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I feel like I spent so much time cackling to people in person after I read Operation Mincemeat that I completely forgot I hadn't actually written it up on here, like, no, self, describing the contents of the book to at least ten separate people is not in fact the same AT ALL as putting it on the internet. For those who are reading this entry rather than having to put up with me giggling at them in person, rest assured, you are getting a much better bargain.
Anyway: Operation Mincemeat! The amazing true story of one REALLY DETAILED hoax perpetrated by the British upon the Germans. The initial idea seems to have gone basically like this:
Step 1: Obtain corpse
Step 2: Cover corpse with fake British war plans for the Germans to find and be confused by
Step 3: FALL OVER LAUGHING AND ALSO PROFIT
Then more and more in-between steps began to proliferate, such as
Step 7: Figure out how long it is safe to keep corpse on ice before corpse is too gross to use in cunning ruse
Step 13: Obtain real, used, appropriately classy British underwear to dress corpse in, lest Germans be made suspicious by unconvincing undergarments
Step 18: Go on fake dates with corpse's fake girlfriend to obtain real ticket stubs to put in corpse's pocket, for verisimilitude
Step 21: Write forged letter from real admiral
Step 21.5: Fight with superior officers on how many jokes it is allowable to include in a forged letter from a real admiral
...and on and on. All this before the corpse and its TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE even land on the Spanish coast, at which point the British have to play this hilarious game of trying really hard to make it look to the Spanish authorities like they DESPERATELY want the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE returned before the Germans see it while at the same time making absolutely sure that the Spanish authorities absolutely do not return the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE before the Germans see it, leading to a lot of "Shit! SHIT. THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES ARE BEING TOO HELPFUL AND ACCOMMODATING. WHAT DO WE DO NOW."
(Spanish official: Hey, British official, we found a corpse with a top secret briefcase! Why don't you just take it back now and save us all time?
British official: Um ... I have ... a deathly allergy ... to briefcases SORRY GOTTA GO)
It seems inevitable that I'm going to keep reading Ben Macintyre books until run out, or until I get tired of laughing about OH, THAT WACKY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE. Which ... may be never? It may very well be never.
(My other favorite anecdote from the book, only tangentially related to Operation Mincemeat: that time the Allies had to rescue a famous French general who hated the British so much that he refused to be rescued by anyone except the Americans. Unfortunately all American submarines were busy at that point or something, so the British sent a sub with STRICT ORDERS to run around faking American accents, waving American flags and shouting "America, heck yeah!" until the end of the mission. They acquired the general, but whether he actually fell for this clever ruse is not on the historical record.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/381760.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
Anyway: Operation Mincemeat! The amazing true story of one REALLY DETAILED hoax perpetrated by the British upon the Germans. The initial idea seems to have gone basically like this:
Step 1: Obtain corpse
Step 2: Cover corpse with fake British war plans for the Germans to find and be confused by
Step 3: FALL OVER LAUGHING AND ALSO PROFIT
Then more and more in-between steps began to proliferate, such as
Step 7: Figure out how long it is safe to keep corpse on ice before corpse is too gross to use in cunning ruse
Step 13: Obtain real, used, appropriately classy British underwear to dress corpse in, lest Germans be made suspicious by unconvincing undergarments
Step 18: Go on fake dates with corpse's fake girlfriend to obtain real ticket stubs to put in corpse's pocket, for verisimilitude
Step 21: Write forged letter from real admiral
Step 21.5: Fight with superior officers on how many jokes it is allowable to include in a forged letter from a real admiral
...and on and on. All this before the corpse and its TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE even land on the Spanish coast, at which point the British have to play this hilarious game of trying really hard to make it look to the Spanish authorities like they DESPERATELY want the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE returned before the Germans see it while at the same time making absolutely sure that the Spanish authorities absolutely do not return the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE before the Germans see it, leading to a lot of "Shit! SHIT. THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES ARE BEING TOO HELPFUL AND ACCOMMODATING. WHAT DO WE DO NOW."
(Spanish official: Hey, British official, we found a corpse with a top secret briefcase! Why don't you just take it back now and save us all time?
British official: Um ... I have ... a deathly allergy ... to briefcases SORRY GOTTA GO)
It seems inevitable that I'm going to keep reading Ben Macintyre books until run out, or until I get tired of laughing about OH, THAT WACKY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE. Which ... may be never? It may very well be never.
(My other favorite anecdote from the book, only tangentially related to Operation Mincemeat: that time the Allies had to rescue a famous French general who hated the British so much that he refused to be rescued by anyone except the Americans. Unfortunately all American submarines were busy at that point or something, so the British sent a sub with STRICT ORDERS to run around faking American accents, waving American flags and shouting "America, heck yeah!" until the end of the mission. They acquired the general, but whether he actually fell for this clever ruse is not on the historical record.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/381760.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.