--- title: "Meaning & Key Takeaway of: Soon after joining the agency, Marks set…" description: "\"“Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to commun..." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg" --- # Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the… ![“Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits…” quote by Lynne Olson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg) [Download](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg) [Open image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg) > ““Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits and provided its sets and coding. Marks was dismayed by the simplicity of the codes, which were based on classic English poems by Shakespeare and others that were “so familiar that an educated German was quite capable of recognizing them and guessing the cipher.” To replace them, he wrote poems of his own, ranging from ribald verses to tender love poems. He gave one of the latter, entitled “The Life That I Have,” to a twenty-one-year-old agent named Violette Szabo, who, after being parachuted into France in 1942, was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. It read: The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours. A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours. Since then, the poem has developed a life of its own. It has been used in a movie about Szabo’s life, found in poetry anthologies, reprinted on a 9/11 victims’ website, and recited by Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky at their wedding in 2010. “Every code,” Marks would later say, “has a human face.”” [Lynne Olson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/lynne-olson/) ## About This Quote This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation. Marks created personal poems as codes to protect agents, showing how humanizing communication can enhance security. **In simple terms:** Human poems made codes safer. Key Takeaway Humanize your messages. Themes security humanization history Mood reflective inspirational Type historical educational When to use this quote - military communications - creative problem solving - memorials Key Concepts cryptography poetry wartime intelligence Questions to Reflect On - How can personal touches improve security? - What risks do personal codes carry? A Different Perspective Poems may be deciphered if known. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet [Code Marks](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/code-marks-4595125/) [First step](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/first-step/) [Green grass](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/green-grass/) [Life](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/life/) [Love poems](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/love-poems/) [Mi6 Years](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/mi6-years-4595124/) [Poem Developed](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/poem-developed-3755995/) [Poetry](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/poetry/) [Tender love](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/tender-love/) [Two years](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/two-years/) [Wrote Poems](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/wrote-poems-247561/) [Years Soe](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/years-soe-4595126/) ## Related quotes > [The forms of the short, written poem as they have been developed in English over the past few centuries can be usefully seen as…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/robert-scholes/the-forms-of-the-short-written-poem-as-they-have-been-developed-in/) [Robert Scholes](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/robert-scholes/) > [While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. 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And as you become…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/osho/the-first-step-in-awareness-is-to-be-watchful-of-your-body-slowly/) [Osho](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/osho/) [Browse all 1,815 First step quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/first-step/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits and provided its sets and coding. Marks was dismayed by the simplicity of the codes, which were based on classic English poems by Shakespeare and others that were “so familiar that an educated German was quite capable of recognizing them and guessing the cipher.” To replace them, he wrote poems of his own, ranging from ribald verses to tender love poems. He gave one of the latter, entitled “The Life That I Have,” to a twenty-one-year-old agent named Violette Szabo, who, after being parachuted into France in 1942, was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. It read: The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours. A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours. Since then, the poem has developed a life of its own. It has been used in a movie about Szabo’s life, found in poetry anthologies, reprinted on a 9/11 victims’ website, and recited by Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky at their wedding in 2010. “Every code,” Marks would later say, “has a human face.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Lynne Olson" }, "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/lynne-olson/soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set-out-to-lessen-the-danger-his/", "about": { "@type": "Thing", "name": "First step" }, "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/lynne-olson/soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set-out-to-lessen-the-danger-his/#quotation", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4b2/lynne-olson-34648_first-step_soon-after-joining-the-agency-marks-set_1351016.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. 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