This is my Easter Ticket for tomorrow I am really looking forward to The Easter Party tomorrow to I think it will be really good and good fun. The time is 12pm until 3pm it is on for three hours.

Every war brings to the fore a new way of maiming and killing soldiers. Gun powder in the 16th and 17th centuries meant that – finally, sadly – one could eliminate many of his enemies with one agent of offensive effort, an artillery round. Ultimately, in WWII it was demonstrated that a single atomic weapon could kill more than one hundred thousand of the enemy with a single use of a single weapon. While the efficiency of maiming and killing steadily advanced from the 17th to the 20th centuries it accelerated by an order of magnitude in WWI with the use of inhaled poison gasses.

One of the enduring hallmarks of WWI was the large-scale use of chemical weapons, commonly called, simply, ‘gas’. Although chemical warfare caused less than 1% of the total deaths in this war, the ‘psy-war’ or fear factor was formidable. Thus, chemical warfare with gases was subsequently absolutely prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It has occasionally been used since then but never in WWI quantities. Production of some of these dangerous chemicals continues to this day as they have peaceful uses – for example, phosgene (carbonyl dichloride) is an industrial reagent, a precursor of pharmaceuticals and other important organic compounds.

Masked soldiers charge through a cloud of gas.

Several chemicals were weaponized in WWI and France actually was the first to use gas – they deployed tear gas in August 1914. The agent used was either xylyl bromide, which is described as smelling ‘pleasant and aromatic’, or ethyl bromoacetate, described as ‘fruity and pungent.’ Both are colorless liquids and have to be atomized to be dispersed as weapons. As lachrymatory agents, they irritate the eyes and cause uncontrolled tearing. Large doses can cause temporary blindness. If inhaled they also make breathing difficult. Symptoms usually resolve by 30 minutes after contact. Thus, tear gas was never very effective as a weapon against groups of enemy soldiers.

The German gas warfare program was headed by Fritz Haber (1868 – 1934) whose first try for a weapon was chlorine, which he debuted at Ypres in April 1915. Chlorine is a diatomic gas, about two and a half times denser than air, pale green in color and with an odor which was described as a ‘mix of pineapple and pepper’. It can react with water in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid, which is destructive of tissue and can quickly lead to death, or, at least, permanent lung tissue damage and disability. At lower concentrations, if it does not reach the lungs, per se, it can cause coughing, vomiting, and eye irritation. Chlorine was deadly against unprotected soldiers. It is estimated over 1,100 were killed in its first use at Ypres. Ironically, the Germans weren’t prepared for how effective it would be and were unable to exploit their advantage, gaining little ground.

Chlorine’s usefulness was short-lived. Its color and odor made it easy to spot, and since chlorine is water-soluble even soldiers without gas masks could minimize its effect by placing water-soaked – even urine-soaked – rags over their mouths and noses. Additionally, releasing the gas in a cloud posed problems, as the British learnt to their detriment when they attempted to use chlorine at Loos. The wind shifted, carrying the gas back onto their own men.

Phosgene (carbonyl dichloride) was Haber’s next choice, probably used first at Ypres by the Germans in December 1915. Phosgene is a colorless gas, with an odor likened to that of ‘musty hay’, but for the odor to be detectable, the concentration had to be at 0.4 parts per million, or several times the level at which harmful effects occur. Phosgene is highly toxic, due to its ability to react with proteins in the alveoli of the lungs, disrupting the blood-air barrier, leading to suffocation.

Allied soldiers pose for a picture while wearing their gas masks.

Phosgene was much more effective and more deadly than chlorine, though one drawback was that the symptoms could sometimes take up to 48 hours to be manifest. The minimal immediate effects are lachrymatory. However, subsequently, it causes build-up of fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema), leading to death. It is estimated that as many as 85% of the 91,000 gas deaths in WWI were a result of phosgene or the related agent, diphosgene (trichloromethane chloroformate).

The most commonly used gas in WWI was ‘mustard gas’ [bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide]. In pure liquid form this is colorless, but in WWI impure forms were used, which had a mustard color with an odor reminiscent of garlic or horseradish. An irritant and a strong vesicant (blister-forming agent), it causes chemical burns on contact, with blisters oozing yellow fluid. Initial exposure is symptomless, and by the time skin irritation begins, it is too late to take preventative measures. The mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%, but those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had long hospitalizations and if they recovered were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life.

Windswept gas spreads across a battlefield in Europe.

Chloropicrin, diphenylchlorarsine, American-developed Adamsite (diphenylaminechlorarsine), and others were irritants that could bypass gas masks and make soldiers remove their masks, thus, exposing them to phosgene or chlorine.

Gases often were used in combinations. Most gas was delivered by artillery shells. The agent(s) were in liquid form in glass bottles inside the warhead, which would break on contact and the liquid would evaporate. Shells were color coded in a system started by the Germans. Green Cross shells contained the pulmonary agents: chlorine, phosgene and diphosgene. White Cross had the tear gases. Blue Cross had the ‘mask breakers’ like chloropicrin. Gold (or Yellow) Cross had mustard gas.

John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’ depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack on British troops.

In retrospect it is sad to know that warfare by poisoning soldiers – so brutal, highly personal, and used with such little restraint by both sides in WWI – had been previously outlawed by the Hague Convention in 1899. The ironies of gas warfare are vividly focused in the life of Fritz Haber, the German chemist who invented phosgene and also the ‘Haber Process’ which allowed fixation of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia-based fertilizer. A German Jew who converted to Christianity, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1919 for the Haber Process. Though long dead before The Holocaust, he was one of the chemists who perfected the hydrocyanide-based insecticides Zyklon A and Zyklon B, the latter gas used to kill millions of Jews and others, including some of his relatives.

Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American actress and technology inventor. She was a film star during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, Fritz, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood. She became a film star with her performance in Algiers (1938). Her MGM films include Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and White Cargo (1942). Her greatest success was as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille‘s Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film, The Female Animal (1958). She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

At the beginning of World War II, along with avant-garde composer George Antheil, she co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers.

Early life

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (née Lichtwitz) and Emil Kiesler.

Her father was born to a Galician-Jewish family in Lemberg in the Austrian part of the Austrian Empire (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was, in the 1920s, deputy director of Wiener Bankverein, and in the end of his life a director at the united Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother, a pianist and a native of Budapest, had come from an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a “practicing Christian” who raised her daughter as a Christian, although Hedy was not formally baptized at the time.

As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theater and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began to learn about technological inventions with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how devices functioned.

European film career

Early work

Lamarr was taking acting classes in Vienna when one day, she forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to get herself hired as a script girl. While there, she was able to get a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930), and then a small speaking part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931). Producer Max Reinhardt then cast her in a play entitled The Weaker Sex, which was performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Reinhardt was so impressed with her that he brought her with him back to Berlin.

However, she never actually trained with Reinhardt or appeared in any of his Berlin productions. Instead, she met the Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his film directorial debut, The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931), starring Walter Abel and Peter Lorre.Granowsky soon moved to Paris, but Lamarr stayed in Berlin and was given the lead role in No Money Needed (1932), a comedy directed by Carl Boese. Lamarr then starred in the film which made her internationally famous.

Ecstasy

In early 1933, at age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in Gustav Machatý‘s film Ecstasy (Ekstase in German, Extase in Czech). She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.

The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr’s face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief scenes of nudity. Lamarr claimed she was “duped” by the director and producer, who used high-power telephoto lenses, although the director contested her claims.

Although she was dismayed and now disillusioned about taking other roles, the film gained world recognition after winning an award at the Venice Film Festival.Throughout Europe, it was regarded as an artistic work. In America, it was considered overly sexual and received negative publicity, especially among women’s groups. It was banned there and in Germany.

Withdrawal

Lamarr played a number of stage roles, including a starring one in Sissy, a play about Empress Elisabeth of Austria produced in Vienna. It won accolades from critics. Admirers sent roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to meet her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl. He became obsessed with getting to know her.

Mandl was an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve, due to Mandl’s ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.

On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old and he was 33. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, she described Mandl as an extremely controlling husband who strongly objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau.

Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany, as well. Lamarr wrote that the dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.

Lamarr’s marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country in 1937. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but by other accounts, she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party, then disappeared afterward. She writes about her marriage:

I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife. … He was the absolute monarch in his marriage. … I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.

Hollywood career

Louis B. Mayer and MGM

After arriving in London in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was scouting for talent in Europe. She initially turned down the offer he made her (of $125 a week), but then booked herself onto the same New York bound liner as him, and managed to impress him enough to secure a $500 a week contract. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr (to distance herself from her real identity, and “the Ecstasy lady” reputation associated with it), choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barbara La Marr, on the suggestion of his wife, who admired La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman”.

Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film, Pépé le Moko (1937). Lamarr was cast in the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a “national sensation”, says Shearer. She was billed as an unknown but well-publicized Austrian actress, which created anticipation in audiences. Mayer hoped she would become another Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich.According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, “everyone gasped … Lamarr’s beauty literally took one’s breath away.”

In future Hollywood films, she was invariably typecast as the archetypal glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Her second American film was to be I Take This Woman, co-starring with Spencer Tracy under the direction of regular Dietrich collaborator Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg was fired during the shoot, replaced by Frank Borzage. The film was put on hold, and Lamarr was put into Lady of the Tropics (1939), where she played a mixed-race seductress in Saigon opposite Robert Taylor. She returned to I Take This Woman, re-shot by W. S. Van Dyke. The resulting film was a flop.

Far more popular was Boom Town (1940) with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert and Spencer Tracy; it made $5 million. MGM promptly reteamed Lamarr and Gable in Comrade X (1940), a comedy film in the vein of Ninotchka (1939), which was another hit.

Lamarr was teamed with James Stewart in Come Live with Me (1941), playing a Viennese refugee. Stewart was also in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), where Lamarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner played aspiring showgirls – a big success.

Lamarr was top-billed in H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), although the film’s protagonist was the title role played by Robert Young. She made a third film with Tracy, Tortilla Flat (1942). It was successful at the box office, as was Crossroads (1942) with William Powell.

Lamarr played the exotic Arab seductress Tondelayo in White Cargo (1942), top billed over Walter Pidgeon. It was a huge hit. White Cargo contains arguably her most memorable film quote, delivered with provocative invitation: “I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?” This line typifies many of Lamarr’s roles, which emphasized her beauty and sensuality while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom.

She was reunited with Powell in a comedy The Heavenly Body (1944), then was borrowed by Warner Bros for The Conspirators (1944). This was an attempt to repeat the success of Casablanca (1943), and RKO borrowed her for a melodrama Experiment Perilous (1944).

Back at MGM Lamarr was teamed with Robert Walker in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945), playing a princess who falls in love with a New Yorker. It was very popular, but would be the last film she made under her MGM contract.

Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent much of her time feeling lonely and homesick. She might swim at her agent’s pool, but shunned the beaches and staring crowds. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it. Writer Howard Sharpe interviewed her and gave his impression:

Hedy has the most incredible personal sophistication. She knows the peculiarly European art of being womanly; she knows what men want in a beautiful woman, what attracts them, and she forces herself to be these things. She has magnetism with warmth, something that neither Dietrich nor Garbo has managed to achieve.

Author Richard Rhodes describes her assimilation into American culture:

Of all the European émigrés who escaped Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria, she was one of the very few who succeeded in moving to another culture and becoming a full-fledged star herself. There were so very few who could make the transition linguistically or culturally. She really was a resourceful human being–I think because of her father’s strong influence on her as a child.

Lamarr also had a penchant for speaking about herself in the third person.

Wartime fundraiser

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell war bonds.

She participated in a war bond-selling campaign with a sailor named Eddie Rhodes. Rhodes was in the crowd at each Lamarr appearance, and she would call him up on stage. She would briefly flirt with him before asking the audience if she should give him a kiss. The crowd would say yes, to which Hedy would reply that she would if enough people bought war bonds. After enough bonds were purchased, she would kiss Rhodes and he would head back into the audience. Then they would head off to the next war bond rally.

Producer

After leaving MGM in 1945, Lamarr formed a production company with Jack Chertok and made the thriller The Strange Woman (1946). It went over budget and only made minor profits.

She and Chertok then made Dishonored Lady (1947), another thriller starring Lamarr, which also went over budget – but was not a commercial success. She tried a comedy with Robert Cummings, Let’s Live a Little (1948).

Later films

Lamarr enjoyed her biggest success playing Delilah against Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman in Cecil B. DeMille‘s Samson and Delilah, the highest-grossing film of 1950. The film won two Oscars.

Lamarr returned to MGM for a film noir with John Hodiak, A Lady Without Passport (1950), which flopped. More popular were two pictures she made at Paramount, a Western with Ray Milland, Copper Canyon (1950), and a Bob Hope spy spoof, My Favorite Spy (1951).

Her career went into decline. She went to Italy to play multiple roles in Loves of Three Queens (1954), which she also produced. However she lacked the experience necessary to make a success of such an epic production, and lost millions of dollars when she was unable to secure distribution of the picture.

She played Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen‘s critically panned epic, The Story of Mankind (1957) and did episodes of Zane Grey Theatre (“Proud Woman”) and Shower of Stars (“Cloak and Dagger”). Her last film was a thriller The Female Animal (1958).

Lamarr was signed to act in the 1966 film Picture Mommy Dead, but was let go when she collapsed during filming from nervous exhaustion.She was replaced in the role of Jessica Flagmore Shelley by Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Inventing career

Further information: Frequency-hopping spread spectrum

Although Lamarr had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she invested her spare time, including on set between takes, in designing and drafting inventions, which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a flavored carbonated drink.

During the late 1930s, Lamarr attended arms deals with her then-husband arms dealer Fritz Mandl, “possibly to improve his chances of making a sale”. From the meetings, she learned that navies needed “a way to guide a torpedo as it raced through the water.” Radio control had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a torpedo’s guidance system and set it off course. When later discussing this with a new friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, her idea to prevent jamming by frequency hopping met Antheil’s previous work in music. In that earlier work, Antheil attempted synchronizing note-hopping in an avant-garde piece involving multiple synchronized player pianos. Antheil’s idea in the piece was to synchronize the start time of identical player pianos with identical player piano rolls, so the pianos would be playing in time with one another. Together, they realized that radio frequencies could be changed similarly, using the same kind of mechanism, but miniaturized.

Based on the strength of the initial submission of their ideas to the National Inventors Council (NIC) in late December 1940, in early 1941 the NIC introduced Antheil to Samuel Stuart Mackeown, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech, to consult on the electrical systems.¹⁶⁹ Lamarr hired the Los Angeles legal firm of Lyon & Lyon to search for prior art, and to draft the application for the patent which was granted as U.S. patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942, under her legal name Hedy Kiesler Markey. The invention was proposed to the Navy, who rejected it on the basis that it would be to large to fit in a torpedo,^[49] and Lamarr and Antheil, shunned by the Navy, pursued their invention no further. It was suggested that Lamarr invest her time and attention to selling war bonds since she was a celebrity. 

In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society.

Later years

Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States at age 38 on April 10, 1953. Her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, was published in 1966. She said on TV that it was not written by her, and much of it was fictional. Lamarr later sued the publisher, saying that many details were fabricated by its ghost writer, Leo Guild. Lamarr, in turn, was sued by Gene Ringgold, who asserted that the book plagiarized material from an article he had written in 1965 for Screen Facts magazine.

In the late 1950s, along with former husband W. Howard Lee, Lamarr designed and developed the Villa LaMarr ski resort in Aspen, Colorado.

In 1966, Lamarr was arrested in Los Angeles for shoplifting. The charges were eventually dropped. In 1991, she was arrested on the same charge in Florida, this time for stealing $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. She pleaded no contest to avoid a court appearance, and the charges were dropped in return for her promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year.

Seclusion

The 1970s was a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none piqued her interest. In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming that the running parody of her name (“Hedley Lamarr”) in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy. Brooks said he was flattered; the studio settled out of court for an undisclosed nominal sum and an apology to Lamarr for “almost using her name”. Brooks said that Lamarr “never got the joke”. With her eyesight failing, Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981

A large Corel-drawn image of Lamarr won CorelDRAW‘s yearly software suite cover design contest in 1996. For several years, beginning in 1997, it was featured on boxes of the software suite. Lamarr sued the company for using her image without her permission. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd adjacent to Vine Street where the walk is centered.

Lamarr became estranged from her older son, James Lamarr Loder, when he was 12 years old. Their relationship ended abruptly, and he moved in with another family. They did not speak again for almost 50 years. Lamarr left James Loder out of her will, and he sued for control of the US$3.3 million estate left by Lamarr in 2000. He eventually settled for US$50,000.

In the last decades of her life, the telephone became Lamarr’s only means of communication with the outside world, even with her children and close friends. She often talked up to six or seven hours a day on the phone, but she spent hardly any time with anyone in person in her final years.

Death

Lamarr died in Casselberry, Florida, on January 19, 2000, of heart disease, aged 85 Her son Anthony Loder spread part of her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods in accordance with her last wishes.

In 2014, a memorial to Lamarr was unveiled in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. where the remainder of her ashes were buried.

Awards and tributes

Hedy Lamarr was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

In 1939, Lamarr was selected the “most promising new actress” of 1938 in a poll of area voters conducted by Philadelphia Record film critic. British moviegoers voted Hedy Lamarr the year’s 10th best actress, for her performance in Samson and Delilah in 1951.

The British drag queen Foo Foo Lamarr (born Francis Pearson, 1937–2003) originally took his surname from the actress when embarking on a performing career.

In 1997, Lamarr and George Antheil were jointly honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Pioneer Award and Lamarr also was the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, known as the “Oscars of inventing”. The following year, Lamarr’s native Austria awarded her the Viktor Kaplan Medal of the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors.

In 2006, the Hedy-Lamarr-Weg was founded in Vienna Meidling (12th District), named after the actress.

In 2013, the IQOQI installed a quantum telescope on the roof of the University of Vienna, which they named after her in 2014.

In 2014, Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. The same year, Anthony Loder’s request that the remaining ashes of his mother should be buried in an honorary grave of the city of Vienna was realized. On November 7, her urn was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery in Group 33 G, Tomb No. 80, not far from the centrally located presidential tomb.

On November 9, 2015, Google honored her on the 101st anniversary of her birth, and on her 109th on November 9, 2023 with a doodle.

On August 27, 2019, an asteroid was named after her: 32730 Lamarr.

Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert (28 October 1892 – 8 January 1966), later Marthe McKenna, was a Belgian nurse who became a spy for the United Kingdom and its allies during the First World War. She later became a novelist, and is credited with writing over a dozen spy novels in addition to her memoirs and short stories.

Early life

Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert was born on 28 October 1892 in the village of Westrozebeke in the Belgian province of West Flanders, to Felix Cnockaert and his wife Marie-Louise Vanoplinus. She began studying at the medical school at Ghent University, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

World War I

In August 1914, German troops razed the village, burning her home down and temporarily separating her family. Cnockaert was studying medicine but was conscripted as a nurse at a German military hospital located in the village, where she was valued for her medical training and her multi-lingual skills, speaking English and German as well as French and Flemish. She was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans for her medical service.

In 1915, she was transferred to the German Military Hospital in Roulers, where she was reunited with her family who had also moved there after the destruction of their home. Around this time, she was approached by a family friend and former neighbour, Lucelle Deldonck, who revealed to Cnockaert that she was a British intelligence agent, and wished to recruit her to an Anglo-Belgian intelligence network operating in the town.

For two years, Cnockaert (codenamed “Laura”) used her cover as a nurse and her frequent proximity to German military personnel—at both the hospital and as a waitress at her parents’ café—to gather important military intelligence for the British and their allies, which she passed on to other agents in local churches. She mostly worked with two other female Belgian spies: an elderly vegetable seller codenamed “Canteen Ma”, and a letterbox agent codenamed “Number 63”, both of whom helped her relay messages to and from British General Headquarters. Her exploits during the war included destroying a telephone line which a local priest was using to spy for the Germans; and obtaining details of a planned but cancelled visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II for a British aerial attack. At one stage, her German lodger, Otto, tried to recruit her to spy on the British. Cnockaert attempted to relay harmless but seemingly important information to him for a short time, but when operating as a double agent became too difficult, she arranged for him to be killed.

She discovered a disused sewer tunnel system located underneath a German ammunition depot, and placed the explosives to destroy the ammo dump; however, this operation led to her exposure and capture when she lost her watch, engraved with her initials, while placing the dynamite. In November 1916, Cnockaert was sentenced to death for her espionage; however, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to her Iron Cross honour. She served two years in grim conditions in a prison in Ghent, and was released in 1918 when the Armistice with Germany was declared, ending the war.

After the war

Cnockaert was awarded British, French and Belgian honours for gallantry for her espionage work—she was mentioned in despatches on 8 November 1918 by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig in recognition of her intelligence work, as well as receiving a British certificate for gallantry from Winston Churchill; she was also made a member of the French and Belgian Legions of Honour.

She married John “Jock” McKenna, a British army officer. Her memoir I Was a Spy! was ghostwritten by her husband and published under her married name in 1932. Winston Churchill wrote the foreword for the book. The publication of her memoir was prompted by the visit of an English author who encouraged Marthe to write and publish details of her wartime experiences. Following a warm critical and popular reception of her memoirs and other espionage anecdotes, the McKennas published a string of over a dozen spy novels. Although published under Marthe’s name, it is speculated that her husband was largely responsible for their writing.

The couple moved to Manchester during World War II and, despite her retirement, she was listed in ‘The Black Book‘ of prominent subjects to be arrested by the Nazis in the case of a successful invasion of Britain.

The McKennas later returned to Marthe’s family home in Westrozebeke, and no further books were forthcoming after the McKennas’ marriage ended around 1951. McKenna remained in Westrozebeke, and died in 1966.