`US News` Special Issue focusses on the intriguing military career of Ian Fleming

The latest Special Issue of U.S. News features an intriguing article that focusses on the military career of Ian Fleming and his life before the infamous James Bond novels:

When the war was finally over, Ian Fleming told a friend shortly after the Normandy invasion, he was going to write "the spy story to end all spy stories." Less than 10 years later, he made good on the pledge with Casino Royale, an adventure tale featuring a motley cast from the espionage underworld and introducing a swashbuckling superspy by the name of Bond-James Bond.

A dozen novels and 20 films later, Agent 007`s exploits have obscured Fleming`s own remarkable career. Bond`s creator may never have served in Her Majesty`s secret service or toted a golden gun, but his stint as special assistant to Britain`s director of naval intelligence during World War II supplied him with more than enough ma- terial for his books.

In 1939, Fleming was a newly minted, 31-year-old lieutenant in Britain`s Naval Intelligence Division, assigned to collect information on enemy shipping. But when war arrived, writes Andrew Lycett, author of Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, his group was brought into "covert activities outside its normal province." And Fleming-himself a gin-drinking bon vivant who just months earlier had been known primarily as a failed stockbroker-suddenly found himself coordinating clandestine operations against Romanian oil refineries, sending operatives to sabotage barges on the Danube, and brainstorming ways to cut off the supply of Swedish iron ore to Germany.

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