He arranged the "purchase" of Eliza Armstrong, the 13-year-old daughter of a chimney sweep, whom he then smuggled away to France in order to prove how easy it might have been to carry off a real abduction.
Some of his childhood, peacetime memories were perhaps as rare as his wartime ones: catching thrushes by hand in the rocky fields, hand-stitching his own shoes, setting up a chimney-sweep business in Nogent-sur-Marne.