Lockhart remembered being driven down the wooded drive for the first time. It had reminded him of his first day at his prep school, sitting in the back of a taxi from the local station, even clutching the same small suitcase. The same nerves had come back too, although they had disappeared after a few hours—there was little time to sit and brood at Arisaig. Lockhart had welcomed the distraction—Whitehall had provided him with too many dull moments in which he could sink into a funk.

The training was tough, and he found that his regular runs around St. James’s Park had kept him in good enough shape. After just a few weeks, he had started to master the skills of unarmed combat, laying explosives and living off the land. With some exceptions, there was an air of amateurism about the place that Lockhart enjoyed. Apart from the odd policeman drafted in from the tough streets of places such as Glasgow and Shanghai, the tutors were an assortment of scientists and academics, all of whom were prostituting their particular skills and experience for the benefit of SOE. Very few had been in the services. In fact, Lockhart’s more or less honorific rank of captain, gained from working in military intelligence in Whitehall, made him one of the few officers. But when his fellow trainees had found that he wasn’t a real soldier, they quickly scoffed at his rank. He took it in good cheer—in truth, he had felt a bit of a fraud when he wore the uniform around London.

The pines were getting more numerous, and soon they were driving through thick forest. They had to stop for ten minutes to let a Wehrmacht convoy go past. From his position in the backseat, all Lockhart could make out were the huge wheels of the trucks—there were at least fifty of them. It must have been the best part of an army going past, probably on their way to Berlin to help with clearing up.

A few miles into the forest, they turned left down a dirt track. Soon the trees cleared, and the car stopped at a large wood-and-barbed-wire gate. Lockhart leaned forward and peered through the windscreen: it was the gate to a prison camp. Two guards were approaching the car, both being dragged by a couple of urgent Alsatians. Bloody dogs, thought Lockhart, it was because of one of them that he was here now.

The sign above the gate read SONDER TRENNUNG 517—STALAG IIID. This was a prison camp for NCOs, Lockhart thought, as officers were kept in oflags. “Sonder Trennung” meant “special detachment”—what was so special about this place? As they drove through the gate, he saw that the camp was small. Four large wooden huts surrounded a small field, but the car was approaching a larger building, the size of a typical English church, Lockhart mused. The car drew to a halt in front of it, and he was asked to step out. It made a pleasant change from the normal push.