Author Miller Caldwell reveals the true story of his remarkable relative, a woman forced to spy for Nazi Germany during the war, but whose double agent status helped to secure a series of vital wins for the allied forces.
A Reluctant Spy
Since the age of fifty-three, I have been a full-time author. Now as I approach seventy, I have written twenty-four books. A Reluctant Spy set off on many different directions, unlike any other book I’ve written, even before it was published. The reluctant spy in question was my great aunt, Hilda. A language graduate of Aberdeen university in 1912, she set out to Germany where her heart lay in the nuances of the guttural language, its practical people and its solid food. That information was gained through a board game!
On Boxing Day 1987, the most popular Christmas present in British homes was Trivial Pursuit. My godmother and her husband aged ninety arrived from Glasgow at our Troon home with my parents that day and after lunch, the board game was opened. A question about Germany in the history square appeared. It asked which city with its medieval character was untouched by the Second World War. (The answer is Ragensburg.) But Vera my godmother looked up at the ceiling and through misty eyes said, ‘I don’t want to go to Germany again.’
We all thought the statement strange. She was ninety and unlikely to travel. Moreover no one had suggested she should cross the North Sea. Nevertheless I asked her why. What she told me is now found in the Forres Public Library. It records the story of how Vera was caught behind German lines in World War 1. The article explains how she managed to get to Denmark and home a week after the hostilities began. It also enlightened me to Hilda who had married a German GP and lived in Hamburg. She had helped her safe passage. I asked Vera about Hilda and she was reluctant to say too much; their lives during the war had been something of a family secret and I didn’t know why. But the following day she told me she had been, after her husband died in 1938, a double agent during World War II. It seemed she spied for the Nazi party as well as the British. That was a step too far for the family to be completely proud of her activities.
When I retired I remembered Vera’s remarks and began to write Operation Oboe. Vera had died in 1993, a day before her husband at the age of ninety-three. I also knew Hilda played the oboe expertly. Because I worked in Ghana for six years, I knew the church history there and how the Bremen and Basle mission were dominant in the country. So I set her spying there. Operation Oboe, my first book, was popular and I gave a copy to my uncle Dr Stanley Caldwell.
He visited us in Dumfries a few years later and told me although he enjoyed reading Operation Oboe, it was not her story. He told me she spied for the Nazi party before being turned to spy for the Allies. My ears popped up. He told me about her espionage in Portugal, her son in the German army and how she got back to London after feigning her death on a Portuguese beach; how she managed to identify American Nazis on the East coast of America and how she translated technical German and made herself available to provide information about Germany at war. He also gave me her oboe which he had kept since 1956 when she died. I also learned that she survived the war having given her evidence at the Nuremberg Trials and remarried. She became the wife of Sir Francis Simpson, British Ambassador to Finland, Iran and finally Poland.
And so, after hearing about this enigmatic relative, I began to piece her life together amid the great historical events of the Second World War. I had not only a skeleton but a solid account of her activities before during and after the War. In the book I added a letter from her, I showed where she received a German transmitter in northern Scotland, there is a picture of the medal she received from Heinrich Himmler in Hamburg and an article about Hitler’s plans, had he won the Battle of Britain to invade the UK through northern airports. These last two photographs were given to me by Marc Horne a Times journalist.
I shared the book in an email with a couple of friends and in their honest responses; they felt it was one of the great untold spy stories. But that was a first draft. Every author knows there is a lot of cutting, clarifying and checking grammar and spelling tasks in the second draft and of course, the sequence of events had to be accurate.
My film agent has now secured a contract with the French ARTE company to make a documentary film about the book, in French, German and English. This has meant renewing my expired passport! I let it lapse in June due to the uncertainly of a blue or burgundy one for the future. I was advised to be ready, to fly to Paris to advise on the documentary and Mathilde feels confident that it will then be taken up by TV or a Film producer and that means a passport to America which is also needed for the high security at Hollywood.
So how long has it taken me to write this book? The seeds were sown in 1987 and so an amazing thirty-two years. Without the knowledge of Dr Stanley Caldwell, Medical officer of Health for the Kingdom of Fife and the memory of Vera Wild, the story of Hilda Campbell, Hilda Richter and finally Lady Hilda Simpson, would never have been know.
A Reluctant Spy by Miller Caldwell is published by Clink Street, September 24th, RRP £9.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook. For more information visit www.millercaldwell.com