Operation Mincemeat
Page 12
Don Gómez-Beare described the Clauss network to Montagu and Cholmondeley. Some of what he said was familiar. The decoding of Abwehr messages had revealed, early in the war, the existence in Huelva of this “very efficient German agent58 who had the majority of Spanish officials there working for him, either for pay or for fascist ideology.” For more than three years, Montagu had monitored the steady buildup of German espionage activity in southern Spain, the use of Spanish territorial waters by German U-boats, and the activities of what he called this “super-super efficient agent”59 in Huelva with “first rate”60 sources, who seemed to own the town: “No ship can move without being61 seen, named and reported by W/T [wireless telegraphy]. The Germans get reports from lighthouse keepers, fishing boats, pilots and navy vessels, and agents in neutral fishing boats.” When the Germans began building an infrared spotting system to track ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar at night, Churchill briefly considered launching a commando raid against the installation. Only the most vigorous diplomatic objections from the British government persuaded the Spanish to intervene and have it removed. For the most part, the Spanish government quietly tolerated, or actively condoned, the German espionage and sabotage of British and Allied ships.
Gibraltar, just fifty miles south of Huelva, was Britain’s key to the Mediterranean, “one of the most difficult62 and complicated places on the map,” in John Masterman’s words. The Rock guarded the gateway to the sea, a pivotal British outpost on the Spanish coast and a magnet for spies. As MI5’s senior officer on the island wrote, in a burst of lyricism: Gibraltar was “the tiniest jewel in the imperial63 crown … this strategic dot on the world’s map is not only a colony: it is also a garrison town, a naval base, a commercial port, a civil and military aerodrome, and a shop-window for Britain in Europe.” The Abwehr funneled money to willing Spanish saboteurs in Gibraltar and the surrounding region through one Colonel Rubio Sánchez, code-named “Burma,” the chief of military intelligence in the Algeciras region. Sánchez was distributing five thousand pesetas a month to saboteurs in and around Gibraltar. So far, the damage was limited since, as the MI5 chief in Gibraltar pointed out, the saboteurs’ “mercenary instincts were64 more outstanding than either their efficiency or their enthusiasm.” Montagu believed that special intelligence had successfully foiled several sabotage attempts, but the threat from German espionage in southern Spain was growing. In the month that Operation Mincemeat was born, Montagu warned that German sabotage had “increased and spread”65 and was now being actively pursued by the Nazis and their collaborators “in all Spanish and Spanish owned ports.”66
Adolf Clauss had, so far, enjoyed a most pleasant and productive war. In Madrid and Berlin he was held in high esteem as “one of the most important,67 active and intelligent German agents in the South of Europe.” Even NID and MI6 had a healthy respect for his manipulative skills. His network of spies and informers extended from Valencia to Seville. If anything of importance or interest washed up within fifty miles of the Café de la Palma, let alone a body carrying documents, then Clauss would surely hear of it. The German spy’s industriousness would be used against him. Later, if the operation worked, the proof of Clauss’s espionage activities would be so blatant that it could be used to ignite a diplomatic row, and, with luck, “sufficient evidence can be obtained68 to get the Spaniards to eject him.” It was agreed: Huelva was the target, and if the unpleasant Clauss could be undermined, made to look a fool, and thrown out of Spain as a result, then so much the better.
A memo was sent to the Royal Navy’s hydrographer, the official repository of technical maritime information, with a veiled enquiry: if an object was dropped off the Spanish coast near Huelva, would the tides and prevailing winds bring it ashore? At the same time, Gómez-Beare was instructed to fly to Gibraltar and inform the flag officer there, and his staff officer in charge of intelligence, of the plan’s broad outlines. “They would have to69 be in the picture,” Montagu explained, “in case the body or documents should by any chance find their way to Gibraltar.” Before returning to Madrid, Gómez-Beare should visit the British consuls at Seville, Cádiz, and Huelva and instruct them that the “washing ashore of any70 body in their area was to be reported only to NA Madrid [naval attaché Alan Hillgarth] and to no other British authority.” Francis Haselden, the consul in Huelva, “was to be told the outline of the plan71 without, of course, any description of its object.” Gómez-Beare should then return to Madrid and fully brief his boss.
Captain Alan Hillgarth would stage-manage the Spanish end of the operation, and there was no one better suited to the task.
CHAPTER NINE
My Dear Alex
EVEN CHARLES CHOLMONDELEY’S elastic mind was having trouble wrapping itself around the problem of how to transport a corpse from London to Spain and then drop it in the sea, without being spotted, in such a way that it would appear to be the victim of an air crash. There were, he reckoned, four possible methods of shipping Major Martin to his destination. The body could be transported aboard a surface ship, most easily on one of the naval escorts accompanying merchant vessels in and out of the Huelva port. This option was rejected, “owing to the need for placing1 the body close inshore;” nothing was more likely to attract the attention of Adolf Clauss and his spies than a Royal Navy ship lingering in shallow waters. An alternative would be to take the body by plane and simply open the door and throw it out at the right spot. The problem, however, was that “if the body were dropped in this way2 it might be smashed to pieces on landing,” particularly if it had already started to decompose. A seaplane, such as a Catalina, might be able to land, if the conditions were right, and slip the body into the water more gently. Cholmondeley drew up a possible scenario: the seaplane and its cargo would “come in from out at sea3 simulating engine trouble, drop a bomb to simulate the crash, go out to sea as quickly as possible, return (as if it were a second flying boat) and drop a flare as if searching down the first aircraft, land, and then while ostensibly searching for survivors, drop the body etc, and then take off again.” On examination, this plan seemed far too elaborate. Any number of things could go wrong, including a real plane crash.
A submarine would be better. The drop could be carried out at night, and if there was insufficient depth of water, then a rubber dinghy could be used to take the body closer inshore. The submarine captain could monitor the winds and tides in order to surface and drop the body at the optimum moment. “After the body has been4 planted it would help the illusion if a ‘set piece’ giving a flare and explosion with delayed action fuse could be left to give the impression of an aircraft crash.” The only problem, as Cholmondeley delicately put it, was the “technical difficulties in keeping5 the body fresh during the passage.” Submariners were a notoriously hardy bunch, able to withstand long periods underwater in the most fetid and cramped conditions. But even submariners would surely object to having a rotting corpse as a shipmate. Moreover, the operation was top secret: the presence of a dead body on a submarine would not remain secret very long. “Of these methods,”6 Cholmondeley concluded, “a submarine is the best (if the necessary preservation of the body can be achieved).”
There is no easy way to smuggle a dead body aboard a submarine, let alone prevent it from rotting in the warm, muggy atmosphere of a submarine hold. For help, Cholmondeley turned to Charles Fraser-Smith of “Q-Branch,” the chief supplier of gadgets to the Secret Service. A former missionary in Morocco, Fraser-Smith was officially a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Supply’s Clothing and Textile Unit; his real job was to furnish secret agents, saboteurs, and prisoners of war with an array of wartime gizmos, such as miniature cameras, invisible ink, hidden weaponry, and concealed compasses. Fraser-Smith provided Ian Fleming with equipment for some of his more outlandish plans, and he doubtless helped to inform the character of “Q,” the eccentric inventor in the James Bond films. Fraser-Smith possessed a wildly ingenious but supremely practical mind. He invented garlic-flavored chocolate to
be consumed by agents parachuting into France in order that their breath should smell appropriately Gallic as soon as they landed; he made shoelaces containing a vicious steel garrote; he created a compass hidden in a button that unscrewed clockwise, based on the impeccable theory that the “unswerving logic of the German7 mind” would never guess that something might unscrew the wrong way.
With the help of Fraser-Smith, Cholmondeley drew up a blueprint for the world’s first underwater corpse transporter. This was a tubular canister, six feet six inches long and almost two feet in diameter, with a double skin made from 22-gauge steel and the space between the skins packed with asbestos wool. One end would be welded closed, while the other had an airtight steel lid that screwed onto a rubber gasket with sixteen bolts. A folding handle was attached to either end, and a box wrench was clipped to the lid for easy removal. With the body inside, Cholmondeley estimated the entire package would weigh about four hundred pounds and would fit snugly into the pressure hull of a submarine. Sir Bernard Spilsbury was consulted once more. Oxygen, he explained, was the cause of rapid decomposition. But “if most of the oxygen had previously8 been excluded” from the tube with dry ice, and if the canister was completely airtight, and if the body was carefully packed around with dry ice, then the corpse would “keep perfectly satisfactorily”9 and remain as cold as it had been inside the morgue. Fraser-Smith’s task, then, was to design “an enormous Thermos flask”10 thin enough to fit down the torpedo hatch. The Ministry of Aircraft Production was given the plans and instructed to build this container as fast as possible, without being told what it was for. On the outside of the canister should be stenciled the words “HANDLE WITH CARE11—OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS—FOR SPECIAL FOS SHIPMENT.”
Montagu, meanwhile, contacted Admiral Sir Claude Barry, the flag officer in command of submarines (FOS) to find out which submarine might best be used for the mission. Barry replied that British submarines passed Huelva frequently en route to Malta; indeed, HMS Seraph was currently in Scotland, docked at Holy Loch on the Clyde and preparing to return to the Mediterranean in April. The Seraph was commanded by Lieutenant Bill Jewell, a young captain who had already carried out several secret assignments and who could be relied on for complete discretion. Montagu drew up some draft operational orders for Jewell and arranged to meet the submarine officer in London and give him a full briefing on his new mission.
The hydrographer at the Admiralty submitted his report on the winds and tides off the coast at Huelva. As befits a man immersed in the vagaries of marine conditions, he was distinctly noncommittal, pointing out that “the Spaniards and Portuguese12 publish practically nothing about tides, tidal streams and currents off their coasts.” Moreover, “the tides in that area13 run mainly up and down the coast.” If the object was dropped in the right place, in the right conditions, “wind between S[outh] and W[est]14 might set it towards the head of the bight near P. Huelva.” However, if the body did wash up on the shore, there was no guarantee it would stay there because “if it did not strand,15 it would be carried out again on the ebb.” This was less than perfect, but not discouraging enough to call off the operation. In any case, Montagu reflected, the “object” in question was a man in a life jacket, rather larger than the object the hydrographer had been asked to speculate about, and might be expected to catch an onshore wind and drift landward. He concluded: “The currents on the coast16 are unhelpful at any point but the prevailing south west wind will bring the body ashore if Jewell can ditch it near enough to the coast.”
In the last week of March, Montagu drew up a seven-point progress report for Johnnie Bevan, who had just returned from North Africa, where he had coordinated plans for Operation Barclay with Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke. Relations between Montagu and Bevan remained tense. “I am not quite clear as to who17 is in sole charge of administrative arrangements in connection with this operation,” Bevan wrote to Montagu, in a note calculated to rile him. “I think we all agree that there are quite a number of things that might go wrong.” Montagu was fully aware of the dangers and in no doubt whatsoever that he was in sole charge of the operation, even if Bevan did not see it that way. Privately, Montagu accused Bevan of “thinking it couldn’t come off18 and disclaiming all responsibility.”
Montagu’s report laid out the state of play: the body was almost ready, with Major Martin’s uniform and accoutrements selected; the canister was under construction; Gómez-Beare and Hillgarth were standing by in Spain. And there was now a deadline: “Mincemeat will be taken out19 as an inside passenger in HMS Seraph leaving the northwest coast of this country probably on the 10th April.” That left just two weeks to complete preparations. Montagu and Cholmondeley had deliberately sought to arrange everything before obtaining final approval for the operation, on the assumption that senior officers were far less likely to meddle when presented with a fait very nearly accompli. But there was now little time to finalize the last, and by far the most important, piece of the puzzle. Montagu’s letter to Bevan ended on a note of exasperation: “All the details are now20 ‘buttoned up,’” he wrote. “All that is required are the official documents.”
The debate about what should, or should not, be contained in Major Martin’s official letters had already taken up more than a month. It is doubtful whether any documents in the war were subjected to closer scrutiny or more revisions. Draft after draft was proposed by Montagu and Cholmondeley, revised by more senior officers and committees, scrawled over, retyped, sent off for approval, and then modified, amended, rejected, and rewritten all over again. There was general agreement that, as Montagu had originally envisaged, the keystone of the deception should be a personal letter from General Nye to General Alexander. It was also agreed that the letter should identify Greece as the target of the next Allied assault and Sicily as the cover target. Beyond this, there was very little agreement about anything at all.
Almost everyone who read the letter thought it could do with “alteration and improvement.”21 Everyone, and every official body concerned, from the Twenty Committee to the Chiefs of Staff, had a different idea about how this should be achieved. The Admiralty thought it needed to be “more personal.”22 The Air Ministry insisted the letter should clearly indicate that the bombing of Sicilian airfields was in preparation for invading Greece, and not a prelude to an attack on Sicily itself. The chief of the Imperial General Staff and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, wanted “a letter in answer to one from23 General Alexander.” The director of plans thought the operation was premature and “should not be undertaken24 earlier than two months before the real operation,” in case the real plans changed. Bevan wondered whether the draft letter sounded “rather too official”25 and insisted, “we must get Dudley Clarke’s26 approval as it’s his theatre.” Clarke himself, in a flurry of cables from Algiers, warned of the “danger of overloading27 this communication” and stuck to the view that it was “a mistake to play for high28 deception stakes.” Bevan remained anxious: “If anything miscarries29 and the Germans appreciate that the letter is a plant they would no doubt realise that we intend to attack Sicily.” Clarke framed his own draft, further enraging Montagu, who regarded this effort as “merely a lowish grade innuendo30 at the target of the type that has often been, and could always be, put over by a double agent.” The director of plans agreed that “Mincemeat should be capable31 of much greater things.” Bevan then also tried his hand at a letter, which again Montagu dismissed as “of a type which could have32 been sent by signal and would not have appeared genuine to the Germans if carried in the way this document would be.” There was even a brief but fierce debate over how to spell the name of the Greek city Kalamata. The operation seemed to be running into a swamp of detail.
Typically, Montagu tried to insert some tongue-in-cheek jokes into the letter. He wanted Nye to write: “If it isn’t too much trouble,33 I wonder whether you could ask one of your ADCs to send me a case of oranges or lemons. One misses fresh fruit terribly, especially thi
s time of year when there is really nothing to buy.” The Chiefs of Staff excised this: General Nye could not be made to look like a scrounger. Even to the Germans. Especially to the Germans. So Montagu tried another line: “How are you getting on34 with Eisenhower? I gather he is not bad to work with. …” That was also removed: too flippant for a general. Next Montagu attempted a quip at the expense of the notoriously bigheaded General Montgomery: “Do you still take the same size35 in hats, or do you need a couple of sizes larger like Monty?” That, too, was censored. Finally, Montagu managed to squeeze a tiny half joke in at the end, relating to Montgomery’s much-mocked habit of issuing orders every day. “What is wrong with Monty?36 He hasn’t issued an order of the day for at least 48 hours.” That stayed in, for now.
Montagu’s temper, never slow to ignite, began smoldering dangerously as the deadline neared and the key letter was tweaked, poked, and polished. And then scrapped and restarted. Page after page of drafts went into the files, covered with Montagu’s increasingly enraged squiggles and remarks.
Finally, the Chiefs of Staff came up with a good suggestion: why not have General Nye draft the letter himself, since this would be “the best way of giving it37 an authentic touch”? Archie Nye was no wordsmith, but he knew General Alexander fairly well, and he knew the sound of his own voice. Nye read all the earlier drafts and then put the letter into his own words. The key passage referred to General Sir Henry “Jumbo” Wilson, then commander-in-chief of the Middle East, making it appear that he would be spearheading an attack on Greece; it indicated, falsely, that Sicily was being set up as a cover target for a simultaneous assault in another part of the Mediterranean; it referred to some run-of-the-mill army matters, which also happened to be authentic, such as the appointment of a new commander of the Guards Brigade and an offer from the Americans to award Purple Hearts to British soldiers serving alongside American troops. Above all, it sounded right. Montagu, after so many weeks spent trying to pull off the forgery himself, admitted that Nye’s letter was “ideally suited to the purpose.”38 The false targets were “not blatantly mentioned39 although very clearly indicated,” allowing the enemy to put two and two together, making at least six.