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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1950-8-9, Page 6RepNihon For Fa'li'51695:. By ltlehard seal Wilkinson Mike didn't intend to be unreas- onaitle about it. Ile :red a reputation for fairness, and he meant to live up -to it. There wasn't a person alive who didn't have f.tulte. And knowing this to be a fact. Mike could understand why such a gorgeous creature as Serena Wood fell short of being a paragon. Not that Serena's faults were any- thing to worry about. If they had been :Mike would never have asked her to marry trim. Sareua's greatest faith, he thought; was her inability to get ready to go any place on time. Mike adopted a unique method in order to cure this deficiency, For a time he decided to fall its with Serena's habits. Thus, he would dispel any pos- sible doubt in her mind regarding his purpose. Presently he would be- gin tc get himself ready 00 time and sit around waiting. Serena couldn't help no.leutg and take licca. Then there was Sereta's habit of goitre into a• room. switching on an elee.tic lieu and going out again without thinking to extinguish it. Mike decided to adopt the same tuetaod in effectitig this cure also. During the next half year Mike noted with some satisfaction that Serena had already begun to feel his stronger personality. She was al:owing herself a bit more time to got dressed for parties, and once or twice suggested to Mike that he hurry up. By the time the six nton.hs was up, Serena had improved greatly, He decided to forego his tapering off. letting well enough alone, Three months passed and the situation "I didn't mean that you were weakminded or anything like that. We all have our faults." had taken on quite a new aspect. Serena, unconsciously, was doing a lot of walking from one room to another switching off lights that Mike had left burning. Things reached a point at the end of a year that called for some sort of undertaking, Oddly, it was Serena who brought matters to a head. "I realize," she told Mike crossly, "that everyone has their faults. But it does seem to me that you could attach a little more import- ance to things around the house. I've done my best to make you change your ways, I've even resort- ed to artifice." 'Artificer "I mean, litre telling you we have to be at a party 10 minutes before hand in the hopes that you'll get ready on tittle. I've deliberately gone Otto the bedroom to switch off the lights after you came out, hop- ing that you would notice. I've got out of bed and padded away to the kitchen to shut off a dripping faucet that you left running. f declare, Mike, you can't have a very strong personality." "Now wait a minute." Serena, Something's wrong here. We've got to have an understanding." "Rye certainly have. From now on tf you leave the lights burning they stay burning and you can pay the bill. If you're late for parties 1'11 go on ahead and you can stake your own excuses," "But about this personality busi- ness. Now—" •'I didn't mean that you were weakminded or anything like that. Why, even I have some, I suppose, I've tried to help you overcome yours. But front now on you'll have to shift for yourself, unless you can give me some en -opera- tion." "Co-operation! Why, hang it, I did those things deliberately to break you of them, and now I find myself doing them automatically and—and—liking it. Mr. and Mrs, Mike Graham star- ed at each other, "It's my fault that you have faults and I have faults because of your faults. Oh, darling, Mike, don't you see what's happen- ed? We made the mistake of—of thinking ourselves perfect, Let's start all over again—now that we have an understanding, and work the other way." "O.K.," said Mike, "O,K." fit grinned, remembering he had a reputation for fairness and„now was the time to live up to it, The Man Who "Doubled” For Field Marshal Montgomery Living in a quiet little house on the .South Coast is a sick, utlddle- aged actor called Clifton Janes, who once ,rood on the stage of the world itself—and played a part that every actor alive would have ac- cepted with an excited, tlmtnping heart. Clifton James is the one-time lieu- tenant in the Royal Arttty I'ay Corps who "doubled" for Field :Marshal Montgomery in the vital hours before 1) -Day, He (sone into the •new; again recently when the Press reported that his application for a disability run, about chair had been turned down because he was not totally disabled. writ,, Leonard Samson in a recent issue of "An. 1 went down to itis borne at Worthing to see hint and hear again the fantastic story of how he hood- winked the Germans into thinking that Monty was in Gibraltar at a time when he was really standing on the spring -hoard of the Euro- pean invasion. The orders given to James were probably the most vital and colour- ful ones ever put before an insifi- nificant subaltern, and I wanted to find out something of the years that had led up to one of the greatest deceptions in history. His First Battle He was seventeen years old, a schoolboy, when the First World War broke out, but he lied about his age and a few months later found himself an infantry officer in the British trenches, just another shy, frightened boy suddenly flung into the thick of the Battle of the Somme. He doesn't talk much about those days (although enemy gas may have contributed to his present ill- ness) but he did mention one inci- dent concerning a German soldier who surrendered with a grenade clasped in one hand. Janie., woke up to find an 31.0. picking lumps of metal out of his body. And the middle finger of his right hand was missing. That finger was to cause many a headache in Whitehall nearly thirty years later, Two years after the Kaiser sur- rendered, Jantes was still in hospi- tal, but a few weeks later he had recovered sufficiently to try to pick up the threads of his pre -tsar life. "My father had died when I was one-year old, and my guardian was no longer responsible for me, so I was pretty well alone," he told tie. "I decided to become an actor. It wasn't easy, but I gradually be- gan to make headway,' There were long tours up and down Wales with a company that had fifty plays in its repertoire—a different play each night; there were resident companies in England, and tours of the British Isles, The years passed, and Jantes became a reli- able, competent actor, Ile Itad a bad period of unemployment, when he tried his hand at selling pianos, but by- the middle thirties he was making a success of his career. Then came the Second World War, "I joined the Army again, and this time I was put in the Royal Army Pay Corps," he said. "Being an actor, I organized entertain- ments and took part in troop shows." One day Clifton Jantes was called to London from his unit in Leices- ter to meet Colonel David Niven and chat about Army films. But their conversation was only a pre- text. A few minutes after meeting each other, Niven ushered hint Otto an- other room where he was intro- duced to Colonel Lester, "At least, that's what he called himself," J:uues went on. Ile asked use to sign an extract from the Uilieial Secrets '\rt, and then told me that I resembled General \font• goutery so closely that, if 1 was willing, I might be called upon to 'double' for hint. 1 -was completely bewildered, but I said iuuue liarely that I'd do it'' TIte curtain was about to be rung UP 08 the greatest role of Clifton Jantes career. General Montgomery himself was at a secret rendezvous on the South Coast, ready to watch a full dress rehearsal of the invasion. It was Asa a rehearsal for James. A few days later lee bad been "denoted" to a sergeant to the Intelligence Corps, and posted to Montgomery's headquarters so that lee could study the general at close range. "If I'd Been A Spy" "When the exercise ended," said Jantes, "1 travelled back to Lott - don by train. In the sante coutpart- ment was a sailor who told me practically every detail of the inva- sion rehearsal 1 had just witnessed. If I'd been a spy the -Germans would have had the whole set-up. Fortunately, it was just another lit- tle incident. hack at the War Office they told me that Monty was going to Scotland on a fishing trip. 1 was to go up there and see him privately so that 1 could catch the intona- tions and pitch of his voice, "I had two or three fifteen -min- ute interview, with him, when we would tall: about the theatre—ire was deeply interested in it — or Australia, the country where I was born, 1 was terribly nervous, but by the time I returned to London I had begun to take on his charac- ter." Awkward Questions On Friday, May 26th, Lieuten- ant 1I. B. Clifton Jantes became General B. L. 'Montgomery. He wore the famous beret and uniform, whitened his moustache and teut- ples—and tied a cunningly con- trived bandage on his right !land in place of the missing finger. He drove through the street* of Loudon to Northolt, and along the route he returned the salutes and waves of soldiers and civilians. At the airport, highrauking, officers of the Army and ,\ir Force saw' hint into the plane which was to tly hint to Gibraltar. "My 'aide' was a brigadier who knew Monty intimately. I -Ie was travelling with me to keep at a distance anyone who might ask awkward questions; the general's own relatives, perhaps." They Saluted James laughed suddenly: "1 wish I could have enjoyed the role 1 was playing. but the last words Colonel Lester said to me were 'Do your best, Jantes. You've got the lives of two divisions en your shoul- ders.' I was terrified that I would retake that one little slip that would give the game away." As the plane_ approached Gibral- tar, James prepared himself for the scene that he had rehearsed so many times back in London. He stepped out of the aircraft and re- turned the salutes of the officers standing at attention to greet him. "I was driven to Government House," James continued, "to meet Sir Ralph Eastwood, the Governor of Gibraltar. "He and Monty were eery old friends so, of course, he knew all about the plan, \\'c wandered Otto the garden together and went through a pre -arranged conversa- tion, While we were talking, two Bucs Change Hands—Tam Johnson (left) and Johns Galbraith, new heads of the Pittsburgh Pirates, drop down to Forbes Field in Pittsburgh for a look-see. Galbraith will he president and Johnson secretary-treasuten', Frank McKinney sold out his interest in the National League's cellar team, Tanks Are Coming—Light tanks of the First Marine Division are loaded aboard, an LSU in San Diego, Calif. The tanks are part of the equipment of the Korea -bound Leathernecks. Wren, walked up the path and the Governor introduced me to them. Later I was told that one of then was a Spanish nolileman in the service of the Germans. It had all been worked out so that the enemy would know of my arrival 01 the Rock. "And here's a thrilling sidelight on the whole thing. One hour after I arrived 'Madrid had the news. That sante night Berlin knew all about \Iontgont.wy's visit to Gi- bralcar. The news reached Berlin through the most secret channels, but our ow•n agents in the German capital were s..) well organized that they were able to pass the informa- tion had,: 10 Loudon almost imme- diately." All Over Front Gibraltar, James Hen to Algiers, and there he was driven by one .of General Maitland Wilson's aides to G.11.(3. It was a ride plan- ned to display himself as alont- gomery. When the car dress to a halt and Ire entered the house• the last act was over. The curtain had rung down. But there was no applause front an appreciative audience. All that remained was for the actor to sit down quietly, smoke a cigarette, and remove itis costume and make- up. A few days later. after an incon- spicuous stay in Cairo, Lieutenant Clifton James flew back to England. The anti -climax reached its lowest depths when his C.O. at Leicester threatened to put hint on a charge for being absent without leave. A call to M.I.5 soon cleared matters up. "That Fake" The months dragged by and in Juste, 1946, he was demobbed. Still sworn to secrecy, Jantes read an extract one day in Harry C. Butcher's book "My Three Years With Eisenhower," which stated that someone, with tongue in cheek, had reported to 'Montgomery at SHAEl' (Sapreme Headquarters American Expeditionary Force) that "the fake Moutgontery is swagger- ing about half drunk in Gibraltar, sntoktng ntamutotlt cigars like a chimney." The information had never been refuted. so Jantes contacted the War Office and was given permis- sion by Viscount Montgomery to tell publicly the true version of his dramatic flight and impersonation. PEOPLE ARE READING TEE A L,AS AGAIN - - - .\ tea days ago a lot of people trade the same old journey to the bookshelf to take dower the atlas and look up the location of un- familiar places. This time is was beaul, the 1.uut Ricer and Taiwan. :.here may have been a• time when a ratan could be content if he knew his own country and the towns in it, but not in the past twenty-tive 3 ears, During those years after the First World \Var• there was many a journey to the shelf for the map; of places far away. The fitst"time, back in 1925, may have been for pleasant purposes. In those days maps showed chiefly where for- eign friends might lite or they nttpfud the route for a leisurely bicycle tour of England and West- ern Europe, They might even have showed the itineraries of lntourist journeys to the Soviet Union, rat those days when tourists were wel- come, in those day's when Sta grad was simply a two-hour stop in the evening on the boat ride down the Volga to Astrakhan. In the next years the atlas bad other uses: to shots tete exact location of Locarno and the treaty signers, anti a close study of what was called tine Great Circle route, which Lindbergh and other pilots were flying, Int 1932 the atlas became some- thing else—a means for quickly lo- cating the latest horror. The Far Eastern section showed just where the Japanese were landing in their punitive expeditions on Chinese soil, Not long after, it was the maps of Germany and Austria, with Ilitler in power and Dolfuss dead. In 1935 a ratan had to turn to a totally unfamiliar part of the atlas to search down the strange places named Addis Ababa, Adowa and Makaie, There was one un- happy clay, apart from wars and fighting in those years, when. the atlas had to be used to locate Point Barrow, where Will Rogers had just died. Tire atlas was off the shelf almost every day after 1937, to 011 out the details in the reaps the newspapers were publishing, They showed Sev- ille, Granada, Cordoba and GUM, nice, the towns of the Spanish Civil Wat'. They showed the exact course of the Yangtze, where the Japanese had hit an American gun- boat, They showed the route through Austria along which ISit- ter's troops were marching. They located the small towns of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, A little later they marked the un- happy places of Hitler's first blitz in Western Poland, from Bud- goszes and Poznan to Zoppot and Westerplatte by Danzig, Soots thereafter a matt had to turn to the maps of the coastal clues of Norway, Bergen and Stavanger, of the roads through Holland, of the Engtislt Channel and particularly of its varying width at various places. The list of places searched for lengthened and spread wide, from Dunkerque and Dover to Coventry, Sidi Bar - rani and Tobruk. Then to another part of the atlas for Pearl Harbor and a detailed neap of the Bataan Peninsula, and anyone could be- come impatient with an atlas for not showing everything in the most minute detail. An atlas was almost a necessity now, if only to. know the distance between a man and the danger that could put an end to all he cared for. The naps of Western Europe, of the North African coast, of the Far East, were always open then. The towns of Western Russia to the suburbs of Moscow, the routes through the Ukraine and to the Volga were searched out on the appropriate map, A man's eye climbed the ladder up the Pacific, from Darwin in Australia to New Guinea, Bougainville. the Solontons. Later the atlas came off the self for the neaps of the North African and Italian coasts and then the towns of Normandy, Then Renta - gen, the Ocler River, and Dongo, where Mussolini was shot, More recently it has been the towns of Indo-China and Burma, of northern Greece, the deserts of Palestine and the Bulgarian towns across from Yugoslavia. And now Korea. This generation has had to know its geography, as a matter of life and death, probably better than any generation heretofore. To learn it from an atlas when some new trouble hits the headlines may be one way to learn it, but it is a grins way, Once an atlas used to be a pleasant book—a book that merely showed pleasant places to visit and new seas to sail, —Froeu The New York Times. MYS CI OOL LESSON By Rev. R. Barclay Warren, B.A., B.D. Ezra, Interpreter of God's Word Nehemiah 8;1-4a, 5-6, 8. 10, 18 Golden Text: This day is holy unto our Lord; neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength. —Nch. 8:10b. Zerubbabel led the first band of captives from Babylon to Judea in 458 B.C. Seventy-eight years later, Ezra, a priest and a scribe, returned to teach the people. In today's les - on we find the people asking Ezra to give then[ the book of the law • of Moses. They made a pulpit, and Ezra stood on it. He and his thir- teen helpers "read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense,and caused theta to un- derstand the reading." This went on for a week, It was a time of happiness. They were happy not merely because they were hearers of the word, but be- cause they becanie doers of the word. They confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. Then they could worship, They made a covenant with God. They brought in the tithes and offerings which had been neglected. They observed the Sabbath. Nehemiah, the ruler, took a stern stand against those who persised in doing their work on the Sabbath and selling their wares. Likewise the practice of intermar- rying with. the neighboring heathen was publicly rebuked. That was a great turtling to, God. If only our nation—would turn to God's Word for guidance todayl If there were more Ezra's whose amain concern was to give the meaning of God's Word to the people; de- fense of their denominational doc- trinal positiow being quite second- ary. A national turning to God's Word, tvoui'di result in a revival of righteousness.. May 11 soon comet He Barber* Royalty Benedetto Viccari is bald-headed,, but that doesn't worry hint. He ltae made Itis name looking after other people's (fair. Anyone can drop into his May- fair. hairdressing saloon, but hie appohrtment book reads Like Who'sWho, Thirty years ago he came to London with only a few shilling' in his pocket. Today fifty -six-year- old Mr. Viccari is hairdresser to do world's kings, princes, diplomat/ and celebrities of every profession. After the first world war he was just one of London's Italian bar- bers. Ile moved from saloon to saloon. It wasnt until the early thirties, when he was appointed to Claridge's, England's top-ranking hotel, that he achieved eminence. IIis first famous client was the Aga Khan. Some clients sign Itis autograph book, others read it. There is such a collection of well -know names scrawled across the pages that the illegible ones are almost ignored. A quick glance reveals the signa- tures of ex -King Alphonso of Spain (who wotild send a Rolls•Royce for Mr, Viccari to visit him to cut his hair), the Duke of Milford Haven, Lord Anson, the late Jan Masaryk, of Czechoslovakia, Sir Jolla Bar- birolli, Anton Walbrook, Anthony Asquith, several Indian princes, and so many Ministers of the Crown tliat the pages read like an imagin- ary House of Commons roll call spanning twenty years. Mr. Viccari is a modest ratan and confesses in his Italian accent that he is bewildered by his own pres- tige. "Some people have put it clown to. personality," he says, "but that's too easy an answer. All I know is that I enjoy hairdressing, it's an art to. me, and every customer is someone different," - A Precise Haircut So determined is he to give the finest haircut possible that he defiet a golden. rule and sits down to hit work, "That way," he points out, "1 can take my time and make sure of a precise haircut." Mr. Viccari will readily chat about himself, but rarely about his clients, He knows that, as the confidante of kings,tact is his greatest asset. Question him further and he re. plies with a senile: "I'nt still s working ratan. One day I'll retire— and maybe write the memoirs of a barber." 'they should be worth reading. New Chief Of Railway Engin. eers -- James P. Shields of Cleveland, 0., above, is the new grand chief engineer of the Brotherhood of Loconto• tive Engineers. Elected at the ISLE convention, Shields suc- ceeds Alvanley Johnston, who was chief executive of the union for 25 years. Seventy -One Beds! For How Many Reds?—Neighbors to the old J. P. Morgan mansion, above, on Mantineeocic Point, Glen Cove, N. Y., are concerned about what their new neigh- bor, Leonid A. Mor'ozov, Soviet diplomat at the UN, plans to do with the 71 folding beds recently moved, into the mansion, If he plana ed to use the property for a sunnier resort, They say, he's violating zoning laws.