Waiting for Adolf
Sir: As the 'other officer' referred to in Colonel Peter Fleming's letter (26 April), and since Mr Lampe presumably obtained this anecdote from my book Fighting Mad, I feel that I owe these two gentlemen, yourself and your readers an explanation.
I dictated the text of the book Fighting Mad and my agent, with the help of another, sorted it out and tried to sell it to a Sunday news- paper. The newspaper was interested but re- quired cuts, changes of emphasis and, above all, that each chapter should be written as a 'whole.'
I became ill during this period. I acceded to certain cuts and changes which did not alter the truth as I saw it, although I was not par- ticularly enamoured of some of the phrases inserted. As regards the booby-trapping incident which was factual and accurate, I had just stated that the object of our raid was 'a divisional headquarters.' My agent asked whether this could have been Montgomery's Divisional Headquarters, which I later knew had been somewhere in the south of England. I said that 'it could have been.' In actual fact, it was a divisional headquarters in east Kent whose number and commander I cannot remember.
The Sunday paper finally decided not to publish, and the agent sold the book to Jarrolds. When the proof came I was still in hospital, and, quite frankly, all the memories of the past increased my illness. I feebly remonstrated against certain deviations and they were mostly altered, except one which I feel much more strongly about than this minor imbroglio involv- ing the mistaken identity of a couple of divisions and their commanders.
As for the incident in south-east England. my account, as far as my memory recalls, is true except for the naming of the divisional com- mander. At that time I had never heard of General Montgomery as my service had mostly been in the Far East, where he never went.
My apologies to Mr Lampe. Colonel Flem- ing- and a great captain of war. Field-Marshal Montgomery, whom I later met and greatly admired.
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