Pat Owtram used her language skills to listen in on German U-boats during WWII

By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Pat Owtram didn’t need to go to war. It came to her. As the Nazis took control of Germany and Austria, her father hired Jewish refugees to cook and clean at the family home in Lancashire, where the Owtram family raised pedigreed shorthorn cows and Pat rode a pony named Dolly. One of the refugees, Lily Getzel, was a cultured woman from Vienna who told stories of concerts and the opera. They spoke in a combination of German, Austrian German, and English. Those conversations paid off in 1942, when Owtram applied to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service and a test showed that she was fluent in German.