Alexander Scotland - World War I

World War I

In 1915, Scotland sought to enter intelligence work in England. Initially rebuffed, he was then accepted into the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps. He was posted to France and received a commission as second lieutenant in July 1916. In France he was assigned to interrogate German prisoners.

In London Cage, Scotland says that he used his fluent German and knowledge of the German Army to cajole information from German prisoners. To determine the manpower needs of the German army, for instance, he ordered German noncommissioned officers at a prisoner of war cage to survey their men's health status and age. The purpose was to determine whether the German Army was being forced to return ill soldiers to duty, or to use young and inexperienced soldiers, because of manpower shortages.

In the spring of 1918, Scotland made three secret trips behind German lines in Beverlo, a town in Flanders where porous security allowed transit into German-occupied Belgium. Scotland posed as an overseas German from German South West Africa. On the recommendation of a German he knew in South Africa, he obtained employment as a civilian worker for the German Army, and gathered intelligence by chatting with German soldiers. Scotland fled to England when he came under suspicion from a German noncommissioned officer.

Scotland left military service in 1919 with the rank of captain, which he describes in London Cage as the highest rank in the Intelligence Corps. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on 1 January 1919, in a group of honours awarded "for valuable services rendered in connection with military operations in France and Flanders".