I was Franco's double

 I suspect it is a universal certainty that youth is full of beginnings, endings come only in the form of the pause between the next page.  Were it always the case.  Increasingly I find that, even in our own dear club, I turn a corner and find a space where an old friend had been in residence for many years and in that gap memories flood in.  So it was when I wandered through the Bowls Roof Terrace where Arthur Bland had sat, adding up the scores, for nearly four decades.  People of his kidney took the Official Secrets Act seriously.  I am reminded of those couples who did such important work at Bletchley Park , spending decades of happy marriage without divulging to each other they had been code breakers in the neighbouring huts.  I believe some felt even their names were covered by the Act and never knew each other by anything other than ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam.’  We may speculate on the benefits of secrecy in sustaining any marriage but that is for another time. Arthur was a man who took promises seriously and had vowed to never break the silence surrounding his deeds for personal gain or private amusement.  He is gone.  The world has moved and I feel free to share his act of patriotic duplicity.

First I must take you back to the Summer of 1940.  Following a little confusion over what the Bosche were actually up to our boys had been whisked off the beaches of Dunkirk with a dash of élan and just a hint of relief.  The nation was in peril and depending on pluck and improvisation rather the tried and tested stand-bys of strategy and a well stocked armoury.   Some battalions were sharing a dozen Ross Rifles between them and the Tank Corps had learnt the habit of ‘taking and driving away’ any Standard Flying V-8 they could get their hands on; bolting some sheets of steel to said car and declaring themselves the answer to Blitzkrieg.   

 

While all of Blighty was digging trenches and putting Pill Boxes in places in places which endangered the occupants more than the attackers, Hitler and his gang of ruffians were looking for any weakness in our Imperial Shield.  The position of Gibraltar was one which gave great concern.  If this sentinel post at the mouth of Mediterranean fell then Malta would be in danger and vital supplies forced around Africa.  Spanish exiles were consulted about the route south and it was felt indeed possible for Panzers to make along the railways and roads of that war torn land.  Something needed to be done.

 

Arthur Bland had led a mostly blameless life till that point in one of those departments the Civil Service create to ensure their members have somewhere warm and indoors to spend the winter months.  Physically underwhelming Bland had spent the Great War in the environs of Blackpool devising ways to account for all the bandages being used at convalescent hospitals and it must be clear he was not cut of the cloth of classical heroes.  His moment of hidden glory came when returning to his home in Ealing South on the Piccadilly Line.  He was spied by one of those chaps Tom Wintringham was recruiting at Osterley Park to wreak merry hell on any Hun invader who had the cheek to besmirch this Sceptred Isle with his presence.  The exclamation made by the Iberian Anarchist startled the whole carriage.  The thing was that this Spanish friend of liberty had, for a moment, felt he was sharing public transport in suburban England with his greatest foe.  The truth was, Arthur Bland was a perfect double for Francisco Franco, the rank bad hat who had wormed his way to the top in Spain.  Hugh Dalton was informed.  SOE contacted.  Even before he had reached Acton Town Arthur Bland had been ‘lifted’ and was on his way to a secret house ‘somewhere in Royal Berkshire.’

 

One of the many advantages of impersonating El Caudillo was the man was utterly without character.  Pretending to be a Hitler or Mussolini would always lead a chap to take that extra step from cunning impersonation to the greatest of hamacting and there are only so many carpets you can bite in Nazi clobber before someone begins to suspect.  Franco was such a colourless little oik that even years later, on the Dia de la Hispanidad, it had to be pointed out to the troops parading past who they were actually saluting

 

Time was not on our side.  The Fuhrer was scheduled to meet the Generalissimo in October on the Franco-Spanish border and, to be frank, it looked all up for our future in the Med.  Luring Franco away from his bodyguards was going to be a bit of a problem.  Like many Mother’s Boys, El Caudillo would have thousands slain for wanting to earn a decent crust without a single blush but would go all unnecessary if he heard a slightly off joke.  Research Humourists from the Ministry of Information worked night and day to devise a joke blue enough to make Franco storm out of a room but not so offensive as to make him shoot the cove delivering it.

 

It has to be said that Arthur Bland was a worried man when he rowed towards the Spanish shore somewhere east of Gijon and made his way across the Cantabrian Mountains and onto Madrid.  Was his Spanish good enough?  Could he remember the words of ‘Face to the Sun’ without having to hum through the second verse?  Did he like or revile the Freemasons?  He grinned sheepishly when telling me how the plan came off.  SIS had a man placed in the dictator’s court.  The fellow was only half way through the tale of the Nun, the shepherd and the castanets when Franco stormed out of the grand salon and into the arms of an SOE snatch squad. 

 

The meeting at Hendaye was more of a success than anyone could imagine.  ‘Every time Hitler asked me about how many Divisions I could send to Andalusia I turned the conversation back to domestic matters.  Telling him I didn’t like dogs didn’t go down well and when I asked him why he had gone to Munich to avoid military service in his youth he looked very glum.  His aides tried to get us back on track but when they asked how much money we needed to enter the war the amount I asked for made even my own generals blench.  I think I got a little confused over the peseta exchange rate but either way we never heard from Hitler again.  Apparently he’d rather have had teeth removed without anaesthetic then meet me again and to be honest the feeling was mutual.  He didn’t half go on.’

 

Arthur’s service to his nation was not yet complete.  It was always a concern that the Spanish could interfere with the 1942 Allied landings in North Africa.  ‘It was quite easy really’ Bland recalled.  All I had to do was turn a blind eye and let my cabinet take all the bribes the British government could shovel into their back pockets.  As for relations with Mrs Franco ‘I said I’d been wounded down there and couldn’t perform all my duties.  To be honest, I just didn’t fancy her much.’

 

In 1943 it was suggested that Franco should ‘die’ in a motor accident and Bland be recalled.  ‘I was against it’.   ‘Well, the winters were kinder in the south and I got used to a little nap in the afternoon.  I persuaded the government I could still do some good in a Post-War Europe.   I did have a few moments of worry.  Once I was discovered doing the football pools.  I had seven score draws and was waiting to see if Stoke could get something at Carlton.  Then I remember I was a dictator, screamed at the intruder and they put it down to just another foible.  There were some things I was missing though; a decent roast, ‘Two Way Family Favourites’ on the wireless and the West Middlesex Golf Club.’  Fortune was Bland’s friend here again.  The election of President Eisenhower allowed him to take up the game in public as people assumed he was just toadying to the great man.

 

‘I didn’t have much to do really,’ Arthur claimed a little before he left us.  ‘It was amusing watching the secret service frogmen holding on to very big trout when I went fishing but I got a little bored.  I had always a soft spot for the seaside and when Pedro Zaragoza, no, really, that was his name, came to me and said he wanted to make Benidorm the Blackpool of the South I let him.  It took years to stop the Guardia Civil arresting anyone wearing a ‘kiss me quick’ hat.  Those chaps are strangers to Donald MacGill’s work.

 

By 1975 Spain was ready to move on.  The assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco meant no strongman would prevent the return of democracy and so it safe to bring Arthur in from the cold.  ‘I went home, cleared the back log of correspondence that was on the hall floor and got on with life, just like so many others of my generation’ he said.  ‘We are very private people in the cul-de-sac I lived in and no one asked where I’d been.