World War II cryptographer, author Leo Marks dead at 80

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http://surf.bookwire.com/news/authors/2001/01/22/wstm-/2440-1571-Britain-Obit-Marks..html

Associated Press
January 22, 2001

LONDON (AP) - Leo Marks, a cryptographer who used silk squares printed
with rows of numbers to transmit codes to British agents in World War
II, has died at age 80.

Marks died Jan. 15, according to an obituary published Monday in The
Times.

Marks worked in the the Special Operations Executive, formed by Prime
Minister Winston Churchill in 1940 with orders to ``set Europe
ablaze'' by infiltrating agents behind enemy lines to carry out
sabotage and set up secret armies.

In his work, Marks was acutely aware that agents were being tortured
and killed, and those painful memories were poured out in a book,
``Between Silk and Cyanide,'' published in 1999.

``If you brief an agent on a Monday and on Thursday you read that he
has had his eyes taken out with a fork, you age rapidly,'' he said,
recalling the fate of an agent in Yugoslavia.

The title derived from Marks' campaign to introduce codes printed on
silk squares that could be destroyed - a far safer method than the
unreliable, easy-to-crack poem codes then in common use.

Facing strong opposition within SOE, he did much of his work in
secret. ``We had to lie to make progress,'' he recalled in an
interview in 1999.

Marks then worked out a system in which rows of unique codes were
printed on squares of silk, which were easy to hide and could be
destroyed, bit by bit, as each row of numbers was used. The long
sequences of figures could not be tortured out of agents.

SOE successes included the destruction of an atomic weapons plant in
Norway, spying on Hitler's long-range missiles base, and providing the
intelligence that led to the sinking of the Bismarck, a German vessel.

An intense character of fierce intelligence, Marks greatly regretted
that it took him two years to persuade his superiors that SOE's Dutch
secret army had been infiltrated by the Germans. During that time,
some 50 agents died, many of them unnecessarily, he believes.

``I feel guilty for not saving more agents,'' he says. ``Guilt for not
finding a way of convincing SOE that the Dutch traffic was corrupted,
guilt for not going directly to Churchill.''

Before the silk squares, SOE had used well-known poems as keys to
code.

Marks thought the codes would be safer if they were hidden in original
poetry, and 20 of his poems were included in the book.

One of the poems was written to a woman called Ruth, whom he loved
deeply, and who died in an air crash in Canada in 1943 before he could
tell her.

      ``The life that I have

      Is all that I have

      And the life that I have

      Is yours

      The love that I have

      Of the life that I have

      Is yours and yours and yours

      A sleep I shall have

      A rest I shall have

      Yet death will be but a pause

      For the peace of my years

      In the long green grass.''

Among Marks' agents who perished were the brilliant, alluring Noor
Anayat Kahn, killed at Dachau, and Violette Szabo, executed at
Ravensbruck, whose story was told in the film ``Carve Her Name With
Pride.''

In later life, Marks wrote a successful play, ``The Girl Who Couldn't
Quite,'' about a girl who has lost the ability to laugh, and a film,
``Peeping Tom,'' about a photographer obsessed with watching women on
the verge of death.

Marks was divorced and had no children. Funeral arrangements were not
announced.

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