Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An important senior MI5 officer’s Great War O.B.E. group of six awarded to Colonel J. P. G. Worlledge, Royal Signals, late Royal Engineers, who was appointed Controller of the MI5’s top secret Radio Security Service (R.S.S.) on the renewal of hostilities in 1939, his brief to ‘intercept, locate and close down illicit wireless stations operated by enemy spies in Great Britain’: he and his team of experts subsequently obtained early and vital intelligence in respect of Abwehr transmissions - surpassing the high standards of fellow ‘boffins’ at Bletchley Park and incurring the wrath of MI6

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Military Division) Officer’s 1st type breast badge, silver-gilt, hallmarks for London 1919; 1914-15 Star (Capt. J. P. G. Worlledge, R.E.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col. J. P. G. Worlledge); Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937, mounted court-style as worn, together with a set of related miniature dress medals, generally good very fine (6) £1600-1800

O.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

John Percy Gannons Worlledge, who was born in September 1887, was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in July 1907.

Advanced to Captain shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he served in France and Flanders in August-October 1915, December 1916, May 1917 and August 1917-October 1918; so, too, in South Russia in the period March-October 1919. He was awarded the O.B.E. and twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 5 July 1919 and 16 July 1920, refer).

With his wide experience of R.E. wireless companies, Worlledge became a key figure in the newly established Corps of Signals - afterwards the Royal Signals - in the 1920s. Advanced to Major in June 1921, he commanded a wireless company in Palestine and, having then attained the rank of Colonel in February 1932, he was serving as a Member of the R.E. & Signals Board on the renewal of hostilities in September 1939.

MI5: Controller of the Radio Security Service 1939-41

At the start of the war, Vernon Kell, the head of MI5, introduced a contingency plan to deal with the problem of illicit radio transmissions. A new body was created, the Radio Security Service (RSS), and Worlledge was appointed C.O. and Controller. His brief was to ‘intercept, locate and close down illicit wireless stations operated either by enemy agents in Great Britain or by other persons not being licensed to do so under Defence Regulations, 1939’. As a security precaution, RSS was given the cover designation of MI8(c).

Worlledge immediately set about assembling his team of experts, recruiting members by word-of-mouth invitation only, selecting individuals with a keen grasp of Morse Code, language and cryptology. He choose Major Sclater and Major Cole-Adams as his assistants and appointed Oxford University lecturer, and his former Great War wireless colleague, Walter Gill, together with Oxford research fellow, Hugh Trevor-Roper, as chief intercept analysts. Working alongside them in Wormwood Scrubs was MI5’s John Masterman and T.A. Robertson who ran the double agent XX System. Gill used the codes already found by Agent SNOW (Arthur Owens) as the basis for decrypting incoming agent traffic.

RSS received intercepted signals from a variety of sources including the Post Office which caught unlicensed radio transmissions from three receiving stations in the furthermost corners of the U.K. At first, there was a failure to find any signals emanating from German spies in Britain. This led Gill to look at the problem the other way around and try to find the transmissions from the Abwehr Secret Service in Germany: ‘If the agent can hear Germany’s replies,’ he reasoned, ‘so might we.’ Hugh Trevor-Roper was instrumental in this as he was a noted mathematician and fluent in German. By intercepting such communications, RSS was straying beyond its remit, but it passed this signal traffic to the Government Code & Cypher School (GC. & CS), who had recently relocated to Bletchley Park under their head, Alistair Denniston. Despite its potential, Denniston dismissed the material out of hand, perhaps as a message to RSS to steer well clear of GC & CS’s remit. Worlledge, Gill and Trevor-Roper were dissatisfied with this rebuff and continued to work away at deciphering the code themselves.

After much trial and error, Trevor-Roper broke the cypher one evening whilst lying in the bath holding a damp typed sheet. Once he had found the key, German words and sentences appeared out of the script of what before had been gibberish. On return to the Scrubs, the team worked around the clock until it became clear they were reading the radio transmissions of the Abwehr. This one particular general cypher was used when an Enigma machine could not be safely housed. Soon RSS was cracking similar codes and reading much of the Abwehr’s traffic, including from ships in the Baltic which resulted in the arrest of several enemy agents as soon as they landed on British soil. These first intercepts acted as a widening peephole into the Abwehr’s use of wireless encryption and prove to be essential in the eventual breaking of the Abwehr’s Enigma code. According to Hugh Trevor-Roper’s Biography:

‘Gill and his deputy were understandably excited at what they had discovered, as was their Commanding Officer, Colonel J. P. G. Worlledge. After he circulated the news of RSS’s findings, Worlledge received a ‘rocket’ from his MI8 superior, who instructed him in future RSS would not interest itself in cryptography since ‘that is the province of GC & CS. only’. Gill greatly enjoyed this order and continued RSS’s breakthrough work. Denniston reacted with alarm, hurrying down to Wormwood Scrubs, accompanied by his senior cryptographer, Oliver Strachey. During the course of the ensuing discussion, it was agreed that Bletchley should set up its own section under Strachey to handle the traffic RSS had discovered. Despite these arrangements, the next four Abwehr codes to be broken were cracked within RSS, not Bletchley.’

Due to RSS success and increased staff complement, the decision was to follow suit with Bletchley and relocate away from London. The Scrubs also began to receive hits from German bombing, so the decision was made to move to Arkley View, a large country house near the village of Arkley in the London Borough of Barnet. It was given the cryptic postal address of Box 25, Barnet and processed messages before forwarding a select number to Bletchley.

Towards the end of 1940, RSS had intercepted signals from an Abwehr substation in North Africa which provided a comprehensive picture of its organisation in Morocco. Worlledge ordered Trevor-Roper to write a report on the subject which he then distributed with the covering note: ‘The attached memorandum, the work of Captain Trevor-Roper, seems worthy of circulation.’ Major Cowgill, of Secret Intelligence Services, was incandescent at this breach of security: ‘Worlledge and Trevor-Roper ought to be court-martialled,’ he fumed. He was irritated that Hugh’s report had been circulated to MI5, of which SIS was always jealous. For Cowgill, the matter emphasised the anomalous position of RSS, and the resulting lack of what he considered proper control over their activities. As a result, allied with the fact that some of its personnel had managed to decode some Abwehr cyphers ahead of Bletchley, meant that control of Arkley passed to MI6. RSS was detached altogether from the War Office and MI8, removed physically from the embrace of MI5 and transferred to MI6. The Abwehr, with all its schedules known, was monitored around the clock and, in December 1941, the Enigma cypher was finally broken.

Hugh Trevor-Roper concludes:

‘Our discovery was of great importance; so important that it must be kept a closely-guarded secret. And yet what had happened? Colonel Worlledge had naively revealed it, not only to his official contacts in the Armed Services intelligence departments (which in the eyes of MI6 was bad enough) but also (horror of horrors!) to the civilians of the Post Office. I found myself taken over by MI6 as I was junior enough not to threaten anyone’s prospect of promotion. Takeovers are commonly ruthless and this was no exception. Colonel Worlledge, having resisted the change, was unceremoniously dropped and retired to his castle in Ireland. Major Gill was also annexed. The manner of their extrusion seemed to me rather shabby. After all, they had thrown a struggling Secret Service a lifebelt, which after they had run their own ship aground, had enabled them to be winched to safety and afterwards, on dry land, to congratulate themselves on what they would claim as their achievement.’