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The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II's Boldest

Counterintelligence Operation

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MILITARY MEDICINE, 174, 1:93, 2009

The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of

World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
CDR Klaus Gottlieb, MC, USN

ABSTRACT On the 30th of April 1943 the waterlogged body of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines drifted
toward the shores of the Spanish Atlantic-coast city of Huelva after having been floated from a British submarine.
A train of events was set into motion, which helped to change the course of the war. Major Martin, although dead,
played a key role in the allied deception operation code-named Mincemeat. Operation Mincemeat has been the sub-
ject of several books and a motion picture. The crucial postmortem examination of Major Martin conducted by the
Spanish authorities has received surprisingly little attention in the general intelligence literature and details of the medi-
cal aspects have to our knowledge never been examined. This article is, in a manner of speaking, a postmortem itself.
The events happened 65 years ago and although new material is presented, the interpretation of its significance in the
context of the known facts may convince some readers but not others. Nevertheless, we hope that this literary postmor-
tem will fascinate intelligence and medical professionals alike and contribute to the medical and intelligence history of
World War II.

BACKGROUND account and the official history of British intelligence in the

Mincemeat was a top-secret operation and remained classified
for 30 years after the war. As we will see, some of its aspects
continue to be puzzling to the present day. Despite the fact that
those involved were sworn to secrecy, Duff Cooper, a former
First Lord of the Admiralty, published a book only 5 years
after the end of the war, which many correctly recognized as a
roman à clef titled Operation Heartbreak.1 It was fictionalized
history and clumsily written. Nonetheless it caused consider-
able excitement in government circles because it obviously
was derived from Operation Mincemeat. To control the dam-
age, a semiofficial version of the events was commissioned
and written by Ewen Montagu. The sanitized account of the
events was published in 1953 after it had been approved by the
Ministry of Defense under the title The Man Who Never Was.2
The book became a commercial success, is still in print, and
was the basis for the 1956 movie. At the center of Mincemeat
was a dead body that would serve as a make-believe courier
intended to deceive the Germans regarding the location of the
next allied landing operation.
The author of the bestseller, Ewen Montagu of the Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve, was in civilian life a lawyer who
had been born into a wealthy banking family in Londona.
He masterminded the Mincemeat operation when he was a
Lieutenant Commander attached to MI-5 in 1942/43. Ewen’s
NR VTU 2209G Spokane, 5101 N. Assembly Street, Spokane, WA 99205.
a
The Hon. Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu was born in 1901, the second
son of the prominent peer Louis Samuel Montagu, 2nd Baron Swaythling. He
was educated at Westminster School before becoming a machine gun instruc-
tor during World War I at a United States Naval Air Station. After the war he
studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Harvard University before he
was called to the bar in 1924.
This manuscript was received for review in June 2007. The revised
manuscript was accepted for publication in July 2008.
Reprint & Copyright © by Association of Military Surgeons of U.S., 2009.
Second World War3 are to this day the chief sources of infor-
mation on the topic.
In late 1942 allied planners, after a successful completion
of the North African campaign, turned their eyes toward the
“soft underbelly of Europe” because it was clear that a cross-
channel invasion of Western Europe would not be feasible
that year. Taking Italy out of the war was the aim and Sicily
the stepping-stone. North Africa had been the proving ground
of successful deception operations before and now another
one was needed to divert the attention of the German High
Command from Sicily toward Greece and Sardinia. The plan
was to make the Germans believe that they had, quite by acci-
dent, intercepted high-level private correspondence between
general officers that pointed toward Sardinia and Greece as the
allied objective. The plan conceived by Montagu was to plant
the disinformation on a corpse dressed as a Royal Marine that
would be released from a submarine to float onto the Spanish
shore. This would be made to look like a plane crash into the
Gulf of Cadiz coast with a life boat thrown into the water
together with the body to make it look even more authen-
tic. Spain was a nonbelligerent nation in the Second World
War but left the German counterespionage service (Abwehr)
a free hand as long as the appearance of neutrality could be
maintained. Following a successful launch of Mincemeat the
British were hoping for the following course of events: The
corpse would be discovered by the Spanish, who would do
a postmortem, examine the papers, secretly share them with
the Germans, and then pass the body and documents on to the
British as if nothing had happened. The British would then
give the impression as if they took the bait.
A Suitable Corpse
After Operation Mincemeat had been approved in principle,
Montagu needed to find a corpse that would fulfill the following

MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009 93

 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation

requirements: (1) permission obtainable from relatives or

competent authority, (2) fresh or only minimally decomposed,
(3) no secrecy violations, and (4) fit the expectations of the
German and Spanish authorities. The crucial question was:
“What would a pathologist expect to find and what would he
expect not to find in the body of a man who had drifted ashore
after an aircraft had been lost at sea”?2 The ideal body would
of course have been a victim of drowning. In his book The
Man Who Never Was, Montagu goes into elaborate detail to
explain that the body of an actual drowning victim was really
not necessary. We think, on the contrary, that a drowning vic-
tim was indeed used but that Montagu had reasons to make
his readers believe otherwise. Montagu pledged that he would
“ … never let it be known whose corpse it was” and it appears
that in his book he deliberately constructs a cover story for the
body to further cloak its identity. He develops his argument
as follows: Death at sea does not necessarily mean drowning
(aspiration of water into the lungs); death could have been
due to shock, exposure or injury, a lot of water in the lungs
means drowning, a little water could have seeped in after
death, Spanish pathologists (who are not up to par to their
British colleagues according to Sir James Spilsbury, his foren-
sic adviser) would not be able to differentiate pneumonia from
sea water that entered the lungs after death, therefore, a person
who died of pneumonia could be a suitable candidate for the
body of the make-believe courier. Montagu: “There we were,
in 1942, surrounded all too often by dead bodies, but none that
we could take. …At one time we feared that we might have to
do a body-snatch—‘do a Burke and Hareb’ as one of us put;
but we did not like that idea, if we could possibly avoid it.”
Montagu writes that they were becoming ever more desperate,
now seriously considering the theft of a body. Montagu and
his team finally “heard of someone who had just died of pneu-
monia after exposure: pathologically speaking, it looked as if
he might answer our requirements.”2
Montagu was given permission to use the body and depos-
ited it into suitable cold storage until needed. We will call
this corpse “Cold Storage Man” to avoid confusion with other
bodies we will get acquainted with (Fig. 1).
Who was “Cold Storage Man?”
Montagu tells us very little about him. Apparently he had
not been very physically fit for some time before his
death and Montagu responded to a senior who questioned this
point: “He does not have to look like an officer—only like a
staff officer.” This is an interesting, in fact, telling remark,
which we will come back to later.
The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published in
1996 information released from the Public Records Office
b
William Burke and William Hare actually murdered their victims and
then sold the bodies to the Edinburgh Anatomical Institute (1827–1828). Here
the reference is to the once common practice of grave robbing (body snatch-
ing) which ended when the Anatomy Act of 1832 increased the legal supply
of cadavers for medical schools.
FIGURE 1. The official photograph of Major William Martin, R. M.,
ready to go to war. But was it really this man who was autopsied in Spain?
identifying “Cold Storage Man” as one Glyndwr Michael who
was born the illegitimate son of illiterate parents from a Welsh
mining village.4 Michael Glyndwr died January 28, 1943 at
St Pancreas Hospital in London with liver failure (not pneu-
monia) from “phosphorous rat poison” after ingesting it either
accidentally or with suicidal intent 2 days earlier in a London
warehouse. The 34 year old apparently had led a filthy and
lonely existence as a tramp on the streets of London and was
officially classified as a lunatic and unfit for military service.
The coroner of the district, Sir William Bentley Purchase,
coauthor of a textbook of forensic medicine, had previously
been contacted by his colleague Sir Bernard Spilsbury that a
suitable body was needed for a certain operation (Mincemeat),
and Glyndwr seemed to fit the bill. Purchase turned the body
over to Montagu’s group. Based on these revelations of The
Daily Telegraph, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
in January 1998 removed the gravestone of “Major Martin” in
the Catholic cemetery of Huelva to have it re-engraved adding
underneath the initial inscription: “Glyndwr Michael served
as Major William Martin, R. M.”
The Trouble with “Cold Storage Man”
In the 1940s, class distinctions in British society were still
very obvious and members of the different social strata could
easily identify each another by numerous attributes such as
education, speech, dress, pastimes, grooming, body marks,
jewelry, and so forth. The presence of a tattoo would not be
unexpected in a member of the lower classes; neither would
rotten teeth. Conversely, an officer with tattoos and several
missing teeth would have been unthinkable. Even if dressed
like a gentleman, nobody would mistake him for one, dead or
alive. Notwithstanding Montagu’s remark, a staff officer in the
British system of the time was even more likely to have con-
nections to the highest strata of society. Let us then imagine

94 MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009

 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
Glyndwr Michael as a potential officer and gentleman: Michael
was 34 years old and existed on the fringes of society during
the war years in London. If he had ever seen a dentist in his
life he was certainly not able to afford one now. His teeth
were probably badly stained, some of his teeth may have been
missing, and others certainly had cavities. Gold crowns would
not have been found. If “Cold Storage Man” had been sub-
jected to an autopsy by a reasonably competent forensic exam-
iner, these interesting discrepancies would have been evident
even after advanced decomposition. Moreover, rat poisoning
with phosphorus causes death by liver failure with jaundice
and typical postmortem findings.
Montagu must have been keenly aware of the risk he would
have incurred if he actually had used “Cold Storage Man” to
play the role of Major Martin. “Cold Storage Man” was mean-
while safely tucked away awaiting further developments.
“Dasher Man”
“This account opens up the strong possibility that one of the
bodies from HMS Dasher occupied that crucial, if posthumous,
role (of Major Martin).” Brian Wilson MP,c June 2002.5
HMS Dasher was an American-built merchant vessel con-
verted to an auxiliary aircraft carrier for transatlantic convoys.
On March 27, 1943 it blew up apparently when a thrown-away
cigarette ignited aircraft fuel. HMS Dasher sank within 8 min-
utes in the Clyde Estuary. Three hundred seventy-nine lives
were lost, only 24 burials were recorded, and 255 bodies were
never accounted for. The Dasher tragedy was not announced
in the press; there was no casualty list. The survivors and
their families were sworn to secrecy and the loss of the carrier
would not be acknowledged until after the war. News of this
disaster, and of others, such as “Tube Crush” of March 3rd
of the same year when 173 Londoners were trampled to death
during a stampede in the London underground during an air
raid, was thought to endanger morale and confidence and
was routinely suppressed by the Ministry of Information then
responsible for wartime censorship. Dasher’s loss was even-
tually announced in The Times of London in tiny print more
than 2 years after the fact.
The Welsh historian Colin Gibbon was first to suggest a
connection between the Dasher sinking and The Man Who
Never Was5: “Within days of the sinking of the aircraft carrier
Operation Mincemeat was set into action. Why so sudden, the
very weekend of the tragedy in the Clyde? Why did Montagu
and Cholmondeleyd arrive at the port of Greenock, from where
bodies from HMS Dasher were being brought ashore? They
already had the body of a tramp, in cold storage in London
since January.” Retired police detective Herbert Geoffrey
c
Member of Parliament for Cunninghame North 1987–2005, served as a
Minister of State in the UK from 1997 to 2003. Foreword to The Secrets of
HMS Dasher.
d e
Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley (pronounced “Chumley”) has
been credited with first coming up with the idea of a dead courier. He was
Montagu’s assistant.
MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009
Cameron who worked with Ewen Montagu in the London
courts of law became an expert in Operation Mincemeat. He
asks the following question5: “With all the naval establish-
ments on the south coast of England, including submarine
depots, why take a body stored in London 500 miles by road,
in wartime, to a submarine depot in Scotland?”
What is more likely is that Montagu and Cholmondeley
drove the truck with an empty heavy dry-ice container from
London to northern Scotland where they would meet the sub-
marine HMS Seraph and select one of the drowning victims
from the HMS Dasher accident to play the role of Major
Martin. Further thoughts to support this theory are offered
by John and Noreen Steele in their book The Secrets of HMS
Dasher.
Indeed, Lieutenant Commander Montagu met with the
commanding officer of HMS Seraph, Lieutenant Norman
Jewelle, on March 31, 4 days after the Dasher accident, in
London where Jewell received orders to sail from Seraph’s
usual base at Blyth to Holy Loch, a submarine base in north-
eastern Scotland on the Firth of Clyde (Fig. 3).
At this point the reader will probably share our doubts that
a destitute vagrant who died from rat poisoning was used for
Operation Mincemeat. It is much more likely that a young
healthy sailor, officer or enlisted, who drowned during the
HMS Dasher tragedy was picked for the job and that a body-
snatching operation (quoting Montagu) did actually occur.
The Arrival of Major Martin
The submarine Seraph arrived on the coast of Huelva on April 29
(Fig. 2). The body was floated in the early morning hours
of the following day ~1.5 km from the shore. It was buoyed
up by a life jacket with the briefcase attached to the body by
chain. The decomposition was more advanced than what had
been hoped for; a greenish mold covered the inferior half of
the face and the skin had started to separate from the nose and
the cheeks, according to Jewell.6
A 23-year-old fisherman, José Antonio Rey, found the body.
In an interview conducted in 1989 he remembers: “His head
was tilted above the water with one side of the face submerged
and the other appearing blackened, as if it had been scorched.”
The body was transported from the beach of Portil by donkey
to Punta Umbria, a suburb of Huelva7.
A Spanish Naval Reserve officer, designated the Navy
Examining Magistrate, was dispatched by boat to transport
the body to the morgue in Huelva. The death certificate was
filled out by the physicians Eduardo Fernández del Torno and
José Pablo Vázquez Pérez. The autopsy was conducted the
following day in the anatomy building of the municipal cem-
etery Nuestra Señora de la Soledad. The contents of Major
Martin’s briefcase were meanwhile scrutinized by the Spanish
Norman Lisbury Auchinleck Jewell, known as Bill, achieved the final
rank of captain and commanded the Third Submarine Squadron after the war.
He retired from the Royal Navy in 1963 and died at age 90 in 2004.
95
 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
FIGURE 2. HMS Seraph, commanded by Lieutenant Norman Jewell, sailed on April 19, 1943 with Major Martin in a dry-ice cylinder.
and Germans and returned by diplomatic channels to the
British with the letters seemingly unopened.
The Postmortem
Sir Bernard Spilsbury, forensic adviser to Montagu, had some-
what pompously stated that there were no pathologists of his
caliber in Spain and that the subtle differences of a death by
pneumonia vs. death by drowning would go unnoticed. Be that
as it may, would this also apply to death by rat poison? We think
not. Quite contrary to the wishful thinking in London, the post-
mortem was not conducted by an amateur. The Navy District
Command had no suitable personnel of their own to conduct a
postmortem and the civilian medical examiner of Huelva was
therefore asked to perform the autopsy on the Navy’s behalf.
Huelva had at the time ~55,000 inhabitants and was a busy port
city in southwestern Spain with a flourishing mining industry.
Dr. Eduardo Fernández del Torno, Huelva’s médico forense
titular, was called to perform the postmortem.7 He had been a
medical examiner for 22 years and must have seen a fair share
of interesting cases including those of asphyxia by drown-
ing, industrial accidents, and poisoning, when he encountered
his most famous corpse. Dr. Férnandez had graduated from
the University of Seville Faculty of Medicine in 1906. The
older practitioner had the assistance of his son, Dr. Eduardo
Férnandez Contioso, a recent graduate who was in town on
a visit from Madrid. Eduardo the younger was not your usual
country doctor but a research-minded physician who would
later publish a monograph on hypoproteinemias in liver cir-
rhosis in 1961.8 He should have noticed unusual features of
the liver during a postmortem. According to records exam-
ined by Jesus Copeiro in the municipal and consular archives
in Huelva,7 Fernández del Torno, the forensic examiner, con-
cluded that the young British officer had fallen into the sea
alive, did not have any contusions, that death was caused by
96
asphyxia due to drowning, and that his body had been at sea
for 8–10 daysf. The full official autopsy report unfortunately
does not exist anymore. It was forwarded by the Navy District
Command to a regional Navy Archive in Cadiz where it was
destroyed by fire in 1976. However, Copeiro was able to inter-
view the pathologist’s son (Eduardo Fernández Contiososo)
who remembers the curious fact that the body did not show the
typical bite marks on the soft uncovered parts (ear lobes, for
example) so often caused by marine animals in these latitudes.
He did not, however, recall any unusual liver findingsg.
What Does the Postmortem Tell Us?
A critical analysis of the postmortem casts serious doubts on
the notion that the body in Huelva was “Cold Storage Man”
f
Direct quotes from a 1943 text book of forensic medicine9. “The ques-
tion is often raised as to whether water can pass into the lungs and stomach
after death. …One strong inspiration will carry foreign particles right into the
alveoli, but if a body is left with similar particles after death no trace of such
matter is found even after six weeks’ immersion with frequent moving. …The
points of importance in making a diagnosis of drowning are therefore. …the
voluminous sodden condition of the lungs and the watery exudates on inci-
sion. …If the body is not shortly recovered from the water, lividity becomes
very marked in the head, neck and chest . . owing to the fact that the buttocks
float at a higher level than the head, as a result of which blood gravitates to
the latter. …When putrefaction is moderately advanced the diagnosis of death
by drowning is difficult. …The exposed parts are often attacked by fish, crabs,
eels, water rats, etc. …(Putrefaction) starts in the side of the neck and face,
and spreads to the front of the chest, and to the axillae. These parts become
green in colour before the abdomen is much affected. …If there is a watch in
the pocket of the victim it usually stops on immersion or shortly after. …”
g
From the 1943 text book of forensic medicine9: On phosphorous poisoning
in Post-Mortem Signs. The body usually shows signs of jaundice, and spots of
hemorrhage may be observed. On opening the body a garlic smell may be noted. …
The liver shows the most characteristic changes; it is usually enlarged, and of a
lemon yellow tint; it feels greasy and soft, and is easily ruptured. On microscopic
section, extensive fatty degeneration of the liver cells will be observed, the
accumulation of fat in the Kupffer cells being an early manifestation.”
MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009
 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
FIGURE 3. British Isles with London, Firth of Clyde, Holy Loch, and Blyth.
who died from phosphorus poisoning in London months earlier
(Fig. 4). First, it is very unlikely that Major Martin had liver
failure. Even without opening the body the external inspection
would have shown jaundiced eyes. Second, this was not a rou-
tine autopsy and Dr. Fernández must have been conscious that
a lot of parties would be scrutinizing his report. Moreover, a
third physician was involved, the one who came out to see the
body when it was first found and signed the death certificate
(Vázquez). The case was surely well discussed among these
three physicians. We have to assume that the postmortem
diagnosis of death by drowning was agreed upon after a very
thorough examination. Also, a yellow liver as seen following
phosphorus poisoning would definitely have been noted dur-
ing an autopsy. If present, this finding would likely have been
MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009
remembered by Eduardo Fernández Contioso, the patholo-
gist’s son, during the interview conducted by Copeiro, but
a yellow liver was not mentioned. It is true that recollection
many years after such an event can be treacherous, incom-
plete, and even false. However, Fernández Contioso was not
a passive bystander but a professional involved in the inves-
tigations and he recalled seemingly minor details such as the
absence of bite marks.
No signs of poor oral health, tattoos, or other indications of
a lower socioeconomic class were apparently noted during the
autopsy. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the corpse
was of middle class background with good oral health, no tat-
toos, and not a vagrant. Furthermore, given the experience
of the primary examiner and his awareness that this might
97
 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
FIGURE 4. A timeline of important dates.
be a case which could be reexamined by higher authority or
foreigners, it must be assumed that Dr. Fernández del Torno
believed his diagnosis of “death by drowning” to be correct.
In summary, it is hard to imagine that the body in Huelva was
“Cold Storage Man.”
The absence of bite marks by marine animals could be
explained by a shortened duration of exposure or drowning in
a colder climate with less marine lifeh or maybe the presence
of the life jacket which initially kept the head out of reach.
Postmortem conditions in a marine environment are complex
and generalizations are hard to makei.
Was There a Second Autopsy?
The British vice consul Francis K. Haselden in Huelva, who
had been briefed in advance about the general nature of
Mincemeat, had the grave covered by a heavy headstone as
soon as possible and a man was entrusted to keep a watch
over the grave the following days to thwart any attempts
by German agents to exhume the body for a second look.
Nevertheless, Federico, the son of the main German Abwehr
agent in Huelva, Adolf Clauss, remembers his father saying
that the body was lifted from the grave and taken by a sub-
marine to Germany for a second autopsy.7 Dr. Fernández del
Torno was a known long-time anglophile and has been con-
sidered by some a possible coconpirator11 and his autopsy
report may have been suspect. Even if it occurred, the sec-
ond autopsy did not change the German assessment and this
would support the theory that the body was indeed a victim
of drowning. Jesus Copeiro believes in a second autopsy
and is convinced that the tomb in Huelva is empty (personal
communication).
h
Such conditions would have existed off the coast of Scotland where the
HMS Dasher sank.
i
In experimental decomposition studies in the marine environment of
British Columbia, floating pig carcasses were less exposed to scavenging
marine fauna than those that sank to the ground.10 In other words, the absence
of bite marks in a clothed floating body was contrary to the local experience
in Huelva, where bite marks were typically seen in victims of drowning, but
would not be unexpected in a colder northern climate such as if the body had
come from the Clyde estuary off the coast of Scotland (“Dasher Man”).
98
Some Questions
What should have puzzled the Germans—but apparently did
not—is the curious fact that Major Martin apparently had
time enough when his plane went down to put on his life vest
but elected to do so over his trench coat. Given the water
temperatures on the Spanish coast, most people would prob-
ably have taken the coat off to be able to swim more easily.
Also Martin should have anticipated that his briefcase would
become waterlogged and further bog him down. There was
no chance that he would be able to deliver the documents
anyway. A better course of action would have been then to
rip the papers up and to ditch the satchel. That this did not
happen should have planted doubts into the minds of the
German analysts. However, we need to also be aware that the
Germans were more familiar with drowning in the colder parts
of the Atlantic where cold-water immersion quickly leads to
swim failure and loss of rational action. As Alan Stripp put
it, “the false idea … might never have taken root, if German
intelligence had not been, as we already knew, predisposed to
cherish it.2, j”
CONCLUSION
We hope to have shown that the postmortem findings and the
timeline of events support our theory that a victim of the HMS
Dasher accident was used for Operation Mincemeat and not
the hapless vagrant Glyndwr Michael who had been in cold
storage in London for months.
Mincemeat was a great success strengthening the German
pre-existing belief that the main Allied attack would be
aimed not at Sicily but at Sardinia and Greece and can be
credited with saving countless lives and bringing the war
in the European theater to an earlier conclusion. The mas-
termind of the operation, Ewen Montagu, of the Royal Navy
Volunteer Reserve, was rewarded with the Military Order
of the British Empire. It is certain that Ewen Montagu, later
j
Mincemeat was part of a more comprehensive deception operation called
Barclay, which used agents, bogus radio transmissions, and the like to con-
vince the Germans that a national British army of nine divisions was getting
ready for a major operation in the Aegean to involve Turkey in the war and
attack the Balkans via Greece.
MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009
 The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II’s Boldest Counterintelligence Operation
Judge Advocate General of the Navy, was very well aware
of the legal and ethical implications of his actions. Operation
Mincemeat was approved by Winston Churchill himself;
the specifics were left to Montagu. We do not know for
sure whether Montagu ever obtained permission to use the
body from competent authority but he certainly had the
implicit support of his superiors. Montagu was a deeply reli-
gious man and he did what we have to do when there are no
established customs or rules to go by: use our moral com-
pass. He also kept his promise to never let it be known whose
corpse it was: Ewen Montagu died in 1985 taking his secret
with him.
To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another’s pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! Why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
(Thomas Gray Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College)
MILITARY MEDICINE, Vol. 174, January 2009
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author thanks Kenneth K. Meyer, MD, Sayre, PA, and Guy Montag,
PhD, Straelen, Germany, and the reviewers for many helpful suggestions.
REFERENCES
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4. Fenton B: Tracking down a most unlikely hero. The Daily Telegraph,
October 28, 1996, p 28.
5. Steele J, Steele N: The Secrets of HMS Dasher. Ed 3. Glendaruel, Argyll,
United Kingdom 2002.
6. Operation MINCEMEAT: 106/5921 W, copies of documents made avail-
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