Operation Mincemeat

by Ben MacIntyre

  The trickiest aspect of lying is maintaining the lie. Telling an untruth is easy, but continuing and reinforcing a lie is far harder. The natural human tendency is to deploy another lie to bolster the initial mendacity. Deceptions—in the war room, boardroom, and bedroom—usually unravel because the deceiver lets down his guard and makes the simple mistake of telling, or revealing, the truth.

  The invasion of Sicily was planned for July 10. That left a gap of two months in which the elaborate fabrication had to be protected, buttressed, and fortified. For weeks, Allied deception planners had built up the fictional “Twelfth Army” in Cairo, the dummy force apparently poised to strike at the Peloponnese, by spreading modern Greek myths: recruiting Greek fishermen familiar with the coast, distributing Greek maps to Allied troops, employing Greek interpreters.

  On June 7, Karl-Erich Kühlenthal sent a message to Juan Pujol asking his star spy to find out whether the British were recruiting Greek soldiers in preparation for the assault. The First Canadian Division was already training in Scotland and preparing to embark for Sicily. Kühlenthal assumed they were heading for Greece. “Try to find out if Greek troops53 are stationed close to the First Canadian Army or elsewhere in the South of England, and if so, which Greek troops are these?” wrote Kühlenthal. “It is of greatest importance to discover the next operation.” Garbo told his handler that Agent No. 5, a wealthy Venezuelan student, would immediately head to Scotland “to investigate the presence54 of Greek troops.” The Greek troops did not exist, of course, but then, neither did Agent No. 5.

  The Germans had clearly taken the bait, but they would also be watching closely for any evidence confirming or disproving what they now believed. Dudley Clarke sent a message suggesting that “the only serious danger”55 of the deception being uncovered would be a “legal or illegal exhumation56 with a view to a more thorough autopsy” on the body in the Huelva cemetery. Montagu arranged another meeting with the St. Pancras coroner, Bentley Purchase, who reassured him that an autopsy at this late stage would probably be inconclusive. “By the time that he had been57 buried for a short period his internal organs must have been, according to the coroner, in a very mixed up condition [and] the lungs would probably have been liquefied,” making it even harder to establish death by drowning. Montagu sent a message to Bevan: “Although no one in this world58 can be certain of anything it does not seem that the fear that the Germans may learn anything from a disinterment and subsequent autopsy is well founded.”

  Still, a large slab of engraved marble might help to discourage any grave robbing, while giving William Martin the sort of dignified gravestone he deserved. On May 21, Alan Hillgarth received an encoded message from London: “Suggest unless unusual59 that a medium priced tombstone should be erected on grave with inscription such as quote William Martin, born 29th March 1907 died 24 repetition 24 April 1943 beloved son of John Glyndwyr repetition Glyndwyr Martin and the late Antonia Martin of Cardiff, Wales. Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori. R.I.P. end quote.” Montagu spelled Glyndwr Michael’s first name wrong in his cable: the error was duly transferred to the stone. For a moment, the spies had second thoughts. Would a large marble gravestone look suspicious? “This to be done unless restrictions60 on making payment from England to Spain or other wartime difficulties would have made it too difficult for a father to get this done in normal circumstances.” Hillgarth replied immediately: “Please send me ordinary cipher61 signal saying that relations would like this stone put up telling me to get on with it I will then get exchange in normal way and proceed immediately.” Germany’s spies within the British embassy could be relied on to pick up the message and relay it to the Abwehr in the usual way. In a final element of stage design, the Mincemeat team wrote: “Suggest Consul place wreath62 now with card marked quote From Father and Pam end quote.” Mario Toscana, the Huelva gravestone carver, was instructed to make the stone “as fast as possible.”63 Francis Haselden sent the wreath as instructed, as well as several bouquets picked from the garden of the Casa Colón, the headquarters of the Rio Tinto Company. “The purpose of this was not only64 to carry out what would probably have occurred in real life, but also to enable the grave to be visited often enough to discourage any chance of a secret and illicit disinterment for further autopsy.” Lancelot Shutte, Haselden’s sidekick, would make a daily pilgrimage to the graveside, ostensibly as an official mourner, in reality to see if the flowers had been moved and the grave disturbed.

  Hillgarth composed and dictated a letter, addressed to “John G. Martin ESQ” but for the attention of Kühlenthal and his spies:

  Sir,

  In accordance with instructions65 from the Admiralty, I have now arranged for a gravestone for your son’s grave. It will be a simple white marble slab with the inscription which you sent to me through the Admiralty, and the cost will be 900 pesetas.

  The grave itself cost 500 pesetas, and, as I think you know, it is in the Roman Catholic cemetery.

  A wreath with a card on it with the message you asked for has been laid on the grave. The flowers came from the garden of an English mining company in Huelva.

  I have taken the liberty of thanking the Vice Consul, Huelva, on your behalf for all he has done.

  May I express my deep sympathy with you and your son’s fiancée in your great sorrow?

  I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, Alan Hillgarth

  At the same time, Montagu sent a message to Hillgarth with the same audience in mind: “I have been asked66 by Major Martin’s father, fiancée and friends to thank you for the trouble you and the Vice Consul have taken in connection with his funeral and to say how much they appreciate the promptitude with which you returned his personal effects. Few though they were, as Major Martin was an only son and just engaged to be married, they will be greatly treasured.” Here was confirmation for the Germans that all Martin’s accoutrements were safely back in Britain. “Could you possibly procure67 for him a photograph of the grave after the tombstone has been erected?” Hillgarth duly obliged.

  As far as the Germans knew, the British authorities were deeply relieved to get their valuable documents back intact. Another small outlay by Hillgarth would bolster that impression, by way of local gossip: “A reasonable reward of not more68 than £25 should be given to the person who handed the papers to the safe custody of naval Authorities. It is left to your judgement whether this should be done by you through Naval Authorities or by Consul Huelva direct.” The sum of twenty-five pounds was a small fortune in wartime Huelva: José Rey’s fishing trip would turn out to be the most lucrative of his life.

  While “Pam” and “Father” grieved in private, the news of Major William Martin’s death now needed relaying to a wider, public audience. The Germans had access to the British casualty lists, and if Martin’s name failed to appear on them, suspicions might be aroused. At least equal suspicion might be provoked among Royal Marines officers if one of their number was suddenly declared dead without warning. A letter, marked most secret and personal, was sent to the commanders of the three Royal Marines Divisions, as well as the colonel who edited the Globe and Laurel, the official Marines newsletter: “No action is to be taken69 in respect of the notification of the death of Major William Martin. This officer was detached on special service and no mention will be made in General Orders.” The casualty section received a curt order: “Insert the following entry70 in the next suitable casualty list ‘Tempy Captain, (Acting Major) William Martin, R.M.’ This should appear at the earliest possible moment.” But it was not so easy to slip a false death past the authorities. The Department of the Medical Director-General later demanded to know whether Major Martin had died in action and if so, how. The navy’s legal department wanted to know if the gallant major had left a will “and, if so, where was it?”71 Both departments were politely, but firmly, told to mind their own business.

  The announcement of Major William Martin’s death on active service duly appeared in the Times on Friday, June 4, 1943. By pure chance, the nam
es of two other real naval officers, whose deaths in an aircraft accident had previously been reported in the newspaper, appeared on the same list. The Germans, Montagu speculated, might link the reported death of Martin with that accident. The death of Leslie Howard, “distinguished film and stage actor,”72 was reported in a news story alongside the Roll of Honour featuring W. Martin. The civilian plane carrying the actor had been shot down by a German fighter over the Bay of Biscay. Somewhat eerily, an Abwehr informant may have mistaken Howard for Winston Churchill, who had recently visited Algiers and Tunis. It is safe to assume that more public attention was paid to this “severe loss to the British theatre73 and to British films” than to the obscure death of a officer whom no one, bar a few spies, had ever heard of.

  The Times was the place all important people wanted to be seen dead in, and it is not possible to be deader than in the death columns of Britain’s most venerable newspaper. That said, several people have been pronounced dead in the press while being very much alive, including Robert Graves, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain (twice), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In July 1900 George Morrison, the Peking correspondent of the Times, read of his own death in his own newspaper after he was believed to have perished during the Boxer Rebellion. (The obituary described him as devoted and fearless. A friend remarked: “The only decent thing they can do74 now is double your salary.” They didn’t.) This, however, was the first time in the newspaper’s history that a person was formally pronounced dead without ever having been alive.

  At the end of May, the director of Naval Intelligence noted in his secret diary that “the first German Panzer Division75 (strength about 18,000 men) is being transferred from France to the Salonika region.” The information was graded “A1.” This was the first indication of a major troop movement in response to the Mincemeat papers. An intercepted message added further details of the “arrangements for the passage76 through Greece to Tripolis, in the Peloponnese, of the 1st German Panzer Division.” The movement seemed directly linked to the information in Nye’s letter, since Tripolis, Montagu noted, was a “strategic position well suited77 to resist our invasion of Kalamata and Cape Araxos.” The First Panzer Division, with eighty-three tanks, had seen fierce action in Russia but was now “completely reequipped.”78 Last located by British intelligence in Brittany, the Panzer division was a formidable, hardened force, and it was now being rolled from one end of Europe to the other, to counter an illusion.

  On June 8, Montagu wrote an interim report on the progress of Operation Mincemeat. “It is now about half way between79 the time when the documents in MINCEMEAT reached the Germans and the present D-Day for Operation HUSKY, and I have therefore considered the state of the Germans’ mind in so far as we have evidence.” Montagu summarized the intercepted messages, known troop movements, diplomatic gossip, and double-agent feedback, all of which suggested the most “gratifying” progress. “The present situation is summed80 up in the [June 7] message to Garbo which to my mind indicates the Germans are still accepting the probability of an attack in Greece, and are still anxiously searching for the target we foreshadowed in the Western Mediterranean.” Goebbels remained silent on the subject, but whatever other suspicions there may have been on the German side now seemed to be allayed: “They raised (but did not pursue)81 the question [of] whether it was a plot.”

  “Mincemeat has already resulted82 in some dispersal of the enemy’s effort and forces,” Montagu wrote. “It is to be hoped that, as visible signs in the Eastern Mediterranean increase, the story we have put over may be ‘confirmed’ and lead the enemy to take their eye off Sicily still more, although they obviously cannot entirely neglect the re-inforcement [sic] of so vulnerable and imminently threatened a point. It already appears to be having the desired effect on the enemy and (as the preparations for Husky grow) its effect may become cumulative.”

  There was still time for Mincemeat to go horribly wrong, but so far, Major Martin’s secret mission was going swimmingly. Montagu’s interim report declared: “I think that at this half way stage83 Mincemeat can still be regarded as achieving the objective for which we hoped.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Seraph and Husky

  BILL JEWELL STEERED the Seraph toward the jagged silhouette of the coastline as the wind whipped and wailed around the conning tower. It was past ten o’clock, and curtains of thick fog draped an irritable sea, the rear guard of a nasty summer storm. Jewell shivered inside his sou’wester. The weather, he reflected, was “moderately vile,”1 but the reduced visibility would work to his advantage. Once again, the Seraph was creeping toward the southern coast of Europe in the darkness to drop off an important item. Once again, she had been entrusted with a mission of profound secrecy and extreme danger. Once again, the lives of thousands depended on her success. The difference between this mission and the one successfully executed three months earlier was that the canister in the hold really did contain scientific instruments, a homing beacon to guide the largest invasion force ever assembled to the shores of Sicily. Having played her part in the secret buildup to “Husky,” the Seraph had been selected to lead the invasion itself.

  A week earlier, Jewell had been summoned to submarine headquarters in Algiers and briefed by his commanding officer, Captain Barney Fawkes: “You are to act as guide and beacon2 submarine for the Army’s invasion of Sicily.” Jewell’s mission would be to drop a new type of buoy containing a radar beacon one thousand yards off the beach at Gela on the island’s south coast, just a few hours before D-day: July 10, 0400 hours. Destroyers, leading flotillas of landing craft carrying the troops of America’s Forty-fifth Infantry Division, would lock onto the homing beacon, and the assault troops would then storm ashore in the early hours of the Sicilian morning. Seraph should remain in position as a visible beacon “for the first waves3 of the invasion force” and retire once the attack was under way. The British submarine would act as the spearhead for a mighty host, an armada of Homeric proportions—more than 3,000 freighters, frigates, tankers, transports, minesweepers, and landing craft carrying 1,800 heavy guns, 400 tanks, and an invasion force of 160,000 Allied soldiers, composed of the United States Seventh Army under General George Patton, and Montgomery’s British Eighth Army.

  Sicily may be the most thoroughly invaded place on earth. From the eighth century B.C., the island has been attacked, occupied, plundered, and fought over by successive waves of invaders: Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, and British. But never had Sicily witnessed an invasion on this scale. If Operation Mincemeat had succeeded, then Allied troops would face only limited resistance. Jewell had no idea whether his strange cargo had ever reached the coast of Huelva, but as he absorbed his new orders, he found himself wondering whether the dead body “had delivered his false information4 to the Germans and whether, as a result, the thousands of troops preparing to assault the island would meet less resistance.” If the ruse had failed and tipped off the Axis to the real target of Operation Husky, then the Seraph might be leading the vast floating host into catastrophe.

  After receiving his orders, Jewell had reported to the Seventh Army headquarters for a briefing from General Patton himself. Swaggering, foulmouthed, and inspirational, Patton was a born leader of men and a deeply divisive figure. Jewell detested him on sight. With an ivory-handled revolver on each hip, the general strode around the briefing room, barking orders at Jewell and the two other British submarine commanders who would help guide in the American ground troops. “His force was to land in three parts,5 each on its own beach; he wanted reconnaissance checked and the submarines allocated to the beaches to stay in their position over the beacon buoys to ensure that the right forces landed on the right beaches.” The briefing lasted all of ten minutes. “He was really very short with us,6 somewhat conceited and very rudely outspoken,” Jewell recalled. Outside the conference room, Jewell heard a loud American voice call his name and turned to find Colonel Bill Darby of the U
.S. Army Rangers, his friend from the earlier Galita reconnaissance. Darby explained that he would be leading his troops ashore in Seraph’s wake, at the head of Force X, made up of two crack Ranger battalions. “Do as good a job for us7 as you did at Galita,” said Darby, “and we’ll be mighty grateful.” Jewell promised to do his best. Yet the submarine commander was privately apprehensive. If the enemy spotted the Seraph laying the beacon buoy, it would certainly realize that an invasion was imminent and rush reinforcements to that section of the coast. “Discovery,”8 Jewell reflected, “would throw the whole Husky plan into jeopardy.”

  Dwight Eisenhower himself had warned that if the Germans were tipped off, the attack on Sicily would fail. The American general told Churchill: “If substantial German ground troops9 should be placed in the region prior to the attack, the chances for success become practically nil and the project should be abandoned.” Even a few hours’ warning would be paid for in greatly increased bloodshed. Surprise was essential; lack of it was potentially fatal. Patton’s closing remark also stuck in Jewell’s mind, both irritating and alarming him: “The submarines would be less10 than a mile from the enemy, but come what may they must stay there until the Task Force with the Army arrived, no matter how late.” Seraph, code-named “Cent,” would be left on the surface as the sun rose, isolated and defenseless, a sitting duck for the Italian guns ranged along the coast. This was undoubtedly Jewell’s most dangerous mission, with every probability that it might also be his last.