51 days ago
Aged 4, daughter Jaya is being told to celebrate VE day at school today. I tried to explain what VE Day meant but could not in full. Aged 23, eldest daughter Olaf says she has no interest in family history. So for both of them when they grow up , here is my family and WW2: Churchill’s bunker, Arctic convoys, a Spitfire pilot and a Normandy hero, two deaths, Operation Mincemeat (covered in more detail here), a leg lost in Egypt, evacuations and at one step removed, the Air Vice Marshall on D Day, the executed Nazi who was half Jewish and the fortunate Hungarian Jew. I hope that, one day, my kids if nobody else, will find this interesting.
314 days ago
In Operation Mincemeat, in 1943, British Military intelligence dressed up a dead tramp as a Marine officer, floated his body carrying details of a planned invasion of Greece onto the Spanish coast knowing that the bogus plans would find their way to the Germans. The Germans fell for it and diverted tanks, boats and men from Sicily, where the allies really were going to land, to Greece. It was a triumph. There are two books written about the operation and both mention the underpants placed on the body but only in Ben Macintyre’s 2010 account, on which the Colin Firth film is based, is there real detail. Unfortunately, Macintyre engages in dramatic conceit and gets it all wrong. I start, once again, with those 4 young girls photographed in the late 1880s.
338 days ago
A Greek holiday looms and that should allow me the mental space to write a bit more about the death of my Great Uncle David Cochrane but also a much longer piece about Operation Mincemeat, the underpants, my family’s involvement and how that also links to agent Cicero. Trust me, it is gripping stuff. Ahead of that, enjoy a newly framed piece of family history from 1862.
