Monday, March 18

Tending the grave
"Lying for one's country
"Deceit is justified in wartime, rarely in peace

"The MBE awarded today to Isabel Naylor de Mendez indirectly, and rightly, pays tribute to one of the greatest wartime deceptions ever perpetrated by British intelligence. Mrs Naylor has for 40 years tended the grave of the Man who Never Was — an illiterate Welsh tramp, whose body was used after his suicide to plant false documents on a supposed British intelligence officer washed ashore in Spain. The aim was to convince the Germans that the allied attack planned on Sicily would actually be made through Sardinia and Greece. It succeeded brilliantly. After the war, the strategem, carelessly revealed by Churchill, captured the public imagination; the film was a box office hit. Only the tramp was forgotten — by all except Mrs Naylor." (TIMES ON LINE, London, March 19, 2002)

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