The Greatest Traitor by Roger Hermiston Page B

of the realm – HMS King Alfred ’s aim when it opened its doors in September 1939 was to promote a new kind of officer to enlarge the ranks of the expanding Navy. These HO (‘Hostilities Only’) officers, such as George Blake, would be bright, assertive young men, commissioned into the RNVR as temporary appointments; at the end of the war they would return to their civilian lives. In fact, by the end of hostilities, nearly 80 per cent of the officers on active duty with the Royal Navy were from the RNVR.
    Once more Blake applied himself well to the complicated system of weekly tests and examinations. Failure in any one of them wouldhave meant immediate dismissal from the course, but he consistently achieved impressive marks and, in April 1943, ‘passed out’ successfully as a sub-lieutenant.
    It was an achievement of which he could feel proud, but he still hankered after a Secret Intelligence role. The opportunity appeared to present itself when, after a few day’s leave back in Northwood to celebrate his commission, he returned to HMS King Alfred for a further two weeks for postgraduate training. ‘A man came down from the Admiralty to lecture to us on the various branches of naval service open to us,’ recalled Blake. ‘Right at the end of his talk, he added: “There is one other branch which I should mention. It is called ‘Special Service’, and I cannot tell you very much about it because it is secret and, as far as we are concerned, the people who join it vanish.”’ This was music to Blake’s ears: ‘Special Service, secret, people not heard of again. It must be intelligence work, the landing of agents on the enemy coast . . . I wanted to be a real member of the Dutch underground, I wanted to be dropped into Holland to do secret, important work and I thought the Special Service would provide this opportunity.’
    He was to be sadly disabused of that notion when he received a letter a month later requesting him to report to HMS Dolphin , headquarters of the Royal Navy Submarine Service at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport. What the ‘secret’ work actually entailed was training to be a diver for midget (two-man) submarines. Though disconcerted by this turn of events, he had signed up to the course and felt duty-bound to see it through. It turned out to be even more of a disaster than he had anticipated.
    Physically fit he may have been, but he didn’t relish the long hours spent under water and the particular kind of stamina needed to cope with those conditions. More seriously, he soon discovered he had an allergy to the altered oxygen containers the divers carried. So much so that, when put to the test on one of the midgets off an island on the West Coast of Scotland, he actually fell unconscious in the water and had to be swiftly dragged back to the surface. His ears suffered severe, albeit temporary, damage.
    While his superiors pondered what to do with him, Blake was taken off the course and given the job of officer of the watch on HMS Dolphin . A few weeks later, the captain of the establishment, who had taken a liking to the young man and had made some enquiries on his behalf, summoned Blake to his office: ‘He asked me if I would be interested in fast boats and plenty of action. This was just the sort of thing that appealed to me. I was therefore told I was to go to London early the next day and report to an address in Palace Street, just off Victoria Street.’ What Blake was about to discover was that ‘fast boats’ and ‘plenty of action’ was euphemistic language. He was, in fact, about to take the first steps towards realising his dream of becoming a Secret Intelligence Officer.
    Arriving in the City of Westminster the following morning, Blake was introduced to a Royal Navy captain who questioned him about his background, his resistance work and his escape from Holland. He was then told to write down his life story, including as much detail as possible. What he didn’t immediately realise