“The Colonel has given me orders to take you straight in to him—if and when you come back. You’ll have a good deal of explaining to do, I should say. Come on, let’s get it over.”
He marched out of the office and I followed him marvelling at his starchiness and formality.
Presently I found myself seeing the Colonel with George standing stiffly to attention beside me. For some moments the Colonel did not speak. I suppose his feelings were too much for him. He just sat and stared at me with no very pleasant expression.
Looking back on it now I can sympathize with his indignation. Quite suddenly he had been told by his General that a junior officer of his to whom he had granted a week’s unofficial leave on the plea that he was wanted for filming was removed from his Command for Special Pay Duties.
He must have known that this was a put-up job. In the first place, any officer chosen for Special Pay Duties would have to be a Regular and not inferior in rank to a Major, with years of experience behind him. Furthermore, this officer would be posted officially, his name appearing in Part I Orders, not to mention the circulation of a great many official memos.
He knew that sand had been thrown in his eyes, and not only was his pride hurt, but his years of Army training made him incensed at the apparently casual way I had walked out of the Pay Office and simply disappeared. As I looked at him I dimly guessed what was passing in his mind.
“Well, James,” he began quietly, “so you have decided to return to your duty station? Some time ago you came to me with a cock-and-bull story about Army films and you showed me a letter from—a friend of yours, I have no doubt. On the strength of your story and the letter, and I may say against my better judgment, I granted you one week’s leave. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The General rang me up and informed me that you were to go on Special Pay Duties.”
“Yes, sir.”
Suddenly he lost control. “Damn it, man,” he shouted, “you don’t know the first thing about Special Pay Duties!”
Of course I couldn’t deny that. More quietly he continued: “What sort of Special Pay Duties do you think you’re capable of? The only kind that I know are investigating cases where there has been some grave deficiency in regimental or other funds.”
He leaned back in his chair. “What were these Duties? Where have you been?”
All I could reply to this was that I had been severely cautioned to keep my mouth shut. Naturally this did not go down very well with him.
“Very well,” he said, “I will tell you what I propose to do. I shall put you on a charge as a deserter. Perhaps we shall get at the truth about your movements when you come up before a court martial.”
I stood there in front of him unable to say a word. And suddenly he exploded again.
“You, a junior officer, having the infernal audacity to try and put one over on your own Colonel! I don’t know what you’ve been telling the G.O.C., but I am not deceived.”
Turning to George he snapped, “Send in Major Walters.”
I saw then that he meant business and that I should have to take a risk.
“May I speak to you privately, sir?” I asked.
“Very well,” he growled. “Wait outside, Reid.”
When the Adjutant had gone out I said, “I am very sorry to have to put you in this position, sir, but I am under strict orders not to say one word to anyone about what I have been doing.”
He frowned at me and then began fuming. “Under whose orders? You are under my orders, aren’t you? “Who else can give you orders, I should like to know, without referring to me?”
There was no answer I could think of to this.
“Frankly, I don’t believe a word of your story,” he said, stretching out his hand to press the bell on his desk.
I knew then that I should have to break my promise to Colonel Lester and tell him whom I had been working under or else face arrest, court martial and Heaven knows how much unwelcome publicity and awkward cross-examination.
Psychologists can explain it how they will, but as I realize now, it was moments of danger or emergency which jerked me back into the Monty role. I heard myself saying in a cold, precise tone: “Pick up that phone and get on to the War Office—understand? Ask for MI 5. They will tell you all that it is necessary for you to know.”
He looked at me in amazement, and without a word he picked up the receiver. But on second thoughts he replaced it, sighed deeply and gave me a sudden smile.
He said, “There was a rumour going round here that you were in the Tower of London waiting trial as a spy.”
I couldn’t help returning his smile.
“I am glad it was only a rumour,” he went on drily, “both on your own account and on mine. I suppose you can’t tell me anything—off the record?”
“I am very sorry, sir, but I have been given the strictest instructions not to talk to anyone. The official story is that I have been on film work connected with Top Secret weapons.” I grinned at him. “The Special Pay Duties wasn’t a very good one.”
To do him justice, he bore me no ill-will for keeping my lips sealed, and we parted on friendly terms.
“Very well,” were his last words. “Report to your section and call Reid in.”
I believe he was thinking that an officer of his being chosen to carry out Secret Service work was after all rather flattering to his battalion. As I went to the door he actually gave me a sly wink.
George was standing outside looking more than a little worried.
“Hullo, Georgie,” I greeted him. “It’s all over and the old man wants you.”
He stared at me in great astonishment. “Isn’t he going to put you on a charge?”
“Whatever for? I told him where I had been and everything’s perfectly O.K. now.”
Later on when he had been in to the Colonel I told him my story about filming secret weapons and I was thankful to find that he swallowed it.
“We’ve all been worrying about what was coming to you when you got back,” he said darkly. Evidently the story about the Tower of London had been circulating pretty freely.
When I joined my section I soon realized that the men were bursting with curiosity to hear where I had been, so I told my Sergeant the hand-out story knowing that he would immediately repeat it in the Sergeants’ Mess.
In the canteen questions were fired at me from all directions. Again and again I had to repeat my story, but not always with complete success. A few remained sceptical and suspicious.
One officer told me it had been reported on the highest level that I had been arrested as a spy, and he seemed indignant that I was not still a prisoner in the Tower. This story was repeated to me many times, and to this day I have never discovered who started it.
I soon settled down once again to routine work which was about as strongly in contrast to the work I had just been doing as it is possible to imagine. I tried hard to forget the past, but I came to realize that my fellow officers had changed their attitude towards me. They avoided me, and when I joined a group of them I noticed that they stopped talking.
I tried to discover what was the matter, but I did not succeed. I suppose the explanation is that I had become a mystery man and they felt uncomfortable when I was about. Obviously some of them had never believed my story about the filming, and no doubt fresh stories to account for my absence were already in circulation behind my back.
As time went by I began to feel the strain of this barrier which had formed round me. Some of my fellow officers never gave up questioning me as if they hoped one day to catch me out. I don’t know what their motive was, but I found it trying to be forever on the defensive.
As soon as the war ended I applied to go on the Control Commission in order to escape from this perpetual inquisition, but my application was refused. I was thankful when at last my turn for demobilization came and I was able to return to civilian life.
Chapter XIX
THE AFTERMATH
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Soon after the end of hostilities a good many war books began to appear on both sides of the Atlantic. I wrote to Colonel Lester to ask if I might publish my story of the Impersonation, but he replied sternly that I was still under the ban of secrecy. However, things were soon to take a dramatic turn.
One day I was told by a friend that my name had been mentioned rather unflatteringly in a book called My Three Years with Eisenhower, by an American named Captain Harry C. Butcher. The county library got me a copy of it. The passage which referred to me was a little surprising.
After giving a short account of the Impersonation, the author went on: ‘Someone walked into S.H.A.E.F. and with his tongue in his cheek said that Monty’s Double had been seen staggering about Gibraltar, drunk, smoking a large cigar. Monty, livid, rose to the bait and was going to send disciplinary cables.’
Not being accustomed to the American style of humour I was somewhat taken aback. At length I went to the War Office asked them if anything could be done about it. I was told no, they were powerless to do anything, for Butcher was an American and he had left the country.
But once again it was Monty who came to my rescue. When he heard about the book he was furious, and he saw to it that I was given permission to write a short ‘vetted’ version of my adventures. After he had passed it personally it was published in the Sunday Express.
There was a sequel to this. Four years later the editor of the News Review rang me up to ask if I knew that Captain Butcher was coming over to attend a D-Day Remembrance service on the beaches of Normandy. According to the American Press he intended to visit Great Britain to see me and apologize for what he had said about me in the book.
A week later the News Review gave me a short write-up, quoting the American newspapers. But the whole thing was a wet squib. Butcher never saw me or wrote to me.
Unwittingly he did me rather a bad turn. For months I had to put up with such greetings as: “Hullo, Jimmy, fancy seeing you! I wish I‘d had as good a time as you did in the war—taking off Monty and staggering about from bar to bar.”
Some people took a grave view of it. One pompous acquaintance told me I ought to be ashamed of myself letting down my country and getting drunk in the uniform of a British General. Ah well, I dare say I helped to pay for the radio station which Butcher bought with the proceeds of his book.
One day coming out of an agent’s office I ran into a friend who took me along to a bar and stood me a drink. An elderly man was standing by the bar counter.
“Hullo, Collins,” said my friend. “Out of the Navy at last, are you? May I introduce Mr. Clifton James.”
Automatically he held out his hand, then stared at me and withdrew it.
“Clifton James, did you say?”
“Yes.”
Glaring at me he said: “I have a bone to pick with you. Early one morning in Gib., after I had been on duty all night, I had just got into bed when I was ordered to turn out on parade to welcome General Montgomery.”
With immense solemnity he went on, “I have since learned that it was not General Montgomery who fetched me out of bed that morning, but a certain Lieutenant Clifton James.”
At first I thought he was joking, but he looked so much like an angry turkey cock that I realized he must have been nursing a grudge against me for years.
“I was only obeying orders,” I said mildly.
“Capering round the Middle East dolled up like a bloody General!” Collins growled. “I expect you had the time of your life.”
As a result of the articles which appeared in the Sunday Express I became for a while almost front-page news. A great many newspapers and journals both at home and abroad published photos of me alongside Monty. I was invited to parties and asked to address many different kinds of gatherings and tell them as much as I was allowed to about my adventures.
With my name on everyone’s tongue I thought this might be a good opportunity to get back on to the Stage. Full of optimism I went for an interview with a theatrical manager. He gave me a most effusive welcome.
“Clifton James! I’m delighted to see you. Good heavens, you’re the living spit of him. It’s amazing. Excuse me a moment.”
In no time his office was full of people who stared at me as if I were a waxwork. After they had goggled at me for some time I ventured to say: “I’m trying to forget all this. I came here to get some work.”
At once there was an awkward silence and I soon found myself alone with the manager again. Sitting at his desk he looked at me sadly.
“I’m sorry, old man, there’s nothing doing. I daren’t cast you for a part, you’d be too much of a disturbing influence. The audience wouldn’t be interested in the show but only in having a look at Monty’s Double. Sorry, but there it is.”
This was something new in my experience. Usually an actor hopes at all costs to make a name for himself, to be a household word with the public. But now it seemed that fame could be of the wrong sort. Wherever I applied I was received effusively, congratulated and shown to a gaping staff, but as soon as I asked for a job I was shown to the door.
At last I was driven to try for crowd work in the film studios. I managed to get a small contract, but I was soon pounced upon by the publicity man and photographed with Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison and other stars in my uniform and a beret.
There was something comical in what happened next, though at the time it didn’t strike me as very funny. Just when I was growing desperate I had a letter from a stranger who said that he had a tip-top business proposition to offer me. He wrote from an address in Manchester, and with high hopes I replied at once asking for details. Back came a letter saying that the writer could offer me big money if I would appear in the North, opening early in the summer.
By return I wrote again enquiring what was the town and the theatre. I also asked for a contract to be sent which I promised to sign immediately.
A week went by before the eagerly awaited reply came. Tearing open the envelope I read the enclosed letter and hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. It said that the writer had a good ‘pitch’ at Blackpool on the South shore and would like me to appear in his side-show on a sharing basis! I was pretty desperate, but I hardly fended appearing as Monty alongside freaks and fat ladies for holiday-makers to gape on.
Then something rather unexpected happened. One day I had a phone call from a Staff Colonel at the War Office who told me that Field Marshal Montgomery had promised to take part in a pageant at Chilham Castle in Kent, but at the last moment finding himself unable to go he had said, “Ask James to take my place.”
When I went down to the Castle I found that I had to make a dramatic appearance through a yew hedge as a climax to the pageant. On the cue “Yet lastly we produced a Churchill and a Montgomery” I came out from my hiding place, passed between a double file of soldiers representing the Kent Volunteers in the days of Napoleon, and standing in the midst of them I gave the famous Monty salute.
Only a few of the audience were in the know, and the roar of applause which went up showed that the majority took me for Monty himself.
One evening I was asked to give a talk to an ex-Servicemen’s Association. After the talk I was introduced to a gravelooking man who might have been an undertaker but who, as I soon discovered, was an archaeologist recently returned from Egypt. Before long he was describing a portrait head which he had unearthed and which he considered nearly as fine as the famous obsidian portrait head of King Amenemhet III.
This led him to tell me of the plot to assassinate Amenemhet I, and how when his son, Senusert, became King before his death he advised him: “Be on your guard against subordinates. Trust not a brother, know not a friend, and make not for thyself intimates, for it profiteth nothing.”
Something prompted me to ask if he had ever met another archaeologist, Professor Salvadore Cerrini.
He stared at me. “Did you know him?” he enquired.
“I met him once for a few minutes,” I replied, wishing that I
had not mentioned the subject.
“Where was that?”
At that time I was still under a ban of secrecy about many of the details of the Impersonation. I countered by asking him why he had used the word ‘did’. Was the Professor dead?
“Yes,” he said quietly. After a moment he added, “He died under mysterious circumstances.”
Naturally I wanted to hear more. He told me that soon the war ended the Professor had been engaged on excavating a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and one morning had been discovered dead from a knife wound. How he had met his death or what was the murderer’s motive was still a mystery.
“Do you think a curse had been laid on the tomb?” I asked.
“Impossible to say. Curses often were laid on the tombs of the Egyptian, rulers and some of them worked out in very curious ways.”
I thought of King Amenemhet’s warning to his son and of the report which Professor Cerrini must have put in about Monty’s visit to North Africa, but I said nothing.
Once you have been involved in Secret Service work you can never quite escape from it. I found that this applied even to me.
Soon after I began work on this book I had a phone call from somebody who gave his name as Max Harris and described himself as a journalist. He asked me for an interview. This surprised me. I told him that I was no longer Press news; but he brushed this aside and said he would come down from London the next morning.
When he arrived he turned out to be a very ordinary-looking man of about forty with the glib flow of conversation which you often find in Press-men. I couldn’t see why he should want to talk about the Impersonation so long after the event, but this is what we did. Presently he asked me if I had any written account of it which gave more details than had yet appeared in print. I explained that I was writing a book which was not yet available.
“What I am really interested in is the planning of the job,” he said.
“Planning?”
I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE Page 18