Soldier’s story brought to life on the big screen

Sep 24 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

WHAT is it like to see a person you know in real life played on screen? This experience recently happened to historian and writer Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, who had interviewed many veterans for his highly successful book Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man.

After reading Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel Atonement, and then seeing the film version starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, Hugh realised that one of the former soldiers he had befriended for his own book appeared to have provided the inspiration for the fictional lead character.

While watching McAvoy’s war scenes unfold, Hugh realised that this was the early wartime life of Lt Julian Fane, MC and Bar (also mentioned in dispatches), who rose to be a colonel and is now an 86-year-old grandfather living in Gloucestershire.

“He’s still very much on the ball and alert, but it was very strange to see very similar experiences to those that he’d related to me come alive on the screen,” says Hugh.

“With a couple of comrades, McAvoy’s character battles back to Dunkirk on the last day of the British evacuation on June 2, 1940.

“He’d probably have been involved in one of those rear-guard actions necessary to keep the escape corridor open for British and Allied Forces.

“Lt Fane was an officer in charge of nine men, even though he was only 19. Some of them were older, but they also took care of him, just the same as happens in the movie.

“His brigade was holding Cassel, a small hilltop town 20 miles south of Dunkirk. Anybody commanding this could dominate the area and the Brits nabbed it first.”

On May 29, 1940, three days after the evacuation started, Fane received orders that he could depart with his men. Most of the British were ambushed five miles outside and although wounded (like McAvoy) Fane escaped.

At that stage, the Germans had overrun the area between Cassel and Dunkirk, so all escaping British soldiers individually had to battle their way to the beaches and rescue.

“Lt Fane had experiences far worse than depicted in the film. One time, he was hiding high on a haystack with his men in a barn and German soldiers burst in. Fane’s men hid all day while Germans went in and out inspecting the farm machinery,” says Hugh.

“At one heart-stopping point, someone climbed up a ladder and saw them. From his clothes they assumed it was a French farmer, who saw them but did not let on to the Germans. They had a whole series of similar close shaves.

“That occasion is reworked for the film as Fane and the soldiers hiding and hearing the Germans march in – only to find they’re mistaken and its French villagers bringing them food.”

The soldiers walked at night and hid by day.

Once, they saw a column of horse-drawn artillery and addressed the leading horseman in French. Realising he was German, they hastily retreated, incredibly lucky not to have had their uniforms spotted.

Another time they were walking along a lane and had to throw themselves into a hedgerow as a German tank column swept past.

“Lt Fane got the MC as it was very rare for a man in the rear-guard to get back safely, never mind with nine men (two were lost at Dunkirk). Fane himself was blown out of a house by a bomb.

“Ian McEwan had not met Lt Fane, and my Dunkirk book had not come, but he surely must have heard about him and his experiences.

“In the novel, Dunkirk was a major part of Atonement, but slightly less so in the film. McEwan’s stuff is terrific in the book, much better than in the movie. His research is immaculate

“The film is beautiful and I’ve seen it twice, with the second viewing more enjoyable than the first. The film is wonderfully shot with lovely Impressionist-style moments, rather like a Monet painting. It works well dramatically, too.

“It was very moving to see this real-life character, whose Dunkirk story I was so involved with, come to life on the screen.”

* DUNKIRK: Fight to the Last Man, by Hugh Sebag-MontefiorePenguin, £7.99

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk