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Douglas Berneville-Claye 1941.
The son of a warrant officer awarded the
MBE for services in the First World War,
Douglas Clay was born in 1917. After
a short period as a cavalry trooper, he
married and drifted between jobs until
the outbreak of the Second World War.
Initially joining the RAF, he failed the
aircrew exams, went AWOL, bigamously
married his girlfriend, worked in an
armaments factory, and joined the
home guard. He also began wearing
his father’s old uniform, complete with
additional pilot’s wings and, after a
traffic accident whilst in uniform, was mistakenly sent to an officers’ hospital. There, he stole a cheque-book before being charged with obtaining money by deception and impersonating an officer. However, the charges were dropped as he repaid the money and, to cover his tracks, he changed his name to Douglas Webster St. Aubyn Berneville-Claye.
Enlisting as a private in the West Yorkshire Regiment, he claimed to have been educated at Charterhouse School and Magdalen College, Oxford, and, based on these falsehoods and in the absence of a reliable vetting system, was selected for officer training. Commissioned from Sandhurst on 26th September 1941, he served with the 11th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment in Egypt. Charged once again with cheque fraud, he managed to convince the authorities he was a barrister, conducted his own defence, and was acquitted. By now, having supposedly inherited his father’s title and calling himself ‘Lord Charlesworth’, his regiment was probably glad when he volunteered and was accepted for service in L Detachment of the SAS. After taking part in operations behind enemy lines, he was captured and sent to POW camp, firstly in Northern Italy and then to Oflag 79 in Germany.
After fellow POWs became aware that there was an informer in their midst and, having narrowed the suspects down to one, they planned to court-martial and execute Berneville-Claye – so he was moved by the Germans for his own safety. A few weeks later, a POW working party spotted him wearing civilian clothes in Hanover. He next
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