Rommel’s secret war
QUESTION Bletchley Park broke the Enigma code, but did the Germans get invaluable information after breaking the Americans’ code in Egypt before the U.S. entered the war? IN SEPTEMBER 1941, members of the Sezione Prelevamento (Removal Section) of Italian Army Intelligence ( Servizio Informazioni Militari), a group which specialised in breaking into embassies to remove secret information, entered the U.S. embassy in Rome and photographed the code book known as the Black Code (named after the colour of its binding) and its super- encipherment tables.
But despite being allied with Germany, the Italians gave their Axis partner only sanitised versions of the American messages, not the code itself.
By the autumn of 1941, however, armed with the knowledge of what they were looking for, the German Chiffreabteilung (military cipher branch) intercept stations broke the Black Code themselves.
The station covering Britain’s North African headquarters in Egypt was situated in Lauf, north-east of Nuremberg.
In 1940, the U. S. assigned Colonel Bonner F. Fellers, its military attache, to Egypt. The Americans had yet to enter the war and instructed Fellers to report to Washington on British combat operations against their Italian, and later German, desert adversaries.
From October 1940 to August 1942, Fellers attended General Claude Auchinleck’s daily staff conferences and was given full details of British operations. It took the Germans about two hours to identify Fellers’s messages, decode them and translate them into German.
By the beginning of 1942, every breakfast, Erwin Rommel was said to have received ‘a concise appreciation of his opponent’s plans, location of units, strength and morale’. Fellers was known to the German High Command as die gute Quelle (the good source). Despite their growing suspicions, it wasn’t until June 10, 1942, that the British confirmed that Fellers’s dispatches were compromised.
Fellers wasn’t found at fault, but was transferred from Egypt on July 7, 1942. On his return to the U.S., he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal and was also promoted to brigadier general.
The quality of the information intercepted has led some to question Rommel’s supposed tactical genius in the field.
Richard Yapp, Ravensden, Beds.
QUESTION What is the origin of the unusual surname Chipchase? NORTHUMBERLAND is scattered with reminders of the days of border warfare, from fortified farmhouses and pele towers (fortified keeps) to full-blown fortresses. One of the finest examples is Chipchase Castle, north of Hadrian’s Wall, near Wark on Tyne, a 17th-century Jacobean mansion incorporating a 14th-century pele tower.
The castle was built in the mid-13th century, but the first recorded mention of Chipchase Castle was in 1415, when it belonged to Alexander Heron.
However, there is also an earlier reference to Chipchase (as ‘Chipches’) in July 18, 1261, when Peter de Insula, the owner of Chipchase, obtained a licence from Alexander III, King of Scots, to strengthen his mill dam on the North Tyne.
A Subsidy Roll of 1296 shows that the village was well-populated and wealthy. There were 12 taxpayers, including Robert de Insula who was head of the list. The earliest forms of the name are Chipches, Chippeches and Chipchesse.
The village was cleared in the late 16th century, and from then on the surname is found around the country, particularly in London. The origin of the name is uncertain, but might be from the Old English cipp — a fence or logged area — and ceas —a chase, a tract of ground for breeding and hunting wild animals, i.e. a place for holding or possibly trapping animals. Alan Munford, Hexham,
Northumberland.
QUESTION The word ‘awful’ originally meant ‘awe-inspiring’. What other words have changed their meaning over time? FURTHER to earlier answers, a word that is in the process of changing its meaning is the word ‘regular’. Its usual meaning is to describe an event that takes place repeatedly at a fixed time period or to describe an item that is symmetrical.
Nowadays it is often used to describe an event that happens ‘frequently’ (a totally different meaning) and to describe the size of an item e.g. a coffee or drink.
Derek Cranage, Loughborough, Leics. ONE word that has changed its meaning over time which has led to a gross misreading of the Bible is ‘suffer’. When the King James Bible was printed, suffer meant ‘to allow’, as in ‘never suffer a witch to live’. So when Jesus says to his disciples, who are stopping children approaching him, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’, he simply meant ‘allow’ them to come to him.
Ian Duckworth, Rochdale.
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