|
| classicists
as spies |
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
"Douglas A. McLeod"
Subject:
Classicists as Spies
Bob Develin argues that "the scarcity of information available
to ancient historians makes us ideally suited to the exploration of
the essentials and limitations of methodology." This fits in
with my impression that classicists would make excellent
intelligence analysts. I read in the introduction to a volume
dedicated to the late J.E.A. Crake, the longtime head of the
Classics Dept. at Mount Allison U., that he was a spy during the
second world war. He incidentally wrote his dissertation on archival
material in Livy. Does anyone know any stories about him, or about
any other classicist turned spy?
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
Mark Reasoner
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Robert M. Grant, former Professor of New Testament and Early
Christian Literature at The U. of Chicago, worked in intelligence
services during WWII. He is also an expert on submarine warfare and
has published two books on the topic.
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
Mark Williams
Subject: Re: Classicists as Spies
I
recall that, some years ago, when I was a graduate student at Chapel
Hill,the National Security Agency recruited, among others,
classicists; though they never explained why, it was widely believed
at the time that they valued the facility for languages that the
discipline represented--and still represents. A fellow I knew took
the N.S.A. test and found it to be very heavy on logic. Perhaps
someone can tell us whether such agencies still recruit folks like
us.
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
Jennifer Dellner
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
If
so, it is not included in "Careers for Classicists."
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
James O'Donnell
Subject:
*Spies
The
Knox brother who did Herodas (they blur together in memory) also
worked at Bletchley Park: papyrology and cryptography are not
unrelated. I also knew a lady, now deceased, who took a summa in
classics at Berkeley in the late 40s, a first in Egyptology at
Oxford in the early 50s, and was deterred from further research
up-Nile by Nasser's rise, so found herself back in California
getting an MLS degree, and then went in to the CIA for twelve years,
though my impression was that she was an inside analyst rather than
anything more dramatic, and she reported that Allen Dulles had a
propensity for hiring people with training as medievalists. He
thought they were clever, good at languages, and had a good
background for making sense of modern Europe. She then went to
England and lived as a scholar of private means, later moving to
Ireland and renovating the house on my family's farm in Kerry. She
and a historical novelist cousin published a Norman conquest
chronicle with Clarendon Press in the English years, and at the time
of her death she was working on a biography of Theoderic the
Ostrogoth. I saw her last being charmed by Jesuits at high table at
Campion Hall, Oxford. A *very* smart lady.
Date:
Fri, 8 Oct 1993
From:
Leo Curran
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
I believe that Robin Winks, _Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America's
Secret War_ at least mentions some American classicists.
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1993
From:
John Glasscock
Subject:
Spies
George
Smiley, in the Le Carre' books, was a philologist of German.
Date:
Sun, 10 Oct 1993
From:
Donald Lateiner
Subject: Re: spies
In
response to J.Herrman's note, I think the person referred to was
Gilbert Highet, no prosopographer, but part of a group working on
German officer psychology. Of course, JH's note did not specify the
field of the scholar, so it might have been someone else working in
this group, but they were influenced by Syme, Namier, Gelzer and
Muenzer.
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993
From:
Doug Burgess
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
When
I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, I had the
opportunity to meet several British scholars who had been young men
during WWII. If my memory serves me right, Prof. N.G.L. Hammond
spent most of the war behind German lines in what used to be
Yugoslavia working for one of those special ops. groups run by MI6.
And I also seem to remember that Sir Ronald Syme spent most of the
war as an attache to the British embassy in Istanbul. I don't know
that he would ever say what he did...even when a few of us gave him
a Scotch or two at a party at Frank Clover's house. Everyone
assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that he was in the "great game."
Several of my fellow graduate students were recruited by the CIA and
NSA in the early 80's. They were not, strictly speaking,
Classics-people. Historians, rather.
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993
From:
Don Fowler
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Quite
a few British classicists worked at Bletchley, including Donald
Russell (though he's never talked to me about it). Lloyd-Jones was
out in India learning Japanese from the Japanese translation of Mein
Kampf (his sergeant is now a distinguished Welsh Judge). But did any
Germans or Italians participate in intelligence?
Date:
Mon, 11 Oct 1993
From:
"James G. Keenan"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Yes,
Winks mentions C.B. Welles (Yale) who was in OSS in Cairo during
WWII; Winks also remarks that Welles destroyed his files on this
part of his life, son Winks doesn't have much to say about Welles,
but there's a lot about Norman Pearson of the Yale English Dept.
Date:
Mon, 11 Oct 1993
From:
Bob Rowland
Subject:
Re: spies
I'm pretty sure that the scholar who worked on the German officers'
promotions was Birely.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Ian Tompkins
Subject: Re: Classicists as Spies
I seem to remember that George Forrest was given a medal by the
Greek government honouring him as a freedom fighter for his part in
the overthrow of the colonels. Then there's the case of T.E.Lawrence
and Woolley surveying Sinai, because the British government needed
to know the topography in anticipation of the war against the
Ottomans.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Don Fowler
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
If
we start to include active SOS men etc, there's a big list. Eric
Gray, the Christ Church ancient historian now dead, learned his
ancient and modern Greek together in Australia, and was parachuted
into Greece during the war. In consequence, Christ Church has an
interesting collection of Greek resistance newspapers et): even
though he'd have been shot for hoarding them, he was too good a
historian to throw them away .
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Roger Taylor
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Although
I am technically not a real classicist (Community College with only
broad general teachings of the classicists in my world lit - but
nonetheless what I think is a genuine love), I was technically a spy
when I was in the Air Force in the 60s. My unit was under the NSA
(which was mentioned earlier) and we flew around Russia offering
ourselves as tempting targets while monitoring their response
procedure and effectiveness. Had a number of interesting moments.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Mary Lewis
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
The
caper that Fermor and Wm. Stanley Moss participated in in Crete is
told in numerous sources, one of the most interesting being Dilys
Powell's The Villa Ariadne. Moss later wrote a book about the
capture of the German general (Kriepe, I think was his name) called
Ill Met by Moonlight which was later made into a movie with Dirk
Bogarde. Apparently Fermor hated the film. I have never seen it. It
was released in the U.S. under the name Night Ambush. BTW, Powell's
book tells much about Pendlebury and his involvement dur ing WW II.
I assume she is the same Dilys Powell who is on the BBC delight, My
Word which is carried on many NPR stations.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
There
was a story that Patrick Leigh Fermor really drank too much during
the Crete escapade and nearly botched it. Has this been published?
Hammond was full of interesting stories, including his attempt to
pass as Greek in a shepherd's hut that workd 'til the shepherdess
who happened by asked him how he made his cheeses. He muttered
something like "Shut up woman and go to sleep " and
preserved his cover. Carol Snively has an nteresting recent review
on Hammond's biases in writing about Macedonia.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject: Re: Classicists as Spies
Wasn't
Anthony Andrews a spy?
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Ah, we could go on and on in the spirit of infinite paranoia. Start
a substring: what classicists were Russian spies at Cambridge in the
30's? Start naming everyone who was there and subtract one or two
and you'll catch the spirit of some recent British books. Remember
Gow as the Fifth Man? Slightly further afield, E.P. Thompson's
brother was a spy who was killed in Bulgaria. Dan Tompkins
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
>
On Tue, 12 Oct 1993, igt wrote: > I seem to remember that George
Forrest was given a medal by the Greek > government honouring him
as a freedom fighter for his part in the > overthrow of the
colonels. >
Forrest
deserved a medal, if for nothing else for being one of too small a
group of classicists and archaeologists to oppose the junta. Most of
them did not care a whit , even when their fell0w-classicists like
Kakridis were being thrust from their positions. One, in
Thessaloniki, was imprisoned.
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Patrick Rourke
Subject: Anouilh; spies...
Under
the Nazi regimes there was often a great deal of "subversive"
literature that the authors would get away with simply because the
censors were too stupid to get the point -- take for example the
popularity of Shaw and the fact that he, a communist (more or less),
was not on the list of people to be rounded up when the Nazis got to
use their AB Aktion on Great Britain (see Shirer). The Anouilh seems
an extreme case of this. At least two of the professors I studied
with, and the father of a third, were in some way or another
involved with Allied intelligence in WWII. A good source on Dillwn
Knox, who worked on the Naval Enigma with Turing, is the book
*Solving the Enigma* (I think that's the title). (Sorry for the sp
on AD Knox's name, but I can't spell Welsh)
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
Debra Hamel
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
I'm forwarding the following message from Victor Bers, who is not a
member of this list: Tony Andrewes was parachuted into the
Peloponnesus. He liberated Patras from the Germans riding into town,
sitting on the hood of a jeep and waving a pistol. He acknowledged
that the sergeant in charge of the parachuting pushed him out of the
plane, but told me,"I think I would have jumped by myself."
Now, to get the flavor of that remark, you have to imagine it as
emerging from deep in his belly,somewhat lower in pitch than two
octaves below middle c, the great lower jaw hanging lax, the eyes
twinkling like a department-store Santa Claus who actually likes
children.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
"John D. Ayer"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
Isn't
Ill Met by Moonlight by Xan Fielding? Reading the book, the whole
caper struck me as a bit of thoughtless foolishness that put a lot
of innocent people at risk for no serious military purpose --
self-indulgent schoolboys at play, no matter what ther qualityof
their minds. Surely some of these stories are told in Robert Eisner,
Travelers to an Antique Land (Mich 1989). I wonder why no one has
mentioned Bernard Knox. It seems like he has been dining out on his
war stories for a lifetime -- and more power to him, the tale of the
chewable canned Russian butter is one of the best.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
PMW Matheson
Subject:
Re: *Classicists as Spies
Tony
Andrewes spent some part of WWII in the hills of Greece with the
Greek guerillas in the resistance. He too was decorated -- though he
used to say that "anyone" who happened to be in Cairo on a
certain date got the medal. He was also very reluctant to discuss
the experience, partly because the division among the Greek
partisans which led to civil war after the German withdrawal was
already evident during the war... Homer Thompson was also in
intelligence during the war (British, I think) and in Greece. He was
teaching at the University of Toronto at the time, and his
colleagues, who were signing up for various armed forces (my father,
William Wallace, who taught Greek history at the UofT, was in
Canadian Naval Intelligence, "Division II: Miscellaneous"),
kept asking him what he was going to do, and were very jealous when
they discovered that he had got himself a job in Greece -- he has
stories about being caught and let go again after convoying someone
secretly across Athens.
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 1993
From:
"Dirk t.D. Held"
Subject:
Re: Classicists as Spies
There
is an extensive literature by and about British classicists in
Greece during WWII, many of whom were military liaison officers to
the various factions in northern Greece as well as in Crete. Among
the more recent publications is Nicholas Hammond's _Venture into
Greece with the guerillas 1943-1944_ published in 1983. Fermour's
activity in Crete is discussed briefly by him in his _Roumeli_. The
exciting account of the capture of the commanding German officer in
Crete (who lived in Arthur Evan's Villa Ariadne at Knossos) by Leigh
Fermor et al. is presented by one of the participants W. Stanley
Moss in his _Ill Met by Moonlight_. The archaeologist T. Dunbabin
was active, in Crete if I recall. The archaeologist John Pendlebury
was captured by the German forces in Crete and killed.
Date:
Wed, 13 Oct 1993
From:
Kenneth Kitchell
Subject: spies
It
may have passed me by, but was not JDS Pendlebury a spy in Crete and
was he not killed there? This is a memory from some time back.
|
| Culled
from
classics.log9310b |
|