Page 147 - The Secret Museum

a letter marked by the archivist as RDMSC RD 1/1/1. The letter is the first item in

Dahl’s ‘Personal’ file. It was written by a New York literary agent, named Harold
Matson, to Miss Katherine Swan, who was the writer C. S. Forester’s secretary. The
letter tells an interesting story: the story of how Dahl became a writer.

The first story Roald Dahl ever wrote was a true one – which he embellished,
with his nascent storytelling skills – about his time in the RAF in the 1940s. He was
sent on a mission from Egypt to Libya. He hadn’t had much training, and on the final
leg of the trip he crash-landed in the desert because he couldn’t see a runway, and
was running out of fuel. He fractured his skull and nose and was unable to see.

Luckily, a pilot called Peter had seen the plane coming down into the desert and
rushed to the wreck to pull Dahl’s body out. Dahl carried on flying, but after severe
headaches, a blackout and some time recovering in England he was transferred to an
office job in Washington as an assistant air attache. On the first day of his new job,
he was sitting at his desk wondering what on earth he was supposed to be doing
when the writer C. S. Forester came in and asked him if he had any good stories

about the war. America had just joined the Allies and the public was hungry to hear
stories of heroic deeds.

Dahl and he got chatting, and Forester invited him out for lunch. They were so
busy talking and eating that Forester forgot to take notes and so he asked Dahl if he
would mind sending over some anecdotes about his crash in Libya, which Forester
could then shape into a story. Dahl did so, but he wrote the story out in full. Forester
thought the tale was brilliantly written and replied to Dahl with the life-changing
question: ‘Did you know you were a writer?’

Forester sent the piece to his agent, Harold Matson, who then wrote this letter to
Katherine Swan asking: ‘Did Lt. Dahl write it without any assistance whatever? If so,

he should write more. He is a natural writer of superior quality.’ No wonder the
letter is stored first in Dahl’s archives. I imagine it changed his life.

The second letter in the archives is Dahl’s reply to Matson, asking whether he’d
like a piece about Greece. He asked to remain anonymous if his first story was
published, as members of the RAF were not allowed to publish tales of the war. He
also requested that if his writing was going to be illustrated, that the drawings of his
plane be accurate. The next letter in the file is a reply from Matson saying that there
was no problem about either anonymity or illustrations, and he had some good news:

he’d sold the piece for £300.

It was published verbatim in August 1942 in the Saturday Evening Post. Dahl had
called the story ‘A Piece of Cake’, but it was changed to ‘Shot Down over Libya’ to
sound more dramatic. Dahl had changed details of the original story: being shot down
made a better story than running out of fuel. Already Dahl’s love of exaggeration for
the sake of a good story shone through. He continued to write, and Matson became his
agent. Dahl told the whole story himself in ‘Lucky Break’.

Over his career Dahl wrote two novels, 19 short story collections, six film