20. Joining the Germans
Chapman was on the lam in the Channel Islands when WWII began. A botched burglary earned him a two-year sentence in a Jersey prison, and that was where the Germans found him when they captured the Channel Islands in 1940. He offered to work for them to get out of jail, and they accepted. Chapman was freed and trained in the use of explosives, sabotage, and other clandestine skills, before he was parachuted into Britain in 1942, tasked with destroying a bomber factory.
He was arrested soon after landing, however, and immediately accepted an offer to become a double agent – an easy choice, considering that the alternative would have been a hangman’s noose. Given the codename “Agent Zigzag”, a plan was concocted to fake the bomber factory’s destruction, which convinced the Germans and raised Chapman high in their esteem. From then on, Chapman’s radio reports, carefully fed him by British intelligence, were treated as gospel by the Germans.
