Behind the lines

Among the fresh-faced teenagers and 21- and 22-year-old 'veterans' who'd been wounded in the Normandy fighting and were returning to the front, one man stood out.

Mr Whiting, a military historian perhaps better known as best-selling novelist Leo Kessler, describes the encounter in the introduction to his latest book, Hitler's Secret War.

"The spy was different. He was an old man, perhaps all of 30. He was strong-looking and surly and he'd obviously been an officer until quite recently. You could see the lighter marks where his pips had once been.

"Otherwise his battledress blouse was devoid of all unit insignia or medal ribbons, save for one thing left from his, to us, unknown past. They were upturned white-and-blue wings on his chest, complete with a parachute. I'd never seen the device before, but I recognised it for what it was. It indicated that he'd jumped behind enemy lines three times."

It's a haunting description, catching as it does both the whiff of dishonour and the sense of brave deeds never acknowledged that clings to our idea of the spy.

That anonymous spy encountered by a youthful Mr Whiting would have recognised instantly a certain kindred spirit in Percy Castle.

I met Mr Whiting ostensibly to talk about his new book, an account of the German spies who infiltrated Britain during the Second World War. But the talk soon switched to Percy: a homegrown York spy who was neither an officer nor a gentleman but whose adventures behind enemy lines during the Second World War would have put James Bond to shame.

Percy - a 'little, skinny man' Mr Whiting says - was a production worker at Rowntrees in York when the war broke out.

He was called up to join the 51st Highland Division, and posted to France. His service as an ordinary Tommy, though, was to be short-lived. In 1940, when much of the rest of the British army was being evacuated from Dunkirk, the soldiers of the 51st Highlanders were unable to escape and surrendered to Rommel in St Valery, on the French coast.

Percy, though, was not about to take life as a prisoner of war lying down. He made his bid for freedom as he and his captive comrades-in-arms were being marched through France in a long column towards Germany.

During a roadside break he managed to dive over a culvert and scramble into hiding. From there, he made his way back to Calais.

France at that time, Mr Whiting says, was full of former Tommies on the run, many of whom had taken up with local girls.

"Percy was sitting there in the square in Calais at midnight and this bloke came up to him and said: 'You're on the run, mate, aren't you?'," Mr Whiting said.

It was a former Tommy. He helped Percy evade the Germans, and in no time had landed him a job as a slater, working near Calais.

And so began Percy's secret life. Soon, he was roofing German barracks - and picking up invaluable information on German troop movements and weaponry at the same time. He was a clever man, Mr Whiting says; and knew enough to recognise the importance of what he was seeing.

It couldn't last, though. Eventually the Germans, realising Normandy could well be a key invasion point, began rounding up all the ex-Tommies in the region. Percy, determined to evade capture once more, somehow escaped to Marseilles.

His hope was to make it to French North Africa. "He was going to be put in the hold of a ship bound for Algeria," Mr Whiting said. "But he realised that once he was in there they would probably dump him and take his money."

He changed his plans. By now, he'd been behind German lines for more than two years. He decided to head for Spain.

Alone, he crossed the Pyrenees in winter and got as far as Madrid. But Fascist Spain naturally sympathised with Germany, and there he was picked up by the Spanish Secret Police.

Even now, all was far from over for Percy. Somehow, while in prison in Madrid, he struck up a liaison with a local prostitute. She informed the British Embassy, who arranged for his release. Expecting to be welcomed with open arms and asked to tell all he knew about German troop build-ups in France, he found himself instead stuck in a cell - and covered from head to toe in plaster of Paris.

It wasn't until next morning when a doctor came in to cut the stuff open and peel it off that he knew why, Mr Whiting said. Percy had been on the run and in hiding for months - and the plaster was covered in ticks.

England-bound at last, Percy was shipped in a convoy to Greenock in Scotland, and then put on a train to London - with military guards in attendance.

The train stopped in York en route. Percy, who hadn't seen his wife for over two years, asked if he could pop home for a visit - but was refused.

In London, he was hauled up before a series of high-ranking intelligence officers. At first, says Mr Whiting, they thought he was a double agent. Eventually, he persuaded them otherwise - and after telling what he had learned during his years behind enemy lines, they congratulated him on a job well done.

That, though, was all the thanks Percy ever got. "After six weeks, they got rid of him, and he ended up finishing the war in Italy," Mr Whiting said. "Whether they thought he had come across something they didn't want anyone else to know, he never found out."

After the war, Percy returned home to life as a production worker at Rowntrees. He eventually died in a council flat in Navigation Road in about 1990. It is not clear whether he left any relatives.

Mr Whiting, who met him and interviewed him several times as an old man and saw many of the papers and photographs he still had from his time behind German lines, recalls that even in his seventies he remained quick and sharp.

"He was definitely a cut above the ordinary working man," he said. "But he was a bit of a cynic at the end. And he was very, very cagey about what he would tell."

Just how important was the information Percy was able to pass on to British intelligence we may never know.

"But in those days they were so desperate for information about occupied France they put appeals out over the BBC asking people to send pre-war postcards," Mr Whiting said.

"Churchill used to say he could read the time by the town hall clock in Calais with his binoculars - but that was all he knew of what was happening in France."

u Charles Whiting's new book, Hitler's Secret War, is published by Leo Cooper price £19.95.

PICTURE: York author Charles Whiting with his latest book, Hitler's Secret War