The Man Who Talked

The feature in the current issue of Reader's Digest (circ. 17.5 million) is a condensation of The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, a spine-chilling tale about a "gentle spy" by Quentin Reynolds. In Reynolds' crackling, reportorial prose, the book describes "quiet, religious" George DuPre, a Canadian who entered British Intelligence early in World War II and prepared for a strange mission. For nine months he was trained to behave like "the village halfwit" so that he could play the part of a harmless, moronic French garage mechanic after he was dropped behind the German lines. The book told how DuPre helped smuggle Allied flyers out of enemy territory until the Gestapo picked him up. The Nazis tortured him with a sulphuric-acid enema, poured boiling water into his clamped-open mouth, squashed his finger in a vise, gave him savage beatings, etc. But DuPre, by his own account, never told the Germans anything, just mumbled dumbly, "I don't know," until he was finally released.

Last week DuPre, Author Reynolds, the Reader's Digest and Random House, the book's publisher, were all themselves subjected to the most horrible torture in publishing. Across Page 1 the Calgary (Alberta) Herald (circ. 56,456) was the headline: CALGARIAN ADMITS SECRET SERVICE STORY WAS A FABRICATION! GEORGE DUPRE TELLS HERALD HE WAS NEVER

IN FRANCE AS SPY. Said the Herald: "The story of George DuPre, as related in the ... Reader's Digest, is a fiction. Millions of people in every country in which the Digest is published will have been taken in ... There are so many holes in [his story] that it is hard to imagine DuPre expecting to get away with it." There was no denying the Herald's expose. Author Reynolds announced candidly that he had been "duped" by the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated." Reader's Digest Editor DeWitt Wallace was equally stunned, explained that the Digest would confess its error in its January issue. "This mistake," said Random House's President Bennett Cerf, "is a beaut."

Awful Truth. DuPre first attracted the Digest's attention six months ago, after giving a number of lectures and broadcasts in Canada on his war experiences. He was invited to suburban Pleasantville, N.Y. to meet the Digest editors. "If there ever was a man who inspired confidence and seemed deeply religious." recalls Editor Wallace, "it was he." The Digest asked Reynolds to write DuPre's story, later sold the idea of the book to Random House. Reynolds went to Canada with DuPre, branch manager of Calgary's Commercial Chemicals, Ltd., found that he was an outstanding citizen in Calgary, leader in the Boy Scout movement and an active member of United Church of Canada. At war's end he worked as confidential assistant and security officer to Nathan E. Tanner, Alberta's Minister of Mines and Minerals, who supervised the provinces' vital natural resources.

In Calgary, Reynolds dined with DuPre and the mayor, saw DuPre together with high government officials, and went to an R.C.A.F. officers' party in DuPre's honor. "Everyone was delighted," says Reynolds, "that at last DuPre was to get recognition outside of Canada." Even though R.C.A.F. officers spoke glowingly of DuPre's war record, Reynolds says, he submitted his manuscript to the tight-lipped British Intelligence, was told they would not even look at it, since as a matter of policy they never give clearance. At the end of the story, DuPre signed his name to the statement: "[This] is my factual story exactly as I told it to Quentin Reynolds."

The Herald got the first hint that something was wrong from an anonymous tipster who had read the Digest story. He told the Herald that he had enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force with DuPre in 1942, although the book said that DuPre was in France at the time. Herald Managing Editor Allen Bill, who had helped Reynolds gather information for his book, assigned Reporter Doug Collins to investigate.

Collins, a onetime British Intelligence agent himself, had no trouble punching holes in the fabulous yarn. From R.C.A.F. records and scrapbooks of ex-R.C.A.F. officers, he found out that DuPre had never been in France during the war. He had spent a total of 13 months with an intelligence unit in England, where he had been a flight lieutenant. But at about the time the Gestapo was supposed to be torturing him, DuPre was safely back in Canada. His evidence in hand, Reporter Collins went to DuPre, cagily asked him about some fictitious "old friends" Collins said he remembered from his own days in British Intelligence, talked nostalgically about nonexistent training camps. "Yes, indeed," said DuPre, rising to the bait. "I knew [them] well." Then Collins told DuPre the awful truth.

Boy Scouts. Reluctantly, DuPre admitted the hoax. He had started out, he said, just telling a small lie back in 1946, but everyone seemed so- interested that the lie "grew." DuPre spoke all over Canada, contributed the proceeds of his fame to the Boy Scouts and ordered his share of the royalties from the book (now in its third printing) turned over to them. DuPre, who had repeatedly said in the book that he had withstood torture only because of his great "faith in God," explained that the only reason for talking about his adventure at all was "to prove, especially to the young, that a man with faith can endure anything." His wife, who knew about the hoax from the beginning, had another explanation. "He was trying to be a hero to me," she said sorrowfully, "but he didn't need to. I was satisfied with him the way he was."

Last week, after the Herald's expose, DuPre was "in a state of collapse" and "under doctor's care." Said Author Reynolds: "I am shocked and sad and very sorry for George." Random House Publisher Cerf took a more commercial view: this week he offered to refund the price of the book to anyone who wanted it, and suggested to bookstores all over the U.S. that they move the book from the "nonfiction" display shelves to the "fiction" section where it belongs.

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