He impressed Donovan in those meetings and would later make an impression on Allen Dulles while Dulles was Director of the post war CIA. Fleming essentially drew up memoranda and plans on how to create an intelligence service, using his newly gained knowledge of the SIS. While these compliments seem as doubled edged as a Fairbairn Sykes commando dagger, Fleming, barely into his 30s, had evolved from being a young man without much direction to becoming a key part of one of the oldest and most respected intelligence departments in Britain.įleming accompanied Godfrey to the United States in the summer of 1941, where he met with William Donovan, future head of the OSS. He was a skilled fixer and a vigorous showman…a giant among name-droppers.” 35)Īnother officer in Godfrey’s service, quoted in Max Hasting’s The Secret War, summed Fleming up as “if not the wisest of the staff in Room 39, the most vivid…his gift was much less for the analysis and the weighing of intelligence than for running things and for drafting. In his excellent book on that operation, Ben Macintyre quotes Ewen Montagu, Fleming’s fellow naval officer and spy, who fleshed out Fleming’s idea into MINCEMEAT, in his assessment of Fleming: “Fleming is charming to be with but would sell his own grandmother. Some of the suggestions were a bit far-fetched but one suggestion-to put false information on a corpse and allow it to be discovered by the Germans-was later refined into the highly successful Operation MINCEMEAT, in which a corpse dressed as a Royal Marine officer was floated ashore to technically neutral but fascist friendly Spain. While issued under Godfrey’s name, many at the time and to this day see that it is very much Ian Fleming’s style and ideas. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, A 2077.īy the end of September 1939, Godfrey issued what came to be called “the Trout Memo,” which used fly-fishing as an analogy for conducting deception operations against the Germans. This gave Fleming wide access to the British intelligence services. Godfrey wisely used Fleming as liaison with other departments such as the Secret Intelligence Service (more popularly known as MI-6), Special Operations Executive (SOE), of which Peter Fleming became a member, MI-5, the counterespionage department, and Combined Operations. Godfrey was a respected naval officer but had a reputation for being difficult and abrasive. Perhaps most useful was Fleming’s great personal charm. He had no real naval experience or intelligence training but his travels and experience as a journalist proved useful. Commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) in July 1939 as a lieutenant, he was quickly promoted to lieutenant commander. Fleming’s code name was "17F," and he worked in Room 39 at The Admiralty Building in London. In May 1939, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) recruited Fleming to be Godfrey’s personal assistant. Ian Fleming in Naval Uniform from the album of Maud Russell, circa 1940. Courtesy of Ian Fleming Images/Maud Russell Estate Collection. The war changed the course of his life in ways that he probably never could have imagined. (His love of Switzerland can be seen in several of the James Bond novels that have scenes set there, and Fleming gave Bond a Swiss mother from the Canton of Vaud.) In early 1939, his career was mainly as a stringer journalist. He had a gift for languages and studied in Switzerland where he learned French and German. He attended Eton and then Sandhurst with the intention of joining the British Army but his time at Eton and Sandhurst were not promising. Ian’s life prior to 1939 was not as stellar. During World War II Peter was a Grenadier Guards officer who joined SOE, trained Chinese guerrilla troops, and participated in commando raids in Norway, for which he was given an OBE in 1945. Peter was a star student at Eton and Oxford, who became an explorer and writer. His elder brother Peter was the nightmare of middle children like Ian Fleming. His father was a successful barrister and MP who served with Winston Churchill and was killed in the First World War. His early years ranged from being a journalist to being what several of his friends described as one of the worst stockbrokers in the world. Born on May 28, 1908, Ian Fleming lived a colorful life.
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