Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert, later Marthe McKenna, was a Belgian spy for the United Kingdom and its allies during the First World War. She was born in a village to Felix Dnockaert and his wife Marie-Louise Vanoplinus. She began studying at the medical school at Ghen University, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. She received honours for gallantry for her espionage work from the British, French and Belgians. A film of her first book I Was a Spy was produced in 1933. She later became a novelist, and is credited with writing over a dozen spy novels in addition to her memoirs and short stories. Some of her works include: My Master Spy: a narrative of secret service (1936) Drums Never Beat (1936) Lancer Spy: a story of war-time secret service and espionage (1937) Set a Spy (1937) Hunt a Spy (1939) Spying Blind (1939) Spy in Khaki (1941) Arms and Spy (1942) Nightfighter Spy (1943) Watch Across the Channel (1944) Write Your Own Best-Seller (1946) Three Spies for Glory (1950) What's Past is Prologue (1951)
A great true story about a lady spy. Enjoyed it very much. I liked how the girl managed herself to come forward and do something for the country. But as far war goes nothing is justified. If you kill your enemies, it means you are doing the same thing that they does. If they are evil, you are evil as well. And thus people find reason to justify their deed.
Either way, the girl saved many people too. She was humble in her duty both in killing and saving. She also could save herself from may men that tried to make physical contact with her. The time was not great for Belgian girls at that time, and I could see the picture vividly.
A great read for any one who like to read war stories, and want to know about a lady spy amongst the revenge seeking human killing tide of war.
I picked this up after the New York Times ran a belated obituary for Marthe McKenna in September, 2018. This book reads like a non-stop adventure novel. McKenna (nee Cnockaert) was in her early twenties and studying to be a doctor when the war broke out. The Germans overran her native Belgium before their progress was halted and the front-line trenches formed just past her hometown of Westrozebeke. Her town was destroyed and she and her mother were forced to move a little further behind the lines to Roulers, where the Germans had set up a hospital.
Cnockaert volunteered as a nurse at the hospital, where she treated both German and Allied soldiers. If you've ever read accounts from other WWI nurses, you know what a horror that job was. Around the time she moved to Roulers, her aunt, an independent and free-spirited loner, recruited her as a spy for the British Secret Service.
Cnockaert was able to gather quite a bit of information from the German officers billeted in her house. (Every house in Roulers was forced to board German soldiers during the war.) Because Cnockaert worked at the hospital and had to be on call at all times, she was one of the only citizens in town who carried a pass that allowed to violate the German curfew. Her pass allowed her to go anywhere at any time, while her dedicated and extraordinary work at the hospital kept her above suspicion of the German authorities. (Because of her medical training, she was more skilled than the other nurses, and her personality made her a favorite of doctors, patients, and hospital administrators alike.)
Cnockaert recounts a number of fascinating missions, in many of which her life was on the line at every moment. In one of her first missions, she sweet-talks the German officer who runs the railway station, trying to extract information from him about when a munitions train will arrive. She gets the information, in a very clever manner, and as she does so, she comes to recognize the German officer who she has just swindled as a fundamentally decent man forced by his country to do job he may not necessarily like. With deeply mixed feelings, she passes her information on to the British, knowing it will lead to the violent death of the man who has just helped her. Two days later, she watches British planes bomb the munitions train, blowing up not only the train but the entire station, with the German officer inside.
Cnockaert passes on other valuable information to the British, including information about a previously unknown German submarine base, a behind-the-lines telephone from which an unfaithful Brit has been passing secrets to the Germans, and most importantly, plans for the large-scale bombing of London that, thanks to her warning, the British were able to thwart.
Her greatest regret comes from an incident whose significance neither she nor the British understood at the time. She reported that a munitions train had arrived in Roulers carrying large cylinders unlike any she'd ever seen before, and that she had gathered from the talk of local soldiers these were bound for the front lines. The Brits replied that they wanted information about troop movements, and they were not interested in cylinders.
Cnockaert continued to investigate the cylinders, and she also reported that two unusual German officers were now billeted in her house. They spent their days studying weather reports, measuring windspeed and making maps. The Brits again replied they weren't interested in such information, but she continued to search for details, because the constant chatter of the German soldiers about an imminent turning point in the war told her something big was about to happen.
The last things she reported before that Germans carried those mysterious cylinders to the line was that the officers billeted in her house were not standard army officers. They were university professors who taught chemistry. She also mentioned overhearing a soldier who had unloaded the munitions train saying the canisters contained chlorine. Again, the Brits were not interested. No one understood at the time what was afoot.
The first chemical attack of war came just after her final report, and Cnockaert was the head nurse at the hospital that received the first hordes of choking, chemically burned soldiers. Although the townspeople were used to the sight of soldiers arriving with their arms and legs blown off, even parts of their faces missing, the sight of the gassed, burned and choking soldiers so horrified them that for the first time, they rose up in open protest against the Germans.
This is just one of number of incidents the author recounts. There are many more, and many of them are more harrowing because the author is so bold and forward in her attempts to extract information from the Germans. In many cases, she's the only Belgian in a room full of male enemy soldiers. And in many cases, she travels great distances on foot, in the dark of night, to distant towns and country farmhouses, avoiding German patrols again and again, while knowing she has to show up at work the next morning looking fresh and clean or she'll blow her cover.
One of the more striking aspects of this book is the portrait it paints of a long-lost world. Although the Europeans were fighting a twentieth-century war with twentieth-century weapons, they were still living in a nineteenth century culture. Cnockaert, a farm girl, speaks fluent Flemish, French, German, and English. The German officers, while overrunning her country, are unfailingly polite to her, just as she is to them. German and Allied soldiers are treated side-by-side in the hospital. The savage war is playing out in a society that is far more civil than American society is today. In reading of these people who so easily shifted their conversation into another language to accommodate the person they were talking to, I felt a pang of loss for a civilization that once prized cultural knowledge and now scorns it. (America, that is.)
Another striking aspect of the book is how intimately the dramas of the war played out just behind the front lines. The Germans and the Belgian spies slept under the same roof. They ate and drank together. As the war wore on, they commiserated, all of them sick of it and wanting to return to normal life. Cnockaert herself, as a nurse, often treated and rehabilitated the very soldiers whom her information had caused to be wounded, and she always treated them as fully human, not as enemies. Everything is muddled in war.
There is much more to the book than I've spelled out here. It's a fascinating read, and in the four years of the war, Cnockaert did more living than most people do in a lifetime. She may have been the only person in the war to have won the highest national honors from both the Germans and the Allies. She was awarded the German Iron Cross for her work as a nurse, and the both the Belgian and French Legions of Honor, along with special recognition from the British, for her work as a spy.
If you get a chance, read this book. It's a hard one to put down.
How have I only heard of this book recently? Released in the 1930's, it details the World War I life of Belgian citizen Marthe Cnockaert, a nurse turned spy. Her life is extraordinary- she passes coded messages, evades capture several times, sets off dynamite, and so much more. Marthe's exploits during the war make me wonder why this hasn't been made into a movie yet- so much happens that it almost seems unreal. The forward was written by none other than Winston Churchill, who claimed that he ended up reading until 4 in the morning since he couldn't put it down. A definite must for anyone who loves World War I history, espionage, unappreciated women in history, and really just any reader who can't get enough adventure.
I finished reading 'I was a spy' by Marthe McKenna months earlier and thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography. It tells the tale of a lady born in Belgium who becomes a spy for the British, detailing her daring escapades. It is amazing to learn how several women operated as spies during the First World War without any technology to aid them. It seems like this smart young lady had no formal training to be a spy. But with determination and natural intelligence and quick thinking she became a valuable asset to the British with her alert ears and eyes. From page 100 onwards I was especially fascinated. The reader is kept in suspense as to whether the spy will get caught. (She does, as the back cover says). She works hard and sincerely as a nurse and attends to many wounded German soldiers, none of whom suspect her true identity. Quite remarkable, given how she quietly detests the Germans invading her Belgian homeland...in her heart. She is daring as she tries hard and successfully alerts the British about suspicious activity and train movements and much much more. Her quick thinking and daring acts to take the Germans down amaze the reader. The characters whom we encounter, other spies like her who aid her quietly and the Germans who have no idea who she truly is, make for memorable companions on this page-turning book. Ms. Marthe also writes a very vivid description of the hard life people had to have in a town invaded during a world war. Her true patriotism comes through in this book and is admirable. Her bravery made me think of all the other women who had to work as spies in a patriarchal society at that time.... and they had to avoid getting caught. Not an easy task at all! If you like history and suspense do please read this one!
Unable to resist the book list at the back of the excellent World War 1 novel High as the Heavens, I requested I Was a Spy! by Marthe McKenna via interlibrary loan.听 When it arrived I took the afternoon off, and I鈥檓 in good company; Sir Winston Churchill stayed up until 4 AM to finish it.听 He had a personal interest in the story, though, for in 1919, as Secretary of State for War, he had formally conveyed 鈥榯he appreciation of his Majesty鈥� to Marthe Cnockaert McKenna.
Marthe, a Belgian nurse, was on her second vacation from medical school when war broke out.听 Her village of Westroosebeke was devastated and full of wounded so she volunteered to help some nuns, refugees from Passchendaele, with their emergency hospital. Within half a year the town became too dangerous, all the women were sent to Roulers where Marthe joined the hospital, and Marthe accepted an invitation from an old family friend, presumed missing, to 鈥榮erve her country鈥�.
鈥楲aura鈥� as she was known to British Secret Intelligence Commission, passed on messages to #63.听 At the hospital and her parents鈥� caf茅 she gathered her own intelligence, and passed that on, too.听 She also worked tirelessly at the hospital, sometimes even caring for individuals her information had wounded....
To read the rest of my review, in which I quote Winston Churchill extensively and discuss how Marthe's war is similar to the way Christians fight the good fight, please see my blog:
With her medical studies cut short by the 1914 German invasion, her house burned down and her father arrested for suspected鈥榮harpshooting鈥�, the multi-lingual Marthe Mckenna was recruited by British Intelligence. At the time she worked as a nurse tending the wounds of occupying soldiers, and as a waitress in her parents鈥� caf茅 in the Belgian border town of Roulers. I Was a Spy! is McKenna鈥檚 vivid narrative of these breath-taking adventures as she, aided by a gallant band of loyal locals, goes undercover to sabotage enemy phone lines, report suspicious activity or train movements, and even instigate an aerial attack on a planned visit by the Kaiser. This thrilling account goes on to explain how, in 1916, the young nurse was caught by the Germans placing dynamite in a disused sewer tunnel underneath an ammunition dump. She was sentenced to the firing squad and only survived due to the Iron Cross honour received as a result of her earlier medical service . Mckenna was later mentioned by Douglas Haig in British Despatches and was awarded the French and Belgian Orders of the Legion of Honour for her espionage work.
The title relates the the book a lot because in the book, the main character goes behind enemy lines to gain more information. I think the authors style was very descriptive, she always to the chance to add more information and details so the audience could experience as much as they could. This stories was to teach the readers that you can do something in this world weather it is big or small. I believe that it is noteworthy because you can take this information and apply it anywhere in life. Some topics of discussion are about has this happened anywhere else but hasn鈥檛 been share and how easy was it. I think old kids to adults would like this book. It is very grown up and some words may be trickier for a younger audience. The authors craft is very intense and a lot of things are going on at once. If I could change something, I would change some of the word choices because at some points in the book, I got very confused at what was happening.
A revering book. It felt systematically written in such a streamlined way. The action is encapsulated sharply. I greatly respect Marthe McKenna and the other Belgian spies after reading this narrative account of her WW1 life.
The book was beautifully written to feel like fiction when it was actually a historical account. However, I give it a 4/5 since although I felt much empathy for Marthe and the other characters, I wished the book denoted WW1 to be uglier as it was a terrible, terrible war.
Do not get me wrong, it did recount a few gruelling details of mass destruction and horrors. Maybe the editor and writer (Marthe herself) excluded the ugly WW1 details purposely to make the story flowy and readable for all ages.
The riveting, fast-paced memoir of a Belgian woman who becomes a spy for the Allies during WWI. I came across this by chance 鈥� it deserves to be better known. Not only does it paint a picture of the hardships of life during occupation by enemy troops (the Germans), it sketches how an ordinary, though clever and brave, person ends up in espionage. I wouldn鈥檛 be so fond of the book if it weren鈥檛 true 鈥� in several places I would have been incredulous about the plot if it were fiction! The writing is very spare, and could benefit from more description of places and people, but it serves its purpose of telling a fascinating story.
This personal account of life as a female spy during WWI is one of the best books on the Great War that I have read. That it was written by a virtually forgotten author/heroine makes it, to me, even more special of a find.
This is a first person whirlwind read of a WWI spy. Just a fast and thrilling ride. Not a long read so, good for a fast one. I learned a lot about WWI reading it too. It was a very bad war (I knew that) but it seems like so many interesting things happened outside of miserable trench warfare that have never been told or made into movies. Germany was really awful during WWI too! WWI and WWII are really the same multi generational war with a pause in the middle.