I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE Read online

  I believe various ingenious plans of deception were proposed by different people and discussed at a high level; but the plan which it was decided to adopt was put forward by our Deception staff and approved by General Eisenhower. It was both simple and crafty, and I think it is the first time in military history that such a plan was ever attempted.

  At that time no military commander had a higher reputation than General Montgomery, and it must have been obvious to the enemy that he was to play a prominent role in the concluding stages of the war. Indeed, the Germans must have known that he would be in command of the expected invasion. The plan, then, was to produce an elaborate show of evidence that Monty had not only left his post on the South coast of England but had mysteriously appeared in quite a different part of the world.

  Someone must be found who resembled him so closely and imitated his gesture and mannerisms, his gait and his voice so exactly that he would pass for the General even at close quarters. At a quick glance he must even deceive high-ranking officers of our own who had met the General. After just the right amount of discreet publicity this man would be flown abroad on an apparently badly handled tour, where enemy spies and collaborators would be allowed to see him at point-blank range and pass the information on to Berlin.

  The sudden appearance of General Montgomery in Africa, or wherever it might be, would throw the Germans into confusion. What is he up to now? they would wonder. The German High Command knew well enough that he was brilliantly clever and imaginative and that he loved unexpected moves. No doubt they would think it quite possible that the cross-Channel invasion had been cancelled, at all events temporarily, and that a sudden surprise blow was about to fall on another front.

  As soon as this plan was approved, top priority orders were given to our Army Intelligence department, known as MI 5, to discover a double for General Montgomery. The actual work fell on three men: Colonel Lester, who had been in Military Intelligence work all his life; Captain Stephen Watts, in civilian life a well-known dramatic critic; and Lieutenant Jack Hervey.

  Colonel Lester, who was working at full pressure when the order came, at once inaugurated a world-wide search for a suitable double. Stephen Watts got in touch with a Hollywood film star, but nothing came of this on account of his accent and the fact that he was too tall. Dozens of actors and others in Great Britain were considered, but some of them were too old, some too young, some had not the right temperament, and most of them were not sufficiently like the General.

  In the Army there is no such word as ‘can’t’. As an old soldier replied to a recruit: “P.B.I. means Performin’ the Bleedin’ Impossible.” But this task of finding a double for Monty began to look so much like the impossible that even MI 5 felt a touch of gloom.

  Lying in bed one night with his brain revolving round the eternal problem, Stephen Watts suddenly remembered having seen a photograph in some newspaper. It was a photo of a man in a beret with the caption: ‘YOU’RE WRONG—IT’S LIEUT.—’

  He couldn’t remember who the lieutenant was. He couldn’t even remember the name of the newspaper. But next morning he burrowed into the files of Fleet Street, identified the newspaper and discovered my name. He tracked me down through the papers of every officer called James in the British Army.

  In reply to Colonel Lester’s question, I told him that I certainly was patriotic. I had fought in the First World War and had been wounded on the Somme. That was why I could do no actual fighting in this war.

  “Yes, yes,” he said with a touch of impatience. “I know all about that. We have a complete record of your life up to date.”

  While I stared at him wondering if I was dreaming, he handed me a printed paper explaining that it was a copy of the Official Secrets Act.

  “Read it through carefully,” he said, “and when you have thoroughly grasped it, sign the declaration at the bottom.”

  I tried to read it, but my head was in such a whirl that the words conveyed nothing to me. For the life of me I couldn’t understand what he was getting at or why I should come under the Official Secrets Act. Was I to be dropped with a cine-camera behind the enemy’s lines to record some secret German activity at peril of my life? Colonel Lester seemed to me now like a Man of Mystery, one of those compelling characters in fiction who hypnotize innocent strangers into embarking upon adventures against fearful odds.

  Having signed the paper I waited for the next shock. It was not long in coming.

  “You know who you’re like, don’t you, James?”

  “No, sir,” I said stupidly. My brain had almost ceased to function.

  “You are very much like General Montgomery, or Monty, as he is commonly called.”

  I was in a mood to start at shadows. It seemed to me now that I had walked into a trap. That incriminating photo of myself posing as Monty had been spotted by somebody at the War Office and I was about to be arrested and court-marshalled for unlawful impersonation. Getting me to sign the paper was the preliminary to my disgrace and imprisonment.

  But his next words reassured me a little. “Perhaps I owe you an apology. I have nothing to do with Army films. I am a member of MI 5, the Army Intelligence branch.”

  Why apologize to a man who is about to be arrested? I looked up from the carpet and met his clear grey eyes.

  “You have been chosen to act as the double of General Montgomery before D-Day,” he said quietly. “I am in charge of this job. It is our business to trick the enemy and perhaps save the lives of thousands of men.”

  The walls of the room began to sway, and his voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  “Have a cigarette.”

  Mechanically I took one and held it to his lighter. My head began to ache and my throat felt suddenly dry. I longed for a strong cup of tea.

  He said nothing for some moments; then he told me of the difficulties he had had in finding a suitable double and of his confidence that out of all the people he had contacted I was the one man who could carry out the task successfully.

  He impressed on me the necessity for speed. “I have no idea of the date of the invasion, but there is no time to be lost. We shall train you to play your part, and when the time comes for you to go on the stage you will be General Montgomery.”

  A strange feeling began to come over me, the feeling one has when a dream becomes so fantastic that common sense wakes one up.

  “You will impersonate Monty in Great Britain while he himself goes abroad to launch an invasion in the Mediterranean.”

  As I discovered later, this was not true. It was a reversal of the actual plans which were only disclosed to me at the last possible moment. At that time they did not know if I was capable of keeping my mouth shut and so there was a double reason why they should play for safety. If, in fact, I allowed the secret to leak out, the Germans would learn the very story which MI 5 were hoping to plant in their minds. They would think that Monty was going abroad.

  “Now listen carefully,” the calm voice went on. “You have signed the Official Secrets Act declaration. Do you understand what this implies? You must not breathe a word of what has passed between us to any person whatsoever. While you are under my orders you will communicate with no one, do you understand? You will not be returning to your unit for some considerable time, and henceforth you must sever all connection with everyone you know. You will stay in London, and each morning at 9 a.m. sharp you will ring me at this number.”

  He handed me a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. “Memorize this number and destroy it. Have you any questions?”

  I shook my head. Either I should have to ask several dozens of questions or none at all.

  “Very well,” he said briskly. “Take my advice: go to bed early and have a good sleep. Don’t forget to ring me tomorrow morning.”

  He picked up the famous Homburg hat and pushed out some of the dents.

  “By the way, we must be careful never to be seen together in public. After I have gone, wait here for a bit and then mak
e your way out.”

  He put on his hat and the grim lines of his face relaxed. “I apologize for this seeming unfriendliness, but in this sort of work we often have to dispense with the courtesies.”

  He opened the door, but half-way out he remembered something else.

  “By the way, is that your wife waiting downstairs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He came back into the room and drummed his fingers on the desk. Suddenly he rapped out: “This is an order. Get rid of your wife at once. I don’t care how you do it or what stories you tell her provided it isn’t the truth. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll find you won’t be able to bluff her for long. Wives are usually too clever for that. Tell her—yes, tell her you’re going to make some Top Secret Army films concerned with new types of armament. Get her to go back to Leicester at once.”

  “Very well, sir,” I replied, wondering how on earth I could do it.

  “Right.” He went out of the door, but just before he closed it behind him he smiled and said, “Colonel Niven asks me to say he hopes you don’t think him too much of a skunk.”

  After he had gone a reaction set in from all the excitement of the last half-hour. I don’t know how long I sat in that big room letting a stream of highly coloured fancies course through my mind.

  My first feeling was that I was caught in a trap, and my second was something like that nightmare I often have that I come on the stage before an immense audience and can’t remember a single line of my part.

  Could I really play such a tremendous role? Probably MI 5 were so desperate after failing to find someone to impersonate Monty that they were only pretending I would do. Did I look like him? I saw myself going abroad with absurd pomp and ceremony, to be greeted with roars of laughter and cat-calls from the troops, and perhaps the grim smiles of German spies, for my effrontery in daring to pose as a world-famous General. I could almost see the headlines in the newspapers when the fiasco could no longer be hushed up. I should become the laughing-stock of the world.

  To think of a man like myself, who to this day has a schoolboy fear of senior officers, impersonating the greatest of them all, and being saluted by Generals and Air Marshals! There was something grimly comic in the idea, but presently I began to feel a trifle better.

  I thought of my Pay Corps Colonel looking at me sternly across his desk and rapping out, “Understand, you must be back here in exactly seven days.” What would he do when I had not returned in seven weeks? I was involved in operations of such secrecy that it would be impossible for them to tell him the truth, and if they spun him a yarn that I was making films he would explode like a bomb.

  Every actor has a role which it is his ambition to play, but whoever heard of an actor being cast to play in real life the role of a living and extremely famous General? Somehow as soon as I thought of being cast to play my part, the job lost some of its terror. I must look upon the whole thing as a play, and myself as the Leading Man’s understudy. Of course there would be a great difference between playing a part in the theatre and playing a part in real life. Producers had always warned me not to copy the actors I understudied but to play the part in my own way. But now I should have to do exactly the opposite. I must imitate General Montgomery so closely that I became him.

  Could I do it? Doubts assailed me afresh. And then I thought of that astonishing man Colonel Lester, and of the complete confidence he seemed to have in me. How could I doubt when he was so certain that I would succeed?

  And here I must say that in all my life I have met only one or two born leaders, men who cast a spell round them and infuse others with their own courage. Colonel Lester was one of them. Always quiet, unassuming, dressed in the same well-worn suit, he never wasted words but told you just what he wanted done and saw that you did it. The spell which he cast over me was so powerful that I always felt his reassuring presence even in my worst moments and when he was no longer with me.

  More than once in the course of the nerve-racking ordeals which lay ahead of me I was seized with panic when thousands of miles from home. With all that terrible responsibility on my shoulders I felt horribly alone and almost at the end of my resources. And then suddenly in my mind’s ear I would hear that cheery voice: “Buck up, James, you’re doing jolly well. Let me do the worrying.” And at once I would feel better.

  At times he was like a father to whom I could take my troubles. At other times he was very stern and strict, like an old-fashioned headmaster. Once I was late for an appointment with him. He hated unpunctuality. I was never late again. I have always admired clever men. He was one of the cleverest men I have ever met and he had an inner strength which it is impossible to describe.

  At last I pulled myself together and tottered down the stairs. Eve was sitting where I had left her. As soon as she saw me she jumped up and stared at me in dismay. As she told me later, the commissionaire seeing her sitting in the hall for nearly two hours went over to her and asked, “Are you in trouble?” When she said no, she was waiting for her husband, he remarked, “He’s been up them such a time, they’re either putting him on a charge or making him a General!”

  “Jimmy—what’s the matter? You’re as white as a sheet.”

  LIEUTENANT CLIFTON JAMES, ROYAL ARMY PAY CORPS

  She took my arm and peered anxiously into my face. I saw two of the messengers looking at us with some curiosity.

  “Let’s get out of this,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  “You’re not all right. What has happened? Aren’t you feeling well?”

  She continued plying me with questions until I was almost desperate. I replied evasively and incoherently. Full of concern, she linked her arm through mine and we went out into the street.

  “Let’s get a taxi,” I mumbled.

  The questions came at me like a stream of bullets. “Something’s happened. You’re in trouble. Please tell me.”

  Would she believe the lies I was about to tell her? There was hardly a dog’s chance that she would.

  A taxi came along and we got in. Neither of us spoke for a minute or two. I made an heroic effort.

  “Listen, darling, there’s nothing wrong. I am to take part in making some very important hush-hush films to do with secret armaments. I hate to say it, but I think it would be better if you went straight back to Leicester.”

  She looked at me sadly and her voice changed tone. “I don’t believe you. I know when you’re not speaking the truth. You’re in some trouble. Won’t you tell me what it is —and let me help you?”

  I said nothing. Her eyes filled with tears and I felt simply awful. But I had to go on with it even if she knew I was lying—even if it meant a separation. I was beginning to realize how ruthless Secret Service work can be. Neither life nor death nor love must stand in the way of it when it comes to a show-down.

  I knew that I couldn’t stand up to her questioning for long, and so I tried different tactics. I became curt and hard, pointing out the supreme importance of the work which I had been chosen to do and explaining that if I breathed a single word to her I should have to answer for it and perhaps get into very serious trouble.

  She listened to me in silence and then in a small stifled voice she said: “It’s no good, you’re lying to me. I suppose you want to get rid of me.”

  We drove to David Sendee’s house in a constrained silence. Eve was now convinced, as she told me later, that I had committed some military crime, while I was overwhelmed by my interview with Colonel Lester and at the same time exasperated that Eve refused to believe my story about making secret Army films.

  David, thank goodness, was not only the perfect host but a naturally reticent man. Although when he saw us he must have known that something was very wrong, he asked no questions and tactfully kept up a flow of cheerful conversation. Finding that this did little to relieve the tension between us he retired to do some work in his garden.

  As soon as he left us Eve laid down a fresh barr
age of questions. By now I was beginning to feel worn out by the strain of what I had gone through and something like another quarrel began to develop. But after tea she went out to see her sister who lived on the far side of the Heath. I went up to our bedroom and flung myself on the bed trying in vain to think of some way to escape from this terrible estrangement which was coming between us.

  I saw that I must do something pretty drastic even if it meant a complete separation and the break-up of our home. At all costs I must persuade her to leave London at once.

  When she came in again I was relieved to find her much more cheerful and I hoped that our quarrel was over. We said no more about my future. Next morning at nine o’clock, feeling like a spy in a thriller, I slipped down to the phone in the hall, dialled the number and asked for the extension which I had been given. I was told to report to the War Office immediately.

  Just after I had put the receiver back Eve came down and asked coldly, “Who was that you were phoning?”

  As casually as I could I replied, “I was just getting my orders about this new job of mine.”

  “So I gathered. Who is it gives you your orders, and where is this job?”

  While I was casting round for a plausible reply she put her arms round me. “Please, darling, can’t you see how I’m feeling? Just put yourself in my place. There have never been any secrets between us before. Why are you so secretive all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not being secretive. You don’t understand.”

  “No, I certainly don’t. You look as if you’d had a bad shock and were in dreadful trouble. Won’t you tell me the truth and let me help you?”