Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (31 page)

It was a “very cheerful evening,”
¹⁸
Montagu recalled. It was also distinctly flirtatious. The foursome was shown to a corner table with a banquette and two chairs. Montagu suggested that the women sit together on the banquette. Getting into the dramatic spirit, Avril Gordon remarked playfully: “Considering Bill and Pam are engaged,
¹⁹
they are the least affectionate couple I know. They don’t even want to sit together at his farewell party before he goes abroad.” An American couple eavesdropping at the next table looked round sharply. Warming to his own role, and sensing they were being overheard, Montagu replied that he had only known Pam for a few days before getting engaged to her. “It would be different
²⁰
if Pam and I knew one another better,” he said loudly. “My boss has said in a letter that although I am quiet and shy at first, I really do know my stuff”—a reference to Mountbatten’s fake letter to Admiral Cunningham, in which he had used these words to describe Major Martin. It was also a deliberate double entendre. The couple looked daggers at this naval officer, engaged to a young woman on such brief acquaintance and now joking about his own romantic prowess. The man was clearly a cad. Registering strong disapproval, they got up to dance. Still, if they did not like that sort of suggestive conversation, they should not have come to the Gargoyle Club. The foursome spent the evening drinking and dancing. Cholmondeley proposed a toast “to Bill,” and they clinked glasses. The men were relaxed and plainly enjoying themselves, but Jean sensed an undercurrent of tension. “They kept looking at their watches
²¹
and saying things like: ‘I wonder if he’s afloat now.’” She noticed that Ewen Montagu seemed anxious, as if his life were about to change.

The next morning, Montagu wrote to Iris as usual, in a tone of forced indifference: “I had to go and take
²²
someone officially to the theatre. We went to see a new comedian who has been a lot in the North but hadn’t been in London before. He was called Sid Field and is frightfully funny. A thoroughly good evening.”

In a few days, the engagement of Pam and Bill would come to its predestined end, and so would the strange parallel bond between a naval officer and his secretary. Montagu, who had been so “smitten”
²³
in the early days of the fantasy, was never quite as flirtatious after the farewell dinner. Lady Swaythling’s report to Montagu’s wife about the suspicious signed photograph on his dressing table had had its intended effect. The letter from Iris demanding an explanation has not survived, but it is not hard to imagine what was in it. Montagu asked a colleague, who happened to be passing through New York, to visit his wife and clarify matters on his behalf. Iris seems to have accepted his explanation. “I am glad that Verel
²⁴
told you about my doings,” he wrote. “I was more nervous of what you might think about the photo and its compromising inscription than what Mother might think!!!” “Pam” and “the girl from the Elms” disappeared from Montagu’s life. But nearly half a century later, he was still writing to Jean as “Pam” and signing himself “Bill.”

As the
Seraph
neared the drop-point, the anxiety level in Room 13 rose steadily. “We were all very excited,
²⁵
but also worried, and we couldn’t tell anyone outside the room what was happening,” Pat Trehearne recalled. Any number of things might go wrong, and the stakes could hardly have been higher.

A
LTHOUGH NEVER FORMALLY
integrated into Operation Barclay, the Mincemeat plan was part of a vast operation to deceive the Germans into believing that the next blow would fall simultaneously in Sardinia and Greece, as a prelude to a major campaign in the Balkans, in order to keep as many German troops as possible away from Sicily and the central Mediterranean. Johnnie Bevan in London and Dudley Clarke of “A” Force had devised a scheme of staggering complexity, including the use of double agents, Greek partisans, false rumors, and an entire bogus British Twelfth Army poised to invade the Balkans. The host assembled at Cyrenaica in Libya, within range of German reconnaissance planes, consisted of dummy landing craft, dummy gliders, and dummy tanks, as well as real antiaircraft batteries and fighters to be scrambled at the first sign of enemy aircraft, reinforcing the lie. A genuine sabotage operation was planned to concentrate German attention on Greece. Hints of an impending Greek invasion were dropped at diplomatic dinner parties in neutral countries, in the hope that these would filter back to Germany. Greek troops underwent amphibious training in Egypt, calls for Greek speakers were sent out, and Greek drachmas were bought on the Cairo foreign exchange. “One patriotic Greek managed
²⁶
to remain with a British unit and was no doubt amazed to find himself landing in Sicily instead of his homeland.” Leaflets were distributed on “hygiene in the Balkans.”
²⁷
Similar, though less intensive, efforts were made to indicate an impending assault on Sardinia at the other end of the Mediterranean: fishermen in Algeria were quizzed on their knowledge of Sardinian waters.

At the same time, preparations for the real invasion of Sicily were progressing swiftly, with troops assembling at North African ports. If Mincemeat and Barclay worked, then the Germans would see those preparations as elements of Brimstone, the fake plan for attacking Sardinia, and the supposed attack on Greece. The airfields in Sicily would have to be bombed, since, in Montagu’s words, “no major operation could be
²⁸
launched, maintained, or supplied until the enemy airfields and other bases in Sicily had been neutralised.” If the plan succeeded, the bombing would be seen as supporting action for the invasions in the eastern and western Mediterranean, and not as a prelude to what they were: a full-scale assault on Sicily itself. Various false dates for an imminent invasion were spread through numerous channels, and then “postponed.” The false dates were selected to coincide with the darkest lunar periods. That way, it was hoped, the enemy might assume a dark night was the only time to fear an attack, and relax its guard when the moon was high.

Operation Barclay was to be, in Clarke’s words, “the peak of the Deception effort
²⁹
in the Mediterranean.” Operation Mincemeat was only one element in that mighty effort, but it was a pivotal one. If it failed, then all the other elements of the deception might be revealed as part of an enormous fraud, allowing the Germans to reinforce Sicily and see the preparations for invading Greece as the sham they were. As Montagu had warned at the outset, “if they should suspect
³⁰
that the papers are a ‘plant’ it might have far-reaching consequences of great magnitude.” The responsibility weighed heavily on Montagu’s shoulders. “I had to carry the can
³¹
(and have it on my conscience) if anything happened to Seraph.”

There would be no second chance. John Godfrey, the former boss of Naval Intelligence, had always insisted that deception was a dish best served piping hot: “Intelligence, like food,
³²
soon gets stale, smelly, cold, soggy and indigestible, and when it has gone bad does more harm than good. If it ever gets into one of these revolting conditions, do not try to warm it up. Withdraw the offending morsel, and start again.” Once Mincemeat went bad, it would have to be discarded. Jewell was under no illusions: the smallest hitch, and the operation would be aborted, the body taken to Gibraltar, and the documents handed to the Staff Officer (intelligence) “with instructions to burn
³³
the contents unopened.” Contingency plans were also laid in case matters went awry after the body was launched. On April 22, a coded message was sent to the senior intelligence officer in Gibraltar: “Operation known as Mincemeat
³⁴
repeat Mincemeat has been mounted. … If body is sent to Gibraltar with documents in despatch case please advise Robertson MI5 immediately and give opinion whether such documents have or have not been tampered with. If such documents come into your hands they are to be sent complete with seals intact by direct weighted air bag addressed Colonel Robertson MI5.”

On the evening of April 28 the
Seraph
rounded Cape St. Vincent and headed for Huelva. Jewell summoned his officers to the wardroom. Seated around the table, in addition to Jewell and his second-in-command, David Scott, were Lieutenants Dickie Sutton, John Davis, and Ralph Norris. Taking a large envelope from the safe, Jewell proceeded to describe the gist of Operation Mincemeat. As Scott remarked, the contents of the canister came as “something of a shock.”
³⁵
What seemed to upset him most was the thought that “sailors had been sleeping
³⁶
alongside it, possibly using part of it as a pillow.” The officers nodded and asked no questions. After dropping off a genial American general in one part of the Mediterranean, picking up a grumpy French one in another, blowing up a whale, and becoming, briefly, an American submarine, their new mission was just about par for the course. Jewell stressed “the vital need for absolute secrecy.”
³⁷
Submariners are notoriously superstitious. When Jewell was out of earshot, one of the officers remarked: “Isn’t it pretty unlucky
³⁸
carting dead bodies around?”

At dawn the next day, just off Punta Umbria, Jewell gave the order to dive. For the next few hours, he and Scott carried out “a close range reconnaissance
³⁹
of the beach, making sure we knew every landmark.” The place seemed all but deserted, with just a handful of fishing huts and a few boats drawn up on the sand. This mission, Scott reflected, wrongly, was going to be “easy, even enjoyable.”
⁴⁰
The only impediment was a strong offshore wind. Their orders were clear: “The operation had to be carried
⁴¹
out as near as we could manage to the time of low water” with “an onshore wind,
⁴²
or no wind at all.” Jewell decided to wait. “The next day turned out to be ideal,”
⁴³
Scott wrote. “The wind was light and Southerly and the sky overcast.”
Seraph
withdrew twelve miles off the coast to recharge her batteries and waited for low tide and complete darkness. In London, the Admiralty requested the Air Ministry to “arrange total bombing restrictions”
⁴⁴
in the area. Naval Intelligence reported “no known defensive dangers”
⁴⁵
near Huelva.

At 1:00 a.m. on April 30, the submerged submarine stealthily approached the shore once more. Two hours later, the
Seraph
had reached the prearranged spot, 148 degrees off Portil Pilar and some eight cables, a little under one mile, from the beach. “We were just about to surface,”
⁴⁶
Jewell said, “when the fishing fleet went over the top of us, going out to collect sardines.” Waiting until the boats were well clear, the
Seraph
surfaced and Jewell surveyed the area with his binoculars. “A large number of small fishing boats
⁴⁷
were working in the bay,” “the closest about a mile off”—too far, he calculated, to be able to spot the dark submarine. The sky was overcast with low clouds and patchy visibility, and the wind was picking up.

The crew had been told that the officers were “landing some pseudo-secret instruments
⁴⁸
on the beach in order to try to trap a German agent known to be operating in the vicinity of Huelva, and that we hoped enough evidence against him could be gathered to result in his expulsion from neutral Spain.” Three of the crewmen hauled the canister through the torpedo hatch, which is usually only opened in harbor. The metal tube was laid on the fore casing and the crewmen ordered to return below. Scott manned the bridge, while Lieutenant Norris acted as lookout. Lieutenants Sutton and Davis set to work, unscrewing the bolts in the canister lid. Scott ran the echo sounder, which showed almost twelve feet of water beneath the keel. They “crept in a little closer
⁴⁹
to the beach.” Major Martin was lifted out of the steel tube at 4:15 a.m. There was, as Jewell put it with his usual understatement, “some little stink.”
⁵⁰
Perhaps through oxygen trapped in the dead man’s uniform and blanket, decomposition had accelerated during the passage from Scotland. Several of the officers recoiled. They had seen the worst of wartime underwater combat, but as Jewell observed, “I doubt if any of them
⁵¹
had seen a dead body at that time.” Jewell himself was sublimely unconcerned. “I had seen bodies before.
⁵²
My father was a doctor, a surgeon. My brothers were doctors. I wasn’t that worried by it.” Jewell’s official report described the extent of the decay. “The blanket was opened up
⁵³
and the body examined. The brief case was found to be securely attached. The face was heavily tanned and the whole of the lower half from the eyes down covered with mould. The skin had started to break away on the nose and cheek bones. The body was very high.”