- LONDON (Reuters) - A British
war hero, said to have been the inspiration behind secret agent James Bond,
has died aged 90, British newspapers reported Wednesday.
-
- Former Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job
carried out a series of daring exploits behind enemy lines during the Second
World War including some while serving under author Ian Fleming, who created
the 007 character.
-
- Although he never claimed to be the real James Bond,
Fleming had told him he was the model for the heroic spy, the Guardian
newspaper said.
-
- Dalzel-Job's real life adventures certainly read like
a James Bond novel. In one of most daring exploits in 1940, he disobeyed
orders to rescue all the women, children and elderly residents from the
Norwegian town of Narvik in local boats just before it was destroyed in
a German bombing raid.
-
- He only avoided a court martial after the King of Norway
sent his personal thanks and awarded him the Knight's Cross of St Olav.
Later in the war he commanded a team in one Fleming's undercover units
which worked far ahead of allied lines in France and Germany.
-
- He recounted tales of his wartime achievements in his
memoir "From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy."
-
- However unlike the woman-chasing 007, Dalzel-Job returned
to Norway after the war to marry a schoolgirl he had met there as a child.
He even shunned the Bond films.
-
- "I prefer the quiet life now. When you have led
such an exciting life you don't need to see a fictional account of it,"
the Guardian quoted him as saying.
-
-
- (AFP) -- The supposed model for secret agent James Bond,
a British war hero who could ski backwards and navigate midget submarines,
has died aged 90.
-
- Patrick Dalzel-Job served with Bond creator Ian Fleming
in the Royal Navy during World War II, during which Dalzel-Job's exploits,
worthy of Bond's extravagant adventures, are thought to have served as
a model for agent 007.
-
- "I was Bond, it's true. I worked with Ian Fleming
during the last war," Dalzel-Job once said, according to the Times
newspaper.
-
- "We led a team of Royal Marines through enemy lines
and he later told me he used me as a role model for Bond."
-
- Sent to Norway during the war, where he was told not
to get involved with civilians, he evacuated an entire village which was
threatened by Nazi reprisal bombings.
-
- He saved 4,500 lives and received the country's highest
award from the King of Norway.
-
- But similarities between Dalzel-Job and the notoriously
seductive 007 ended when it came to women.
-
- "I have only loved one woman," he said after
the death of his wife in the 1980s.
-
- © 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
-
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s967925.htm
|
