M. E. Clifton James
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Meyrick Edward Clifton James (1898 - 8 May 1963) was an actor and soldier, notable for his resemblance to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
Clifton James was born in Perth, Australia, the youngest son of notable Australian public servant John Charles Horsey James, and his wife Rebecca Catherine Clifton.[1] After serving in World War I he took up acting and at the outbreak of World War II volunteered his services to the Army as an entertainer. Instead of being assigned to ENSA as he had hoped, Clifton James was commissioned into the Royal Army Pay Corps and eventually posted to Leicester.
About seven weeks before D-Day in 1944, a British Lieutenant-Colonel, J.V.B. Jervis-Reid, noticed Clifton James's resemblance to Montgomery while he was reviewing photographs in a newspaper. MI5 decided to exploit the resemblance to confuse German intelligence. James was contacted by Colonel David Niven, who worked for the Army's film unit, and was asked to come to London on the pretext of making a film. The ruse was part of a wider deception which aimed to divert troops from northern France, by convincing the Germans that an Allied invasion of Southern France (see Operation Dragoon) would precede a northern invasion.[2]
The plan was code-named "Operation Copperhead" and Clifton James was assigned to Montgomery's staff to learn his speech and mannerisms. Despite the problems that he had with alcohol (Montgomery did not drink at all), and the differences in personality, the project continued. He also had to give up smoking. Clifton James had lost his right-hand middle finger in the First World War and so a prosthetic finger was made.
On 25 May 1944 Clifton James flew from Northolt to Gibraltar on Churchill's private aircraft. At a reception at the governor-general's house, hints were made about Plan 303, a plan to invade southern France. German intelligence picked this up and ordered agents to find out what they could about Plan 303.
Clifton James then flew to Algiers where over the next few days he made a round of public appearances with General Henry Wilson, the Allied commander in the Mediterranean theatre. Clifton James was then secretly flown to Cairo where he stayed until the invasion in Normandy was well underway. He then returned to his job after an absence of five weeks.
In 1954 Clifton James published his exploits in a book entitled - I Was Monty's Double. The book became the basis for the script of the 1958 film of the same name, starring John Mills and Cecil Parker with Clifton James playing himself and Montgomery. He died on 8 May 1963 in Worthing aged 65.[3] .
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- Clifton James, M. E., I Was Monty's Double; Hamilton and Co. 1954
- Howard, Sir Michael, Strategic Deception (British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 5); Cambridge University Press, New York, 1990, p. 126
- Holt, Thaddeus, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War ; Scribner, New York, 2004, pp. 561-62, 815
- British National Archives, "A" Force Permanent Record File, Narrative War Diary, CAB 154/4 pp. 85-90
