Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (43 page)

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 names 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 theatre
⁷³
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 do
⁷⁴
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 Division
⁷⁵
(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 passage
⁷⁶
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 suited
⁷⁷
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 between
⁷⁹
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 summed
⁸⁰
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 resulted
⁸²
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 stage
⁸³
Mincemeat can still be regarded as achieving the objective for which we hoped.”

CHAPTER TWENTY
Seraph
and Husky

B
ILL
J
EWELL 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 beacon
²
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 waves
³
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 information
⁴
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 us
⁷
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 troops
⁹
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 less
¹⁰
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.

Jewell was sublimely indifferent to his own safety. He had faced danger and discomfort on an extravagant scale in a gruesome war. Time after time he had demonstrated his willingness to die. But now he had something new to live for. Bill Jewell had fallen in love.

After performing his part in Operation Mincemeat, Jewell had returned to Algiers for some well-earned shore leave. Among the new arrivals at Allied headquarters in the city was Rosemary Galloway, a young officer in the Wrens, the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Rosemary was a cipher clerk, coding and decoding the messages passing in and out of Allied headquarters, and thus was privy to secret and sensitive information. She was vivacious, intelligent, and exceedingly attractive. Jewell and Rosemary had met once before, in Britain, and in the sultry heat of wartime Algiers that acquaintance rapidly bloomed into romance. Once Rosemary was in Bill Jewell’s emotional periscope, he pursued her with unswerving determination. She proved a most cooperative quarry. There were limited opportunities for courtship in wartime Algiers, and Jewell seized all of them. At Sidi Barouk, just outside the city, the American forces had created a rest camp that was the nearest thing in Algeria to an American country club, with bar, restaurant, tennis court, and swimming pool. Jewell recalled: “The American High Command
¹¹
had taken possession of a strip of beach and olive grove and converted it into an Arabian Nights’ dream—barring the houris, of course!” (Actually, these were available too.) An evening at Sidi Barouk was, in Jewell’s words, “a really de luxe experience.”
¹²
Jewell’s friendly relations with senior American officers earned him access to this “most exclusive spot,”
¹³
and even the use of an American driver, one Private Bocciccio, a Brooklyn native, who drove with one leg permanently hanging out of his Jeep. When Bocciccio was unavailable, Jewell squired Rosemary around town in an ancient Hillman acquired by the Eighth Flotilla and known as “The Wren Trap,”
¹⁴
less for its romantic allure, which was zero, than for its captive potential: “None of the doors opened
¹⁵
from the inside and, no matter how urgent the need for fresh air, Wrens who accepted the risk had to rely on the chivalry of their companions to release them.” Bocciccio, who had picked up some fruity British slang, was scathing about the Wren Trap and what went on in it: “Bloody heap ain’t got no springs
¹⁶
left.”