistakably in German! Unable to belive my eyes I read of his commendation after the war by the Special Operations unit of the German High command for his feigning general incompetence until he could get assigned to the oxygen-mask assembly department and, once there, for devising a method for secreting small amounts of sodium cyanide in out of the way corners of the mask which would be activated after oxygen started flowing, and then marking them 'passed after inspection'.
That was almost unbelievable!
Inquiring at the British Air Ministry: yes, the official history of the air war was now available from the archives, right down to engagements, squadrons and tail numbers. Sadly, the tail numbers from the lunch box were all found there, in the official record, every plane marked "missing." None of the planes ever reached their outer marker, at the French coast after climbing to altitude, and no pilot ever called in any indication of trouble or engagement by enemy aircraft. They and their crews just disappeared and were marked 'missing' when they never returned. A tragic end for so many genuine heroes of the Air War.
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Epilogue to "Double Entendre"
Time has marched on -- we recently mourned the passing of Carol Alanson -- and once again, there are newly available official records, now from the Soviet and East German secret service archives, so many years after the War. They bring their own clarifications as, indeed, we now see confirmed the original instructions, early in the war. to George Williamson (born Kurt Wilhelm) and his promtions in Secret Service rank, and payments, through the years until his quiet retirement at the end of the war.
And here history repeats itself and Carol Alanson's role becomes clearer. In Double Entendre you have just read of her part in the unmasking of George Williamson after his death. She received a Medal from the British Air Historical Society for the reporting you have just read.
Sadly, her own papers now reveal that in her role in British Counterintelligence her suspicions were aroused by those bombers that turned up missing for no reason at all. She traced their tail numbers all back to one final inspector and became convinced that George Williamson was somehow sabotaging the oxygen unit assemblies. But she said nothing because, in a note in her own handwriting, "this War has gone on long enough."
-- WXUV Editorial Staff
Do you read quite a lot of WW books or is this outside your usual sphere of interest?