“ACH DER TEUFEL”

Evening Star, Issue 23907, 10 June 1941, Page 6

“ACH DER TEUFEL”

EXCLAMATION BETRAYS SPY (Thom Oun London Correspondent.] The hairdresser who cut my Jocks today was a full-Mown sergeant in the last war and served on the Western Front. Ho narrated an incident that impressed me as showing that Harley street has no monopoly of psycho-analy-tic gumption. After Hooge, when units were a bit mixed up and often strangers attached themselves temporarily to different ones, word came down from brigade that a suspect spy was about. The sergeant at once bethought him of a big stranger, temporarily attached and very popular with the boys, who might very well be the man. So he took four hefty men—in case his suspicions were wrong and the stranger really was British—and sought out the fellow. His theory was that in any sudden extreme crisis a man speaks his own native tongue. So he gave the attached soldier a vigorous kick in the pants without any prelude. The theory worked perfectly. The stranger clapped both hands to the assaulted part and ejaculated -a vicious “Ach! Her Teufel I” Two mornings later my hairdresser was in charge of the firing squad that shot him.