Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (45 page)

Despite the tight security surrounding the Sicilian campaign and the vast clouds of disinformation thrown up by Operation Barclay and the double agents, German and Italian intelligence could hardly fail to spot the signs of an imminent invasion: the hospital ships assembled at Gibraltar; the eight million leaflets dropped over Sicily warning that Hitler was a fickle ally and that “Germany will fight to the last Italian.” Even more significantly, the fortified island of Pantelleria, sixty miles southwest of Sicily, surrendered on June 11 after a three-week bombardment in which 6,400 bombs were dropped. The assault on Pantelleria, “Operation Corkscrew,” was the obvious prelude to a full-scale invasion of Sicily itself, since its capture would furnish the Allies with an air base within range of the larger island. In London, it was feared that the successful capture of the island “would give the game away altogether.”
⁴⁴
Double agent Gilbert told his controllers “not to be alarmed as the attack
⁴⁵
on Pantelleria was merely a feint” and the real attack would come elsewhere.

Even so, some on the German side correctly anticipated what was to come, and German messages deciphered at Bletchley Park suggested that the Germans were increasingly concerned about Sicily. Even Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, watching from Spain, began to wonder whether the plans detailed in the intercepted letters had changed. After the capture of Pantelleria, Kühlenthal “received increasing reports
⁴⁶
that Sicily would be the next invasion goal. Numerous reports to that effect were sent to Berlin, but Berlin discounted the validity of such information.” Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the canny German commander in the Mediterranean, had believed for six weeks before D-day that the most likely point of attack would be Sicily. Yet for the most part, the German high command appeared wedded to the belief that the main assaults would come in the eastern and western Mediterranean, while the assault on Sicily might still be a feint.

The false picture of Allied strength painted by Mincemeat and the other deception operations had left Germany attempting to mount defenses across an impossibly wide front. “Operation Cascade” had successfully convinced the Germans that the Allies had some forty divisions available to participate in the offensive (almost twice the real figure) and could therefore easily mount two or more attacks simultaneously. In truth, the Allies never had enough landing craft for more than one operation. In the same way, the Allies’ strategic thinking rejected the launching of an amphibious assault without adequate air cover: realistically, this ruled out Sardinia and Greece as objectives for major landings. The two targets identified by Mincemeat were simply not on the genuine Allied agenda. The Germans never realized this.

German intelligence was quite unable to tell the high command where or when the main attack would come. Confusion and hesitation reigned as the Germans struggled to see through the murk of deception and their own flawed and limited sources of intelligence. The list of possible landing sites included not only Sardinia and Greece but also Corsica, southern France, and even Spain, while Hitler’s fear for the Balkans colored his every strategic move. In Sardinia, which the Japanese chargé d’affaires in Rome reported “was still regarded as the favourite
⁴⁷
target,” troop strength was doubled to more than ten thousand men by the end of June and bolstered with additional fighter aircraft. At the critical moment in the Kursk tank battle on the eastern front in July, two more German armored divisions were placed on alert to go to the Balkans. German torpedo boats were ordered from Sicily to the Aegean; shore batteries were installed in Greece, and three new minefields were laid off its coasts. Between March and July 1943, the number of German divisions in the Balkans was increased from eight to eighteen, while the forces defending Greece increased from one division to eight. Despite Italian intelligence warnings that an attack on Sicily was coming, and urgent Italian calls for German reinforcements, “no measures were taken to reinforce the island.”
⁴⁸
As the official assessment of Operation Mincemeat later noted, “it was never possible for the Germans
⁴⁹
to cease reinforcements and fortifications of Sicily altogether, as we might have changed our plans and it was always too vulnerable a target.” Yet the Germans clearly continued to believe that Sicily, if it were attacked at all, would not face a full Allied onslaught. At the end of May, an Ultra intercept from Kesselring’s quartermaster revealed how woefully underprepared the German forces were: rations for just three months and less than nine thousand tons of fuel. Confidence that Mincemeat was doing its job rose higher still. “Compared with the forces employed
⁵⁰
in Tunisia, this was a tiny garrison,” one historian has written. Four days before the invasion, Kesselring reported that his troops in Sicily had “only half the supplies they needed.”
⁵¹
Eisenhower’s fears of meeting “well armed and fully organised
⁵²
German forces” on the shores of Sicily were unfounded. Germany simply did not know what was coming, or where, and by the time it became clear that Sicily was the real target after all, it was too late.

The Allies, by contrast, had a clear-cut idea of Sicily’s defenses and the Axis failure to reinforce them. The British and American invaders would face some three hundred thousand enemy troops defending six hundred miles of coastline. More than two thirds of the defenders were Italian, poorly equipped, and ill trained. Many were Sicilian conscripts, men with little stomach for this fight, old, unfit, unenthusiastic, and, in some cases, armed with ancient weapons dating back to the previous war. The Italian coastal defense troops, according to one Allied intelligence report, suffered from “an almost unbelievably
⁵³
low standard of morale, training and discipline.” The German forces, some forty thousand men in two divisions, were made of more resilient material. The newly rebuilt Hermann Göring Armored Division, three battalions of infantry, had seen hard fighting in Tunisia and was transferred to Sicily by Kesselring after the seizure of Pantelleria. The Fifteenth Panzer Grenadier Division was a battle-scarred, war-toughened unit with 160 tanks and 140 field artillery guns. The Italian defenders would probably put up little resistance, it was predicted, but the Germans would be “hot mustard,”
⁵⁴
as one officer put it. Montgomery predicted with cold realism: “It will be a hard and very bloody
⁵⁵
fight. We must expect heavy losses.” Bill Darby was also expecting the worst, and rather looking forward to it: “If casualties are high,
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it will not be a reflection of your leadership,” the Ranger commander told his officers. “May God be with you.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Nice Cup of Tea

T
HE WEATHER FORECAST
was grim and the weather deteriorating as the great invasion force set sail. In Malta, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, naval commander in the Mediterranean and the recipient of the second Mincemeat letter, received the news that the flotilla had set off with more resignation than hope. The admiral had recorded a message for the troops, to be broadcast on loudspeakers once the task force was under way: “We are about to embark
¹
on the most momentous enterprise of the war, striking for the first time at the enemy in his own land.” The upbeat tone contrasted with Cunningham’s gloomy feelings as the flotilla set off into “all the winds of heaven,”
²
with every possibility that the entire force might perish at sea. “The die was cast.
³
We were committed to the assault. There was nothing more we could do for the time being.” Over dinner in the Malta headquarters, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the signatory of two Mincemeat letters, was even more direct: “It doesn’t look too good.”
⁴

The weather steadily deteriorated, and the wind began to bellow, creeping up to gale force 7. The troop ships lurched and bucked through the “breakers and boiling surf,
⁵
whipped into needle spray.” Landing craft tore free of their davits and smashed into the decks. Cables snapped. The gale—some called it “Mussolini’s wind”—screamed louder. Some soldiers prayed or cursed, but most “lay in their hammocks, green and groaning,”
⁶
surrounded by the stench of vomit and fear.

While all around him retched, Major Derrick Leverton of the Twelfth Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery, jovial heir to a long line of British undertakers, played another hand of bridge with himself in the officers’ mess and happily munched the latest rations: “We are now getting Cadbury’s filled blocks,”
⁷
he told his mother. “I had a Peppermint Crème and a Caramello—very nice.” Derrick, known to all as Drick, was thoroughly enjoying “the show,” as he referred to the invasion. He would have been happier still had he known of the small but important part played by his brother Ivor in paving the way for the invasion by ferrying a dead body to Hackney Mortuary in the middle of the night. Like Ivor, Drick had an irrepressible talent for looking on the bright side of everything, the consequence of being brought up in a family dedicated to dealing with death. “It was a most excellent cruise,”
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he wrote, describing the hellish trip to Sicily. “Once we were clear of land, everyone was told the whole plan: date, time and everything. We had maps, plans, models, a copy of A Soldier’s Guide to Sicily and a copy of Monty’s message each.” Drick was particularly impressed by the naval officer who briefed the troops on the strategic importance of Sicily. “He was excellent.
⁹
He looked like a masculine edition of Noël Coward.” Major Leverton’s task would be to set up his field battery on the beach and shoot down any enemy planes attacking the invasion forces.

Leverton could not sleep. “I went up on deck
¹⁰
just before the sun set and could see the Sicilian mountains quite clearly in the distance.” The wind was now dropping. “The sea had been wickedly rough
¹¹
all afternoon, but it had now calmed down. I definitely believe it was a miracle.” The soldiers had already set to work with chalk on the landing craft, on which were scrawled a variety of joking messages: “Day Trips to the Continent”
¹²
and “See Naples and Die.”
¹³
Shortly before midnight, Leverton watched the heavy bombers passing overhead, followed by towed gliders packed with troops for the assault. “I was standing up on deck
¹⁴
by myself then. I had previously often wondered what my feelings would be when the party started. I was disappointed to find that I had absolutely none. Although I was perfectly conscious that quite a lot of people I knew were about to be killed and that I might be just about to kick the bucket myself, I wasn’t really interested. I didn’t feel excited or heroic or anything like that. I seemed to be watching a play.” Drick trotted below for a final hand of bridge (“rather a nice small slam”
¹⁵
) and another Cadbury Caramello.

At the same moment, just a few miles ahead in the darkness, Bill Jewell was setting the stage for the next act of the play. Submerged, the crew had heard the noise of the E-boat propellers fade as the torpedo attack vessel moved off. After twenty more minutes of listening, the
Seraph
cautiously resurfaced. The German boat was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she was lying in wait for an ambush. If so, the two vessels would have to fight it out. The deadline was now less than an hour away. “There could be no more diving
¹⁶
—this time the buoy had to be laid.” The wind had dropped, but the sea was still choppy, making Jewell’s task of dropping the homing buoy “three times as difficult as it should have been.”
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Just after midnight, the buoy was hauled back on deck for a second time and dropped at the precise spot indicated, one thousand yards offshore. Jewell now heard, for the first time, the low, thickening drone in the skies above, hitherto masked by the wind. “Unseen planes, hundreds of them,
¹⁸
were roaring through the dark skies overhead. The vanguard of the invasion! ‘Invasion!’ That electrifying word.” For the first time, Jewell wondered if victory might finally be in sight: “The invasion of Sicily would be
¹⁹
a long stride in the direction of Europe, and at least a short step on the road to Berlin,” he reflected. If it succeeded. The same thoughts were echoed among the assault troops. An American journalist sailing with the Fifth Division wrote: “Many of the men on this ship
²⁰
believe that the operation will determine whether this war will end in stalemate or whether it will be fought to a clear-cut decision.”