Read Online The Ian Fleming Miscellany by Andrew Cook - Free Book Online

way, and miserable. Perhaps Ian wanted to re-live the happy summers on West Country beaches that he had spent with his brothers, of whom only two were left.
• I NVASION FROM N ORTH A FRICA •
    When the Blitz had largely stopped and the Americans came into the war at the end of 1942, Ian watched as the most fascinating ruse of all took shape. When Ian first joined Naval Intelligence, he had written a long list of ideas for deception and sabotage, mostly original. Many of these had been considered and shelved or put into effect already, but one at least had seemed, perhaps, too bizarre to tackle on any occasion. On his list, Ian had credited it to a plot in a Basil Thomson novel of the 1920s, in which a dead body is left to be found, so that the information it is carrying will send the finders on a wild goose chase.
    The plot was again put forward in the summer of 1942, this time by one Cholmondeley, from Montagu’s team. Nothing much happened. But circumstances would make Naval Intelligence look again.
    Donovan’s new OSS was in place and still viewed with suspicion at home but in constant contact with British intelligence. Roosevelt wanted the attack on Germany to start in Europe, right now. The British were adamantly against this. If they could seize North Africa from Casablanca to Cairo, they would be able to invade Italy and fight northwards through the occupied lands of southern Europe, including France, before attacking closer to the Fatherland itself. Roosevelt saw the point and conceded it.
    So in September 1942, the Allies were united in determination that Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, should go ahead as soon as possible. A date was set, and in September, a courier set off by plane from England to Gibraltar with secret documents: most importantly, a letter from General Clark, in charge of the Allied Expeditionary Force, to the island’s governor that told him to expect Eisenhower on the ‘target date’, 4 November. The plane crashed. A few days later the courier’s body was washed up on a beach in Southern Spain. The letter from General Clark was still in his pocket, unopened.
    Had the Germans, in fact, opened it? Would they have been forewarned of the attack?
    Technical experts decided not, and observation revealed no giveaway build-up of German patrols. Holding their nerve, the British ordered Operation Torch to go ahead. It worked exactly as planned.
    The courier was dead, but the macabre Thomson/Fleming/Cholmondeley idea – of the body with the false clue – had come to life again. It was used in Operation Mincemeat. The Germans needed to be tricked, and fast, because as soon as North Africa was fully under control, the dimmest German schoolboy with a map would spot the Allies’ next move – on Sicily, which offered the easiest of landings conveniently opposite the shores of Libya. Just such an invasion was planned for the summer of 1943.
    Could the Germans be duped into defending a different invasion point, or even two? Probably, but a plot would require scrupulous attention to detail. A body was obtained, that of a poor derelict Welshman who had died alone in King’s Cross. Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the pathologist, advised on making it credible as a drowned man, and on the conditions necessary to mislead Spanish or German pathologists as to cause of death. A name was chosen – a common enough name that did, in fact, belong to more than one officer in the services. The corpse was to be a major. The uniform and boots fitted, the underwear – obtained from someone who’d been hit by a tram – was well worn. A backstory, supported by correspondence, identity tags and documents and random indications of the deceased’s origins and character, was concocted, and a fake Most Secret letter.
    Ewen Montagu and others in Room 39 involved were having rather a good time, carefully putting together a convincing persona to be stuffed into the dead man’s pockets. The penultimate touch, a love