World War II

From Double-Oh-Wiki

In 1941, James Bond lied about his age in order to enter the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, from which he emerged with the rank of Commander before joining MI6.

Ian Fleming admitted to being inspired by true or partially-true events that took place during his career at the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty.

Most notably, and the basis for Casino Royale, was a trip to Lisbon that Fleming and the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, took during World War II en route to the United States. While there they went to the Estoril Casino in Estoril, which, due to the neutral status of Portugal had a number of spies of warring regimes present. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a "chief German agent" at a table playing Chemin de Fer, however, Admiral Godfrey tells a different story, that Fleming only played Portuguese businessmen and that afterwards he had fantasised about them being German agents and the excitement of cleaning them out.