大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer from AWLHRG on behalf of Eric Vincent and has been added to this site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A Spy in my Home

My mother had her reservations about our new lodger soon after the woman had taken over my father's job as gardener at the big house in our village. My father had left to join the army with his boss, the owner of our house. I think it was about 1942 and I was six years old. The woman looked very mannish in her appearance but there was nothing strange in that: women often took over men's work in wartime and wore trousers, as our lodger did.

The woman had a self-contained bedsit in one part of our house and although she spoke good English she had a slight foreign accent. She often walked about at midnight and came into our part of the house, which she was not supposed to do. My mother reminded her but she just got an aggressive rejoinder. Sometimes, at night she invited men to her bedsit, too, which made my mother nervous. My mother slept with a poker under her pillow.

It was not until our friend Charlie, the farm cowman, asked why we were leaving the curtains drawn back during the hours of the blackout, that my mother's suspicions seriously grew. Charlie had often seen the light shining out from a window in our house when he took his cows up to the pastures in the early hours of the morning.

There was an underground ammunition dump nearby at West Dean that could be a prime target for enemy planes and we had heard rumours that German spies were being secretly dropped by parachute into England to mix with locals and gain information.

When my father came home on leave shortly afterwards, my mother confided her suspicions to him. He immediately called the police but they laughed off our fears and did not believe that it could be true. My father was determined that the lodger must go at once and said that he would not leave his family and rejoin his unit at the end of his leave until she did. Although there were many objections and he was warned that the Military Police would come for him, my father got his way and the lodger went.

This was not quite the end of the story. Some time later the police called on us again to apologise for not believing us. They told us that the woman had been picked up in Manchester by the police. It seems that she was a spy after all!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.