Smile which turned dentist into a spycatcher

The stranger smiled – and immediately Pocock, an officer in the Royal Army Dental Corps, realised he was a German spy.

What gave him away? It was his teeth.

After the war David Pocock became a well-known dentist in Shrewsbury and the anecdote about the night he helped capture a German spy was a familiar family story.

Son Robin, from Shrawardine, said: "He was quite friendly with David Niven and used to have breakfast with him in the officers' mess. They were based in Abergavenny, where I believe there is still an Army training centre."

Niven, a former soldier who went to America and became a film star, had returned to Britain when war broke out in 1939 and rejoined the British Army.

Robin says his father and Niven just happened to be stationed in the same place.

"He was quite a character. I'm sure my father must have enjoyed his time in his company. It would have been in 1940 or 1941, and they went out for a drink with their pals to the Bear Inn in Crickhowell. A stranger came into the bar and my father thought there was something odd about him. And then he suddenly realised what it was.

"He said to his pals 'quick, this chap is a German spy, I'm sure of it. Somebody let his tyres down, somebody keep him talking, somebody get the Military Police.' They kept him talking until the Military Police arrived and arrested him.

"Because my father was a dentist he noticed when the German smiled that he had German continental gold fillings. And because of my father's German roots he may have detected a slight German accent as well. It turned out that this chap was a spy."

Robin does not know what became of the spy.

"I expect he probably got sent off to some internment camp."

His father, who was a Lieutenant and later a Captain, did not remain in touch with Niven.

Niven was famously a great raconteur, and the spycatching episode would surely have been one of his tales.

"I mentioned the story to a cousin in Calgary, Alberta, a few years ago and she remembered it in a very early edition of The Moon's A Balloon (Niven's autobiography), but I've not been able to find an old edition. It's not in the later versions."

David Pocock, who was known as Hubert to his parents but as David by everybody else, was born in Putney in 1913, and Robin says he was three-quarters German, and went to school in Berlin between 1919 and 1923 when his father was chaplain at the British Embassy.

Being able to speak German was helpful to Shropshire police as it meant he could act as an interpreter for them if, for example, a German tourist was involved in a road accident locally.

"My father met my mother in Scarborough, where my father had his first dental surgery and my mother was living with her father, a local doctor, and her mother.

"My mother Beryl got to hear there was this dishy young dentist and managed to get an appointment. The family story goes that my father was so shy and wanted to ask her out, so he made up a story that she had to come back and have a tooth out.

"When she did, he could not pluck up the courage and made an excuse that she had to come back and have another tooth out. The family joke is that she ended up having false teeth before he asked her out.

"They were married on August 28, 1939, and travelled to the Lake District for a fortnight's honeymoon. This was rudely interrupted after one week by the start of the war. They returned home and my father signed up and was commissioned in the Royal Army Dental Corps."

Robin's parents came to live in Shropshire in 1946, living then in Hanwood, and later in Bayston Hill. David became a well-known dentist with a big practice in St John’s Hill Shrewsbury. He was involved in Shrewsbury Flower Show and, a keen beekeeper with up to 60 hives at one time, was chairman of Shropshire Beekeepers.

He retired after 32 years at the St John's Hill practice, and 41 years as a dental surgeon, in March 1978, and died in 1991.

Robin added: "About 10 years ago I visited Crickhowell and The Bear Inn. From my father's stories, I had built up a mental picture of the inside of the bar. I was blown away by the similarity when I saw the interior for the first time.

"I saw the car park and imagined the guys letting the tyres down of the suspected spy, while some of the others kept him talking until the authorities arrived to arrest him. The spy may have spoken very good English but his fillings were a giveaway! Who else could have spotted that?

"Apart from his beekeeping and the Shrewsbury Flower Show, my father's other passions included the Severn Valley Motor Club, which included helping out with the RAC rally. It is a shame that he never got to see the trophies that I produced for the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Belgium 1999, San Marino and Silverstone with my business, Celebration Crystal in Montford Bridge.

"Raising a family of three girls and four boys also kept my father very busy.

"Apart from the excitement of the spy story, I do sometimes wonder how difficult it must have been during both world wars for my grandmother, who was from Bavaria. Unfortunately, I never knew my grandfather as he died in 1950 and I was born in 1951. My grandmother died in 1955 when I was only four."