Its 1943, the allies have landed in North Africa and the end to the German presence on the continent will soon be at an end. So where next? There are two obvious targets Italy and Greece, the allies knew it and so did the Germans.
The British favoured Italy, Winston Churchill believing that the Italians would not have the stomach to fight to the death, President F D Roosevelt agreed. The problem was that the German command also believed this about Italy and begun to make plans to bolster up its defences.
British intelligence was presented with the task of persuading the Germans that the target for invasion would be Greece and not the true target Italy.
British Intelligence officer Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu was put in charge of “Operation Mincemeat” and after many hours of deliberation the plan was hatched, and simple it was too, a body of a British officer would be set adrift off the coast of Spain, where German intelligence operatives were able to work in the open with the co-operation of the Spanish dictatorship, they would find some details of the proposed invasion of Greece and inform the German high command.
Lt Commander Montagu met with the eminent pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury to discuss the idea of how to make the Spanish believe that the body was that of a crashed pilot and not just someone who had been dumped at sea as a decoy. The search was on for the right type of person for the job and after a long wait a potential recruit was thought to have been found, a man aged 38 had died of pneumonia, this was ideal as the body would have liquid in the lungs and if a post mortem was done the pathologist would assume that he had drowned after his plane had crashed at sea.
Lt Commander Montagu met with the mans relatives who had to be persuaded to let their sons body be taken away and dumped at sea, something that most parents who had just lost their son would never agree to, however in this case, they did give approval and the body was taken away and given the false identity of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines attached to the office of Louis Mountbatten who was the Commanding in Chief of the combined operations in the Mediterranean.
Major Martin was taken on board the submarine “Seraph” and left North west Scotland on 19th April 1943, attached to his wrist was a briefcase which contained a secret coded letter from General Archibald Nye to General Harold Alexander, where General Nye stated that the allies needed to convince the Germans that Sicily was the target, to give the allies the opportunity to invade Greece.
Go To Page: 1 2
