138 • DE JAEGER, ALBERT
of war he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was posted
to Belgium as an observer in the Balloon Section of the Royal Naval
Air Service with the rank of flight sublieutenant. Early in 1915 he
was transferred to theNaval Intelligence Divisionas a cryptogra-
pher, and it was while working in theDiplomatic Sectionof the or-
ganization known asRoom 40, headed by AdmiralReginald Hall,
that he solved the content of the German text known as theZimmer-
mann Telegram, the public disclosure of which in March 1917
helped to propel the United States into World War I. Later, in the
spring of the same year, de Grey was assigned to Taranto and then
Rome with the rank of lieutenant commander to run theNaval Intel-
ligence Division’s Mediterranean Section, liaise with Italy’s director
of naval intelligence, and focus on Austrian cipher traffic. He was
later decorated with the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus for his
work in Italy and also appointed an OBE in 1918.
During the interwar period, de Grey headed the Medici Society,
which published old master prints, and found time to indulge his
many pursuits. He was a keen shot, loved working in his large garden
in Iver, and was a good watercolorist and draftsman. As an amateur
actor he was an enthusiastic member of the Old Stagers and the
Windsor Strollers, and he played cricket during the Canterbury
Cricket Week. In 1938, following a financial crisis at the undercapi-
talized Medici Society, de Grey lost his job, but a year later he was
invited to join theGovernment Code and Cipher SchoolatBlet-
chley Parkto concentrate on German wireless traffic encrypted on
theEnigmacipher machine. There he was joined by his sister Bar-
bara, who met her future husband there, and by his son John, making
the business of cryptography a very family affair. By the end of the
war, de Grey was to become deputy director ofGCHQ, leading a
small, highly compartmented group of cryptographers at Eastcote
working on thevenonaSoviet cable traffic, and to be appointed a
CMG. Upon his retirement de Grey purchased a pottery in Hunting-
donshire, but on the day he completed the sale, 25 May 1951, he
dropped dead of a heart attack in Oxford Street.DE JAEGER, ALBERT.A member of theSicherheitsdienstin Lis-
bon, Albert de Jaegerdefectedto the British in October 1940 and
was interrogated atCamp 020. Upon his release he was codenamed
hatchet.