M. E. Clifton James
| Meyrick Edward Clifton James | |
|---|---|
Clifton James posing as General Montgomery
|
|
| Born | 1898 Perth, Western Australia |
| Died | 8 May 1963 (aged 64–65) Worthing, Sussex, England |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Service/branch | British Army |
| Years of service | 1914–1918 1940–1946 |
| Rank | Second lieutenant (WWII) |
| Service number | 141055 (WWII) |
| Unit |
Royal Fusiliers (WWI) Royal Army Pay Corps (WWII) |
| Battles/wars | |
| Other work | Actor |
Meyrick Edward Clifton James (1898 – 8 May 1963) was an actor and soldier, with a resemblance to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. This was used by British intelligence as part of a deception campaign during the Second World War.
Clifton James was born in Perth, Western Australia, the youngest son of notable Australian public servant John Charles Horsey James and his wife Rebecca Catherine Clifton.
After serving in the Royal Fusiliers during the First World War, and seeing action at the Battle of the Somme, he took up acting, "starting at 15 shillings weekly with Fred Karno, who put Chaplin on the road to fame." At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered his services to the British Army as an entertainer. Instead of being assigned to ENSA as he had hoped, on 11 July 1940 James was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps and eventually posted to Leicester. Here, his acting seemed to be limited to his membership of the Pay Corps Drama and Variety Group. In 1944 his resemblance to Montgomery was spotted, and he was employed to pretend to be the general as part of a campaign designed to deceive the Germans in the lead-up to D-Day.
About seven weeks before D-Day in 1944, Lieutenant-Colonel J. V. B. Jervis-Reid noticed James's resemblance to Montgomery while he was reviewing photographs in a newspaper. James, it seemed, had 'rescued' a failing patriotic show by appearing in it, quite briefly, as 'Monty'. MI5 decided to exploit the resemblance to confuse German intelligence. James was contacted by Lieutenant-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. When Niven explained that it was about something different, James supposedly burst into tears because he thought he had been exposed as a bigamist, who was receiving a double marriage allowance. Like many of Niven’s anecdotes, this one is viewed with scepticism.
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