Last week’s newsletter featured documents on the Global War on Terror. Earlier posts recounted moments from the Cold War. Today, we go further back in time to the Second World War…
March 30, 1944: A letter arrived at Canada House, the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom, located on Trafalgar Square.
When a young Canadian diplomat opened the letter he found a friendly inscription (“Dear Cadieux”) and a short note. The sheet of paper was signed by “H. Berry Steege.” No rank, no office noted.
But Steege needed ping-pong balls.
And he needed a lot: “Say 10 dozen.”
Marcel Cadieux was determined to help.
He forwarded the request to Thomas (Tommy) Archibald Stone in Ottawa, mentioning that Colonel Steege was of the P.I.D. — the Political Intelligence Department. The Canadians, Cadieux wrote, had asked the P.I.D. for a “large number of documents” and so, in exchange, he hoped Canada would meet Steege’s request.
What was the P.I.D.? Until April 1943 it had been a part of the Foreign Office. But Steege was writing almost a year later. And by that time the P.I.D. no longer existed.
But Cadieux knew who Steege was, and where he worked.
One of Cadieux’s tasks in London was to coordinate Canadian and British psychological warfare efforts.
In London, the organization conducting this type of work was the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). “P.I.D.” was a cover name for PWE.
And PWE needed ping-pong balls.
In Ottawa, Stone wrote to the Department of National Defence to help procure the sporting goods. His first point of contact was Major Ian Eisenhardt (See the wartime cartoon of Eisenhardt, below).
Credit: Duggan, Frank. Major Ian Eisenhardt. 1944, McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal, Canada.
From Eisenhardt, the task fell to the precisely titled “Co-ordinator of Sporting Goods for Armed Forces,” a member of the Department of National War Services. He got to work and put External Affairs directly in touch with A. G. Spalding and Bros. of Canada, Limited.
The “Choice of Champions” provided a first set of balls.
Stone informed Cadieux that six dozen balls were on the way to London. Steege had offered to pay. But Stone sent them “with the compliments of the committee” — that is, the Psychological Warfare Committee that Stone chaired.
About a month later, George Glazebrook wrote again to Cadieux:
“More ping pong balls - 6 dozen of them - are on the way for P.I.D.!”
Within two months the Canadians had sent two shipments, of six dozen ping-pong balls each, to London. The Co-ordinator of Sporting Goods for Armed Forces was still at it, seeking to secure even more balls from his own stocks. Finally, External told him the first gross had been enough.
Why had P.I.D. (that is to say, why had PWE) asked the Canadians to send them ping-pong balls?
They were for prisoners of war. And they were part of an intelligence-gathering operation.
Sure, the Geneva Convention placed on the British an obligation to encourage “sporting pursuits” among such prisoners. But there was more to it than this.
As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, one of the main “Psychological Warfare” activities during the war was collecting intelligence (and propaganda material) from prisoners of war.
The most sensational examples of this practice was Trent Park, a country house in north London that housed captured German general officers. Before the arrival of the Nazi officers, the house was fitted with hidden microphones that captured the private conversations of the high-ranking Germans. (See Helen Fry’s The Walls Have Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II for an excellent account of the intelligence gleaned from this method.)
One of the microphones at Trent Park was hidden under the billiards table. In the same room as the billiard tables stood a ping-pong table. And the Germans had many a Tischtennis Turniere (Table-Tennis Tournament) at Trent Park, enough for one of the Nazi prisoners to write about.
What is more, in 1940, Steege (then a Captain) had been appointed as an interrogator at Trent Park. In 1944 his responsibilities still included gathering intelligence from prisoners of war.
I cannot yet say for certain if the Canadian ping-pong balls were batted around by the Nazi generals at Trent Park, or by captured Axis forces at some other holding facility.
It is certain that the shipments of ping-pong balls to Britain were a part, if a small and unexpected part, of Canada’s wartime contribution to allied intelligence and psychological warfare.
***
The above quotations and document photos come from records in Library and Archives Canada, RG25-A-3-b, Volume number: 8494, File number: 6436-40, File part: 1, “Pingpong balls from Canada for the Political Intelligence Department in the UK from Canada.” There are ten pages in the folder.
The cartoon by Frank Duggan is used under non-commercial license. I am following the McCord Stewart Museum policy here.