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DIGGING_FLEMING

                                             August   24, 2005

                                Reading John Pearson's
                                "The Life of Ian Fleming" (1966)
                                In the Bantam paperback edition

In 1960, Fleming talked about he had
great schemes during the war for spying
on U-boats off the coast of Germany (p.90-91):

Fleming said that he:

        ... put up a succession of plans whereby I
        and an equally intrepid wireless operator
        should be transported to the group by
        submarine and there dig ourselves in, to
        report the sailing of U-boats and the
        movements of the German fleet.

        Everything in those foolhardy minutes on
        Admiralty dockets was thought out, everything
        provided for.  There would be a pedal
        generator for the wireless set, we would live
        on shell-fish, my excellent (as I claimed)
        knowledge of German would be enough to bluff
        our way out of trouble in case some
        inquisitive fisherman turned up.


Pearson comments:

   (This idea of digging in and surveying the enemy
   through periscopes was a favorite daydream.  Apart from
   a variant of it which he suggested for the Dieppe raid,
   he was to use it again as the basis of the plot of his
   short story "From a View to a Kill," where a gang of
   Russian spies bury themselves in the woods near SHAPE
   headquarters at St. Germain.)

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