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A review by gautamsing
Churchill's Iceman: The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke: Genius, Fugitive, Spy by Henry Hemming
5.0
Geoffrey Pyke was a very interesting man, far ahead of his time in how he innovated. He is the first disrupter I have read about, other than Winston Churchill.
I had never heard of him, though I had heard of the ideas he had come up with. Telling in this regard is the title of the book in the English edition “Churchill’s Iceman” with Pyke’s name only in the sub-title. Mr Hemming has written a wonderful nugget of a book on this quite amazing, contradictory person.
Pyke’s first foray into “Pykeness” was, finding himself stuck in Denmark at the outbreak of World War I, when he wired Reuters offering to be their war correspondent there. Not having anyone else on the spot, amazingly, given he had no credentials, they agreed! Being in the right place at the right time. After a few useful reports on German naval movement he was asked to leave.
He went straight to Fleet Street in London, offering his services to the Daily Chronicle to be their reporter, in of all places, Berlin! His boldness again got him the needed accreditation, but it was left to him get himself to Berlin.
That’s when the real “Pykeness” kicked in. It is about identifying the right problem, and ignoring all conventional wisdom that might tell you a solution is impossible, to find and do just that.
Pyke defined the problem not conventionally as “How does a British war correspondent get to Berlin at a time like this?” (my para-phrasing). Instead he asked himself, “How does an English speaking person get to Berlin”? He decided to switch nationalities and managing to get an American passport, slid into Germany, and Berlin, quietly using sleepy ports and slow trains, where vigilance was less.
But, betrayed by the man he had planned to use as a conduit to send reports out, he found himself captive. After a harrowing 4 months in solitary, he is sent in January 2015 to Ruhleben, a camp for interred Britishers 500 miles away from the Dutch border. Following “Pykeness” he escapes with a fellow prisoner Teddy Falk, reaching London in July 1915.
Then starts the 30 years of Pyke being shadowing by British authorities. It begins with his studies of British ports during World War I, the question about how he got sent to Ruhleben, and later on, the suspicions of him being a Communist master spy. This dogged him through his life, and he did nothing to calm worried minds.
After some years, his marriage to Margaret and the birth of his son David, Pyke formed his next question or problem, “How to bring up a child?” His answer was to let their minds roam free, implemented (for once!) with his Matling House school. At the same time he dabbled in commodity trading of all things. This eventually led to financial chaos and the collapse of his marriage. This took most of the 1920’s.
The 1930’s started with a gap of a few years that worried his watchers in British intelligence later.
Driven by Edward VIII’s abdication, his next foray was into the study what people in general thought, that lead to the Mass Observation (MO) movement, used intensively during World War II.
Next he started VIAS (Voluntary Industrial Aid to Spain) where he tried to solve problems like providing ambulance assistance using voluntary worker credits instead of money. The worker credits thing didn’t work, but he was able to provide reconditioned vehicles as ambulances.
With Hitler rapidly hurtling to start World War II, Pyke heard that most Germans were not in favour, but being ill-informed, were not resisting. His answer was, “lets tell the Germans what they think” and so he set about doing that. Unfortunately, in end August 1939, it was too late.
In Feb 1942 starts the most productive period of Pyke’s life when he barges into Mountbatten’s office, then the newly appointed Chief of Combined Operations. This was a post created by Churchill, whose fertile mind realized that future military operations would need coordination across land, sea & air forces (till then non-existent). Mountbatten liked what he heard, and for the next 18 months, starts a magnificent relationship. It’s between Mountbatten (open to new ideas and has the ear of Churchill), and Pyke (who defines problems the right way and suggests unorthodox solutions).
It starts with Norway, where Pyke suggests the development of an elite force equipped with outrageous snow-mobiles to inflict maximum damage. Operation Plough doesn’t start due to Pyke’s inability to deal with “non-Pykers”, but eventually the elite force and the Weasel snowmobile did wreak havoc.
In summer 1942, Pyke comes up with his most famous idea, building unsinkable, huge, cheap ships with ice. Many Pyke ideas are totally original to him. But one of the key aspects of “Pykeness” was, once having identified a problem, look at all past ideas. Trying to solve the problem of winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Pyke had come across a 1924 National Geographic article on how solid ice was, and from that kernel grew his idea.
Mountbatten was sold. He got Churchill's support by demonstrated it his bath. And at the famous Anglo-US conference in 1943 where he did the same by firing his pistol into a block of “pykrete”.
The winning of the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-Boats by conventional means and administrative intrusions meant the end of this amazing idea.
After that it was downhill for Pyke. Mountbatten went to Asia and he had no mentor. Pyke committing suicide on Feb 21, 1948. The possibility of Addison's disease maybe a cause but we will never know for sure.
Was Pyke a communist master spy? With the latest declassified information, we learn of reports discovered in Anthony Blunts flat (one of the famous Cambridge spies) that indicates Pyke was giving classified information to Peter Smollett, now known to be a Russian spy. Maybe it’s the romantic in me but I loathe to think of Pyke as one of the Cambridge gang. If he did any of this stuff, I prefer to think he was acting as an “anti-fascist” as he described himself.
On a personal note, I found this book in this amazing bookshop in of all places, Koh Samui airport in Thailand. It’s a tiny airport and you can’t miss it. It’s on the way from checkin to security. Drop in.
I had never heard of him, though I had heard of the ideas he had come up with. Telling in this regard is the title of the book in the English edition “Churchill’s Iceman” with Pyke’s name only in the sub-title. Mr Hemming has written a wonderful nugget of a book on this quite amazing, contradictory person.
Pyke’s first foray into “Pykeness” was, finding himself stuck in Denmark at the outbreak of World War I, when he wired Reuters offering to be their war correspondent there. Not having anyone else on the spot, amazingly, given he had no credentials, they agreed! Being in the right place at the right time. After a few useful reports on German naval movement he was asked to leave.
He went straight to Fleet Street in London, offering his services to the Daily Chronicle to be their reporter, in of all places, Berlin! His boldness again got him the needed accreditation, but it was left to him get himself to Berlin.
That’s when the real “Pykeness” kicked in. It is about identifying the right problem, and ignoring all conventional wisdom that might tell you a solution is impossible, to find and do just that.
Pyke defined the problem not conventionally as “How does a British war correspondent get to Berlin at a time like this?” (my para-phrasing). Instead he asked himself, “How does an English speaking person get to Berlin”? He decided to switch nationalities and managing to get an American passport, slid into Germany, and Berlin, quietly using sleepy ports and slow trains, where vigilance was less.
But, betrayed by the man he had planned to use as a conduit to send reports out, he found himself captive. After a harrowing 4 months in solitary, he is sent in January 2015 to Ruhleben, a camp for interred Britishers 500 miles away from the Dutch border. Following “Pykeness” he escapes with a fellow prisoner Teddy Falk, reaching London in July 1915.
Then starts the 30 years of Pyke being shadowing by British authorities. It begins with his studies of British ports during World War I, the question about how he got sent to Ruhleben, and later on, the suspicions of him being a Communist master spy. This dogged him through his life, and he did nothing to calm worried minds.
After some years, his marriage to Margaret and the birth of his son David, Pyke formed his next question or problem, “How to bring up a child?” His answer was to let their minds roam free, implemented (for once!) with his Matling House school. At the same time he dabbled in commodity trading of all things. This eventually led to financial chaos and the collapse of his marriage. This took most of the 1920’s.
The 1930’s started with a gap of a few years that worried his watchers in British intelligence later.
Driven by Edward VIII’s abdication, his next foray was into the study what people in general thought, that lead to the Mass Observation (MO) movement, used intensively during World War II.
Next he started VIAS (Voluntary Industrial Aid to Spain) where he tried to solve problems like providing ambulance assistance using voluntary worker credits instead of money. The worker credits thing didn’t work, but he was able to provide reconditioned vehicles as ambulances.
With Hitler rapidly hurtling to start World War II, Pyke heard that most Germans were not in favour, but being ill-informed, were not resisting. His answer was, “lets tell the Germans what they think” and so he set about doing that. Unfortunately, in end August 1939, it was too late.
In Feb 1942 starts the most productive period of Pyke’s life when he barges into Mountbatten’s office, then the newly appointed Chief of Combined Operations. This was a post created by Churchill, whose fertile mind realized that future military operations would need coordination across land, sea & air forces (till then non-existent). Mountbatten liked what he heard, and for the next 18 months, starts a magnificent relationship. It’s between Mountbatten (open to new ideas and has the ear of Churchill), and Pyke (who defines problems the right way and suggests unorthodox solutions).
It starts with Norway, where Pyke suggests the development of an elite force equipped with outrageous snow-mobiles to inflict maximum damage. Operation Plough doesn’t start due to Pyke’s inability to deal with “non-Pykers”, but eventually the elite force and the Weasel snowmobile did wreak havoc.
In summer 1942, Pyke comes up with his most famous idea, building unsinkable, huge, cheap ships with ice. Many Pyke ideas are totally original to him. But one of the key aspects of “Pykeness” was, once having identified a problem, look at all past ideas. Trying to solve the problem of winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Pyke had come across a 1924 National Geographic article on how solid ice was, and from that kernel grew his idea.
Mountbatten was sold. He got Churchill's support by demonstrated it his bath. And at the famous Anglo-US conference in 1943 where he did the same by firing his pistol into a block of “pykrete”.
The winning of the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-Boats by conventional means and administrative intrusions meant the end of this amazing idea.
After that it was downhill for Pyke. Mountbatten went to Asia and he had no mentor. Pyke committing suicide on Feb 21, 1948. The possibility of Addison's disease maybe a cause but we will never know for sure.
Was Pyke a communist master spy? With the latest declassified information, we learn of reports discovered in Anthony Blunts flat (one of the famous Cambridge spies) that indicates Pyke was giving classified information to Peter Smollett, now known to be a Russian spy. Maybe it’s the romantic in me but I loathe to think of Pyke as one of the Cambridge gang. If he did any of this stuff, I prefer to think he was acting as an “anti-fascist” as he described himself.
On a personal note, I found this book in this amazing bookshop in of all places, Koh Samui airport in Thailand. It’s a tiny airport and you can’t miss it. It’s on the way from checkin to security. Drop in.