Astonishing
Well, to me, at least.Espionage fascinates me, and I've read a few books (okay, a lot of books) on the subject. I'm reading one now called The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service. This is post-WWII, at the start of the Cold War, so it's a different era than I normally read about.
Inside this Cold War narrative, though, was a story about the service's inception in World War:
During the first World War, networks of agents behind enemy lines would watch coaches move down the rail tracks as they did their knitting. Drop one for a troop car, purl one for something else. Send the resultant pullover back for analysis.
I never thought I'd hear about a use for knitting in espionage, but there you go. An amazing anecdote.
I fully expect to read about crochet-related counterintelligence any day now.
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