GIBRALTAR “INVADED”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21360, 1 June 1939, Page 2

GIBRALTAR “INVADED”

GERMAN NURSEMAID LANDS WITHOUT PASSPORT (Special—By Air Mail) LONDON. May 13. The police and naval authorities at Gibraltar were perturbed this week 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 Sudetenland. Fraulein Gertrude Schiffner accomplished the impossible by landing on the Rock and establishing herself at the fashionable Rock 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 the Rock Hotel. For some months now the police have been indexing every person landing on the Rock. In the case of Germans and Italians, a special report is made 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 t.o the policemen, but they had never seen her before. They askesd for her passport—and it had not been visaed for Gibraltar. Nor did it contain anylanding stamp. Fraulein Schiffner had landed from the troopship Dilwara with her employer, Mrs Eve Nott, wife of a British officer stationed in Palestine and Mrs Nott's two-year-old daughter. Tire 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.