X, Y & Z by Dermot Turing

Author:Dermot Turing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

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In moments of darkness, James Bond should come on to the scene. Lieutenant Ian Fleming, RNVR, spent the war reporting to the Director of Naval Intelligence and in that capacity found enough real-life inspiration to create his famous novels in his second career. One of his most colourful contacts was Commander Wilfred Dunderdale, also RNVR, who is one of the many contenders to have been Fleming’s model for the suave, martini-swilling international agent of the books.

Dunderdale had a CV which came straight from a Fleming story. He was born in Odessa and grew up speaking Russian as well as English. He was 19 when the Russian Revolution began and found himself caught up in the civil war as temporary honorary sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, acting as interpreter and liaison officer with the White Russian naval commanders in the Black Sea. He was also a formidable boxer, on which account he was nicknamed ‘Biffy’ by colleagues. No doubt deploying his pugilistic skills, he is said to have thwarted a Bolshevik attempt to murder the Tsarist officers (and himself) on the ship he was assigned to and came back from this venture with an MBE (‘Dunderdale remain Interpreter to [Senior Naval Officer]. Promote and decorate.’) As he moved up in the world, he found himself at Yekaterinburg investigating the murder of the Imperial family and then at Constantinople in the employ of MI6. Another job as interpreter was to assist a White Russian general in a private railway carriage liaison with his mistress. As neither spoke the other’s language, Biffy stood outside and interpreted, presumably until the point at which words became unnecessary for the proceedings.

The British Establishment continued to make use of Biffy’s services as intermediary in similar sensitive situations: ‘he always maintained that his first job for MI6 was to pay off, with gold sovereigns, all the foreign members of the sultan’s harem and to repatriate them through the good offices of the Royal Navy.’ Liaison involved more traditional forms of intelligence as well and Dunderdale was commended by the Admiralty for his reports on minefields, defences around Odessa, shipping, and so forth. By 1926, possibly because Paris had become a hotbed of White Russian intrigue, but certainly because he spoke excellent French, Biffy was posted there and began his long mission of liaison with the French secret intelligence services. By 1937, he was Head of Station and it is in this context we have met him before, meeting with Rivet and escorting the Polish replica Enigma machine across to London in 1939.35

Still under the cover-name Dolinoff, Dunderdale was busy in June 1940, trying to salvage something from the wreck of Allied intelligence in France. On 17 June 1940, contact was established with Bertrand, who from this date on is referred to in the British sources as ‘Bertie’. Bertie was busy too. The situation in France was changing hourly. Now it was Biffy’s job to see what could be done about Bertie and his fugitive code-breakers.

23.6.40 to Bertrand.

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