Authors: Ben Macintyre
Tags: #General, #Psychology, #Europe, #History, #Great Britain, #20th Century, #Political Freedom & Security, #Intelligence, #Political Freedom & Security - Intelligence, #Political Science, #Espionage, #Modern, #World War, #1939-1945, #Military, #Italy, #Naval, #World War II, #Secret service, #Sicily (Italy), #Deception, #Military - World War II, #War, #History - Military, #Military - Naval, #Military - 20th century, #World War; 1939-1945, #Deception - Spain - Atlantic Coast - History - 20th century, #Naval History - World War II, #Ewen, #Military - Intelligence, #World War; 1939-1945 - Secret service - Great Britain, #Sicily (Italy) - History; Military - 20th century, #1939-1945 - Secret service - Great Britain, #Atlantic Coast (Spain), #1939-1945 - Spain - Atlantic Coast, #1939-1945 - Campaigns - Italy - Sicily, #Intelligence Operations, #Deception - Great Britain - History - 20th century, #Atlantic Coast (Spain) - History, #Montagu, #Atlantic Coast (Spain) - History; Military - 20th century, #Sicily (Italy) - History, #World War; 1939-1945 - Campaigns - Italy - Sicily, #Operation Mincemeat, #Montagu; Ewen, #World War; 1939-1945 - Spain - Atlantic Coast
Montagu claimed to have written his account in the space of forty-eight hours “with much black coffee
40
and no sleep” in order to get it to the newspaper’s offices by Monday, January 24. In fact, a draft was complete and had already been approved by the authorities and sent to the
Sunday Express
at least three weeks before the newspaper’s deadline. On January 8, Montagu wrote to Jean Leslie, now Jean Gerard Leigh (“or should it be
41
‘Pam’?”), warning her that his book was about to be published: “The powers that be
42
have decided that an accurate story by me ‘under control’ would be less dangerous than an inaccurate one which might lead anywhere.” Montagu asked Jean for permission to use her photograph as “Pam”: “We don’t want to alter
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anything of that kind as we want to be able to say ‘this is true.’” Montagu assured her that she would be identified only as “a girl working in my section.”
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Montagu sent a simultaneous letter to Bill Jewell informing him that “Mincemeat is soon going
45
to be published” and that his draft had been approved by Whitehall: “My account has been vetted
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and passed,” he wrote. “I felt that you ought not
47
to be taken by surprise.”
Jewell raised no objection, but Jean was concerned: “I was most interested
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to hear that part of your and Bill’s doubtful past are to be revealed to the unsuspecting public,” she wrote. “But what should my answer be if someone sees through the ravages of time and identifies me with Pam!? … Perhaps you would come and have a drink one evening and put me ‘in the picture’ if it is not too late.” Montagu suggested that if anyone made the connection and asked what she had done during the war, she should “merely say that you were
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working in a branch of the War Office.”
Charles Cholmondeley wanted nothing to do with the project. As an MI5 officer, he refused to be named, but his natural reticence would have prevented his participation in any case. Montagu had first raised the idea of writing a book together two years earlier, after the appearance of
Operation Heartbreak
. He now offered to cut his former partner in on the deal, with a quarter share of the profits from “book, film rights, or other uses
50
to which the story might be put.” Cholmondeley’s response was typically polite, but firm. “As you will recall,
51
when you originally broached the subject in 1951, I felt, due to my position, that I could not take part in it.” In the interim, Cholmondeley had left MI5. “Whilst the general situation
52
has changed considerably,” he wrote, “I do not feel that my own
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rather peculiar position has done so and therefore I must reaffirm my decision to take no part and accept no benefit from this publication. I am sure you will appreciate this difference in our positions, but reaching this decision has not been easy and believe me I am not less appreciative of your very generous offer.”
The first installment of the story, proclaiming “the war’s most fantastic secret
54
disclosed for the first time,” appeared in the
Sunday Express
on February 1 under the headline “The Man Who Never Was”—the title was the inspiration of the news editor, Jack Garbutt. This was followed by two more installments. Ian Colvin was understandably furious at being elbowed out of the story, but as a sop he was allowed to write an introduction to and analysis of the pieces. His own book of the story—necessarily incomplete, but nonetheless a remarkable piece of investigation—appeared later that year under the title
The Unknown Courier
.
Montagu’s book,
The Man Who Never Was
, was published a few months later by Evans Brothers, with the image of a faceless marine on the cover (wrongly wearing service dress). It was an instant, huge, and enduring best seller, going on to sell more than three million copies. It has never been out of print.
Opinion among Montagu’s former colleagues in the intelligence world was sharply divided over the decision to reveal Operation Mincemeat. Charles Cholmondeley made no comment on the contents but was generous, as ever: “I shall look forward
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to a gripping and soul searing saga of the silver screen at some future date.” Mountbatten gave qualified support: “Although I heartily disapproved
56
of
Operation Heartbreak
, and told the author so when I saw him, once the beans had been spilt in that way I think it was probably a good thing that the true story should be told.” However, Archie Nye, the author of the plot’s centerpiece, was sharply critical, telling Montagu that he would need “a good deal of persuasion
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that the merits of publication exceeded the drawbacks.” John Masterman was also opposed. “You and I don’t agree
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on the wisdom of publishing Mincemeat in this form,” he wrote. “I always thought that a good deal could be published with advantage but I also thought that such publication should be anonymous and with official sanction.” (Such scruples did not endure. In 1972, Masterman would publish his own account of the Double Cross System, under his own name, and in the teeth of strong official opposition.) The most trenchant criticism came from Admiral John Godfrey. “Uncle John blitzed me
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on the phone in quite the old way,” Montagu told another former denizen of Room 13. The old admiral testily pointed out that the book claimed to be nonfiction, while withholding key truths: “Your admirable Man Who Never Was
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covers up the real final secret—how did we know that the Germans had access to the despatches?”
The Man Who Never Was
remains a classic of postwar literature. With a lawyer’s precision, Montagu laid out the plot in careful steps to reveal “an exploit more astonishing
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than any story in war fiction.” Inevitably, some of the writing is a little dated, but more than half a century later it is still gripping, a tour de force of reconstruction.
Yet the book is—and was always intended to be—partial, in both senses. In some ways, it fulfilled the demands of postwar propaganda. In Montagu’s telling, the British planners made no mistakes and the Germans were duped without the slightest hint that anything might go wrong. He can be forgiven for presenting himself as the hero of his own drama—many of those involved could or would not be identified—but in so doing, he made Operation Mincemeat appear to be a one-man show. Cholmondeley appears fleetingly in the book under the pseudonym “George.” The others who played roles, large or small—Alan Hillgarth, Don Gómez-Beare, Johnnie Bevan, Charles Fraser-Smith, Juan Pujol, Jean Leslie—were not only unnamed but in some cases simply excised from the story. The Ultra secret would not be revealed until the 1970s, so Montagu was unable to describe how the success of the operation had been tracked. The book was carefully vetted and contained nothing that might embarrass the government: the extent to which British diplomatic officials had cooperated in deceiving the Spanish was glossed over, as was the level of Spanish collaboration with the Germans; the way the body had been obtained was made to seem entirely official and aboveboard. Partly for dramatic effect, partly in obedience to the guardians of official secrecy, and partly because that is the way he was, Montagu “managed to give the impression,”
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wrote one detractor, “that he was single-handedly responsible for the entire deception scheme.”
As for Glyndwr Michael, he was removed from the story, permanently, or so Montagu believed. In a first draft of
The Man Who Never Was
, he concocted a story in which the “real” identity of the dead man was hinted at, misleadingly, as “an only son,
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an officer of one of the services, from an old service family.” He wrote: “His parents were then
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alive and we decided to take a chance on their agreeing to our plan. We could not tell them the whole story but we felt we could not in decency keep them completely in the dark. They did not like the idea—who would?—but they agreed on the strict condition that neither the real name nor any identifying particulars of their son would ever come out.” In the final version of the book, however, he opted for an even vaguer explanation, claiming that he had asked the relatives of the dead man for permission to use the body “without saying what we proposed
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to do with it and why” and that “permission, for which our indebtedness was great, was obtained on condition that I should never let it be known whose corpse it was.” Montagu presented his refusal to divulge the name as a matter of honor, since he had given his word to the relatives of the dead man. In 1977, he claimed that all those relatives had since died: “I gave a solemn promise
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never to reveal whose body it was and, as there is no one alive from whom I can get a release, I can say no more.” The truth, of course, was that none of Michael’s few relatives had ever been contacted, let alone asked for permission to use his body. This was a cover-up to spare the blushes of the British government and to avoid the admission that the body had been obtained by falsifying a legal certificate indicating burial outside the country and used entirely without permission.
While not exactly a white lie, this untruth was surely an excusable shade of gray. In the midst of a ferocious war, Montagu and Cholmondeley had persuaded a coroner to bend the law in the national interest. Bentley Purchase had done so on the understanding that he would not be later called to account. The Joint Intelligence Committee would never have allowed Montagu to publish a book revealing that the body of Glyndwr Michael had, in effect, been seized illegally by government intelligence officers: that would have provoked a scandal, as well as undermining the moral high ground upon which
The Man Who Never Was
rested. If the identity had been revealed, then Glyndwr Michael’s relatives might, with some reason, have kicked up an almighty stink. So Montagu hid the truth with another deception and continued to hide it for the rest of his life.
During the war, Ewen Montagu had complained: “My work is such that
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I will never be able to mention its importance and people will merely say ‘Oh, he didn’t do much good in the war.’ I will therefore go down as someone who was a failure when tested in the war.” The publication of
The Man Who Never Was
turned him, almost overnight, into a celebrity. He toured the United States, gave lectures, and appeared on American television alongside a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs. Hollywood swiftly came calling, as Cholmondeley had predicted, and a vigorous auction ensued. The film rights were finally purchased by 20th Century Fox.
The film of
The Man Who Never Was
, an Anglo-American Technicolor Cinemascope production, opened with a royal premiere attended by the Duchess of Kent, on March 14, 1956. Shot in Britain and Huelva, it starred the American actor Clifton Webb playing Montagu and Gloria Grahame as “Lucy,” his secretary’s fictional flatmate. André Morell played Sir Bernard Spilsbury, while William Squire was submarine commander Bill Jewell. The script, by Nigel Balchin, used the truth where convenient and made up the rest, including an Irish spy in Britain deployed by the Nazis to verify the identity of the body. Montagu was long past caring and declared himself entirely happy with the “thrilling incidents which,
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although they did not happen, might have happened.” Mountbatten got an early look at the script and complained that it made him “appear to be grudging
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and rather ‘Old Blimpish.’” He wrote, “I would like to make it clear
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that I was the most enthusiastic supporter of this idea from the beginning.” He even tried to insert a line to make his character more appealing: “I would have no objection
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to the addition of a phrase like ‘Nice of Mountbatten to take a dead man on his Staff.’” Among those on set during filming was a tall, ungainly man with an extravagant air-force mustache, who was described as a “technical adviser” and known only as “George.” He did not appear in the credits. Even the director, Ronald Neame, never knew that “George” was Charles Cholmondeley—content, as ever, to organize matters anonymously from the wings.
In the film, Montagu makes a cameo appearance as an air vice marshal with doubts about the plan’s feasibility. At one point in the film, Montagu leans over to Webb, looks him in the eye, and declares: “I suppose you realise, Montagu, that, if the Germans see through this, it will pinpoint Sicily.” This was a wonderfully surreal moment: the real Montagu addressing his fictional persona, in a work of filmic fiction, based on reality, which had originated in fiction.