Escape maps for WWII PoWs were hidden in prunes

THE prune's contribution to Allied victory over Nazi Germany has hitherto been passed over by historians, but all that is set to change. An extraordinary collection of materials used to help prisoners of war and French Resistance fighters in occupied Europe is to go under the hammer later this month. It includes two prunes of the original thousands used by the Special Operations Executive, Churchill's secret army of undercover agents, to smuggle miniature documents into PoW camps.

The documents included intricate maps of continental railway networks, allowing PoWs to plan their escape. The prunes are part of a collection formerly belonging to Doreen Mulot, an SOE agent, whose great-nephew Richard Marshall, from Crook, Co Durham, is selling them.

"I remember her once telling me she and her colleague used to sit over the bathtub filled with dried prunes,'' Mr Marshall said.

"As the prunes swelled up they picked out the stones and filled the cavities with waxed paper.

"The prunes were then dried out and sent to prisoners in Red Cross parcels.

"The maps contained details of the railway lines so that if anybody was escaping they would know which lines to go for to get back to Britain.''

Mrs Mulot, who lived in France before the war having married a Frenchman, left in 1940 when he had an affair but she continued to work with Free French fighters in London and joined SOE. Her collection included sabotage booklets disguised as diaries, pocket dictionaries or recipes.

There were also accurate forgeries of official German rubber document stamps and elaborate plates used to forge "camp money'' used by PoW officers to buy a limited range of goods, but with no value at all outside the camp.

Only two prunes, unused, survived in the collection.

Caroline Weiner, an expert at Spink, the auctioneer, where the collection will be sold with an estimate of pounds 1,200 on April 27, said: "They are very, very dry, but they have survived. We were extremely surprised.''