The Man Who Never Was

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Glyndwr Michael is buried at Heulva Roman Catholic Cemetery in Spain in a grave also marked by the name of his alter-ego, Major William Martin. Was Operation Mincemeat successful?

He had directed a few films before The Man Who Never Was, but appointing him director ensured that the film would have both a dramatic and a convincing look, with scenes ranging from the streets of wartime London to the Spanish fishing port of Huelva (where filming actually took place), and from the cramped basement headquarters of naval intelligence to the interior of submarine HMS Seraph. Still secret Side note: apparently, the story is retold, at three times the length (so, presumably, in more detail), in a 2010 book titled: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory ... but I haven't read that (and, frankly, there's a certain joy in reading Montagu's sparse, tight, yet, almost light and airy, autobiographical retelling of the tale with more than a fair share of modesty and self-congratulation, all of which seemed both fully justified and, surprisingly, endearing). Macintyre also suggests that Ewen Montagu’s account is incomplete, written at the behest of the Government, conceals facts, and is deliberately misleading.While the Sicily campaign was hard fought, the Allies achieved victory in just 38 days, compared with the predicted 90 and with fewer than expected casualties. The invasion was the first step towards the liberation of Western Europe, paving the way for subsequent amphibious assaults in Italy and Normandy. Warner Brothers upcoming movie Operation Mincemeat tells the story of one of the most secret operations of World War Two. In 1943, following the campaign in North Africa the Allies turned their attention to the island of Sicily. But to help increase their chances of success, the British Intelligence service hatched an elaborate plan to fool the defenders into thinking Allied priorities lay elsewhere. What was Operation Mincemeat?

I'm glad that, for whatever reason, I kept the book for all these years ... and finally read it. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys (either) military history or spy/espionage fiction. (Frankly, it's crazier, and, at a minimum, less conventional, than most spy fiction I've read over the years.) Again, it's a remarkable story and an informative, entertaining period piece. The Man Who Never Was is a 1956 British espionage thriller film produced by André Hakim and directed by Ronald Neame. It stars Clifton Webb and Gloria Grahame and features Robert Flemyng, Josephine Griffin and Stephen Boyd. It is based on the book of the same name by Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu and chronicles Operation Mincemeat, a 1943 British intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking the Allied invasion of Sicily would take place elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Admiral Lord West (16 April 2022). "The double deception behind Operation Mincemeat". The Telegraph. The film was made in Britain but an American actor Clifton Webb played the central character of Ewen Montagu, the naval intelligence officer. Most of the other actors were British. Nigel Balchin, the acclaimed author and scriptwriter, adapted the book for the screen and Ronald Neame directed. Major Martin was assigned to Combined Operations Headquarters, working under Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten. When his aircraft crashed he was carrying secret documents, including a letter from Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye, Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the Anglo-American 18th Army Group then stationed in North Africa.However, the man laid to rest in Huelva Roman Catholic Cemetery was not Major Martin. Major Martin never existed. William Martin, along with the documents he carried were an elaborate forgery, a fiction conjured up in the minds of British Intelligence operatives including then Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, the later creator of James Bond. Who was the real Major Martin?

General Sir Archibald Nye, the deputy to the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee, was asked to write a personal letter to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of Allied forces in North Africa, revealing details of the false invasion plan. Admiral Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations, was asked to write a personal letter to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham again giving away key details.

Yet, Macintyre in his book (Operation Mincemeat) states: “If my discovery of these papers [documents kept by Ewen Montagu from his war-days and handed to Macintyre by his son] reads like something out of a spy film, that may be no accident: Montagu himself had a rich sense of the dramatic. He [Ewen Montagu] must have known they [the documents] would be found one day.” With Germany reeling from Alamein and Stalingrad, it was prone to that "wishfulness" and "yesmanship" that are the cardinal sins of counter-deception. The real weakness of Operation Mincemeat was that there was just one body and that one suspiciously stuffed with high-grade intelligence. One of the oddities of the story is that, even in the London of the blitz, corpses without relations or injuries were extremely hard to come by. Smyth, Denis (16 June 2010). Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-161364-7– via Google Books.