In 1938 friends who farmed high above Dundee told me that they had rented part of their land to a Mr. Smith and his wife who wanted to start a hen farm. Before the days of battery hens there were many small hen farms up and down the country and they were pleased to let him have ground on the hill behind the farm.
They were keen for me to meet their new neighbour as, like myself, he was very interested in naval ships. With war looming on the horizon warships were back in the Forth in large numbers and from the Ferryhills I was able to identify the aircraft carriers, battleships, town and county class cruisers along with destroyers and corvettes.
During 1938 I had a number of visits from Mr. Smith and I let him see the best vantage points to view the ships from the Ferryhills. He was a real enthusiast and knew the details of every ship in the Navy and had no difficulty in naming a particular ship. During the first half of 1939 he was always telephoning me to find the names of the ships lying in the river, and on one of his visits, he insisted on giving me photos of all the ships in the Navy, along with a pair of Zeiss binoculars, so I could identify the ships more easily.
By this time I was getting worried about his increasing interest in the warships, especially when he rang me one day to say that he had heard that the Rodney and the Nelson had additions to their main gun turrets and would I have a look and ring him back. It was time I decided, to tell someone in authority about the activities of the hen farmer and who better than the Sergeant of Police who was a friend of mine. He listened to my story and asked me to leave the photographs and binoculars with him and emphasised that I should say nothing nor do anything until I heard from him again.
My next meeting with the sergeant was a few days later when I was introduced to an officer from Naval Intelligence who questioned me at length about my friend Mr. Smith. He had already studied the photographs which he returned to me along with the binoculars. He told me to continue giving the hen farmer all the information he asked for.
A few days after the declaration of war I was asked to call at the police station and bring the photographs and binoculars. At the police station I again met the Intelligence Officer who refused to answer any of my questions. He reminded me instead that Great Britain was at war and that it was my sworn duty to remain silent about Mr. Smith and his great interest in the British Navy. He said that he was keeping the photographs and binoculars and I would be hearing from him at a later date.
Meanwhile my friends the farmers telephoned me to say that Mr. Smith and his wife had gone without telling anyone. When they called they found the cottage empty and men with a lorry taking away the hens and henhouses. In answer to my friends’ questions they said that they had been instructed by a solicitor to carry out the clearance and gave them his telephone number. When they telephoned him he said that he did not know the Smiths‘ whereabouts, only that everything had to be removed and that my friends had to be sent a cheque for six months’ rent.
My friends were left mystified by their tenant’s sudden disappearance and I could only agree that it was a mystery. I had a question of my own that would never be answered :- ‘Was the hen farmer a German Spy?’
Many years after the war I read the autobiography of Willie Merrilees the Chief Constable of East Lothian. In it he describes how he disguised himself as a railway porter at Waverley Station during the war and caught a German Spy.
I often wondered what part German Spies played in the sinking of the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow on the 14th October 1939.