PRIVATE COPPERFIELD

THE MAGICIAN OF WORLD WAR 1

LONDON, 1916, and as war raged in Europe, life continued as best it could back home. In the music halls, the most popular act was magician Albert Copperfield, who mesmerised his audience by making an elephant on stage disappear. And in the audience of one performance, Field Marshall Edward Lewerthwaite sat and watched the act in astonishment.

THE NEXT day, The Amazing Copperfield swapped his stage outfit for battle fatigues and enlisted in the King’s army. Immediately, Private Copperfield was sent to Salisbury Plain where he set to work on the audacious plan to disappear The Paris Gun. The Quartermaster promised that anything he might need to bring about the illusion would quickly be found.

WHEN the curtain fell, the 190-ton artillery piece – the largest in the British arsenal – was still there for all to see. It was a devastating blow, and the generals shook their heads. But Copperfield was not despondent. All good illusions need practice and preparation, and he was confident that he could succeed in pulling off the most audacious illusion of WW1.

LIKE all magicians, Copperfield needed a glamorous assistant to help pull off his illusion. Without hesitation, Cicely volunteered her services, and after another month of training the generals once again gathered on Salisbury Plain. This time when the curtain fell, the mighty Howitzer had disappeared! There was a gasp of disbelief followed by a roar of cheers.

IN LEWERTHWAITE’S mind, a plan was taking shape, and after the show, he went backstage to introduce himself to the magician. He had seen a pachyderm disappear before his very eyes. Would it be possible, he wondered, to vanish The Paris Gun – the Kaiser’s 250lb behemoth of an artillery piece that was raining down destruction on the Paris skyline?

A MONTH later, Copperfield was ready to test the illusion on a 190-ton, 18inch Howitzer. Wearing a specially constructed military issue top hat and opera cloak, Copperfield went into his routine, showing the audience the gun before closing the enormous field curtain around it. The military brass watched with bated breath as Copperfield tapped his cane three times on the ground.

THREE weeks later Private Copperfield, The Wonderful Cicely and a dozen men from The Royal Engineers found themselves behind enemy lines in France. The plan was to make their way to The Paris Gun disguised as a troupe of travelling players. They gave nightly shows with standard tricks – levitating Cicely and sawing her in half – to add to their credibility.

AFTER three weeks of shows, the entourage finally arrived Mont de Joie, the site of the Paris Gun. The men of the Royal Engineers set up the enormous curtain, whilst Copperfield and his glamorous assistant went round the German ranks handing out free tickets to the show. All the many months of planning and training were about to come to fruition.

COPPERFIELD asked Kaiser Wilhelm onto the stage and invited him to examine the curtains. There was silence as the German Emperor and King of the Prussian Empire studied the enormous drapes carefully, examining the back and front. After a few moments, he pronounced them to be “nichts

aubergewohnliches” – nothing out of the ordinary.

BILLOWING in the breeze, the curtain dropped to the ground and the crowd let out a gasp. The mighty Paris Gun, 260 tons of iron and steel, had simply disappeared with no sign that it had ever existed! The Kaiser was dumfounded as he stared at the empty space where, but a few seconds before, the enormous gun had been. His face was suddenly ashen.

THE KAISER was stupefied, but he knew that if the British army could make his most feared weapon disappear into thin air, then it could do the same to the rest of his artillery and that of the Central Powers. He realised the game was up. The very next day he stepped inside a railway dining car in The Forest of Compeigne and signed the German surrender.

AT 2100 hours, the audience, including the Kaiser himself, sat down. They were entertained when Copperfield locked Cicely in a cabinet, only for her to appear out of a second one, and when she climbed into a box in which he thrust razor-sharp swords. But everyone was waiting for Copperfield’s show stopper – making The Paris Gun disappear.

THE SILENCE became even more intense as the curtain was closed in front of the enormous artillery piece. Copperfield went into his routine, starting off with a small, badly choreographed dance, and waving his arms in a dramatic way. When the tension reached a crescendo, he tapped his cane and The Wonderful Cicely pulled sharply on a string.

THE CROWD leapt to their feet to applaud as Copperfield and The Wonderful Cicely took their bow. But the applause came to an abrupt stop as the curtain was once again raised, only for it to have transformed into an enormous Union Jack! After a few seconds, it fell once more to reveal that Copperfield and the team, like The Paris Gun, were gone.

PRIVATE Copperfield and The Wonderful Cicely were awarded The Victoria Cross by King George V. On presenting him with the honour, the King asked the illusionist how he had pulled the trick off. But Copperfield simply smiled. As a member of The Magic Circle he would never reveal how the trick was done, not even to His Majesty the King himself!