Major ? part two.

On 30th April 1943 the “Seraph” surfaced just off the coast of Huelva, Spain and the crew carefully set the Major adrift.

It was not until 3rd May 1943 that the British Embassy in Madrid informed London that a body had been recovered by Spanish fisherman and given a full military funeral; there was no mention of the briefcase or the documents from inside it.

Lt Commander Montagu contacted a British Embassy official and ask him to make enquiries regarding its where about’s, the official had no idea of the plan and made his enquires, ten days later the briefcase and its contents were handed over to the British Embassy.

The Allies could only wait now; did the Germans believe that the invasion would be in Greece or Italy? Did they even know about the plans? It was not long before messages began to be intercepted and indeed the Spanish had allowed the German agents to copy the documents and inform the German high command.

The operation was a complete success, the Germans began to increase their troops in Greece in order to bolster the defences there in anticipation of the imminent invasion and left Sicily with a token force only to be invaded by General’s Patton and Montgomery, who went on to liberate the whole of the mainland itself. It is believed that Major Martin not only saved thousands of troops but also helped bring the war to an earlier conclusion.

At the end of the war when the Allies began to sieve through the thousands upon thousands of documents and statements of prisoners of war, the subject of Major Martin appeared, the Germans were well and truly taken in by the operation and had no idea at all of the real story behind Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, the man who did not exist.

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