Wikipedia (where I found this) and at least two other sources site this man, Patrick Dalzel-Job, as being the real James Bond. Dalzel-Job served with author Ian Fleming as an aide de camp with British Navel Intelligence and then in an ultra-secret reconnaisance commando unit skilled in lock picking, sabotage, assassination and other covert means of subversion.
Dalzel-Job’s swagger, handsome good looks and sense of elan’ inspired Ian Fleming to create a fictional character called “Agent 007, James Bond”.
Also of interest (at least to me since I’m a total geek) is that Ian Fleming authored a document while in service with the British government that inspired the charter of the current U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Dalzel-Job (sp?) is deceased now, and I wrote this on another Internet site several years about him and his passing:
**"On Wednesday, October 15th of this year a 90-year old man named Patrick Dalzel-Job passed away quietly at his home in the small town of Plockton, Western Scotland. His son announced his father’s passing in the local paper. And the worldwide press descended on the town. Every major news network carried the story of this quiet man’s unremarkable departure from this life. The TV cameras showed up, the newspapers came, documentary and movie producers came. They grilled his son with questions, they wanted to interview Dalzel-Job’s wife, but learned she had passed away in the ‘80s. **
Why all the worldwide attention paid to the death of this anonymous old man in this quiet town in the middle of nowhere in Scotland?
Dalzel-Job was James Bond. The real James Bond, agent 007.
In World War II Dalzel-Job commanded a naval special operations team in which a young commando named Ian Fleming served. Fleming, also a writer, was so astounded by the dashing figure of Dalzel-Job and his incredible courage under fire, resourcefulness and daring that he went on to create a fictional character based on Dalzel-Job. The character was called “Agent 007, James Bond” in a series of books that became movies that became a part of our culture and the very definition of masculinity for some people.
**So, for every man (certainly myself included) who has daydreamed about being like James Bond but dismisses the idea as absurd or implausible let me assure you: James Bond was real. Perhaps he never piloted the space shuttle, wrestled a battalion of Ninjas in a hollowed out volcano or did combat with a seven-foot tall man with a limited vocabulary and metal teeth while bedding seemingly every attractive woman on all seven continents, but he was real. **
The exploits of Dalzel-Job died with him. No one person other than Dalzel-Job knew the entire story of everything he did in service to Queen and country. His military record reveals that he vacillated between being disciplined for some outrageous insubordination or that he was being decorated for heroism. But nothing in between. Never boring, never dull, never unspectacular. As they say, and I know from personal experience this is true: Truth is always stranger than fiction.
**But James Bond is dead now. The real Bond is gone. And all we are left with is speculation over which Hollywood pretty-boy will be the next “Bond” while we watch increasingly crappy special effects scored to a musical theme by a now antique female pop star. **
I mourn the death of Dalzel-Job. How I would have loved to meet him, just for a moment. Can you imagine?"
