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Part Four

"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."

Ken Kesey (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"The War Magician" begins with Jasper Maskelyne "dressed in his finest Harry Hall suit" volunteering for duty in April 1940, trying unsuccessfully to enlist in the Officer Reserve. This description of Jasper's neat attire caught my attention because in his first letter Alistair Maskelyne happened to mention the following:"my father had a contract with a well known London tailor, Harry Hall, by which means he was given a huge number of tailor made suits free, in return for the rights to display large posters of him dressed in this apparel in every London tube rail station."

That David Fisher has accurately captured this incidental detail serves as a sharp reminder that the War Magician cannot be written off as complete fabrication.

Fisher's book is a curious combination of insider knowledge and outsider invention, of real dialogue and of created dialogue, of actual people and fictitious people, set against a backdrop of real events.

Author David Fisher appears to have extracted details from the 'diaries' and then inventively filled in the gaps, cleverly developing a story in which historical accuracy is selectively jettisoned, particularly if obstinate 'facts' interfere with the storyteller's grander theme. Fisher has created, in effect, a plausible work of fiction , masquerading as popular biography.

The skilled 'forger' of a tale will incorporate real people or real material in order to add to the surface authenticity of the narrative. But the accuracy of such details, incidental or otherwise, does not necessarily mean that the core of the story is true.

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In a later article we will consider in more detail not only the dubious genre of ghost-writing but also the history of 'fabricated history' —the artificial reconstruction of dialogue and events as a substitute for authentic recollection or description — which frequently occurs in famous works of ancient history (e.g. those by the Greek historian Thucydides or by the Roman historian Tacitus).

Fisher's technique, though disreputable by the stricter standards of twentieth century critical biography, has elements akin to the looser traditions of ancient biography. According to Ed Sanders, an Oxford specialist in New Testament Studies, "Ancient historians regularly supplemented their narratives with freely created material of various kinds."

Furthermore, the methods used by scholars to unravel the historical basis to ancient documents may be of relevance to our present inquiry , namely, trying to distinguish the truth from the fiction surrounding Maskelyne's wartime career.

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Like many of his contemporaries Maskelyne was at first ignored and overlooked by the army bureaucracy. After several rejections and false starts, Maskelyne was eventually recruited in October 1940 to an experimental camouflage section.

Fisher's account of how Maskelyne was recruited is based on surviving correspondence in the private scrapbook.

A local member of Parliament wrote an encouraging reference to Churchill's private secretary who then passed Maskelyne's name on to Churchill's personal scientific adviser, Professor Lindemann.

Jasper Maskelyne supposedly met with Lindemann in late September 1940. Consequently, Jasper secured a place at Farnham in mid-October.

In Fisher's account, Jasper leaves Whitehall after the successful interview and returns that night to his house in Albany Street, 'a sturdy two-storied red-brick-and-mortar construction, topped with a sloping gabled roof. Ivy vines that for some reason never climbed above the first level gave the house the appearance of having a dark beard.' This is a mishmash of factual description and fictional rendition.

Fisher includes a rather sentimental departure scene where Jasper says goodbye to his wife prior to reporting for duty. There is a major difficulty with this episode — Alistair, Jasmyn and their mother, Evelyn, were already by this time in New Zealand, and unless you grant Evelyn the power of magical transmigration, this farewell scene must be rejected as inauthentic. (Clarification: Fisher several times throughout the rest of the book gives Jasper's wife the name 'Mary', but in fact her first name was Evelyn. )

It is interesting to compare Alistair Maskelyne's version : "with the outbreak of war, and the further decline of my father's finances, it was decided that my mother, accompanied by my sister and myself, should travel to New Zealand, to live with an uncle while my father would seek an army job.

Because of his lack of education beyond secondary school, my father had at first little luck in his application for a commission. But by September 1940, when mother and us kids had arrived in New Zealand, he was able to get a 2nd Lieutenant position in the Royal Engineers. Initially much out of his place because of his age, thirty-nine, he was transferred to camouflage training school at Farnborough, and from there on he came into his own."

Jasper Maskelyne reported for duty at the newly created Camouflage Development and Training Centre (CDTC) based in Farnham Castle which is in the vicinity of Farnborough airfield. According to another book, "Camouflage" by G. Hartcup, there were three hundred applicants for only thirty places , so the selection process would have been competitive.

Fisher's references to the training centre at Farnham are consistent with the details presented by Hartcup. For example, the main instructor was a character named Colonel Richard Buckley who had served in the First World War.

However, I noted too close a similarity in the following passages:

"Besides the magician Maskelyne, the group included Victor Siebel, a well-known couturier, painters Blair Hughes-Stanton, Edward Seago, Frederick Gore and Julian Trevelyan, designers Steven Sykes, James Gardner and Ashley Havindon, sculptor John Codner, Oxford don Francis Knox, at forty-two the oldest recruit and an animal-camouflage expert, circus manager Donald Kingsley, zoologist Hugh Cott, art expert Fred Mayor, who decorated his room at the Castle with Rouaults and Matisses from his London gallery, and Jack Keeler, a West End set designer. Among their other classmates were a restorer of religious art, an electrician, two stained-glass artisans, a magazine editor, a Punch cartoonist and a Surrealist poet.

The War Magician (p.17)

"The artists ranged from the avant-garde to the traditional and included the painters Blair Hugh-Stanton, Edward Seago, Frederick Gore and Julian Trevelyan, who since his experience in civil camouflage had been approved for a commission by Buckley, and the designers Steven Sykes and Ashley Havinden. Others connected with the arts were Gabriel White, later a pillar of the Arts Council and Fred Mayor, who decorated the rooms with Rouaults and Matisses and other modern masters from his London gallery."

Camouflage by Guy Hartcup (p. 80)

Significantly, Hartcup a few paragraphs later includes the name Jasper Maskelyne : "There was the conjurer Jasper Maskelyne who, on account of recent events, had just had an unsatisfactory season at the seaside resorts he usually frequented."

He then makes reference to Hugh Cott , an expert in 'natural camouflage' , and the surrealist painter who is named as Roland Penrose

Hartcup's book was published in 1979. Fisher's "The War Magician" in 1983. My immediate suspicion was that

Fisher's list was plagiarised from Hartcup. However, a more generous explanation might be that both authors drew

Maskelyne , Royal Command Celebrity, at Rhyl, 16th, January, 1939

from an identical source.

A further important point to notice is that Fisher has suspiciously inserted the name 'Frank Knox' in the passage previously quoted.

Was Knox a real person or a fictional creation?

Professor 'Frank Knox', described as an Oxford don and animal camouflage expert, supposedly shared quarters with Jasper at Farnham. He becomes Maskelyne's sounding-board and confidant. Later, as a key member of the Magic Gang, he contributes to and refines several camouflage techniques. His tragic demise, surviving a plane crash in Egypt but dying in the subsequent fire, supposedly inspires Maskelyne to develop fireproof paste to protect aircrews.

Knox is not mentioned in "Magic - Top Secret." However, the ghost writer of "Magic - Top Secret" generally provides fewer names and gives few details of the individual Gang members.

Mindful of Alistair Maskelyne's warning that many of the personal relationships recorded in "The War Magician" were fictional, I pressed him in a subsequent letter about the character 'Frank Knox'.

If Knox really did exist, surely his father Jasper would have made mention of him in one of his wartime letters, especially after Knox's dramatic and unexpected death?

The same questions might be applied to the other members of the Magic Gang.

Are they real persons or fictional devices to give structure to the narrative? Why is it so hard to verify their historical existence in the written record? Has David Fisher altered their names for purposes of confidentiality?

It would be fascinating to check the versions of any survivors against the one that was recorded by Fisher. Of course, if these members were merely fictional creations to flesh out a story, then any such search would be futile.

In a recent letter (March 1st 1994), Alistair responded to this last sentence : "Frank Knox I cannot help you with: the name just doesn't ring a bell, as, for that matter all the other names of the so-called Magic Gang: not wishing to be negative, but I really think they were created by one or other of the ghost-writers to flesh out their story."

These misgivings about the authenticity of the Magic Gang will resurface over the next few articles when we analyse their so-called accomplishments.

There is an important clue which can easily be overlooked in the front pages to "The War Magician", before the main narrative begins, before even the introduction, where the publishers state: "The events described in this book are true. Everything Jasper Maskelyne is credited with doing he actually accomplished. Some of the characters are composites, and the names of others have been changed for legal reasons."

This is a curious and somewhat contradictory statement: a bold affirmation that the book is authentic, followed by an admission that some characters have been redrawn and renamed.

Given the questionable nature of the evidence, I suspect that the members of the Magic Gang are figments of dramatic licence. Even if it can be shown that one or two are loosely based on real people, I will still be arguing that Fisher has invented the group's dialogue, exaggerated and sometimes fabricated their activities, and has tampered with the time sequences.

Which brings me directly to a problem facing anyone who attempts to analyse Jasper Maskelyne's actual wartime career. In my zeal to overthrow the falsified version presented by Fisher , I could risk underplaying or deleting sections that are authentic.

Let me therefore issue a challenge: can anyone in the magic world provide further information which might shed light on whether the Magic Gang as portrayed by Fisher actually existed ?

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A question that will recur in these articles is how closely "The War Magician" follows or copies the account in "Magic-Top Secret"?

Occasionally, lines do overlap. For example:

"If I could stand in the focus of powerful footlights and deceive attentive and undisturbed onlookers separated from me only by the width of an orchestra pit, then I could most certainly devise means of deceiving German observers a mile away or more, or perhaps 15,000 feet up in the air, or on Nazi warships at sea."

"Magic - Top Secret" ( p. 15)

"If I can stand in the focus of powerful footlights and deceive an audience only the width of an orchestra pit away, I can certainly deceive German observers fifteen thousand feet away in the air, or miles away on land."

"The War Magician" (p. 11)

Fisher has smoothed down the quote and placed it in a specific and possibly fictionalised context, in the interview with Lindemann.

However, examples like these are infrequent. I had expected greater concordance or agreement.

Seen as a totality, Fisher has not simply taken "Magic-Top Secret" and rephrased it. There are minor and sometimes major discrepancies in the recounting of particular incidents as we shall see.

The first ghost-writer and David Fisher almost certainly worked from the same 'diaries' or 'photo-albums". However, Fisher's account includes much greater detail (at least until the Battle of El Alamein). Whether this additional detail is creative fiction or factual detail is a moot point, and this recurring problem will be tackled throughout the series.

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A very confusing aspect of both Fisher's account and the earlier "Magic-Top Secret" is the claim that Maskelyne participated in camouflage operations during the Battle of Britain.

After the humiliating evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940, the British seemed to be on the verge of defeat. In this dangerous and panicky interim period, before vital weapons and equipment abandoned in France could be replaced, steps were taken to create rudimentary fake defences. It was hoped that these makeshift preparations might deter Germany from launching an immediate cross-Channel invasion. The aim was to give the appearance of a strong defending army, well-equipped to meet and repel an enemy attack.

And if the German forces ever reached land, surprises lay in wait. For example, copying an idea from the First World War, trees were chopped down, hollowed out, and replanted at vantage points to serve either as camouflaged observation posts or as perches for concealed snipers.

In retrospect, some of these flimsy defensive measures appear Pythonesque. Dummy sheep, packed with dynamite, were supposedly positioned in fields along the most vulnerable stretches of coastline, in readiness for unsuspecting enemy gliders.

In the official records, there is a pathetic photograph of a solitary ice-cream stall on an English beach, containing a hidden gun-position. Such a puny defence would hardly have presented an impregnable barrier against a forceful German invasion.

Of course, these amateurish 'Dad's Army' schemes were never put to the test under real battle conditions. They remain as rather idiosyncratic and, as comedian Peter Cook might say, futile gestures, probably designed to improve morale and give the British soldiers something to do.

Of greater significance were probably the dummy airfields, the dummy aircraft and the decoy sights developed by Colonel Turner from June 1940 onwards. These will be discussed in more detail in a later article when we critically dissect Fisher's claim that in 1941 Maskelyne successfully protected the port of Alexandria from night-time aerial attack by constructing a sophisticated decoy further along the coast.

EVACUATION TO NEW ZEALAND

During this precarious time, people were not allowed to leave England unless they somehow obtained a special exit visa. However, children under sixteen did not require this permit and were allowed to leave if finances and berths were available. Their mothers (and their nannies!) were also given special exemption.

These departures were privately arranged, the costs of which had to be borne by the family. There was, however, a short-lived government assisted scheme (announced June 20th 1940 after the collapse of France and quickly oversubscribed) which evacuated children to 'dominion' countries such as Canada and New Zealand.

Jasper Maskelyne's arrangement fell under the former private scheme. However, his family's departure preceded, and therefore cannot be simply seen as a hurried reaction to, the threatening events of May-June 1940 when Germany unexpectedly overran France

"Our trip to New Zealand had been in the planning stage for about two years : the war merely acted as an added reason."

Evelyn's two brothers and her mother had migrated to New Zealand in the 1920's.

Her brother, Graeme, a newspaper reporter, later tragically died in a car crash.

"Graeme was my mother's favourite brother, and she was from that time on consumed with a desire to visit his grave and, if possible, arrange for the remains to be reburied in England. All these things were done and the coming of the war seemed to serve as an excuse for the journey."

There is a secondary point that needs to be recorded which perhaps throws unfavourable light on the class system of 1940 Britain. In peacetime, parents with money had the privilege of sending their children to élite educational institutions. In wartime, with the dual threats of massive air raids and sea-borne invasion, the wealthier classes now had the privilege of sending their children to friendly countries far from the danger zone. This facade of equality under fire has been skilfully analysed by Clive Ponting in his controversial revisionist book "1940 - Myth & Reality".

"As you guess, our travel was funded by my parents, largely by the sale of the small Ford car of my mothers, and the larger Vauxhall that my father drove, plus the furniture from our rented house in Thames Ditton, Surrey, not far from Hampton Court. This house was two-storey brick with a slate roof in a largish garden. Probably the model for the one you mention in Fisher's book in "Albany Street".

"We travelled by an NZSCo ship: the vintage passenger cargo ship SS "Rotorua". Very different from the ships that my mother and father had been accustomed to travel in when they visited South Africa during the early thirties : hose had been large, luxurious liners, with many facilities. The only facility the old Rotorua had was a canvas swimming pool, rigged in the warmer weather, once the Atlantic convoy was left behind. The voyage was without incident, after an early scare, just out of Liverpool, when the ship was struck by some under water object, which caused the passengers and crew to be mustered to boat stations amidst some confusion. For a small boy it was all pretty good fun. The ship had five masts, and I remember sitting with the other children on a canvas hatch top at night under the bright stars of the pacific, listening to a wind up gramophone playing a top tune of the day "Begin the Beguine..."

"... To my recollection we arrived in NZ in May, 1940 and our stay lasted almost three years"

In a future article, I will document the reasons why , in 1943 , they returned to England.

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In any case, for the purposes of our investigation, it is important to realise that Maskelyne arrived at Farnham in mid October, 1940 (at least three independent sources confirm this), and was therefore unlikely to have been deeply involved in the camouflage work either after Dunkirk in June/July or at the height of the Battle of Britain in late August-early September.

To put it more emphatically, Maskelyne had not even begun specialised training. And by the time he had completed camouflage training, the perceived threat of invasion had receded.

Fisher's time frame regarding the fake defences is also surely mistaken. What he describes in exaggerated fashion as "the greatest deception ever attempted" had been carried out earlier, and only on a modest scale, in the summer, not in the autumn of 1940. Now, with bad weather approaching, the chances of invasion declined even further, from highly unlikely to downright impossible.

In one of the better lines of "Magic-Top Secret", the ghost writer parodies Caesar's famous aphorism: "They came, they saw, and thought they conquered" In fact, these rather desperate camouflage measures over the summer of 1940 had no impact on Germany's decision to call off its invasion. It would be wrong to conclude that Germany somehow missed a golden opportunity for invading England. Ill-prepared and lacking the means of either launching or protecting an amphibious assault, Hitler and the German High Command made an informed and rational decision to postpone Sea Lion, the code-name for the invasion.

And although at the time the subsequent air battle was seen as a close contest, with the benefit of hindsight and with more accurate information about the respective strengths of the combatants and their productive capacity to overcome material losses, it is very hard to see how the Germans could have won the campaign. Modern research, without belittling the bravery and sacrifice of the defenders, has dramatically revised the mythical view of the Battle of Britain :

"the causes of the Luftwaffe's defeat were many and 'built-in' long before the battle began."

(This quote is drawn from A.J. Levine's article, 'Was World War 2 a Near-Run Thing?, in the Journal of Strategic Studies.(1985) John Ellis also presents more detailed arguments about the difficulties facing Germany in the prologue of 'Brute Force'.)

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Briefly, as an odd contribution to this phase of the war, "The War Magician" mentions that in January 1941 , while still at Farnham , Maskelyne devised an 'octopus' mine, made up of eight deadly snaking tentacles joined to a central detonator which floated beneath the water's surface. This interesting design extended the mine's effective contact range. An illustration of the proposed mine appears in "The War Magician" , but is signed and dated August 1941. It is not actually stated whether Maskelyne's mine was ever manufactured, let alone deployed. Obviously, it could have had no bearing at all on Germany's abandonment of Operation Sea Lion in October 1940.

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Let us now consider the next important stage in Maskelyne's career: the transfer to North Africa.

Again there is confusion and contradiction.

When did Maskelyne first arrive in wartime Egypt?

It was in early 1941(April), according to Fisher, and over this particular point, Fisher's version appears to be more accurate than some accounts. For example, some writers carelessly place Maskelyne in Egypt by the autumn of 1940. In "Trojan Horses", it is claimed that Dudley Clarke, realising that Wavell's men were heavily outnumbered by Mussolini's troops, called upon the services of Maskelyne and his Gang to quickly build dummy tanks for use in the battle of Sidi Barrani, December 9th 1940.

"They started to construct , at great speed, dummy Cruiser tanks and heavy field guns.. In reality, the guns were lengths of drainpipe filled with chemicals that produced loud flashes..."

As for tanks : "Maskelyne hired teams of native workers who drove their camels and horses relentlessly to and fro, trailing chains that whipped up the sand and suggested the incessant movement of large armoured columns. It seems that all this trickery at least gave Graziani pause for thought. He did not press home his advantage..."

But, according to Fisher, Maskelyne was still in England doing his training. On the night of Dec. 9th, he and his colleagues were at Farnham Castle listening to the BBC radio. Maskelyne eventually sailed for North Africa from Liverpool on January 19th, 1941.

My own theory is that the authors of "Trojan Horses" have confused a later offensive, Operation Crusader, which was launched in November 1941 against the Afrika Korps, with an earlier deception operation that was carried out in November/ December 1940 against the Italians before Maskelyne had even arrived in Egypt — a completely different campaign against a different enemy.

Indeed, other sources indicate that small-scale deception operations designed to exaggerate Allied military strength were carried out by Wavell in this earlier period.

Even "Magic-Top Secret" makes this major error when it mistakenly describes Maskelyne's involvement in the earlier campaign against the Italians: "Not only had the huge Italian offensive been spoiled before it had begun, but the Italians, outnumbering Wavell's troops by five to one, were in pell-mell retreat...That offensive, which undoubtedly saved Egypt, was a masterpiece of bluff and daring."

This misplaced reference to Maskelyne's participation in the desert war recurs in other secondary accounts. I queried such discrepancies with Alistair Maskelyne and in his first letter he wrote the following response : "My father arrived in Egypt in 1941."

Geoffrey Barkas' own account of the desert camouflage war ,"The Camouflage Story" (1952), also records that Maskelyne first arrived in Egypt in early 1941 (but the precise differs from Fisher's). More of this book later, suffice to say that far from bolstering Maskelyne's contribution, it gives emphasis and credit to other characters in the camouflage war.

"On 10th March, 1941, a draft of twelve camouflage officers reached Cairo, all of them captains and all trained by Buckley in England. The first I knew of their arrival was an urgent telephone message from Jasper Maskelyne. "Please tell Major Barkas," it read," that I am stranded here with eleven other officers and that we have no money at all."

The fact of their financial plight was no great surprise, for almost all of us in the Andes (their passenger ship) had also run out of cash, but I confess that I was disappointed. A magician of Maskelyne's skill, I thought, should have been able at will to cause ten piastre pieces to stream from the nose and ears of the nearest field cashier."

Finally, "The War Magician" and "Magic-Top Secret" both include a strange 'poisoned gift' episode which lacks plausibility. En route to Egypt, Maskelyne supposedly receives a tin of sweets after his ship docks at Sierra Leone. He soon suffers from stomach cramps, develops a dangerous fever, and almost dies. Later, he suspects that German agents might have tried to poison him. This is surely paranoid or grandiose speculation. A more obvious theory is that he was struck down by acute dysentery or food poisoning which frequently afflicted seafarers in those parts of the world.

Alistair Maskelyne in his second letter wrote : "Your appraisal of the "poison gift" account is quite right: my father was ill on that voyage, but I believe it derived from eating fruit bought in the local market at Accra, so was more mundane, and much less dramatic. An attack of dysentery is unpleasant, but not good story value."

In the next article, we will continue with Maskelyne's 'extraordinary' adventures in North Africa.

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Julian Trevelyan, Self-Portrait, 1940