Churchill's White Rabbit (33 page)

Ian Fleming was a backseat spy, and there are various legends about great plans he concocted and missions he went on, including a story about training at SOE’s Camp X in Canada. However, the facts behind these legends are missing: they are a combination of wishful thinking and purposeful misdirection on Fleming’s part – he was always the natural storyteller.

Fleming’s career in NID was largely a desk job; he did make a trip to France to try and persuade Admiral Darlan to move his fleet to England in the early days of the war when the Nazis had taken Paris, but he was unsuccessful and his mission was one more of diplomacy than espionage. From his position in room 39, orchestrating and listening to the various intelligence missions the British were running, he could live the life of a spy vicariously. It was the closest he could get to the action; no one really considered him secret agent material, but as an organiser and creative individual he stood out.

Somewhere along the line he learnt about Forest Yeo-Thomas. It’s probable that had the two ever actually met they would have got along quite well. Both had a well-ingrained stubborn streak and an independent nature. Neither had been particularly fond of school or academic achievements, despite being intelligent men, and had preferred instead to excel at sports, though not team games (Forest was keen on boxing, while Fleming was exceptional in athletics). Neither had a peaceful relationship with their parents and both felt the burden of being compared to a favoured sibling: in Ian’s case his older brother Peter, in Forest’s his dead younger brother Jack.

Both were men of action deemed unsuitable for the field, Ian because of his independent streak and difficulty to control, Forest because of his age. But while Forest had managed to overcome these obstacles and become an active agent for SOE, Ian remained stuck at his desk. That is where their similarities end. Ian was glorified as an ideal spymaster, had he only had the opportunity to sit further up in the NID. His work with 30AU, which he initially controlled, demonstrated this. Forest on the other hand was much more typically a spy: he found organising necessary but frustrating and his temper could make him far from diplomatic.

Emotionally the two men had a lot in common, especially their creativity. Forest had come up with some audacious and completely unworkable ideas during his time in SOE and Ian had certainly matched him with schemes for underwater concrete observation posts and daring raids. Both had individually concocted plans for kidnapping a high-ranking German officer. There seems little doubt that Ian would have liked a man like Forest working on espionage for him, though Forest may have found the budding novelist’s need for control rather taxing on his patience.

This leads smoothly to speculation about the ultimate spy and ladies’ man, James Bond. Was Forest one of many inspirations for 007?

Over the years there has been a great deal of speculation as to who the real Bond was, and the consensus is now that there was no single individual who formed the character, but that he was an amalgamation of several people, both known and not known personally to Ian Fleming. Fleming rather enjoyed spreading rumours about who the real Bond was, sometimes doing it for publicity, sometimes for a joke. But his time in NID and his connections to other secret organisations certainly gave him plenty of inspiration for the ultimate secret agent.
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SOE in particular contained a lot of brave and heroic individuals whose stories stuck in Fleming’s memory. Agents went undercover for months, even years, and faced horrendous torture and death if captured. There was something extraordinary and dashing about these men and women who slipped into the Nazi world, many never to return.

Two significant SOE names that have been linked to Fleming are Vera Atkins and Christine Granville. Atkins was an executive officer in the F Section of SOE and known for her work after the war of trying to trace the fates of the hundreds of SOE agents who never returned from missions. She was originally employed as a secretary, but quickly proved an exceptional intelligence officer. In her obituary in the
New York Times
she was credited with being the inspiration for Miss Moneypenny, the formidable secretary to Bond’s boss ‘M’ and a staple of the novels. It is reasonable to suspect that Atkins might have preferred a more dynamic fictional role.

Christine Granville caught Fleming’s attention just after the war. An amazing and audacious agent, Christine managed to talk her way out of many difficult situations partly because of her dramatic and inventive imagination and partly because of her innate sex appeal. In his 1993 book, Donald McCormick makes a case for her being the original Vesper Lynd, Bond’s love interest in his first adventure
Casino Royale
. There is no conclusive proof, as in all Bond speculations, that she was the genuine inspiration, but she was a friend of Fleming’s and it is possible that he carried on a quiet affair with her. In 1947 he wrote to a friend: ‘I see exactly what you mean about Christine. She literally shines with all the qualities and splendours of a fictitious character. How rarely one finds such types.’
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In 1952 Fleming wrote his first Bond novel as a mental escape from his pending marriage. The same year, Christine was murdered. She was stabbed to death in a hotel at the age of 37.

The list of Bond inspirations is forever growing, but Forest Yeo-Thomas’ name has not cropped up with a Fleming connection before. The letter that links them and proves that the novelist had at least some interest in the man and his escapades, is tucked away in a thick personnel file. It is small slip of paper, all too easy to overlook if the name ‘Ian Fleming’ was not spotted on the bottom.

What could have been the reason for Fleming’s fascination with Forest? Well, he was a rarity among SOE agents – he fell into the hands of the Nazis and came out alive. His amazing escapes (switching identities, jumping from trains, fleeing through no-man’s-land) would be enough to draw any budding thriller writer’s attention, but Forest’s connection with James Bond went deeper than that.

Forest was not just a good secret agent, he was a great one. SOE was swamped with the mediocre, the mundane and even the dangerously careless. There were not many men like Forest who had the skill to stay undercover and the caution to maintain their security. There were even fewer who survived the war to tell their story. Forest was also a relatively high-ranking agent: he took charge of situations and was not just another wireless operator or messenger boy to be bossed around. He demanded respect and he usually got it. Fleming could identify with such a man.

Then there was Forest’s life. He was charming and attractive to women, not necessarily because he was stunningly handsome, but because he was good company, and in a war situation, gave worried helpers the impression that he could take care of them. Forest was surrounded by women: the main members of his personal cell were all female. While Bond would have struggled to put such faith in female agents, he certainly would have appreciated being surrounded by loyal women. Jose Dupuis could even be considered reminiscent of the formidable Miss Moneypenny.

Aside from his female connections, Forest was an impressive master of disguise. He had a whole host of tricks that would have appealed to Bond, who also knew the value of a good cover. From faked walks to a range of hats that changed his appearance, Forest could blend in anywhere. He also always carried a gun; this was not general SOE policy, but for once Forest broke the rules and was not afraid to get his hands dirty if the need arose. If he had to kill he could do so, armed or unarmed.

His eventual capture was due to an act of betrayal, the same method that usually results in Bond’s downfall. His torture held all the dark torments that Fleming would inflict on his personal spy. The beating of Bond’s genitals in
Casino Royale
is all too familiar of the Gestapo techniques that Forest endured.

Lastly there is the daring and incredible escape, the bravery to the last and, when trying to survive, still that desire to fulfil a mission. For Forest, that was getting details of medical experiments out of Buchenwald, something he achieved despite the terrible odds against him. It was probably his ‘letter from Buchenwald’ describing these experiments that Fleming refers to in his own letter.

Finally there was the fact that Forest survived. He came home, he made it. There is an element of thriller fiction in Forest’s story, a suggestion that some of the incidents he was involved in may have been exaggerated slightly. Fleming would have liked that: he was fond of inviting legends about himself. But what was ultimately important was that Forest returned a hero, even if it was only a hero to his closest friends and those he saved. Bond could identify with that.

So was Forest an inspiration for Bond? He certainly has as many credentials and Fleming connections as other accepted contenders. His story was known to Fleming and intrigued him. Is it unreasonable to think he would not have stored away memories of Forest’s adventures that would resurface when he began creating a new spy? All novelists are inspired by the people around them and the stories they hear and lock away inside their minds. Forest was a true-life hero and he was as close to Bond as any real agent could possibly be.

But the post-war period for Forest was far removed from Fleming’s world. When he arrived in London it was to be greeted by Barbara, who had been tormented with the idea that she would never see him again. Forest was not the man she remembered: gaunt, shaven-headed, ailing and with too many dark and grim memories to enable him to settle easily back into normal life.

Forest’s mind was consumed with one overriding desire: revenge. He wanted to find the man who betrayed him, he wanted to make the Germans who had tortured him suffer and he wanted to make the camp doctors and commandants stand before a courtroom and try to defend themselves. As he arrived home his thoughts revolved around the friends he had lost: Brossolette, who he now learned was long dead, and Hubble, whose chess set he had sacrificed bread for, to name but two. Life would never be the same.

Meanwhile SOE was singing its swan song. There would be no need for it in peacetime and the various sections were rapidly reduced to leave enough space for the tying up of loose ends only. De Gaulle was back in France and scorning his British allies as only he could, and the Americans were fast preparing for the pending war crimes trials at Nuremburg. Then there were the Russians, but that was business for MI6. In the muddle of post-war confusion, one sick and frail rescued agent was greeted warmly and then forgotten.

Forest’s first stop was a military hospital at Millbank, where a preliminary diagnosis was a tad depressing. The physician noted:

1. Diminished airway right side of nose.

2. Persistent headache confined to right side of head.

This officer is referred for the E.N.T. specialist’s opinion to exclude nasal cause for his persistent headaches.

He appears to have a deflected septum with a reduced airway on the right side. I should be grateful for your opinion about his nasal condition and possible presence of a chronic infected antrum or sinuses.
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After a more thorough examination the ENT specialist felt there was no reason to suspect that Forest’s nose problems were the cause of his headaches. He remarked that the reduced airway was probably due to an allergy problem. There are no further medical documents in the file, but it would later become apparent that they had missed something vital.

On the other hand, Forest’s psychological evaluation was much more intense. Post-traumatic stress was not a term bandied around, but the war office had learned enough from the First World War to realise that they couldn’t expect badly war-damaged individuals to just walk back into a normal life. At least not without first cataloguing their condition.

In August 1945 SOE was advised that Forest’s ‘psychological condition is, naturally enough, very bad indeed’ and they should not allow him to be interviewed about his war experiences for the Nuremburg trials until he was more recovered. Forest, however, had other ideas. Moves were afoot in SOE to track down missing agents and to make contact with former resistance colleagues. Forest wanted to be part of it, but for his own reasons: he wanted to see if he could find the traitor who had sent him to the Gestapo and the two men who had earned his greatest hate, ‘Rudi’ and ‘Ernst’. They would be hard to find, as he had no knowledge if those were their actual names, and even if they were, there were plenty of Rudis and Ernsts in Germany. But Forest never let low odds defeat him and now the thought of bringing his torturers to justice absorbed his thoughts.

He began to pressure SOE to let him go to Germany and conduct his own, personal, investigations. His superiors were naturally reluctant, but agreed to submit him to another psych exam to see if he was mentally fit. This was conducted in September.

I interviewed [Yeo-Thomas] again this morning. He certainly has made very good progress during the past ten days. His physical condition is now practically back to normal. Mentally he states that he feels much more settled and that he has regained some of his former confidence.

He is very anxious to take the proposed trip to Germany. In view of the improvement of his general condition I think it would be alright from a medical point of view for him to proceed for a few days. However, I think it advisable that someone should accompany him on this trip.
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