My friends and colleagues on the Times have been, as ever, unstinting in their help and advice, some of it solicited: James Harding, Keith Blackmore, Alex O’Connell, Mike Evans, Richard Beeston, and many others. I have Duncan Stewart to thank, once again, for the fine maps and diagrams.
My thanks to John Glusman and the team at Harmony for all their help and support. Ed Victor has been my rock for every one of my last seven books. My friends and family have put up with me banging on about Operation Mincemeat for three years. My thanks and gratitude to them. And for Kate, as ever, all my love.
Notes
Epigraph
1 “Who in war will not have”: Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 91.
Preface
1 “some memoranda which”: Ewen Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra (London, 1977), p. 14.
Chapter One: The Sardine Spotter
1 “lump”: Jesús Ramírez Copeiro del Vilar, Espías y Neutrales: Huelva en la Guerra Mundial (Huelva, Spain, 1996), p. 408.
2 “no-one wanted”: Ibid., p. 409.
Chapter Two: Corkscrew Minds
1 “The Trout Fisher”: National Archives (henceforth cited as “TNA”), Admiralty archives of the Naval Intelligence Department (henceforth cited as ADM) 223/478.
2 “marked flair”: Ben Macintyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond (London, 2008), p. 42.
3 “romantic Red Indian daydreams”: Ibid., p. 43.
4 “deception, ruses de guerre”: TNA, ADM 223/478.
5 “At first sight”: Ibid.
6 “The business of deception”: John Godfrey, “Afterthoughts,” TNA, ADM 223/619, p. 51.
7 “pushing quicksilver”: Ibid.
8 “introducing ideas”: TNA, ADM 223/478.
9 “treasure ship”: Ibid.
10 “an unimpeachable and immaculate”: Ibid.
11 “with instructions on the”: Ibid.
12 “A Suggestion (not a very nice one)”: Ibid.
13 “research”: “The Thomson Case,” Time, January 18, 1926.
14 “I know the stuff”: Basil Thomson, The Milliner’s Hat (London, 1937), p. 64.
15 “World War II offers”: Godfrey, “Afterthoughts,” TNA, ADM 223/619, p. 26.
16 “the target date”: David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York, 2000), p. 471.
17 “extremely worried”: After the Battle, no. 54, 1986.
18 “not been tampered with”: Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, p. 471.
19 “quite legible”: Ibid.
20 “It was highly unlikely”: Ibid.
21 “All the documents”: TNA, Cabinet Office Records (henceforth cited as CAB) 163/1.
22 “no greater importance”: Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, p. 471.
23 “documents had likely”: Frank J. Stech, “Outguessed and One-Behind: The Real Story of The Man Who Never Was” (paper presented to conference, University of Wolverhampton, UK, July 2004).
24 “This suggested that”: TNA, ADM 223/794.
25 “lifting his toes as he walked”: Jean Gerard Leigh (née Leslie), interview with the author, March 5, 2008.
26 “This was a terrible blow”: Tom Cholmondeley, interview with the author, October 1, 2007.
27 “ideas man”: Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (London, 2004), p. 370.
28 “extraordinary and delightful”: Ibid., p. 370
29 “one of those subtle”: Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (Oxford, 1996), p. 116.
30 “a plan for introducing documents”: Imperial War Museum, papers of Ewen Montagu (henceforth cited as IWM) 97/45/1, folder #2.
31 A body is obtained: Ibid.
32 “the drop”: Ibid.
33 “double for an actual officer”: Ibid.
34 “and injuries inflicted after death”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 116.
35 “a full and capable post-mortem”: Charles Cholmondeley, Memo to XX Committee, February 4, 1938, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
36 “Of these, Spain was clearly”: Ibid.
37 “Meinertzhagen knew no half measures”: T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (London, 1991), p. 452.
38 “Good-bye, my darling!”: John Lord, Duty, Honour, Empire (London, 1971), p. 332.
39 “easy, reliable and inexpensive”: Meinertzhagen Army Diary, cited in ibid., p. 336.
40 “fair going”: Holt, The Decievers, p. 95.
41 “there was never any evidence”: Ibid., p. 297.
Chapter Three: Room 13
1 “The Germans, having cause to regret”: Jimmy Burns, Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain (London, 2009), p. 233.
2 “strongly supported”: Draft of report on Operation Mincemeat, May 29, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
3 “go into the question of obtaining”: Ibid.
4 “fertile brain”: Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (Oxford, 1996), p. 108.
5 “My memory is of”: Ewen Montagu, Untitled, unpublished autobiography in manuscript (henceforth cited as “Ewen Montagu Autobiography”), courtesy of Jeremy Montagu (collection henceforth cited as “Montagu Papers”).
6 “Montagu, first Baron Swaythling”: Ivor Montagu, The Youngest Son: Autobiographical Chapters (London, 1970), p. 18.
7 “small dining room” Ibid. p. 22.
8 “exquisite chandelier”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
9 “Statesmen (British and world)”: Ibid.
10 “like a very animated piece”: Ibid.
11 “It was a servants’ lift”: Montagu, Youngest Son, p. 14.
12 “Born as I was”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
13 “idiotic”: Ibid.
14 “the sort of American social life”: Ibid.
15 “I felt a great debt”: Ibid.
16 “The ‘spread’ among us three”: Ibid.
17 “already had a banker’s attitude”: Ibid.
18 “He and I were much”: Ibid.
19 “we had nothing to do”: Ibid.
20 “I advised [Ivor] to choose”: Ibid.
21 “Our great ambition was”: Ibid.
22 “to study something”: Ibid.
23 “I put it in my pocket”: Ibid.
24 “one of the best fly-fishermen”: Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies, vol. I (London, 1975), p. 278.
25 “never better than a mediocre”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
26 “the thrill of the strike”: Ibid.
27 “an exceedingly primitive vole”: Montagu, Youngest Son, p. 283.
28 “Baron’s Son Weds Secretary”: Evening News, March 23, 1927.
29 “Dear Gladys, I feel for you”: Obituary of Lord Swaythling, Daily Telegraph, July 4, 1998.
30 “a certain sympathy with rogue characters”: Ewen Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra (London, 1977), p. 9.
31 “see the point of view”: Ibid.
32 “gentle manners”: M. R. D. Foot, entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
33 “If he could see a really artistic lie”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
34 “hard in the wind”: Ibid.
35 “This morning the British”: Radio Address by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, September 3, 1939.
36 “looking out to sea”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
37 “It is quite useless”: TNA, ADM 223/478.
38 “two stockbrokers, a schoolmaster”: Godfrey, “Afterthoughts,” TNA, ADM 223/619, p. 26.
39 “The permanent inhabitants”: Ibid.
40 “worked like ants”: Ibid.
41 “learning a new language”: Ewen Montagu, “History of Section 17M (Now Section 12Z),” October 26, 1942, Montagu Papers.
42 “the cream of all intelligence”: TNA, ADM 223/792.
43 “The Germans have a passion”: Ewen Montagu, “History of Section 17M.”
44 “to do the detailed work”: Ibid.
45 “Auntie”: Pat Davies (née Trehearne), interview with the au
thor, October 4, 2009.
46 “She is extraordinarily good”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, January 31, 1941, courtesy of Rachel Montagu, collection henceforth cited as “Montagu Letters.”
47 “watchkeepers”: TNA, ADM 223/792.
48 “far too small”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 51.
49 “which made everyone”: Pat Davies, interview with the author, October 5, 2009.
50 “were not supposed to listen”: TNA, ADM 223/792.
51 “a brilliant band of”: John Godfrey to Ewen Montagu, September 13, 1964, Montagu Papers.
52 “began to regard some almost as friends”: Montagu, “History of Section 17M.”
53 “They were so kind to us unconsciously”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 52.
54 “in the racket”: Ewen Montagu to Vera Ruth Filby, February 3, 1979, Montagu Papers.
55 “If I am killed there are”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, August 17, 1941, Montagu Letters.
56 “The most fascinating job”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 50.
57 “very entertaining but useless”: Montagu, “History of Section 17M.”
58 “a great number who”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 36.
59 “it might be an indication”: Naval Intelligence Department memo, July 13, 1947, TNA, ADM 223/794.
60 “Though I have kept”: Victor Rothschild to Ewen Montagu, November 13, 1941, TNA, ADM 223/794.
61 “had heard and believed the propaganda”: TNA, ADM 223/794.
62 “I thought you had realised”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 59.
63 “an out and out traitor”: TNA, ADM 223/794.
64 “a four-letter man”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, November 13, 1942, Montagu Letters.
65 “Fleming is charming”: Ibid.
66 “The bare idea of the dead airman”: John Godfrey to Ewen Montagu, September 13, 1964, Montagu Papers.
67 “I quite honestly don’t remember”: Ewen Montagu to John Godfrey, September 19, 1964, Montagu Papers.
Chapter Four: Target Sicily
1 “underbelly of the Axis”: Winston Churchill, speech to House of Commons, November 11, 1942.
2 “no major operation could be”: Ewen Montagu, unpublished critique of Constantine Fitzgibbon, Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (London, 1976), Montagu Papers.
3 “and might be the beginning”: Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943–1945 (London, 2007), p. 7.
4 “Everyone but a bloody fool would know it was Sicily”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 143.
5 “prepare deception plans”: Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London, 2009), p. 284.
6 “When things were looking pretty bad”: Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (London, 2004), p. 184.
7 “an ingenious imagination”: Nicholas Rankin, Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914–1945 (London 2008), p. 178.
8 “fourteen of the biggest Nigerians”: Ibid., p. 181.
9 “special section of intelligence”: Ibid., p. 253.
10 “The idea of knocking”: “Future Anglo Saxon Operative Possibilities,” FHW of OKW, February 8, 1943, cited in Ralph Bennett, Ultra and Mediterranean Strategy 1941–1945 (London, 1989), p. 227.
11 “wishfulness” and “yesmanship”: John Godfrey, “Afterthoughts,” TNA, ADM 223/619, p. 10.
12 “If the authorities were clamouring”: Ibid.
13 “inclined to believe the one”: Ibid., p. 12.
14 “He could achieve single-handed”: Colin Evans, The Father of Forensics: How Sir Bernard Spilsbury Invented Modern CSI (London, 2009), p. 122.
15 “He formed his opinion”: Ibid., p. 27.
16 “just carried on”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
17 “England’s modern Sherlock Holmes”: Washington Post, March 30, 1938, p. 3.
18 “haughty, aristocratic bearing”: Evans, Father of Forensics, p. 5.
19 “unlucky sixteen”: After the Battle, November 11, 2006.
20 “that extraordinary man”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 122.
21 “wanted the Germans and Spaniards”: Ibid.
22 “never once did he ask why”: Ibid.
23 “clear, resonant, without any trace”: Evans, Father of Forensics, p. 27.
24 “Many die from exposure”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 122.
25 “doing a Burke and Hare”: Ibid.
26 “A depressing job?”: Robert Jackson, Coroner: The Biography of Sir Bentley Purchase (London, 1963), p. 5.
27 “They were found in Auntie’s bag”: Ibid., p. 260.
28 “rugged in appearance and character”: Ibid., p. 15.
29 “an impish sense of humour”: Ibid.
30 “an old friend from my barrister days”: Ewen Montagu to Roger Morgan, April 19, 1982, Montagu Papers.
31 “An alternative means of getting”: Bentley Purchase to Ewen Montagu, August 25, 1953, Montagu Papers.
32 “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty”: Jackson, Coroner, p. 28.
33 “aching to get into the war”: Ibid., p. 104.
34 “distort the truth in the service of security”: Roger Morgan in After the Battle, no. 54, 1986.
35 “cursory in the extreme”: Ibid.
36 “a warlike operation”: Jackson, Coroner, p. 148.
37 “did not wish to disclose why a body”: Ibid.
38 “You can’t get bodies just”: Ibid.
39 “of national importance”: Ibid.
40 “public confidence in coroners”: Ibid.
41 “At what level has this scheme”: Ibid.
42 “The prime minister’s”: Ibid.
43 “well developed sense of comedy”: Ibid., p. 313.
44 “absolute discretion”: Ewen Montagu to John Godfrey, September 19, 1964, Montagu Papers.
45 “A coroner”: Ibid.
46 “remained unidentified”: Jackson, Coroner, p. 196.
47 “After one or two possible corpses”: Ibid., p. 148.
48 “the inevitable misery of separation”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 65.
49 “I miss you most frightfully”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, August 11, 1941, Montagu Letters.
50 “The interest and pressure of my work”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 61.
51 “It was lovely”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, June 11, 1941, Montagu Letters.
52 “The greatest fun”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
53 “super-secret papers”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 68.
54 “as long as I always wore”: Ibid.
55 “one of the best cooks in London”: Ibid., p. 28.
56 “Mother is too awful”: Ewen Montagu to Iris Montagu, August 11, 1941, Montagu Letters.
57 “crossword puzzles”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 61.
58 “who had been in the family”: Ewen Montagu Autobiography.
Chapter Five: The Man Who Was
1 “senile decay”: Medical records of Angelton Mental Hospital, Bridgend, December 12, 1924, Glamorgan Record Office.
2 “melancholic”: Ibid., December 12, 1924.
3 “confused and very depressed”: Ibid.
4 “deep mental depression”: Ibid.
5 “Hair is grey and thin”: Ibid.
6 “a hectic temperature”: Ibid., March 28, 1925.
7 “on condition that the scale”: Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th series, vol. 197, July 6, 1926.
8 “led men and women to London”: Robert Jackson, Coroner: The Biography of Sir Bentley Purchase (London, 1963), p. 196.
9 “It still surprised him”: Ibid.
10 “a common lodging house”: Draft of report on Operation Mincemeat, May 29, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
11 “kept in suitable cold storage”: Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (Oxford, 1996), p. 123.
>
12 “Lunatic”: Glyndwr Michael death certificate, After the Battle, November 11, 2006.
13 “labourer, no fixed abode”: Ibid.
14 “phosphorous poisoning”: Ibid.
15 “removed out of England”: Draft of report on Operation Mincemeat, May 29, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
16 “a minimal dose”: Ewen Montagu to J. Bevan, May 28, 1943, TNA, CAB 154/67.
17 “This dose was not sufficient”: Ibid.
18 “phosphorous is not one of”: Ibid.
19 “except possibly faint”: Draft of report on Operation Mincemeat, May 29, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
20 “a highly skilled medico-criminal”: Ewen Montagu to J. Bevan, May 28, 1943, TNA, CAB 154/67.
21 “bet heavily against anyone”: Ibid.
22 “You have nothing to fear”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 123.
23 “I am a martyr to Spilsburyism”: Andrew Rose, Lethal Witness: Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the Honorary Pathologist (London, 2008), p. 139.
24 “died from pneumonia after exposure”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 123.
25 “really worthwhile purpose”: Ibid.
26 “on condition that I should never”: Ibid.
27 “feverish enquiries into his past”: Ibid., p. 3
28 “a ne’er do well, and his relatives”: Ewen Montagu to Billy Bob Crim, December 26, 1981, Montagu Papers.
29 “extra-cold refrigerator”: TNA, ADM 223/794, p. 450.
30 “would have to be used within”: Minutes of XX Committee, February 4, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
31 “They ought not to be given names”: Winston Churchill to General “Pug” Ismay, minute, August 8, 1943.
32 “stupidity”: Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, p. 52.
33 “no deductions could be”: Ibid.
34 “sense of humour”: Montagu, Man Who Never Was, p. 125.
35 “good omen”: Ibid.
36 “This Operation is proposed”: Memo to XX Committee, February 4, 1943, IWM 97/45/1, folder #2.
37 “a courier carrying important”: Ibid.
38 “the real target is omitted from”: Ibid.
39 “the Germans will be looking”: Ibid.
40 “The body must be dropped”: Ibid.
41 “find out a suitable position”: Minutes of XX Committee, February 4, 1943, IWM 97/45/1 folder #2.
Operation Mincemeat Page 36