deception the Cairo planners organised much of the operation. On a visit to Naples in January 1944 Clarke had seen the movie Five Graves to Cairo, in which actor Miles Mander makes a brief appearance. The film involves one character impersonating another and Clarke suggested attempting the same trick in real life. He proposed an operation to mislead German commanders as to Montgomery's location in the days immediately before the Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune). Montgomery was one of the most prominent Allied commanders and the German high command expected him to be present for any invasion of France. Clarke hoped Montgomery's apparent presence in Gibraltar and Africa would lend support to the idea that the Allies might be planning landings in southern France, as part of Operation Vendetta, rather than across the Channel. While in London, in February 1944, Clarke, the London Controlling Section and Ops (B) drafted Copperhead in support of Vendetta. Operation Mander, the actor from Five Graves to Cairo, was located in Hollywood but found to be too tall in real life. Another look-alike was identified but before he could be drafted into the operation he broke a leg in a motorbike accident. Eventually, Lieutenant-Colonel J. V. B. Jervis-Reid, head of Ops (B), spotted a photograph of Meyrick Clifton James in the News Chronicle. James, an Australian, had spent 25 years as an actor before the war, and at the time was assigned to the Royal Army Pay Corps. Colonel David Niven, a well-known British actor, was asked to contact James and offer him a screen test for future army films. When he arrived at the meeting, James was told his true role. James was not a perfect stand-in for Montgomery. He had lost a finger during the First World War, so a prosthetic had to be made. He had also never flown before, so the London Controlling Section's Dennis Wheatley took James up for a test flight to make sure he did not suffer from air sickness. Finally, James both drank heavily and smoked cigars, while Montgomery was a teetotaler and disliked smoking. The deception planners were worried that James might be spotted drinking, spoiling the performance. Despite these hitches, and with Montgomery's approval, the plan went forward. To get into character, James spent some time with the general, posing as a journalist, to study his mannerisms. Allied deceivers used their double agent network to