LUCILLA'S CANISTER

Lucilla Reeve was very much her own woman, and in a sense she had to be. The daughter of a parlour maid, who for a time flirted with the political philosophy of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, she nevertheless became land agent at Merton, a large Norfolk estate. A devout Christian, Lucilla was many other things, too. She was a water diviner, and she also had her hair cut short, like a man. No ordinary person, then.
In 1935 she came across Mosley in Swaffham and signed up as a member of his party, but the upsurge in fascism at this time never translated itself into local votes, and in 1937 the Blackshirts' constituency office in Swaffham was closed. With the outbreak of War in 1939, and with her previous political views a subject of public gossip, she remained a controversial figure and at one stage was taken in by the authorities for questioning. Perhaps her boldest move - in the Spring of 1938, however - came when, though lacking cash and actual farming experience, she decided to rent Bagmore Farm at Stanford and run it herself.
Lucilla was not to know, of course, but only three years' later the military authorities would evict the residents of several Breckland farms and five villages - including Stanford, and Bagmore Farm - to create a new troop training area. Lucilla was, in effect, left with nothing, and in 1950, on Remembrance Sunday, she committed suicide.
In her later years she had turned to writing, and her books, though not scarce, are nevertheless sought after. I have two of them (Farming on a Battle Ground, and The Earth No Longer Bare), both accounts of her agricultural struggles in the late 1930s and the early years of the War. Published anonymously, both had their royalties dedicated to charities for the blind. But it is page 59 of her 'Battle Ground' book which fascinates me. Because Lucilla saw something. In one of her fields. Something very odd.
She recounted how one evening she was 'caught' in Withy Holt and lay on the ground under a tree as 'Jerry planes' came over, machine-gunning as they swooped low. After they had gone she got to her feet, but was 'caught' again as another low-flying plane (Enemy? Friendly? She doesn't say) swooped over and she saw something that looked like a lighted cigar, or a torch, drop on to the clover ley across the road. She had been told many times, apparently, about canisters being dropped by aircraft and how important it was not to touch them, so she returned home and rang the police at West Tofts.
The constable said he would report the matter, and the following morning an Army staff car drove up. She told them what she had seen, and the 'brass hat' drove off to search the field. She supposed they picked up the canister and took it away.
But what was it, and who dropped it? Lucilla did not say, or perhaps did not know. People local to Stanford (she said in her book) were often puzzled by the presence of a nearby airfield (East Wretham, probably) pretty much staffed by 'foreign' airmen (mainly friendly Czechs, I believe), and thought there might be some connection. She also mentioned that her neighbouring farm was owned by Dutch people. But if she ever thought 'spies' were somehow woven into the incident, then she never wrote about it. Not in this book, anyway.
So we are left with an intriguing War-time mystery (illuminated canisters being dropped by low-flying aircraft over Breckland fields) which has not, to my knowledge, ever been solved. Perhaps there is a simple answer. Or perhaps not. Very little was simple where Lucilla was concerned.