[aberrant]

From Diplomacy rules:

"Each player secretly writes 'orders' for each of his/her units on a slip of paper. Each player reads his/her orders while others make sure that what they hear is what is written. A legal order must be followed. An order written by mistake, if legal, must be followed. An 'illegal' or ambiguous order or an order that is given an illegal order (or given no order) must stand in place. (The unit holds.) A poorly written order that has only one meaning must be followed." [0]

Assuming the rule version is the same, the rules may not have been obeyed: the written command should have preceded the spoken command. Clearly, the players wanted England dead ;)

[0] https://www.wizards.com/avalonhill/rules/diplomacy.pdf

[bhickey]

Yes, it's in violation of the rules. However, the enforcement of rules is at the pleasure of the tournament director. In tournament play, you typically do not read your own orders. Each round, one player reads starting with his/her own orders. If the rest of the table thinks that you cocked up your orders, no one else is going to police it for you. Walking away from the table during adjudication is egregiously bad play. It's unlikely that the TD would have done anything about it.

In a match with Edi Birsan, someone misread my orders to my advantage. Should I have proactively corrected them?

Occasionally in the chaos of play, a spare unit will make its way onto the board. This is common enough that it's called a flying dutchman[0]. I've seen it happen at least twice in tournament play.

People can get nasty when a tournament is at stake. Once someone managed to lock himself in a garage and his opponents declined to let him out until after orders were due.

[0]http://www.diplom.org/~diparch/resources/calhamer/dozen.htm