By any standards, it was a startling scene. The quiet of the lunchtime dining room at Jersey’s respectable Hotel de la Plage was suddenly disturbed by six strangers – obviously plain-clothes policemen. They made straight for the table where a tall dark man with a pencil-thin moustache was sitting with a peroxide blonde.
Without a word the man stood up, kissed the blonde and dived straight through the window (which was closed). As the shattered glass fell to the ground, Eddie Chapman, safe blower, blackmailer, con man and future superspy was seen running for dear life along the beach.
Eddie’s daredevil exit was not unusual. It was 1938 and he had spent much of the previous decade on the run from the law. This time, however, his life was about to change dramatically. As a new BBC film, Double Agent, reveals, Eddie was about to be transformed into the strangest spy of the Second World War.
When the police finally caught up with him, Eddie was imprisoned in Jersey’s jail for a string of crimes – including leading the ‘Jelly Gang’, crooks who blew up safes with gelignite. He was still there in 1940 when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. Eddie was in a fix – so he offered the Nazis his services as a spy.
‘He was always an opportunist,’ says Stephen Walker, the film’s director. ‘At that time Germany looked like winning the war – so he took the choice that offered him his best chance of survival.’ The Germans welcomed him with open arms. Good-looking, a glib liar, a charmer with women and used to living on the wrong side of the law, Eddie was ideal spy material. Put through rigorous spy training, Eddie passed with flying colours, adding sabotage, unarmed combat, weapons training, parachuting and radio operating to his other talents.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2059753/The-Englishman-win-Iron-Cross.html#ixzz1e90CKtwi
Without a word the man stood up, kissed the blonde and dived straight through the window (which was closed). As the shattered glass fell to the ground, Eddie Chapman, safe blower, blackmailer, con man and future superspy was seen running for dear life along the beach.
Eddie’s daredevil exit was not unusual. It was 1938 and he had spent much of the previous decade on the run from the law. This time, however, his life was about to change dramatically. As a new BBC film, Double Agent, reveals, Eddie was about to be transformed into the strangest spy of the Second World War.
When the police finally caught up with him, Eddie was imprisoned in Jersey’s jail for a string of crimes – including leading the ‘Jelly Gang’, crooks who blew up safes with gelignite. He was still there in 1940 when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. Eddie was in a fix – so he offered the Nazis his services as a spy.
‘He was always an opportunist,’ says Stephen Walker, the film’s director. ‘At that time Germany looked like winning the war – so he took the choice that offered him his best chance of survival.’ The Germans welcomed him with open arms. Good-looking, a glib liar, a charmer with women and used to living on the wrong side of the law, Eddie was ideal spy material. Put through rigorous spy training, Eddie passed with flying colours, adding sabotage, unarmed combat, weapons training, parachuting and radio operating to his other talents.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2059753/The-Englishman-win-Iron-Cross.html#ixzz1e90CKtwi
