Death Notice Dangers

Evening Star, Issue 25893, 10 September 1946, Page 5

Death Notice Dangers

Obituary notices had to be watched carefully. Consider this, for example:— “On April 21, John William Deeds, solicitor, killed by enemy action.” No town is given, but it would be easy for the enemy to look up Mr Deeds in thef English reference books they possessed, and find out where he was practising. They would then know the town- their bombers hit on April 21, and the fact that they caused at any rate, some casualties. If two or more members of a family were killed in an air raid their address might not be given, for though one man might well be killed away from home, it was improbable that several members of the same family would be, and hence the exact locality hit would be betrayed. The same applied to “In Memoriam ” notices. Suppose that in a local paper published at a place containing a large aircraft factory there appeared in June a long series of “In Memoriam ” notices referring to deaths a year before. This would give the enemy a good idea of how much he had interfered with our war production by his raids on that town the previous year.Again, when the enemy claimed to have sunk one of our submarines he could never be certain he had done so unless he had recovered prisoners. The Admiralty, therefore, never announced the loss until some time afterwards, when the submarine was long overdue. Even then the date of the loss was. not revealed, for it was important-not .to tell the, enemy that his tactics on that occasion had been successful.

If, however, a memoriam notice was published containing the date of the loss (the presumed date was communicated privately to the relatives), the enemy would thus receive confirmation of the claim of a year ago.

Comparison of different papers was carefully carried out by the enemy to take advantage of the slightest slip. For instance, the Germans would often be unaware of the name of the small provincial ‘town on which they had carried out a tip-and-run raid. The name of the town was, therefore, not to be released for publication. It was, however, permitted to publish where an enemy aircraft had crashed, since it might have been hit a long distance away from where it actually crashed, and thus the enemy was given no information. Yet two separate reports censored on the basis of these rules did sometimes tell the enemy what he wanted to know. Thus, one censor passed that within a minute of raiding a town in Southwest England an enemy raider crashed in the sea just off the coast. Another censor passed for a different newspaper the fact that an enemy machine crashed off Dawlish. Put the two together and you know where the raiders struck.

It' was the same technique of discovering the position of units that had to be guarded against by censors. The locality but not the regiment of serving soldiers below the rank of lieutenant-colonel might be given, and sonic provincial papers gave lists of local soldiers and where they were serving—Middle East, India, Italy, etc. On the other hand, if a man became a casualty, his regiment could be mentioned, but not the locality. Thus there might appear in one paper: “Captain Edward Smith, of Parkstone Hall, Dorset, who is at present in Burma, is .engaged ,to be. married to Miss Brown.”

A few weeks later there might appear in another paper under casualties :

“ Smith.—On active service, Captain Edward Smith, of Parkstone Hall, Dorset, Royal Berkshire Regiment, seriously injured.”