大象传媒

In the summer of 1939, I was working for a small firm in Loughborough which made the outer film covering for surgical dressings. The firm was owned by a German chemist, although he and his wife called themselves 鈥楳r and Mrs Sanders鈥�. There were only five of us working for them 鈥� our foreman Mr Jones, the German office manager who seemed to be a friend of the Sanders, and myself and two other female workers. Mr and Mrs Sanders had a flat in the building. I earned sixteen shillings a week, which in those days was good money for a teenager. It was a lovely job and very interesting work.

One Monday morning, we arrived at work at 8 o鈥檆lock and were let in as usual by Mr Jones. He had to see Mr Sanders about some matter and went to the flat. He came back a few moments later and said: 鈥淭hey鈥檝e gone!鈥� The Sanders had disappeared. Mr Jones called the police and plain clothes officers arrived. They went and looked through the flat with Mr Jones. There was food left in the cupboards and pots still on the table. It looked as if the Sanders had left in a great hurry. Mrs Sanders had even left her fur coat behind. Their car had gone too. The German manager didn鈥檛 turn up at all that day and we didn鈥檛 see him again. The police went to his lodgings on Derby Road and we heard later that they had found a transmitter.

This was a few weeks before the outbreak of war. We鈥檒l never know why they left in such a hurry and why they did it so secretively. If they were worried about the possibility of war and internment and wanted to get home to Germany, they could have told us and packed up properly instead of going in the middle of the night. We had our suspicions. Mr Jones was convinced they were spies! (There was some heavy industry in Loughborough.) I think he got a lot of information from the police, and we were told not to say anything.

The building was closed down, but the business was taken over by a big company of manufacturing chemists in Leicester and I worked for them until the early spring of 1945.

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