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Bernard Frederick Trench

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Bernard Frederick Trench [1]
Born17 July 1880
United Kingdom
Died10 October 1967(1967-10-10) (aged 87)
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
RankCaptain
CommandsRoyal Marines
Spouse(s)Mary Audrey Taylor
Other workSpy, Royal Marines

Captain Bernard Frederick Trench (17 July 1880 – 10 October 1967) was a British soldier and famous spy who was caught and convicted by the German authorities just a few years before World War I. In 1913 he was released as a present to Ernest Augustus the Duke of Brunswick when Augustus married the German Kaiser's daughter, Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.[2]

Background

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Trench was a descendant of Lord Ashtown and of Archbishop Trench.[3]

Career

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Trench was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Marine Light Infantry on 1 January 1899, and promoted to lieutenant on 1 January 1900.[4]

Captain Trench was arrested and went to trial with another man, Lieutenant Vivian R. Brandon R.N., who had been arrested a few days earlier.[3] Trench had other accomplices on his mission to scout out information about the military installations on the island of Borkum but was the only person arrested from his spy ring.[1][5] He was an agent of the spymaster and future first director of what would become the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, Mansfield Smith-Cumming.[6] Trench's codename was COUNTERSCRAP.[6]

Trench and Brandon's trial took place at the Leipzig Supreme Court in the so-called Great Court of the Reichsgericht on 22 December 1910.[3] Convicted of espionage they were both sentenced to a term of four years.[3]

During his imprisonment, Trench hanged himself from the ceiling by his neck but survived.[7] In letters, he claimed that he did not intend to commit suicide or escape. Trench's letters, however, condemned Captain Lux, a French officer who escaped from the fortress during Trench's imprisonment. Trench complained that the lax security at the fort was possible because of a promise from the prisoners not to attempt to break out.[7]

Captain Trench and another British subject caught spying, Captain Bertrand Stewart, were pardoned and released by the German Kaiser as a present to Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick when Augustus married the Kaiser's daughter, Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia.[2] (They married on 24 May 1913).

He fought in the Second World War and married Mary Audrey Taylor, daughter of Reverend Robert Fetzer Taylor, on 8 September 1943.[8]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b The New York Times 1910
  2. ^ a b Emmerson 2013, p. 13
  3. ^ a b c d GlobalSecurity.org 2014
  4. ^ "No. 27170". The London Gazette. 2 March 1900. p. 1433.
  5. ^ Reader 1991, p. 70
  6. ^ a b West 2006, p. 37
  7. ^ a b The West Australian 1912
  8. ^ thepeerage.com 2004

References

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