William Martin

So we haven't mentioned it until now, and in fact, the MI5 agents who dressed the body up as this fake pilot didn't even bother to learn this.

But the name of the man who died was Glyndwr Michael, and today there's actually a headstone for him on the shore near Huelva in Spain.

So that was the man who was given this pseudonym, the fictional Major Bill Martin.

And here in the US, not far from here in DC where we're recording at the Arlington National Cemetery, you can visit the grave of William Watkins and those brothers of his who all died in the war.

Axis troops were moved north.

The body was buried as Major William Martin, and as Peter Shepperson wrote about the first wave of landings on Gela Beach in Sicily, landed troops against virtually no opposition.

For decades, the true identity of the corpse remained a secret, but in 1996, it was identified as that of Glyndwr Michael, a 34-year-old homeless Welshman who died in London, leaving no next of kin.

And in 1998, the British Commonwealth War Graves Commission updated the inscription on his gravestone to, "Glyndwr Michael, served as Acting Major William Martin, Royal Marines." A war memorial in his hometown of Aberbargoed also honored him with the inscription, "Y dyn na fydd erioed." I hope that's the right pronunciation, meaning, "The man who never was." In the next episode of We Sons of World War II Veterans, we hear about Peter Shepperson's time in Malta and India, about his pet monkey, his time taking commandos down the coast of Burma, and his post-war life.

Meanwhile, to see pictures of Rick and Peter, please go to my website, www.matthewcollins.com.

Here you'll find info about all the episodes, and a link will take you to the Patreon website, where you'll find articles written by me and opportunities to support this podcast.

It's a fascinating but impenetrable mystery.

Well, they say here finally, "An historian pieced together the scant facts of the mission, codenamed Operation Mincemeat, identifying a Welshman, Glyndwr Michael, as the dead man taken from a London mortuary back in nineteen forty-three and used to dupe the German intelligence about the location of a planned Allied invasion of Southern Europe." However, as the UK Telegraph went on to say, "It was only when the media investigated further that it was discovered that, uh, Mr.

Michael had in fact surviving descendants who were still living in Wales." So this wasn't known.

Uh, after the discovery, his family longed for wider recognition, of course, of their relative and for his role in the war.

So there it is.

There's a little plaque now on this bench right near, right near the theater.

It simply says, "For Glyndwr Michael, who served as Major William Martin in Operation Mincemeat nineteen forty-three," which is, I think, timely recognition.

Uh, a bit of the backstory.

Operation Mincemeat landed a dead body on a Spanish beach as part of an audacious plan to fool the Germans into believing that the Allies who planned to invade Sicily were really planning to invade Greece and Sardinia.

So after British intelligence got a hold of his dead body, Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, became Captain Acting Major William Martin, an officer in the Royal Marines on a mission of some kind whose briefcase contained hints of the invasion deception.

The British went to great lengths to create a persona and a personal history for this fictitious Captain Martin.

As we all know, Operation Mincemeat worked to perfection.