The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [63]
When Tommy was introduced to his wireless operator and partner for the mission, he was sceptical. Sigfred Johannes Christophersen, who had celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday on 11 June, was so tall and lean that he stood out from the crowd. Tommy was concerned that Sigfred’s build might make him too easily identifiable for covert operations, but there was something else about him, too. It was as though Christophersen hadn’t begun to prepare himself mentally for the enormity of what they were about to do. Also, there was no natural affinity between the two men.
SIS hadn’t foreseen any potential problems between the pair. They were both young, enthusiastic and seemingly courageous; and their pasts pointed to similar ambitions. Handsome and hitherto adventurous, Sigfred’s story was almost as dramatic as Sneum’s, despite unremarkable beginnings. He had joined the Royal Lifeguard Regiment in November 1935 but found army life too mundane. So he applied to the Flying School in Vaerloese, where he enrolled on 1 April 1937. All went well until the following year, when his superiors noticed that he had started to cut corners and no longer flew according to the rulebook. Deemed a liability, he was thrown out of the school on 10 September 1938, his military career in tatters. After six months’ unemployment, he went to Germany and found work as a gardener. But he spotted a way to beat the boredom in the middle of January 1940, when he volunteered to become a pilot in the Finno-Russian War. For the next ten weeks he flew for the Finns, although Sneum later insisted that Christophersen had never been involved in any kind of aerial combat during that period. The brief and bloody conflict was over by the end of March 1940, and for Sigfred that signalled another downturn in his fortunes.
He returned to Denmark, only to face a fresh period of unemployment, this time caused by the German invasion. Increasingly desperate, he worked that summer under the occupiers back at Vaerloese airfield. But his conscience was clearly nagging away at him. In mid-October he and two comrades quit their jobs and came up with a brilliant plan to travel to England and serve with the RAF. The trio obtained visas to travel to Turkey on the pretext of buying tobacco there. Five days later, to their own astonishment, they were in Istanbul. Instead of seeking out tobacco merchants, though, they reported directly to the British Air Attaché and volunteered for the RAF. The Air Attaché welcomed the offer and gave the Danes some money for food and lodgings. They were instructed to remain in Istanbul and await further orders. Their patience paid off when, on 10 February 1941, they were told to board a ship. It took them south to the Cape of Good Hope and all the way back north to England, where they arrived on 23 April 1941. Their story was checked at the Royal Patriotic School, just as Sneum’s would be two months later.
By the time the British were satisfied, however, Christophersen had heard alarming stories about the mortality rates among pilots in the Battle of Britain. He was therefore more than happy to accept an approach from British Intelligence, who trained him in radio-telegraphy. The course intensified when he was earmarked to accompany Sneum back into Denmark.
One of Christophersen’s colleagues on the journey from Turkey had been Jorgen Thalbitzer. He went through with the original plan and signed up for the RAF. Later, he was shot down over France and imprisoned in a German prisoner-of-war camp, from which he subsequently made a spectacular escape.
Sneum met Thalbitzer in the summer of 1941, before the latter’s heroics, and the pair got on well. He was less enthusiastic about Christophersen, but he hoped that this opinion would change once they got to know each other better. Perhaps in a bid to achieve some bonding, SIS moved the taller man to the Ebury Court Hotel,