As I shall show in relating one of my missions to
England, I was brushed up on the silhouette study of British warships,
for I had to be able to discern and classify them at long range. The
different ranking officers of the navies of the world, their uniforms,
the personnel of battleships, the systems of flag signals, and codes,
were explained to me in detail. I was given large books in which were
colored plates of the uniforms and signal flags of every navy in the
world. I had to study these until at a glance I could tell the rank
and station of the officers and men of the principal navies. The same
with the signal flags. I pored over those books night after night
into the early hours of the morning. My regular hours for tuition
were from ten to twelve in the forenoon and from two until six in the
afternoon. But it was impossible to compress all the work into that
time. I was anxious to get my first mission, and I presume I did a
great deal of cramming.
My study was not all in Berlin. I spent most of my time there at
Koenigergratzerstrasse 70 and at the Zeughaus, the great museum of the
German General Staff. But there were side trips to the big government
works at Kiel and Wilhelmshafen. There I was taught every detail of
the mechanics of naval construction and I was not pronounced equipped
until I could talk intelligently about every unassembled part of a
gun, torpedo tube, or mine.
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