np A legendary flying doctor’s dark secret

[alice wellintown]

A legendary flying doctor’s dark secret
By John Heminway

I knew nothing of this when I visited Spoerry’s grave with my wife in
December 2000. My first reflection that serene evening by the Indian
Ocean was on the selflessness of an old friend. Like so many others, I
believed she was a verifiable heroine. But something did niggle – the
memory of Spoerry’s total embargo on the subject of the second world
war, any mention of which made her quick to anger. So the next day,
when I ran into Bernard – who had inherited Spoerry’s many properties
in Kenya – I asked why the subject of the war was so off-limits to his
aunt. I had heard rumours that she had been tortured by the Germans –
was it true? All he knew, he said, was a family story that Spoerry had
once been denounced as a “sex slave”.

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