The Man Who Never Was: An Oral History of Operation Mincemeat

We were in a windowless room in the basement of the Admiralty, Room 13. The problem was simple and terrifying. Sicily was the obvious target. If the Germans concentrated their defenses there, the invasion would be a bloodbath. We needed a distraction—a grand, macabre distraction.

I’d been thinking about a memorandum written years earlier by Admiral John Godfrey and his assistant, a young man named Ian Fleming. They called it the 'Trout Memo.' It compared deception to fly fishing. Suggestion number 28 was the one that stuck: a corpse, dressed as an officer, carrying top-secret papers, washed up on an enemy shore. It was absurd. It was ghoulish. It was perfect.

We couldn't just use any body. It had to look like a man who had died at sea in a plane crash. We needed someone with no family, someone whose disappearance wouldn't be noticed. We found him in a morgue in St. Pancras. Glyndwr Michael. He was a homeless man from Wales who had died after eating bread smeared with phosphorus rat poison. The coroner told us it would look like a drowning to anyone not performing a specialized autopsy.

My job was to make this dead man real. We named him Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. But a name isn't a life. I spent days writing love letters to 'Bill' from a fictional fiancée named Pam. We included a photo of an MI5 clerk named Jean Leslie, theatre ticket stubs from a recent play, a receipt for a diamond engagement ring, and even an irritable letter from his father. We were building a ghost.

We had to be careful with the 'pocket litter.' We even gave him an overdraft notice from Lloyds Bank for 79 pounds. We figured the Germans would find a man who was a bit sloppy with his money much more believable than a perfect hero. The most important item, however, was in the briefcase: a personal letter from Sir Archibald Nye to General Alexander, hinting that the real targets were Greece and Sardinia.

On April 19, we set off from Scotland. In the casing of the submarine, we had a steel canister filled with dry ice and the body of 'Major Martin.' My crew thought they were transporting a top-secret weather instrument. On the morning of April 30, off the coast of Huelva, Spain, we surfaced. I had only my senior officers on deck. We slipped the body into the water, let the tide take him, and watched him drift toward the shore. I remember thinking, 'Good luck, Bill.'

Then, we waited. The Spanish authorities found him, as planned. They were technically neutral, but we knew their intelligence services were riddled with German Abwehr agents. We sent 'urgent' cables asking about the body, knowing the Germans would intercept them and get curious. It worked. The Abwehr agents convinced the Spanish to let them see the documents.

When the documents reached Berlin, I analyzed them. They seemed remarkably authentic. The personal letters, the bank notice—it all suggested a real man. I reported to the High Command that the threat to Greece was genuine. Hitler himself believed it. He sent the 1st Panzer Division all the way from France to Greece. He moved torpedo boats and reinforced Sardinia. He left Sicily's back door wide open.

We received a telegram at the Admiralty. It was short and sweet: 'Mincemeat swallowed rod, line, and sinker.' On July 9, 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily. The resistance was far lighter than we ever dared hope. Thousands of British and American soldiers survived that day because of a man who never was.