大象传媒

Twenty or thirty years ago they actually said:
"Time Ladies and Gentlemen. Please!" and sometimes they added 'and others!' that is if it had been a trying night with some unsavoury
characters drawn into the brew.Not alone that they would ring a bell to din some idea into the muzzled brains of the people that it was indeed time to depart.They had the motley crowd trained in something of the manner of Pavlov's dogs.
The Black Lion Pub sat at the top of Shenley Hill commanding a ridge four hundred feet above sea level about 15 miles north of Nelson's column, nearabout the centre of London.
At the same time it would lie about five miles south, out of St.Albans City.
It is difficult to get one's thinking cap on when you are pickled in alcohol but I remember on this night so long ago with winter fast approaching it is what a small gang of us from Shenley village endeavoured to do.
Fortunately an unspoken thought hovered in the air concerning a night club in the vicinity which was said to be open all hours into the night. It was down a dark and leafless lane which forked and turned back on itself ocassionally to put one in mind of the network of veins showing through the visages of the late night drinkers.
In those days the Pubs closed at the healthy time of ten thirty, and so when mention was made this proposal to 'invade'the night club we set off alcohic fueled with great alacrity.
I am sure that our minds were fixed on beautiful creatures of the night, a whole genre of saucy French films swam before our eyes and the excitement was intense.
To add to the attraction was the knowledge that a wartime spy was said to conduct proceedings at the establishment and kept a tight rein on the customers.
We gathered ourselves together at the entrance to the club. The moon a silver shimmering scimitar with clouds passing over cast a scythe like shadow over the grim imposing entrance. We gained entrance as pissed in the mill poseurs and made for the bar. The optics at half mast were suffused in smooth lighting. Holding up the bar I could swear was Robert Mitchum along with Charles Brosnin and some more movie cronies. I took it to be the authentic star because he was over here for 'The Big Sleep' playing the part of the private eyes sleuth Robert Marlowe, and as we were not far out from Elstree Studios, that fixed it in my mind
With drink in hand we took an open eye look at the place. In one corner sitting on a whicker chair diametrically opposite Mitchum a man with legs askew and arms stretched out and balanced on the palm of his right hand what looked like a glass of milk in a small stumpy crystal glass."That's Eddy Chapman" my mate declared,"the man with milk!".
He was eyeing it with his body stretched out languidly. My recollection is of a man pasty faced who wouldn't you imagine say boo to a goose. Whatever his drink was fortified with I'm not to know. I did hear that he suffered from the guts.
It seems an unlikey tale but this was the man, Eddie Chapman who raided Odeon Cinemas in the thirties and was pursued along with his gang, by Scotland Yard to Jersey where he was locked up.He was born near Newcastle, and had a notorious career as a crack safebreaker.After the war he was involved with the criminal Kray brothers and 'mad'Frankie Frazier, but at his life's end he received the ultimate accolade being described as one of Britains greatest and bravest war heroes. A film was made of his exploits mostly featuring shots behind enemy lines, called Triple Cross.
I suppose he was the only man who could have been said to applaud the German invasion of Jersey, for they interrogated him and then signed him on as a double agent with promises to secure his freedom. First of all he was lined up to face a firing squad in a bid to fool British Intelligence service that he had been well and truly disposed of and then he was sent to Germany for intensive training.
He was to be para chuted into England and attempt to blow up the De Havillands Aircraft Factory at Hatfield and the Mosquito Development at London Colney which incidentally only lay about a mile from his night club set up which he set up after the war.
After parachuting in to the mainland he made himself known to MI5. They set about a ruse to foil the Germans with his help. They prepared bonfires around the airodromes to look as though they had been damaged intensively thus providing Eddie with an alibi for the Germans.He returned to Germany a hero and was awarded the Iron Cross military honour,110,ooo Reichsmarks,his own yacht and a job teaching a spy school in occupied Norway. Chapman was known to MI5 by the code of Zig-Zag.He was sent back to Britain in 1944 to report on V1 rocket damage bringing vital intelligence for the Allies. After confessing to telling his Norwegian girl-friend he was a British spy he was retired by MI5, fearing it would be too dangerous to continue. Chapman was given a lump sum of 拢6000 and the outstanding criminal charges laid against him were quietly dropped.
After the war Chapman and his wife Betty, bought a health farm at Shenley Lodge, in Rectory lane which they continued to run until the late 1970's and it was in these latter years I found myself there one day.
The story of Chapman was made into a film 'Triple Cross' and starred Christopher Plummer as Eddie.
When I saw Eddie he struck me as a self-effacing fellow with little outward sign of machismo.Last year a friend told me he had seen him with friend in what would have been known as 'The Water Splash Inn'during the war years but of late is now called 'The Fox'. A crowd alongside Eddie's table became increasingly raucous and after giving them due warning about the level of noise and having to take their taunts for some time Eddie set about them and laid out two of the bruisers there and then on the floor.The rest of them up and fled. I have no reason to dispute this story.

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