My German Spy: A Firewatcher in London

When the Second World War broke out, I was 17 and too young to join anything, so I continued with my new job in the City of London and merely enrolled as a Fire Watcher at my local ARP headquarters. But there were no fires to be watched at that time.

It all changed next year in 1940 and soon I was kitted out with my armour - a sort of composition fire watcher's helmet - and, furnished with my own torch and warm clothing, I set about doing my alternate nights of fire watching - one night from dark to midnight and the next from midnight to dawn.

We lived in a three storey house in Streatham and did not use the top storey so it became my watching post. I would leave my family - father, mother and younger sister - asleep on matresses in the cupboard under the stairs and, climbing up to the top floor, I would watch out over the dark mass of London, lit only at intervals by the hooded lights of vehicles going about their business.

Of course, if we were having a raid, it would be lit up by fires and explosions, but on the night I remember, my shift did not start until after that night's raid and everything was once more dark and quiet. I climbed the stairs and peered out at the front of the house - nothing. I wandered into the back bedroom and looked out over the long stretches of gardens leading uphill slightlyto the backs of other tallish houses and .......

Glaring out from the back of one of these houses was what seemed to be a searchlight, high up, horizontal and very bright.

Now everyone had their German spy story to tell and I had heard many of them - how the Luftwaffe was so well informed by their spies that they would come over to destroy any area which had a captured Messerschmitt fighter on show on a bombsite - and we had had one.

I tumbled downstairs and out into the road, down to the ARP dugout. Breathlessly, I told my news - a German spy was signalling out of a window just up the hill!

One of the wardens got his tin (proper tin) helmet and accompanied me back to the house. I led him round into the garden and there, sure enough, was the searchlight beaming forth. He was impressed.

He told me to get back to my duties and he counted on his fingers the number of roofs facing him so that he would be able to find the right house, and he left. About half an hour later the light went out.

Alas! it was no German spy. The inhabitants of a flat in one of the tall houses, whose backs we could see going up the hill, were away for the weekend and so no blackout had been done in their kitchen. The recent air raid had dropped one bomb not far off and the vibrations had made the refrigerator door burst open, letting out a beam of light from the interior. And so dark it was outside that this tiny bulb had produced what we all thought was a searchlight.

I never did catch a German spy!

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