Lieutenant M.E. Clifton James was at his desk at the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1944, when he received a telephone call from film star Colonel David
Niven, who was serving
with the army Kinematograph section during the Second World War.
The call was the first thread in an elaborate web of deception intended to draw attention away from the imminent Allied invasion of Europe. James, who had fought in the trenches during the First World War, was a peacetime actor who happened to bear an extraordinary close physical resemblance to General Montgomery, the victor of El Alamein and the commander-in-chief of all ground forces for the Normandy landings of 1944. Security chiefs hatched a
plan which involved using James to impersonate Monty. Monty's double was then to be
dispatched to Gibraltar and North Africa in order to delude the Germans that Monty was going to lead an invasion from southern France, rather than from Normandy.
Under conditions of the utmost secrecy, James was posted as a Sergeant of the Intelligence Corps to Monty's staff so that he could study the general's voice, gestures and mannerisms: the way he saluted, for example, clasped his hands behind his back, or pinched a little roll of his cheek when thinking. As an actor, James had little difficulty in mastering Monty's every movement, but he was more worried about his ability to capture Monty's personality. "It was so unique and overpowering", he wrote in his classic I was Monty's Double, "that I despaired of ever being him. It was one thing to ape the outside of a man, but quite another to acquire something of his fire and forcefulness."
James underestimated his abilities. after several rehearsals, he flew as General Montgomery to Gibraltar, where he was greeted by the British Governor and introduced - as if by chance - to several of Hitler's known secret agents. A similar performance was then repeated in
Algiers, where he was cheered by British troops. News of "Monty's" whereabouts
travelled fast - transmitted by enemy agents back to the German High Command. James's performance was as fine as any he ever gave and contributed in no small way to the success of what his British Secret Service handler described as 'one of the greatest plans of deception that has ever been attempted'.
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