Glyndwr Michael

The aim of Operation Mincemeat was to allow documents pertaining to Allied operations in the Mediterranean to fall into the hands of German Military Intelligence, to mislead them regarding the target of the intended invasion of southern Europe. In order to convince the Germans of the veracity of the documents, it was decided they would be on the body of a Marine officer, which would also carry documents and personal items attesting to his identity. Finding a usable cadaver had been difficult, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. A suitable body was identified, and considerable effort was made to create Martin's persona: identity card and discs, personal letters, a photograph of a fiancée, St. Christopher medal, some bills and theatre tickets.

On 30 April 1943, Lt Norman Jewell, captain of the submarine HMS Seraph, read the 39th Psalm, and "Martin"'s body was gently pushed into the sea where the tide, aided by the push of the submarine's propellers, would bring it ashore off Huelva on the Spanish Atlantic coast.

Attached to Martin's body was a briefcase containing secret documents that had been fabricated by the British Security Service. The purpose was to make German intelligence (which was known to have operatives in Huelva) think he had been a courier delivering documents to a British general. The documents were crafted to deceive the Germans into thinking that the British were preparing to invade Greece and Sardinia, rather than Sicily.

Martin's body was found by a fisherman and, as planned, the documents he was carrying found their way into the hands of German intelligence. The operation was judged a success, as the invasion of Sicily was accomplished more easily and quickly than its planners had expected.

Ewen Montagu, the officer in charge of Operation Mincemeat, was faced with the task of finding a body to give substance to the persona of William Martin. In this he was assisted by Bentley Purchase, coroner of St Pancras District. Several different accounts of this have been given. In Montagu's book, The Man Who Never Was, written in 1953, he states that in 1942 there was no shortage of bodies, but none they felt they could take. He states that the body of a young man who had died of pneumonia was found, and that permission to use the body was given. Pneumonia was important because it meant the presence of liquid in the lungs which, in the event of autopsy, would appear consistent with death by drowning. The body was released on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed.

However, historian Ben Macintyre states that the dead man's parents had died and no known relatives were found. Anna Pukas states that neither of Montagu's claims, that the man died from pneumonia and that the family had been contacted and permission obtained, were true.

Montagu stated that the body was released on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. However, in 1996, Roger Morgan, an amateur historian from London, uncovered evidence in the Public Record Office that the identity of the corpse was a Welshman named Glyndwr Michael.

Michael was born in Aberbargoed in Monmouthshire in South Wales. Before leaving the town, he held part-time jobs as a gardener and labourer. His father Thomas, a coal miner, died by suicide when Michael was 15, and his mother died when he was 31. Homeless, friendless, depressed, and with no money, Michael drifted to London where he lived on the streets.

Michael was found in an abandoned warehouse close to King's Cross, seriously ill from ingesting rat poison that contained phosphorus. Two days later, he died at age 36 in St Pancras Hospital. His death may have been suicide, although he might have simply been hungry, as the poison he ingested was a paste smeared on bread crusts to attract rats.

After being ingested, phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid in the stomach, generating phosphine, a highly toxic gas. …

The body was buried, with full military honours, as Major William Martin. His grave, No.1886, is in the San Marco section of the Nuestra Señora de la Soledad Cemetery, in Huelva, Spain. The headstone reads:

William Martin, born 29 March 1907, died 24 April 1943, beloved son of John Glyndwyr [sic] Martin and the late Antonia Martin of Cardiff, Wales, Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria Mori, R.I.P.

In 1998, after the British government identified the body as Glyndwr Michael, a new inscription was added to the gravestone:

Glyndwr Michael Served as Major William Martin, RM

A plaque commemorating Glyndwr Michael has been added to the war memorial in Aberbargoed. It is headed Y Dyn Na Fu Erioed ("The Man Who Never Was").

In November 2021 the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, UK Branch, working with the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women and the London Borough of Hackney, placed a memorial plaque at Hackney Mortuary, where Michael's body was kept prior to Operation Mincemeat, and where it was dressed in a Royal Marines uniform in preparation for Operation Mincemeat. The inscription reads:

The Hackney Mortuary played an important role in a British military operation during the Second World War (1939–1945), which helped save the lives of thousands of soldiers.

In April 1943 Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montague CBE KC RNVR, a British Jew, and Flight Lieutenant Charles C. Cholmondeley MBE RAF, a British aristocrat, planned Operation Mincemeat to misdirect German forces' attention away from the Allied invasion of Sicily. They brought the donated body of a man to the Hackney Mortuary where it stayed on ice for three months. Cholmondeley and Montague transformed the corpse into a fictitious officer Major William Martin. The body was taken to Scotland and then to a point off southern Spain, where it was placed in the water carrying false letters from senior Allied officers suggesting the Allies would invade Greece, not Sicily. …