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In Calgary, Reynolds dined with DuPre and the mayor, saw DuPre together with high government officials, and went to an R.C.A.F. officers' party in DuPre's honor. "Everyone was delighted," says Reynolds, "that at last DuPre was to get recognition outside of Canada." Even though R.C.A.F. officers spoke glowingly of DuPre's war record, Reynolds says, he submitted his manuscript to the tight-lipped British Intelligence, was told they would not even look at it, since as a matter of policy they never give clearance. At the end of the story, DuPre signed his name to the statement: "[This] is my factual story exactly as I told it to Quentin Reynolds."
The Herald got the first hint that something was wrong from an anonymous tipster who had read the Digest story. He told the Herald that he had enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force with DuPre in 1942, although the book said that DuPre was in France at the time. Herald Managing Editor Allen Bill, who had helped Reynolds gather information for his book, assigned Reporter Doug Collins to investigate.
Collins, a onetime British Intelligence agent himself, had no trouble punching holes in the fabulous yarn. From R.C.A.F. records and scrapbooks of ex-R.C.A.F. officers, he found out that DuPre had never been in France during the war. He had spent a total of 13 months with an intelligence unit in England, where he had been a flight lieutenant. But at about the time the Gestapo was supposed to be torturing him, DuPre was safely back in Canada. His evidence in hand, Reporter Collins went to DuPre, cagily asked him about some fictitious "old friends" Collins said he remembered from his own days in British Intelligence, talked nostalgically about nonexistent training camps. "Yes, indeed," said DuPre, rising to the bait. "I knew [them] well." Then Collins told DuPre the awful truth.
Boy Scouts. Reluctantly, DuPre admitted the hoax. He had started out, he said, just telling a small lie back in 1946, but everyone seemed so- interested that the lie "grew." DuPre spoke all over Canada, contributed the proceeds of his fame to the Boy Scouts and ordered his share of the royalties from the book (now in its third printing) turned over to them. DuPre, who had repeatedly said in the book that he had withstood torture only because of his great "faith in God," explained that the only reason for talking about his adventure at all was "to prove, especially to the young, that a man with faith can endure anything." His wife, who knew about the hoax from the beginning, had another explanation. "He was trying to be a hero to me," she said sorrowfully, "but he didn't need to. I was satisfied with him the way he was."
Last week, after the Herald's expose, DuPre was "in a state of collapse" and "under doctor's care." Said Author Reynolds: "I am shocked and sad and very sorry for George." Random House Publisher Cerf took a more commercial view: this week he offered to refund the price of the book to anyone who wanted it, and suggested to bookstores all over the U.S. that they move the book from the "nonfiction" display shelves to the "fiction" section where it belongs.