Spy letters up for auction

CODED LETTERS which a British spy sent to his Fife parents whilst he was imprisoned at the infamous Colditz Castle in Germany during the Second World War are to be sold at auction next month.

Papers, photographs and the effects of Captain Julius Morris Green of the Army Dental Corps, relating to his espionage activities on behalf of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9 (MI9), will be sold at Bonhams on June 18 in Knightsbridge for an estimated £4,000 to £6,000.

The archive consists of 40 autograph coded letters by Green to his parents, John and Clara Green of Dunfermline, and a few to his sister Kathleen.

The correspondence runs from May 1941 through to 1944, while Green was a prisoner of war at many camps including Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle), where he was imprisoned sau

- in 1944-45, Bau Arbeits Battalion 21 (Blechhammer), Stalagag VIII-B ( Lamsdorf),), Stalag Marlag X-B und (Sandbostel), Milag sg Nord (Westertimke),), and Kgf. B. A. B. 200 (Heyderbreck).

Being a dentist, he was in an especially good position to carry out such espionage work, as he spentnt much of his time travelling from camp to camp, treating patients. After the war, he presented a portion of his papers to the Imperial War Museum.

The letters sometimes read like a caricature of a faulty language manual. Had the German censors employed someone with a native command of English they would have immediately spotted that something untoward was going on, a fact of which Green himself revealed in his memoir he was all too aware.

As a Jewish POW in Nazi hands, the potential consequences could have been severe. But under the surreal humour of his letters lies horror and quite extraordinary bravery.

Born in 1912, Julius Mor ris Green spent his early childhood in Killarney where his father had a dental practice.

He studied at the Dental School of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and was practising in Glasgow when he joined the Territorial Army in 1939, being posted to the 152 (H) Field Ambulance of the 51 Highland Division.

He was captured with his brigade at St Valery in June 1941 and spent the remainder of the war in a succession of camps, his misbehaviour meaning that he eventually received the honour of being confined to Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz.

At Ilag VII (Tittmoning) he was taught the code used to communicate with MI9, the War Office department tasked with aiding resistance fighters.

Pictures: PA. Dentist Captain Julius Green, left, was held at Colditz in Germany, above and inset. His letters are to go under the hammer.