The art of deceit in warfare

Robert Messenger:

Among the graves in a cemetery in Huelva, in southern Spain, is one for a Glyndwr Michael, a vagrant who died in 1943 at age 34—in London. Long after his death, his grave marker was amended to commemorate his inadvertent service during World War II. For it was the corpse of this young man that was used by the British in one of the greatest of wartime ruses: Operation Mincemeat. The cadaver was dressed in the uniform of a Royal Marines officer and given the name William Martin, taken to Spain in a submarine and left to drift ashore. A briefcase stuffed with "secret" documents was attached to a belt worn by "Major Martin."

The body would be discovered, the British hoped, and the papers delivered to the Nazis, convincing them that Allied forces in the Mediterranean were going to invade southern Europe through Greece—and that any Allied movement toward Sicily would be a feint. The ruse worked: Hitler redeployed his forces and sent Rommel to take command of the Greek defenses. The Allied conquest of Sicily took 38 days rather than the 90 originally estimated, with many thousands of lives saved.

The story of Operation Mincemeat and the Royal Marine who came to be called "the man who never was" is related in Nicholas Rankin's "A Genius for Deception," a delight-filled account of "how cunning helped the British win two world wars." As Mr. Rankin notes, Archibald Wavell—whose career began in the Boer War and ended with him a field marshal and viceroy of India—once wrote: "The beginnings of any war by the British are always marked by improvidence, improvisations, and too often, alas, impossibilities being asked of the troops." Improvisation defined British deception operations. Camouflaging soldiers in the field, building entire fake armies and fake cities to fool airborne reconnaissance and bombers, counter-sniping with dummy heads—all originated in the British amateur spirit and gift for discovering a way forward out of the strangest materials.

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There is much to savor, as in this anecdote (which the author admits "seems almost too good to be true") about an incident during the Battle of Britain: During one of the nightly Luftwaffe attacks, an urgent call went out from a British camoufleur in charge of an elaborate fake airfield, complete with dummy planes, to an RAF fighter pilot.

Camoufleur: "Sir! We're being attacked!"

Pilot: "Splendid, Sergeant. Good show."

Camoufleur: "They're smashing the place to bits!"

Pilot: "Yes, excellent. Carry on."

Camoufleur: "But, sir—we need fighter cover! They're wrecking my best decoys."

There is more including how a painter designed elaborate paint jobs on ships to fool the Nazi U-boats. i wonder if Bernie Madoff might have some ideas about fooling the enemy, It turns out he might have since Hezballah lost a lot of money in a similar Ponzi scheme.

The books sounds like one I would enjoy. I will have to keep an eye out for it.