Introduction: Meet Carol Dillon. She was a young girl growing up in Cape Hatteras North Carolina, specifically Buxton, during World War II. She remembers vividly experiences of German U-Boats and spies. This is her story in her own words. Today she recounts how her family aided in catching a German spy, and about knowing that Germans were getting onto American soil.
Carol Dillon: There was a German family that had a house on the back road. The house is still there. Of course, they do not own it any longer…their son does not. But, they had a man named Hans Haas visiting them, and he used to come in my mother’s post office and mail packages, and the strange thing about this package was it wasn’t cardboard. It was made out of very thin wood. And the box was very heavy. And the last time I remember him doing this, I helped my mother take the box over the counter, because they were quite heavy. And she became a little suspicious, because had had done this before, and asked him what it was. And he told her, "Books." And when he left, I said to my mother when we were putting the box in a canvas bag, mail bag, I said, “Mother, that man’s lying to you because you can’t buy books here.” Because I was an avid reader, and if you could buy books, I would have done it. And you just couldn’t buy magazines or books back then. And so she became suspicious and called the FBI, and they came and opened the box, and it was detailed maps of the depths of water…Oregon Inlet, Hatteras Inlet, even over at East Lake, they had the depth of the water at that little area. And I assume this was to see if submarines could get in and infiltrate the country. But we knew they were infiltrating this island with people on rafts because of rumor from the Coast Guard and, you know, knowing that rafts were found. Now, how they got off the island…maybe with a boat on the…I don’t know that. I don’t know how they got off the island. Because we would have known a stranger here. But this man was visiting the family that owned the house on our Buxton back road. And the FBI did not arrest the man here, but followed him to New York, and they caught, actually, a whole ring of spies. And my mother got a commendation from the government for being responsible for catching him.
