I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE Read online

  Table of Contents

  I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE Chapter I THE GREAT ADVENTURE BEGINS

  Chapter II EVE AND THE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

  Chapter III M.I.5 AS IT REALLY IS

  Chapter IV MY FIRST REAL-LIFE ROLE

  Chapter V MONTY AND THE CORPS DE BALLET

  Chapter VI D-DAY REHEARSAL

  Chapter VII MILITARY PICNIC IN SCOTLAND

  Chapter VIII THE YEARS ROLL BACK

  Chapter IX THE UNFORGETTABLE INTERVIEW

  Chapter X THE STRANGEST REHEARSAL ON RECORD

  Chapter XI A FEARFUL DILEMMA

  Chapter XII I MEET HITLER’S TOP AGENTS

  Chapter XIII FANTASTIC TALKS WITH THE GOVERNOR

  Chapter XIV I MEET MORE “LOYAL COLLABORATORS”

  Chapter XV WHAT TO DO WITH THE BODY?

  Chapter XVI D-DAY SETS ME FREE

  Chapter XVII FANTASTIC FLIGHT HOME

  Chapter XVIII I ESCAPE ARREST AS A DESERTER

  Chapter XIX THE AFTERMATH

  I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE

  by

  M. E. CLIFTON JAMES

  * * *

  RIDER AND COMPANY

  Hutchinson House, Stratford Place, London, W.1

  First published in 1954

  All rights reserved

  Printed in Great Britain by The Anchor Press Ltd., Tiptree, Essex

  I would never have been able to produce this book without the wonderful help and co-operation of Gerald Langston Day, who so gallantly came to my rescue with his long experience in authorship.

  * * *

  To

  “EVE”

  She cheered me in health, nursed me in sickness. With a courage that never faltered she refused to allow me to give up.

  To her I owe my life; to her I dedicate this book.

  Chapter I

  THE GREAT ADVENTURE BEGINS

  It all began one May morning in 1944 when the phone bell rang at my desk in the Royal Army Pay Corps office in Leicester.

  Lifting the receiver with half my mind still on my work, I said, “Lieutenant James here.” The excited voice of an A.T.S. girl operator gasped: “Oh, sir, it’s a London call. You’ll never guess who it is.”

  “Who is it, Lord Haw-Haw?”

  “Oh no, sir. I was so thrilled when I heard his voice I let some of the other girls listen so they could hear him.”

  “Sounds marvellous. Come on, please, put him through.”

  There was a click. “Hullo,” I said; “Lieutenant James speaking.”

  A pleasant voice replied: “Oh, James, this is Colonel David Niven speaking from the Army Kinematograph section. We’ve heard a lot about the shows you’ve been putting on for the troops. They’re very good, I’m told. Now would you be interested in making some Army films? We’ve been looking round and I believe you may be the man, we want.”

  I was stunned. Was someone pulling my leg? No, I knew that voice well and I felt certain that it was really Niven speaking to me. I heard myself saying: “Yes, sir, I most certainly should. There’s nothing I should like better.”

  “Good,” he said briskly. “Will you have a word with your C.O. and tell him I phoned you? See if you can persuade him to give you a week’s unofficial leave so that you can come up to Town and have a film test. I’ll send you a letter confirming the proposal. Good-bye.”

  Slowly I replaced the receiver. Was this an hallucination, or had the pundits who decide upon a man’s job in the Army had a lapse in sanity? When war broke out in 1939 I had applied to the War Office offering to do the only work which I felt capable of doing: entertaining the troops; whereupon I was given a commission in the Pay Corps—I who could hardly do a simple sum of subtraction.

  The last thing I want to do is to poke fun at the Pay Corps; I only want to show how much of a misfit I was in such a specialized department of the Army. On being posted, I embarked upon a career which was as foreign to me as Astronomy or Jungle Warfare.

  “Well, James,” said the Colonel when I reported to him in the orderly room, “I see you are wearing ribbons of the First World War. Be prepared for an entirely different sort of Army life this time.”

  I often think of the unconscious irony of these words. Had my Colonel, who was something of a martinet, guessed what a tremendous understatement he was uttering, and known the supreme annoyance he was to suffer on my account after this fateful telephone call years later, I hardly think he would have spoken so genially.

  “Report to Major White’s Wing,” he concluded. “D.A.C. are full up, so you’d better go on Opening and Linking.”

  What did D.A.C. mean, I wondered as I left him, and what on earth was Opening and Linking? I found Major White in a commandeered factory packed with rough wooden tables and flooded with a brown sea of clerks who were poring over Army accounts.

  The bespectacled Captain to whom I was handed over bade me a bleak ‘Good morning’ and stared at me as if I were a piece of flotsam.

  “Bank?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Stock Exchange?”

  “No.”

  “Accountant?”

  “No. I’m an actor.”

  “Good God!” he exclaimed.

  The first job he gave me was reading out a list of men’s names to an elderly Private, who copied them slowly into a ledger.

  “No. 31604, Private Willard,” I began.

  “Can you speak a bit louder, I’m rather deaf.”

  “Number 31604, Private Willard. Number 72843, Private Jackson. Number 384201, Private Butler.”

  ‘“Who-oa, not so quick,” he grumbled. “This is the Army, not civvy peace-work.”

  I soon learned to fall into that easy-going, somnolent pace which is so characteristic of the Army. You just took everything as it came, no matter how fantastic it seemed, and trusted it would come out all right somehow.

  Queer fellows gravitated to the Pay Corps. I remember one man who suffered from insomnia and who always read the Pay Regulations to put himself to sleep. Another man who was posted to us seemed incapable of adding and was so absent-minded that he once arrived in his uniform wearing a trilby hat. As we discovered later, he was a brilliant mathematician who spent his spare time working out problems in Spherical Geometry. He had risen so far above simple arithmetic that he had forgotten it.

  As the months went by I was ordered to run plays and variety shows for the troops, but only in my spare time. This was a far more congenial job than adding up figures. Soldiers make very good audiences and there is none of that anxiety which oppresses an actor in civilian life—that his show may fail and that there will be no pay packet for him at the end of the week.

  Presently Destiny made another move in my direction. Towards the end of 1940 a brother officer looked at me narrowly as I sat at my table and said, “You know, Jimmy, you’re just like Monty.”

  “Monty?”

  “Yes. General Montgomery, G.O.C. Fifth Corps.”

  “Oh,” I said, and thought no more about it.

  But after the sensational victories of the Desert Rats in North Africa a most peculiar thing happened. In Nottingham I went on the stage to make an announcement, and was met with loud applause which swelled into a roar. I had been mistaken for General Montgomery, the most discussed military commander in Great Britain if not in the world. The audience thought that he had come to address them.

  Although taken aback, I soon forgot the incident. But some time later I took a theatrical company of Servicemen and A.T.S. to the Comedy Theatre in London and we gave a free Sunday night performance of When Knights Were Bold in which years before I had appeared with Bromley Challenor. After the show a News Chronicle photographer came into my dressing-room.

&nbs
p; “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m told you are very much like General Montgomery.” Then, giving me a critical look: “You certainly are just like him. May I take a photo?”

  I borrowed a beret from someone and he took a couple of pictures, remarking that the likeness was extraordinary. But after he had gone I began to have qualms. What would happen if some High-up saw the photo of me in a beret I had no right to wear, posing as a famous General without permission? That night I dreamed that I was hauled up before the entire General Staff, numbering about 100, who sentenced me to be deported by air and dropped by parachute in Berchtesgaden.

  Two days later when one of the photos appeared in the News Chronicle I was overcome by panic. Under my picture, looking, I must admit, very much like the General, was the caption: ‘YOU’RE WRONG—IT’S LIEUT. CLIFTON JAMES.’ Rather to my relief hardly anyone in the battalion noticed it.

  Soon after this I was plunged into a whirlpool of work known as the Main Issue in which thousands of new allowance books had to be got ready and posted within a few days. The incident quickly passed out of my mind.

  And now there had come this strange telephone call. My mind raced ahead to all sorts of exciting possibilities. But could I get away? Quite a number of people in my unit, weary of names and figures, had tried for a transfer, only to be met with a firm refusal. They were told that there was a grave shortage of trained officers in the Pay Corps and that they were playing a highly important part in the war.

  One exasperated veteran who wanted a transfer to an infantry battalion refused to take no for an answer and wrote to Divisional Headquarters who also refused him. Not to be beaten he wrote to Northern Command who told him he was too old to fight. This so incensed him that he wrote to the King; but once again his request was turned down—this time by the War Office, who warned him that if he persisted he would be placed on a charge.

  “Remembering all this I became rather depressed; however, I went along to the Adjutant who took me in to the Colonel.

  Our Colonel was rather a peppery man and a stickler for rules and regulations. He took great pride in his battalion and was very keen that it should shine in sports and competitions.

  “I have just had a personal call from Army Kinematograph in London, sir,” I began.

  “Oh. What do they want?”

  “It was Colonel David Niven who rang up.”

  “David Niven. Isn’t he a film star?”

  “Yes, sir. He wants me to go to London and help make some Army films.”

  “Does he, by Jove. What part of our work does he want you to film?”

  I had an imaginary pre-view of a thrilling screen drama in which a glamorous enemy spy spread alarm and confusion by vamping a pay clerk and persuading him to falsify the accounts.

  “It’s not exactly that, sir. Colonel Niven wants me to go up on a week’s unofficial leave to undergo a film test.”

  The Colonel regarded me blankly. “Unofficial leave? A film test? This is a pay office, not a film studio.”

  “Yes, sir. He said he would be sending me an official letter confirming it,” I blundered on.

  “Confirming what?” the Colonel exploded. “I never heard of such damned cheek! Does he think he’s running this battalion? If you get a letter from him, bring it straight to me.”

  I left his office cursing myself for having bungled the business. Once again I sat down at my desk and my roseate hopes of escaping to make films faded away. The Pay Corps was like a maze: once you were in it you could never find your way out again. As for the promised letter, I had better forget it.

  But next morning the phone bell rang again and all my gloomy feelings were swept away when I heard David Niven’s voice. He told me that a certain Colonel Lester in his department would be coming through Leicester on the following morning on his way North. Would I meet him at the Grand Hotel for lunch and be sure to bring along some photos of myself?

  Of course I said yes. He sounded so friendly that I told him of my unfortunate interview with my C.O. the day before. To my great relief he brushed aside my fears, told me not to worry, and rang off.

  It is extraordinary what power there can be in a human voice. If someone from the War Office had said the same thing in clipped, official accents I doubt if I should have been much reassured, but when Niven spoke to me my anxiety melted like the morning dew.

  Next day I made my way towards the Grand Hotel feeling distinctly nervous. Just as some grown-up men never shake off the fear of their headmasters, so I who had been a Private in the first war could never get rid of my feeling of awe when trusting officers of exalted rank. I could never dissociate them from memories of Colonels and Generals inspecting the brilliance of my buttons and the smoothness of my cheeks.

  I had this uncomfortable feeling as I stood in the lobby of the hotel awaiting the advent of a red-tabbed Colonel with the dilated nostrils of a man who smells something unpleasant. But instead of this apparition I saw coming towards me, his hand extended in greeting, a broad-shouldered man with a close-cropped moustache, dressed in a well-worn lounge suit and holding a battered Homburg hat.

  I couldn’t help liking him at sight. After introducing himself as Colonel Lester, he led me to the bar, and over our drinks we chatted agreeably about the war situation and my work in staging entertainments for the Forces. During a very good lunch I was surprised to find that he knew a great deal about the Theatre and I quite enjoyed talking shop.

  Suddenly remembering the photos, I handed them to him. He glanced at them casually, said he thought they would do and that Colonel Niven would be writing to me. Putting them in his brief-case he looked at his watch and said he must be going.

  It was only after he had gone that I realized I had not said one word about filming. What was the meaning of it? I had spent a very agreeable hour with a most charming man, but was that the end of my hopes? Perhaps he had formed the opinion that I was no good for the job and had been too polite and kind to tell me so. The next two days my depression returned and I tried to forget it all.

  But on the third morning I had an official letter from Colonel Niven saying that I seemed to be suitable for the post. It was very important, he said, that I should come up to London at once and report to the address which was on the notepaper. I was to take this letter to my C.O. without delay and get a week’s leave.

  I went straight to the Colonel and handed him the letter. As he was reading it I glanced out of the window and my eye fell upon a poster advertising a lurid American film. I saw a dashing young officer charging about 200 tough-looking Japs single-handed. Good heavens, I thought, is this the sort of thing I shall be asked to do?

  The Colonel’s voice brought me back to earth. “They seem very anxious to see you,” he said uncertainly. “Go along to the Adjutant and see if he can spare you for a week. But understand, you must be back here in exactly seven days.”

  The Adjutant was a friend of mine. “Sorry to worry you, George,” I said gaily. “The Colonel’s given me seven days’ leave.”

  “Leave? What is it, Compassionate?”

  “It’s special leave to do a film test.”

  “Film test my foot!” he exclaimed angrily. “We’re shorthanded, you know that.”

  “Sorry, old boy, it’s War Office instructions.” I showed him Niven’s letter. But this only made him angrier.

  “Oh, these red-tabs make me sick! How can we win the war by making films? An army marches on its pay-book.”

  But of course he had to make me out a railway warrant and let me go.

  I went back to my digs and told my wife the good news. Eve was as excited as I was about this apparent ‘break’. After talking it over far into the night she decided to come up to London with me and hear what it was all about. I put through a call and found that both of us could stay with a friend named David Sender who lived in Hampstead. Before the war he had been a near neighbour of ours.

  Next morning we set off in high spirits, laughing and joking as we travelled south in
the train. Although I had worked hard I had never been much of a success in the Pay Corps, but now I was going to do a job which I could put my heart into. In a series of dazzling imaginary pictures I saw myself as a character star, the blue-eyed boy of the Army, while my friends were still slogging away at their desks. And when the war was over I should be well and truly launched on a successful new career.

  Arriving at St. Pancras, we took a taxi to the address in Curzon Street. I gave my name to the uniformed hall porter and was taken in hand by a messenger. With a cheery goodbye to Eve I followed him upstairs. David Niven was charming. We chatted for a few minutes and then he took me along a corridor to an empty room, where he asked me to wait.

  It was a big room with a long table down the centre of it and with chairs arranged as if for a Board Meeting. Too nervous to sit down, I paced up and down with ‘butterflies fluttering inside my stomach’.

  Five minutes went by. Nobody came. I was beginning to get a little restless when the door opened and in walked Colonel Lester wearing exactly the same suit and carrying the self-same brief-case and battered hat.

  He said he was glad I had managed to get away, gave me a cigarette, and then we sat down.

  As he lit his own cigarette his whole manner and expression, changed. In place of the charming, apparently light-hearted man I had met the week before, I was now facing a stern, rather grim-looking soldier.

  “James,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ve got rather a shock for you.” He snapped his lighter shut and put it in his pocket. “You are not going to make any films.”

  It is extraordinary how many sinister conjectures can pass through one’s mind in a few seconds. I looked at him, trembling.

  To my immense relief he smiled and added: “Don’t look so worried. Everything’s all right. Are you patriotic?”

  Chapter II

  EVE AND THE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

  By the time these strange things were happening to me we had built up a mighty invasion force whose task it would be to land in France and battle its way to Berlin. It was so big and so heavily equipped that even with our superiority in the air it was quite impossible to conceal its presence from the enemy. The Germans knew where we intended to strike, but they did not know the date of the expected attack, nor could they rule out the possibility of our striking a heavy blow on some other front. So there was still some chance of deceiving them.