Peggy Harmer was the last survivor of the wartime section of MI5 responsible for one of the great triumphs of counter-espionage, the Double Cross System. Through it the Security Service identified, turned and controlled almost all the enemy agents infiltrated into Britain, and used them to feed back misinformation to the Germans. Its work culminated in the successful attempt to convince Hitler that the D-Day invasion would take place at the Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy.
Although Harmer’s role in this campaign of strategic deception was minor, it was not unimportant. In the spring of 1941, when she was a vivacious girl of 19 and just out of secretarial school, a family friend arranged a job for her with the War Office. She was told to report to Wormwood Scrubs prison, and was shown into one of its cells where an officer asked her to take dictation.
“It was bizarre,” she recalled. “He kept referring to ‘Snow’, ‘Tate’ and ‘Summer’. I had no idea what was going on. I thought I was in a madhouse.” Only later did she learn that these were codenames for double agents, and that she had joined the department of the Security Service which handled them.
This was led by Colonel Tommy Robertson, known from his initials as “Tar” or more familiarly, from his habit of wearing regimental tartan trousers, as “Passion Pants”. He had recruited a formidable if eclectic team — including the circus owner Cyril Mills — which because of the breaking of German codes at Bletchley Park was able to learn where and when spies were to be landed.
Once captured, they were offered a choice between execution and co-operation. Most chose the latter course and began to send to Berlin false intelligence co-ordinated by the Twenty Committee, named for the double cross made by the Roman numerals XX.
Advertisement
Robertson’s officers — all of whom were men — looked after the briefing of such agents as Garbo (Juan Pujol), Tricycle (Dusko Popov) and Zigzag (Eddie Chapman). Meanwhile, their secretarial staff — all of whom were women — had charge of the no less vital business of record-keeping, transcribing interrogations and disseminating information between departments. Harmer is mentioned in Ben Macintyre’s recent book Agent Zigzag.
Occasionally, however, Harmer was asked to act as a courier, for instance once passing some documents to Tor Glad, a Norwegian agent codenamed “Jeff”. “I was supposed to meet him in Piccadilly Tube station,” she recalled in 2007. “We wore red carnations, I seem to remember, for recognition. I suppose we were all taking part in the adventure. One got quite blasé about it.”
Her career at MI5 came to an end in 1943 when she married the officer for whom she was working, Christopher Harmer.
They had begun their romance in secret — Harmer later named one of his agents after the Bronx cocktails he had drunk with Peggy on a covert date — but the couple were eventually spotted dancing together in a nightclub.
As such love affairs between colleagues were thought to be a security risk, she was quickly transferred to other duties. She ended the war working for Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), Winston Churchill’s principal scientific adviser.
Advertisement
The daughter of an army officer, she was born Margaret Gordon Phillips at Piltdown, East Sussex, in 1922. Much of her childhood was spent in India, where her father was serving, and she had vivid memories of rising before dawn to take part in drag hunts before the heat of the day spoilt the scent. She enjoyed riding and, later, dancing, both at the cantonments of the plain and in the cool of the hills around Simla.
This idyll was broken by six years of schooling at St Neots, Cambridgeshire, during which time she was in contact with her parents only by post. She spent holidays at the home of a relation, the politician Sir Stafford Cripps.
After the war Christopher Harmer was invited to remain with MI5 but preferred to return to his civilian occupation as a solicitor, based in the Midlands. In the early 1970s he advised the former chairman of the Twenty Committee, Sir John Masterman, when he was trying to publish his revelatory history of the Double Cross System in the teeth of official disapproval.
Peggy Harmer, meanwhile, devoted herself to gardening and to bringing up their two sons and two daughters. Her open and welcoming nature made her the confidante of many of her friends, while she herself became a frequent source of memories for historians of wartime intelligence and documentary makers. “I hate to say it but I found the war really exciting,” she recalled. “There was a wonderful atmosphere; such camaraderie. We all had a common enemy. That made a huge difference.”
Christopher Harmer died in 1996. She is survived by her children.
Advertisement
Peggy Harmer, wartime member of MI5, was born on February 9, 1922. She died on April 2, 2011 aged 89