Rock “Invaded”

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 172, 24 July 1939, Page 12

Rock “Invaded”

GERMAN NURSEMAID’S FEAT The police and naval authorities at Gibraltar were perturbed one week in May to discover that the impregnable Rock fortress had been “invaded.” A foreigner had landed without their knowledge. Their watchfulness had been evaded, quite openly, by a 19-year-old German nursemaid from the Sudetcnland. Fraulein Gertrude Seliiffncr accomplished the impossible by landing on the Rock and establishing herself at the fashionable Eoclc Hotel without even showing her passport. The first intimation that something was wrong came when a police chief was glancing idly through the list of guests at tho Rock Hotel. For some mouths now the police have been indexing every person landing on the Rock. In the case of Germans and Italians a special report is niado by the Secret Service. The police chief could not find any report on Fraulein Schiffner, and he rang his officer in charge of the port, who keeps a record of every person landing at Gibraltar. He had no record of the young girl. Fraulein Schiffner presented herself to the policemen, but they had never seen her before. They asked for her passport—and it had not been visaed for Gibraltar. Nor did it contain any landing stamp. Fraulein Schiffner had landed from the troopship Dilwara with her employer, Mrs. Eve Nott, wife of a British officer stationed at Palestine, and Mrs. Nott’s two-year-old daughter. The Dilwara, which had come from Alexandria, had berthed in the naval dockyard —Gibraltar’s Holy of Holies—and Mrs. Nott and her child and nurse had been passed out through the gates by the naval authorities.