Seventy years ago, in the middle of the Second World War, The Firs in Whitchurch, Buckinghamshire, was very much a hush-hush establishment. The locals referred to it as “that secret War Office place” and took the occasional loud bangs emanating from it in their stoical stride.
It was perhaps a 12-year-old boy who came closest to penetrating the mystery of this fine old property, but even he had no idea that the people working there were developing limpet mines and sticky bombs and experimenting with bullet-firing helmets. What he did know, however, was that some of his pals had discovered some anti-tank bombs and 24-hour fuses in an open store there.
The boy was the explosives-mad Gordon Rogers, who had already been bound over to