The Man Who Never Was
By Ewen Montagu
Published by Evans Brothers Limited, UK, 1953
Purchased secondhand at Berkelouw’s BookBarn
http://www.berkelouw.com.au/
Price $12.50
‘In the graveyard of the Spanish town of Huelva there lies a British subject. As he died, alone, in the foggy damp of England in the late autumn of 1942, he little thought that he would lie forever under the sunny skies of Spain after a funeral with full military honours, nor that he would, after death, render a service to the Allies that saved many hundreds of British and American lives. In life he had done little for his country; but in death he did more than most could achieve in a lifetime of services.’ – CHAPTER 1, THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS.
TUCKED SNUGLY into the shelves of used books at the Berkelouw BookBarn at Eumundi, in the Noosa hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast was a book, when I saw it, I immediately knew what it was about.
The Man Who Never Was could only be about one event: Operation Mincemeat.
And of course this book made its way home with me.
It was written by Ewen Montagu and describes the outstanding execution of an extraordinary plan to deceive the German high command. It was a book that almost never was.
The book might never have been written had it not been for Duff Cooper’s only work of fiction, Operation Heartbreak, hitting the bookshelves in the early 1950s.
In fact, according to Wikipedia, the Cabinet Office ‘tried in vain, on security grounds, to block publication’ of Cooper’s only novel which had been inspired by the secret wartime operation. Having failed in its attempt to stop publication, it was decided that a factual account of Operation Mincemeat would be published, The task fell to Montagu, ideally placed to relate the facts of the operation.
Wikipedia describes his role as follows:
While Commanding Officer of NID 17M, Montagu and Squadron Leader Charles Cholmondeley RAFVR conceived Operation Mincemeat, a major deception operation.[8] Montagu had the idea of having a corpse dressed as a British officer wash ashore in Spain, carrying faked papers revealing plans for invasion of Greece (the real target was Sicily). The location chosen was where pro-German Spanish officials would show the papers to German agents. Montagu manufactured a false identity, “William Martin“, for the body of Glyndwr Michael to have in his pockets: military ID, theatre ticket stubs, love letters and a photo of his fiancée, bills from a tailor and jeweller. To follow the normal wartime procedure that dead or missing officers were required to be listed in the obituary column of The Times, Acting Major William Martin was so listed in the edition of 4 June 1943.
NEW EDITION
A new edition of The Man Who Never Was was published in 2021. I’ve provided a link on the title below to World of Books – a great resource for good secondhand books (free freight).
Operation Heartbreak is being republished this month by Penguin.
The movie Operation Mincemeat, starring Colin Firth, is currently streaming on Netflix. It’s certainly worth seeing.
This is a departure from the normal run of new books that appear on this blog. Don’t worry, there’ll be more new books to read about VERY SOON.
militarybooksaustralia.com 