17 replies to this topic

[spynovelfan]

One of the charges sometimes laid at Ian Fleming's door is that his depiction of espionage was unrealistic. While this is often true (though irrelevant to one's enjoyment of his books), it's not *always* true.

One notable exception is the short story Octopussy: this masterfully handled Maugham-esque tale revolves around one of the least-known aspects of World War Two, namely the search for war criminals in the final days of the conflict and the months following it. The British, the Americans, the Russians and others all had teams undertaking this sort of work: Fleming himself was the driving force in setting up and organising one such team, 30 Assault Unit, which roamed Europe looking for Nazi scientists and researchers to recruit to fight the new 'cold war' against the Soviets.

One event that took place around this time seems to me to be extremely Flemingesque. I wonder if Fleming might even have heard about if from one of his men in 30 Assault Unit. Like Octopussy, it is about a corrupt British lieutenant-colonel getting his hands on gold that isn't his, in Austria, at the end of World War Two. It also features the tragedy of the Cossacks at Lienz - a main plot point in the film GOLDENEYE - and Smersh. This obscure Russian counter-intelligence unit was later made famous by Fleming in his novels. He always claimed he first heard about Smersh in an article in a magazine - but I wonder. I just wonder...

Well, it makes a change from discussing Daniel Craig's suitability as Bond!


From The Times, September 14 1999:

British colonel 'took gold bribe'

By Stephen Farrell

A British colonel was bribed with 30lb of gold to hand over three White Russian generals to Soviet Intelligence in 1945, according to files supplied by the KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin.

The revelation will reopen the controversy over one of the most contentious episodes of the Second World War in which the British Army repatriated 70,000 Cossacks, dissidents and their families from Austria back to Stalin's Soviet Union against their will, knowing many faced death, torture or imprisonment at the hands of their communist enemies.

It was events surrounding the repatriation that led to the bitter 1989 libel trial in which Lord Aldington, then Chief of Staff of the British 5th Corps in Austria, was awarded a record

[spynovelfan]

I am all alone in the world!

Please visit my new website, SmershThreadNotInteresting.com.

[ACE]

Fascinating article there, SNF.
Yes, Octopussy has a lovely, autumnal feel to it and it could really be called The Tragedy of Dexter-Smythe.
Good stuff, there.

[spynovelfan]

Your cheque is in the post, ACE.

[Skudor]

I read it yesterday and enjoyed it very much... didn't have much to say about it so didn't post. I did wonder if the whole story might have been made up - and partly inspired by Octopussy?

[spynovelfan]

Thanks for that Skudor. You mean made up by me? No, no, it's real. Here's another article about it:

http://www.guardian....,271467,00.html

I have the Mitrokhin Archive, but I couldn't be bothered to scan the pages in question! There's also a bit in NIGHTS ARE LONGEST THERE by A I Romanov - the only autobiography by a serving Smersh officer I know of - in which he talks about picking up Krasnov et al and wonders why on earth the British agreed to hand them over. That was published decades before Mitrokhin.

Toby Low - Lord Aldington - was warden of my school, and I remember the libel case about the Lienz Cossacks very well. It was a huge scandal.

Here's more on him:

http://en.wikipedia....Baron_Aldington

[Skudor]

Either you or the original article .

It's fascinating stuff. I like that it provides a link of sorts between Octopussy and Goldeney with the Lienz cossacks (makes one wonder a bit).

[ACE]

Either you or the original article .

It's fascinating stuff. I like that it provides a link of sorts between Octopussy and Goldeney with the Lienz cossacks (makes one wonder a bit).

Yes, and Dexter-Smythe's house in Jamaica is based on Goldeneye. Another connection....

[spynovelfan]

Either you or the original article .

Well, there's certainly no *guarantee* it's true - there never is, especially with books on espionage. But Mitrokhin was a KGB archivist, and he apparently noted this straight from a KGB file. The other revelations in that book and its sequel have been widely reported and all seem to check out - this same book revealed that Melita Norwood had been a Soviet agent, for example, which she admitted. The book's editor is probably the world's most respected expert on Russian intelligence.

It's fascinating stuff. I like that it provides a link of sorts between Octopussy and Goldeney with the Lienz cossacks (makes one wonder a bit).

Yes, I wonder where they got the idea to use the Cossacks at Lienz. Bond films don't often invite the audience to consider that Britain may have committed war crimes!

And I would love to know where Fleming got the idea for OCTOPUSSY. He once wrote in an article that many of his stories were inspired by real incidents, and we know of several that were (CASINO ROYALE being one, QUANTUM OF SOLACE another). The details of OCTOPUSSY - right down to the number of men in each 'Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau' team and the vehicles they used - makes me feel that it is based on some episode he'd heard about (the setting, of course, is where he spent time in his youth). As well as his commando unit, Fleming is also thought to have been 'romantically involved' with several SOE agents: some have said that Vesper Lynd was modelled on Christine Granville.

I'm fascinated by all this stuff about Smersh, T-Force, War Crimes Investigation Units, etc, in the dying days of World War Two. A very good book about the SAS' search for war criminals is THE SECRET HUNTERS by Anthony Kemp.

[Bon-san]

[quote name='spynovelfan' post='522136' date='22 February 2006 - 11:08']
One of the charges sometimes laid at Ian Fleming's door is that his depiction of espionage was unrealistic. While this is often true (though irrelevant to one's enjoyment of his books), it's not *always* true.

One notable exception is the short story Octopussy: this masterfully handled Maugham-esque tale revolves around one of the least-known aspects of World War Two, namely the search for war criminals in the final days of the conflict and the months following it. The British, the Americans, the Russians and others all had teams undertaking this sort of work: Fleming himself was the driving force in setting up and organising one such team, 30 Assault Unit, which roamed Europe looking for Nazi scientists and researchers to recruit to fight the new 'cold war' against the Soviets.

One event that took place around this time seems to me to be extremely Flemingesque. I wonder if Fleming might even have heard about if from one of his men in 30 Assault Unit. Like Octopussy, it is about a corrupt British lieutenant-colonel getting his hands on gold that isn't his, in Austria, at the end of World War Two. It also features the tragedy of the Cossacks at Lienz - a main plot point in the film GOLDENEYE - and Smersh. This obscure Russian counter-intelligence unit was later made famous by Fleming in his novels. He always claimed he first heard about Smersh in an article in a magazine - but I wonder. I just wonder...

Well, it makes a change from discussing Daniel Craig's suitability as Bond!


From The Times, September 14 1999:

British colonel 'took gold bribe'

By Stephen Farrell

A British colonel was bribed with 30lb of gold to hand over three White Russian generals to Soviet Intelligence in 1945, according to files supplied by the KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin.

The revelation will reopen the controversy over one of the most contentious episodes of the Second World War in which the British Army repatriated 70,000 Cossacks, dissidents and their families from Austria back to Stalin's Soviet Union against their will, knowing many faced death, torture or imprisonment at the hands of their communist enemies.

It was events surrounding the repatriation that led to the bitter 1989 libel trial in which Lord Aldington, then Chief of Staff of the British 5th Corps in Austria, was awarded a record

[spynovelfan]

LOL!

How many points would you dock for a shameless 'Yay, someone else was interested!' thread-bumping post? Just out of interest.

[doublenoughtspy]

I agree Octopussy has a wonderful WW2 atmosphere.

My favorite memory is talking with Peter Janson Smith about his discovery of the short story after Fleming's death.

Something we all dream of - coming across that "lost" James Bond story.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of evidence pointing to exactly when it was written and why Fleming didn't tell anyone about it.

I agree SNF that the late war and post war trackdown stuff is fascinating, and I'm also interested in what the Germans were doing to try to prolong it - with the Werewolves for instance, touched on briefly by John Gardner in The Werewolf Trace.

[spynovelfan]

Wow - I'd always presumed OCTOPUSSY had been published before! What a thrill that must have been!

As for why he didn't tell anyone about it, well, I think he must have been feeling guilty about something! DS is pretty clearly modelled on him. Evan has theorised that it's guilt over ripping off McClory, but I don't think that's it. I think it may have been guilt over having made a fortune fictionalising other men's exploits. After all, Fleming was never really a field agent. Or it could be about his affair with Blanche Blackwell - after all, Octopussy was the name of the boat she gave him. Or he had heard the above Smersh story or something similar and decided to merge it with memories of Austria and a portrait of his own increasingly jaded existence.

At any rate, I think it's one of his best pieces of work.

[Flash1087]

I heard the McClory idea, too, and it never really rang with me for some reason. Maybe I just don't want to believe it.

[spynovelfan]

I heard the McClory idea, too, and it never really rang with me for some reason. Maybe I just don't want to believe it.

Here's Evan's fascinating article:

http://commanderbond...es/1117-1.shtml

My personal hunch is that he is right that it is a metaphor for something Fleming was feeling guilty about, but I don't think it's McClory: it has to be something secret, that he hadn't yet been found out about. I don't think Fleming would have felt that guilty about McClory anyway. Stressed and angered and embattled, but not guilty. But I do think Octopussy may, in a loose way, have been Fleming's suicide note.

[spynovelfan]

Okay, here's a crazy theory.

In John Pearson's biography of Ian Fleming, he says that Fleming was fond of hinting to friends and acquaintances that he had killed people, but that his stories were often vague or contradictory. Pearson uses this to suggest Fleming liked to pretend to others that he was a hardened man of action - but I wonder if he might not have been trying to confess.

The above story about Cossack gold took place in June 1945 in Gleisdorf, Austria. One month earlier, Fleming was in the Bavarian Alps:

'Meanwhile, a detachment [of 30 Assault Unit] under Lieutenant T.J. Glanville RNVR made its way south to the Bavarian Alps where it hoped to capture the German Navy's Warfare Science Department. At the entrance to the romantic Alpine Tambach castle, Glanville met Kontradmiral Gladisch (one of the authors of the German official history of the First World War), and two rear-admiral colleagues who explained that they comprised the War Science Department of the German Admiralty... D

[glidrose]

My favorite memory is talking with Peter Janson Smith about his discovery of the short story after Fleming's death.

Something we all dream of - coming across that "lost" James Bond story.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of evidence pointing to exactly when it was written and why Fleming didn't tell anyone about it.

With all due respect to DNS, this isn't true. Fleming's own published letters go into detail about Octopussy. Fleming wrote Octopussy in July 1962 during a rare summer trip to Goldeneye to watch DN being filmed (and apparently get away from his wife). IF then submitted the story to Jonathan Cape, in particular, publisher Michael Howard and reader William Plomer who both read the work. Howard wrote to Fleming in December 1962. In Howard's letter, both men claim to admire the story, considering it IF's greatest short work. However there is something a little too polite and deliberate in Howard's letter that makes me think perhaps they were being slightly diplomatic. Howard did not think it should be included in a future collection of Bond stories for the reason that "Bond's appearance is fairly immaterial and the part he plays a negligible one, so that Bond fans might well react as they did to THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and demand more of their hero." Howard then draws an analogy with Simenon, in particular those tales that do not feature Maigret. Howard believes those non-Maigret tales are better than the ones with the detective, "more varied, more interesting and with better character drawing: nevertheless it is really for Maigret that I read Simenon and I can't help slightly resenting the time he spends on the other books."

In another thread that I can no longer find I seem to recall DNS disputing a claim that Fleming did intend to write a second collection of short fiction. I seem to recall that DNS said that Fleming was very displeased with how Cape's handled FYEO - revisions Fleming made never went into the final copy, numerous copy errors remained, sales were slow, etc. Actually, at least once and more likely twice Fleming did intend to write another short fiction collection.

In that same thread I seem to recall that DNS claimed PJS found the manuscript in Fleming's desk after the author's death. My memory seems to think that a now-banned member Dragonpol may have started the thread. As I can no longer find any of his other posts I will assume that - sadly - all his posts and any threads he started are now kaput.

[Dustin]

This would seem to be the case.

On the matter of 'discovering' Octopussy: I suppose said talk between DNS and PJS took place when the latter was already well into his 80s, so the odd case of unreliable memory may be expected and forgiven. I'm still far from that age myself and have considerable trouble recalling events in detail and sequence without help of my diary.