Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out: always ready with a drink and a story, he was a well-known figure in the local bars. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Those who knew didn't tell, and almost no one really knew at all.
Clarke thought of himself as developing a new kind of weapon. Its components? Rumour, stagecraft, a sense of fun. Its target? The mind of Erwin Rommel, Hitler's greatest general. Throughout history, military commanders have sought to mislead their opponents. Dudley Clarke set out to do it on a scale no one had imagined before. Even afterwards, almost no one understood the magnitude of his achievement.
Drawing on recently released documents and hugely expanding on the louche portrait of Clarke as seen in SAS: Rogue Heroes, journalist and historian Robert Hutton reveals the amazing story of Clarke's A Force, the invention of the SAS and the Commandos, and the masterful hoodwinking of the Desert Fox at the battle of El Alamein. The Illusionist tells for the first time the dazzling tale of how, at a pivotal moment in the war, British eccentricity and imagination combined to thwart the Nazis and save innumerable lives - on both sides.
Review: Dudley Clarke (1899-1974) was an officer in the British Army, a pioneer of military deception and an advocate of special forces. Robert Hutton has written this biography, using recently-released documents. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by the comedian and historian Al Murray.
Dudley Clarke was born in South Africa and experienced the Boer War during his early childhood. After the war, the family returned to England where Clarke attended school and military college before receiving a commission in the Army. Too young to serve on the frontline during the First World War, he joined the Royal Flying Corps and completed his flying training in Egypt, starting an affinity for the Middle East. He remained in the Army after the First World War and served in a number of posts in the Middle East. During the early years of the Second World War, after the British had been forced to retreat from mainland Europe, one of the means of striking back at the enemy was small raiding parties. Clarke, having been impressed by the guerrilla tactics employed by the Boers in South Africa, suggested these raiding troops should adopt the name commandos, after the Boer units.
Towards the end of 1940, Dudley Clarke was posted to the Army headquarters in the Middle East in Cairo as an intelligence officer. His principal role was to develop deception plans to fool the enemy as to the strength of the Allied forces and when and where an attack may come. His methods involved feeding small pieces of information, such as orders to fictional units, using double agents, and visual deception such as dummy vehicles, over a period of time. In this way, the enemy was allowed to assemble the pieces like a jigsaw. He always emphasised that what mattered was not making the enemy think what you wanted, but making him do what you wanted. One of the fictional units he created in January 1941 was the Special Air Service (SAS) Brigade. He persuaded two soldiers to wear uniforms bearing airborne forces insignia and spend time in bars in Cairo and Alexandria where they would be seen. Later that year he met David Stirling who had come up with the idea of forming such a unit and Clarke persuaded him to use the SAS name for this unit. One of Clarke’s most important deceptions was to persuade the Germans that an attack at El Alamein in 1942 was not imminent but, when it came, would be at a different area of the front, ensuring the element of surprise.
However, Dudley Clarke’s most infamous moment came in October 1941 when he was arrested by Spanish police in Madrid whilst dressed as a woman. The British authorities managed to secure his release and get him to Gibraltar, but no explanation was offered for this behaviour.
Throughout the book the author uses comparisons with stage magicians or illusionists who try to mis-direct their audience’s attention in order to pull off a trick. This was very much the approach adopted by Clarke and his disciples, hoping to divert the enemy’s resources away from where an attack would take place. As a highly entertaining account of a shadowy and unsung figure, and a fascinating insight into the world of military deception, I would recommend this book.
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