A decorated Canadian airman

            During a time of war all participating countries rely of the commitment of regular citizens to put aside their regular jobs and take up arms. For a WWII pilot that meant at least two years of training and undertaking some of the most hair-raising missions in the history of flight. When Canada joined the war in September 1939, 24 year old Sydney Shulemson signed up for the Royal Canadian Air Force and by the end of the war he was his country’s most decorated airman.

            Sydney Simon Shulemson was born in 1915 in Montreal and always had dreams of flight. His grandfather was a kosher chicken seller and his parents owned a dry goods store. His dream job was as a flight engineer but the Great Depression in 1929 put a hold on his plans. Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939 and volunteers immediately began to sign up for the armed forces. Shulemson signed up that day to become a pilot in the air force. He graduated in 1942 and was sent to Scotland to fight the Nazis with the 404 Squadron.

            The 404 primary mission was coastal patrol and to sink enemy shipping off the coasts of Norway and the Netherlands. Equipped with Bristol Beaufighters as well as bomber and patrol aircraft they were ready for anything the Germans could bring into the chilly waters. The Beaufighter was a heavy two engine fighter that was heavily armed and could carry a torpedo. They would need the rugged plane to stop the flow of war materials coming from neutral Sweden.

            On his first mission Shulemson down a German flying boat. On the same mission they were alerted by the cruiser HMS Belfast that more planes were on the way. Sydney and his flight commander then proceeded to the location and shot down another flying boat. It was a good start to his flying career.

            Shulemson was not promoted probably because he was Jewish but he earned the respect of his peers and some of his superiors. The squadron was short of wing commanders and Shulemson was selected to lead a group of 14 Beaufighters on a mission of 80 aircraft against enemy shipping off the coast of Norway. He was the only one with experience and he led them on a difficult mission against better planes. Enemy ships had been sighted and on February 3, 1944 they went out to give them the works.

That morning they ran into several Me109 fighters. The Me109 was faster and lighter than the heavy Beaufighter and usually defeated the British plan in an aerial dogfight. Shulemson saw a Me109 chasing one his buddies and positioned himself behind the enemy. He shot cannon into the Me109 and gave it a one way ticket to the ground. Realizing that if the Beaufighter flew close to the ground the Messerschmitts could not position themselves for an attack. He thought that the Germans had turned for home but one determined Me109 began the chase again. Forced to perform dangerous maneuvers the Beaufighter escaped major damage. There was a blown tire but the plane and Sydney were safe. The fighter wing safely returned home and Shulemson received the Distinguished Service Order for downing an enemy fighter and for saving the life of a fellow airman. Their overall mission was a success as well and three merchant vessels were severely damaged or sunk (the records of the battle are vague).

Later that year he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for “consistently successful sorties against heavily defended convoys and units of the German navy off the Dutch and Norwegian coasts”. Two heavily defended German ships were sunk in the Bay of Biscay thanks to the actions of Shulemson and his flight.

After completing the required number of missions he stayed with the air force as an instructor. The all-wooden Mosquito fighter was being outfitted with rockets and Sydney was tasked with creating methods to use them against Axis shipping. Even though he was a Flight Lieutenant e rained an entire wing on these tactics that saw much success. These methods were used for many years until long range and smart weapons were invented.

            After the war Shulemson was recruited for the new Israeli Air Force that was being created out of desperation. Jewish pilots worldwide were being asked to assist their beleaguered brethren to fight off their Arab neighbors. The departing British Army left many planes and advisors for the Arabs and the Israelis were being outclasses. Sydney himself did not take part in the action but he helped recruit key pilots including the famed George “Buzz” Beurling. He also was able to acquire 200 Mosquito planes originally destined for China and divert them to Israel.

            Sydney was honored by the State of Israel for his efforts in their hour of need. He died in 2007 at the age of 91. Shulemson was the highest decorated Jewish Canadian of WWII. Even though he was never promoted due to anti-Semitism he will be remembered for the daring missions that most people would have balked at taking. His efforts on behalf of Israel were important for the existence of the state. 

The Jewish general who singlehandedly won a war

Heroes in the military are usually the ones fighting the enemy in close range combat. Very rarely do commanders meet the enemy face to face. During the Bangladeshi War of 1971 a commander went to the enemy and forced an entire army to surrender. This incredible feat is more impressive when you know that he had very few soldiers in his command and was bluffing. Lieutenant General Jack Jacob of the Indian Army was the man who singlehandedly defeated an entire army.

            Jacob Farj Rafael Jacob was born in 1923 in Calcutta which was then part of British India. His family was Baghdadi Sephardic Jews who had moved there in the 1700s. The family was described as deeply religious in an area with few Jws.. During WWII Jack heard of the plight of his brethren in Europe and decided to join the British Army to fight the Nazis.

            After graduating from officer school in 1942 he was given his first assignment. Ironically, it was with the Arab Legion in the British Army posted in Northern Iraq in case the Germans got that far. Soon it became apparent that the main battle was in Egypt and North Africa so Jacob was reassigned to an artillery unit to fight the Afrika Korps. However, they arrived after the battle and were sent to Burma to fight the invading imperialist Japanese Empire. He saw action here in some of the toughest terrain fighting of the war.

While in Burma (today the country is called Myanmar) he met the eccentric British General Orde Wingate. Wingate was not Jewish but morally was a Zionist and had trained Jewish settlers in Palestine in clandestine warfare. This was Jacob’s first time meeting a Zionist and it rubbed off on him. Later this had an effect on India’s positive reception towards Israel.

            After the war Jacob attended military schools in the U.S. and England and joined the Indian Army when they gained independence from Britain in 1947. He had risen through the ranks and in 1963 was promoted to brigadier general. Two year later he commanded a division during one of the many wars between India and Pakistan. In 1969 he was a major general and was appointed chief of staff of the Eastern Command. His job was put down insurgencies these areas and to keep tabs on neighboring Pakistan.

            In 1971 the eastern section of Pakistan had an uprising and wanted to start their country called Bangladesh. The Pakistani government was ruthless in their retaliation and killed upwards of half a million civilians. Millions more fled to India who then declared war on Pakistan. General Jacob was tasked with drafting a war plan and came up with the idea drawing the Pakistanis into swampy lands in Eastern Pakistan. After tiring out the enemy they then would capture the capital Dhaka. Jacob’s superior, Lieutenant General Sam Manekshaw, agreed to the plan except for the capture of Dhaka.

            Jacob realized that the capture of Dhaka was more strategic then the small towns fortified by the Pakistani Army. The Indian Army therefore bypassed many of these defenses and severed communications. Control of East Pakistan was coming under Indian Army control in two weeks of war but Dhaka still remained to be captured. A drawn out war could spell disaster for the small Indian Army so Jacob came up with a daring plan. He went to the heart of the enemy and gave them an ultimatum.

            Pakistani Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi invited Jacob to discuss a cease fire on December 16. Instead of a cease fire Jacob wrote a declaration of surrender for the Pakistani general to sign. Unarmed and accompanied by only one staff officer he flew to Dhaka. Jacob told Niazi that he had a half an hour to decide or the Indians would be coming to Dhaka to destroy the enemy. Indian planes would bomb the 26,000 or so Pakistani soldiers in Dhaka and an untold number of civilians would be in harm’s way.

While Niazi was contemplating the surrender Jacob went outside and said Shema Yisrael. The truth was that Jacob had but 3,000 men some 30 miles away and they were up against 93,000 Pakistani troops. He was hoping that Niazi focused on the previous two weeks of Indian victories and didn’t want to see any more bloodshed. The United Nations was also pushing for a cease fire and this would be the only chance that the Indians could capture Dhaka. Against all odds the bluff worked. All of the Pakistani soldiers in the area surrendered and Jacob became the hero of the war. It was the largest surrender of soldiers since WWII and when Niazi returned to Pakistan he was stripped of his rank. The war was over and Bangladesh became an independent nation.

After 38 years in the army Jacob retired in 1978 and went into business and became the governor of Goa. He cracked down on criminals and saved areas from destruction. When he left office someone put graffiti on the walls that said “Without Jacob who will feed the poor?” A truly beloved officer of the state he stayed in politics for over 30 years. In the 1990s Jacob was a big advocate for an advanced India-Israel relationship. He visited Israel many times and was a personal guest of former Prime Minister Rabin. Several of Jacob’s personal effects were donated to Israel and his uniform hangs in the Israeli military museum in Latrun.

Although there are some reports that Jack Jacob passed away last year many sources still maintain that he is alive at the age of 90 living in Delhi, India. He said about his time in the Indian Army, “Although I was one of only a few Jews in the army, I never came across any anti-Semitism, only enthusiasm and acceptance.” However, he won’t talk about his time in the British army. General Jack Jacob will be remembered as the man who convinced an entire army to surrender under incredible odds thereby saving countless lives. 

He sunk a cruiser with a torpedo bomber

            The Israeli Air Force today is a big and powerful organization that only the elite pilots can think of joining. That wasn’t always the case. During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 the Israelis practically begged veteran pilots from around the world to help their beleaguered brethren in their quest for a Jewish homeland. Most of the 101^st Squadron were Machal volunteers from many backgrounds. One of these pilots had an amazing story to tell even before he fought for Israel. Leon Frankel had sunk a Japanese cruiser during WWII and would have another hair raising experience flying for Israel.

            Born in St. Paul in 1923 Leon Frankel was just two years out of high school when he joined the navy in 1942. As with many youngsters in the 1940s he was fascinated by aviation and was elated when he was accepted into the naval aviation program. After graduating he was given a Grumman TBF “Avenger” torpedo bomber and assigned to the carrier USS Lexington.

            By February 1945 the U.S. was closing in on the Japanese home islands and B-29 Superfortresses were bombing Tokyo. Marines were about to land on Iwo Jima to provide a base for these attacks with the navy providing air support for the landings. Before the landings, aircraft carriers turned their attention to the Japanese capital with the Lexington’s planes making the navy’s first attack on Tokyo. Their mission was to destroy enemy planes and their support system. Frenkel took his plane to bomb an aircraft factory but the Japanese response was intense anti-aircraft fire. Enemy planes flew to meet the flyboys (an affectionate term for navy pilots) and two of Frankel’s buddies in his formation suffered severe damage and were “limping” back to the Lexington. Frenkel’s Avenger was able to provide adequate cover and everyone landed safely.

            Two months later, the Japanese were down to their last few capital ships and had even less fuel to keep them running. In keeping with the tradition of fighting to the death they sent the massive battleship Yamato, the cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers to destroy the American forces invading the island of Okinawa. It was called Operation Ten-Go but was doomed from the start. American submarines had been tracking the force and soon scout planes joined the party. 400 American planes were in the air headed towards the Japanese force and among them was Leon Frankel in his Avenger torpedo bomber. Anti-aircraft fire was pouring up from the destroyers but Frankel and his wing mates pressed on the attack. A torpedo from Avenger struck the Yahagi and soon the cruiser was gone. He was credited for sinking the ship and was awarded the Navy Cross for his efforts.

            The feat of being singled out as the pilot who sank a ship was sweet and was even more so considering it was one of the enemy’s biggest threats in the entire Pacific Ocean. Frankel went back to his home state of Minnesota after the war and was heralded as a war hero. He stayed in the naval reserve as a pilot while opening up a very lucrative car business in St. Paul. Then in 1947 a phone call came from a stranger that sent him back to war over 6,000 miles away.

            Despite the fact that he wasn’t a Zionist and impassioned pleas from his mother to stay home Frankel joined the Israeli Air Force. He didn’t want it on his mind that abandoned his brethren in a time of need when his skills could help turn the tide. Before going to Israel he first went to New York and found out that the organization that recruited him was being followed by the FBI. After lying about his purposes for going overseas he was given a passport and headed to Czechoslovakia for training in planes that had been kept secret from everyone. The plane was a Czech knockoff of the famed German Me-109 called Avia S-199. It wasn’t a great plane but it was all the Israelis had to fight the Arabs with who were flying the best British aircraft. Many of the pilots, Frankel included, weren’t trained as fighter pilots and had to learn the skills of aerial dog-fighting. Several of the early Israeli Air Forces losses were due to the inexperience of the fighter pilot. Frankel was determined not to be on that list.

Finally in May 1948 Frankel made it to Israel just in time for a truce. When he landed in a C-54 transport plane, a casket was waiting to be loaded onto the plane for transport back to the U.S. It was Colonel “Mickey” Marcus that Frankel helped with transferring who was the American commander of the ground forces and was killed by friendly fire right before the truce began.

            Frankel joined Israel’s first fighter unit the 101^st Fighter Squadron but for a while there was no action. Soon the truce fell apart and Frankel began flying photo reconnaissance missions and escorting bombers to their targets. Frankel describes a job on the three B-17 Fortress bombers in these terms, “They had a position on those bombers called the bomb chucker. They would tie a rope to him so he wouldn’t fall out of the plane. Someone would hand a 70-lb. bomb to the bomb chucker, and, at a signal from the pilot, he would chuck it out of the plane. I’m serious about that.” He also talked about his photo missions. “There was no escort. You’d just fly about eight or ten thousand feet and then turn on the camera. Then fly back and do it again. It was about the scariest thing I’ve ever done. You’re flying over Jordan or Egypt all by yourself.” The S-199 planes that they were flying were primitive examples of flying machines and didn’t even have a working gas gauge.

            On one mission in September he saw an Egyptian Spitfire and began to chase it and preformed a maneuver that was supposed to have the enemy lined up in his gun-sights. However, since he had very little training as a fighter pilot the enemy got away from Frankel. He returned to base to refuel and noticed that the plane was leaking oil. A mechanic cleared him for takeoff but soon he lost all oil pressure and had to return to base again. The plane began to fill with smoke as he tried in vain to reach the nearest air base. He crash landed in a wadi but wasn’t sure if he was in Israel or Jordan. Suffering from minor injuries and armed only with a pistol he began walking and soon spotted soldiers. They were Israeli and told him that he had just walked through a minefield and were surprised that he was still in one piece. They took him in their truck to an airbase in time to see another S-199 burning. That pilot did not make it out and after the funeral the next day Frankel became limp. He had seen enough war and after 25 missions was sent to the hospital and then back to the states.

            Frankel went back to St. Paul and continued with his car business and stayed in the naval reserve. While in Israel he befriended fellow pilot and future president, Ezer Weizman, and maintained a close relationship with his throughout his life. He looked back on his time with the Israeli Air Force with fond memories. “One day during the war I was in Tel Aviv, and planes were coming in from Europe, transport planes. I went over and the planes were full of refugees from the death camps. And you know what they did; they got down on their knees and kissed the ground. But at that moment, I knew why I had come to Israel. The Talmud teaches that if you save one life, it’s the same as if you had saved the entire world. That has always stood with me.”

Jews and the Rough Riders

           The Spanish American War was the shortest war the U.S. had partaken in as it lasted just the three months between April and August 1898. There were two theaters of war. One of them was in the Pacific where the U.S. fought the Spanish to gain land mainly for imperialistic reasons. The other took place in the Caribbean where the U.S. wanted to help Cuba declare independence from Spain and in doing so the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico.

The founder of the most famous unit in the war was a future president who was a big supporter of Jewish causes. During Teddy Roosevelt’s tenure as leader of the Rough Riders there were many Jews under his command. When a rabbi from Philadelphia who was serving in Cuba approached him and asked him for permission to conduct services, Teddy came along with his soldiers. When he ran for president in 1904 (William McKinley had died in 1901 and as vice president Teddy took over so this technically was his reelection bid) posters sprang up all over the Lower East Side encouraging to vote for him- a person who championed for Jewish rights and freedoms.

            The U.S. was not happy with Spanish dominance in the Caribbean because their economic status was being hurt by the ongoing conflict between Spain and Cuban nationals. The U.S. demanded that Spain leave Cuba and was further infuriated when the battleship USS Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor killing over 250 Americans including five Jewish sailors. Naturally, the U.S. blamed Spain and declared war on them in April 1898.

President McKinley asked for troops and hundreds of volunteers signed up to join the army. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who was assistant secretary of the navy at the time, asked the Department of War for permission to raise a Calvary unit. Teddy had no battle experience and therefore asked Colonel Leonard Wood, an army doctor who had won the Medal of Honor during the American-Indian War in the 1880s, to lead the regiment. It was called the 1^st Volunteer Calvary and soon was given the nickname the Rough Riders.

Since they were needed for war shortly after the creation of the unit, Roosevelt wanted men who were “in shape” and could easily prepare for battle. The regiment had about 1,250 men coming from two very different backgrounds. Many were from the west and were cowboys, Indians, cattle ranchers and other rough and tumble types. The rest were athletes from Eastern schools, mainly Ivy League colleges. Both types of men blended together nicely as a fighting unit as they were physically capable of handling the stress of the training.

On June 14, the men shipped out from Tampa and arrived on Cuban soil eight days later- minus a third of the regiment and practically all of their horses. This put the men at a major disadvantage because they weren’t used to marching and fighting as foot soldiers. Two days later on June 24, the Rough Riders saw their first action during the battle of Las Guasimas- a Spanish outpost. Weary from the trek to the outpost many men fell out of position and more couldn’t make it up the steep hill. They went into the hour and half battle with less than 500 men but were able to root out the enemy from entrenched positions. The Americans lost only 8 dead and 31 wounded. The first Rough Rider to die in battle was Trooper Jacob Wilbusky- a Jewish cowboy from Texas.

Before the Battle of San Juan Heights, Roosevelt was promoted to full colonel and made commander of the Rough Riders. The battle took place on July 1 on San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill but at the beginning they were only to be a diversion for the main assault. Roosevelt noticed that his men were exposed and taking advantage of loose orders and that he was the highest ranking officer in the vicinity, charged up the hill with his men following. The unit had three Gatling guns (an early version of the machine gun) in support that took care of 600 advancing Spanish soldiers. The heights had been taken but the Americans suffered many losses including fifteen Jewish Rough Riders who had been wounded or killed.

Once the heights had been taken the Spanish were forced to fall back on the city of Santiago and after a few minor battles, they surrendered to the Americans on August 12. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to get his Rough Riders out of the disease ridden country and back to the states and within a week they were sent to Long Island. Twenty men had died of from illness, most were from malaria, and many more were sick in the hospital recovering from it and other tropical diseases. The unit wasn’t needed anymore and the First Volunteer Calvary was disbanded after less than five months of service. They played a huge part of the United States gaining international prestige as they defeated a world power. 

Mickey Marcus- Israel's first commander

            Future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had a difficult situation on his hands in 1947. The British were about to leave the Middle East (except in Trans-Jordan where they organized the Arabs to fight the Jews) and since the United Nations were soon to give Israel statehood, he needed an army. The Hagana, under Israel Galali, was an underground unit of about 30,000 soldiers and the Palmach, a highly trained and Israel’s only full time unit under the command of Yigal Allon, had about 2,500 commandos. Ben-Gurion needed an experienced officer to lead the soldiers in the upcoming War of Independence and so he sent Shlomo Shamir to New York to search for that man. He consulted with a highly recommended Jewish colonel, Mickey Marcus, and before long they both realized that Marcus was the man.

            Davis Daniel “Mickey” Marcus was born on Hester Street in the Lower East Side to Jewish parents who were immigrants from Romania. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 1920 and graduated four years later. He studied law at night and in 1927 he became a law clerk in New York and resigned from the infantry to work as an assistant US attorney. He worked closely with Thomas Dewey (who would lose the 1948 presidential election to Harry Truman) and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed him as commissioner of corrections.

            Even though he was in the state government he still kept a reserve commission in the army. In 1939, his New York National Guard unit, the 27^th Infantry Division, was sent to prepare for World War II and now Lieutenant Colonel Marcus was the unit’s judge advocate. The division was then sent to Hawaii to await deployment to the Pacific after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. While there, Marcus was tasked with organizing and commanding a Ranger school (another branch in the US Special Forces) but because of his legal position in the army was turned down to lead them in combat. In 1943, he was sent to serve a tour in the Pentagon under Major General Hilldring of the Civil Affairs Department (CAD). He drafted many legal documents, even the terms of the Italian surrender. He also was the CAD legal advisor and was the military government advisor at the most important conferences of the war (the talks between the US, Britain, Russia and other allies on how to fight the war and what should be done after the war ended).

            With his magic tongue, Marcus convinced Hilldring to send him on temporary duty as a liaison to provide legal council for the military government of France. Hilldring became suspicious in June 1944, because he hadn’t heard from Marcus in a couple of weeks, and after a few inquiries he was told that he ‘was somewhere in France’(he wasn’t permitted to go the front lines because of the fear that he may give away secrets if he was captured). He had jumped with the 101^st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, in the predawn hours of June 6, D-Day, and was one of only two men to jump that night without ever having jumped before. When the commanding general of the 101^st asked him what he was doing there, Marcus replied, “Oh, just looking around”. He had distinguished himself in firefights with Germans and had rescued American paratroopers that had been captured. Hilldring ordered him back to the States and thus ended his only front line duty of the war.

            After the war, Marcus was sent to join the occupation force in Germany and was assigned to the general staff. His boss, General Lucius Clay, wanted his staff to see the German atrocities and ordered his men to travel to the Dachau Concentration Camp. Marcus always knew that he was Jewish but this trip opened up a new chapter for him and he became a Zionist. In 1946, he was posted back to Washington where he became head of the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division. It was his job to select the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the upcoming trials of Nazi and Japanese war criminals. One of these trials was the Nuremberg trials, which he attended. He wanted everything documented so that future generations would be able to see the atrocities and destruction that these animals had done.

            In December 1947, he was approached by Major Shamir and the only obstacle that he needed to overcome was the opposition from his wife. He convinced by telling her that he was like the foreign generals helping the Americans during the American Revolution. He traveled to Israel under the name of Michael Stone.

            On his arrival, Marcus met with Ben-Gurion and visited the existing Hagana bases while suggesting improvements for each one. He discovered that the problem with the Hagana was that it was an effective underground force but it couldn’t translate those skills into a conventional army. Marcus tried his best to change that and employed his knowledge and skills leant while teaching the Rangers in Hawaii to the fledgling Israeli Army.

            Two hours after the announcement of the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the Arabs attacked and with Marcus leading them the Israelis were ready. The soldiers attacked at night, when the Arabs were least expecting them but through all of this fighting the Arabs still held the road between Tel Aviv and Yerushalyim. In between the two cities was Latrun- a fortified police station that the Israelis had failed once to capture. Following Marcus’s suggestion that all the Israeli forces be untied under one command, Ben-Gurion appointed Marcus as the country’s first aluf (general). Five days later, Marcus was prepared and ready for another attack on Latrun. However, this attack failed and Marcus needed to find another way to get to Yerushalyim.

            During the China-India-Burma theater of operations in World War II, the Americans had built a road to get supplies to the Chinese who were in desperate need of provisions while fighting the Japanese Army. It was an enormous engineering feat but it was done and it helped push back the Japanese. It was called the Burma Road and Marcus wanted to use the same idea to get to Yerushalyim. The idea, it was also called the Burma Road, worked and the siege around the city was broken hours before a cease-fire was called on June 11.

            However, Mickey Marcus did not survive to see the cease-fire. He had left his quarters in the middle of the night to get a bit of fresh air and was returning at 4 AM when the sentry called out for the password. However, since Marcus, who was wearing a uniform without showing his rank, didn’t know much Hebrew, he responded in English. The sentry, a 19-year-old recruit who didn’t speak any English, shot and killed Marcus. He was last Israeli casualty before the cease-fire.

            Marcus’s body was flown back to New York, where he was buried in the West Point Cemetery. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said of him,” He was the best man we had”. It was a fitting remark for a man whose gravestone reads “Colonel David Marcus-A Soldier for All Humanity”.

The officer behind one of the greatest deceptions in history

         The story during World War II of a corpse fooling Hitler and the German High Command into thinking that an Allied landing was to take place on one beach when in actuality the landings were hundreds of miles away, is one of the most fascinating tales of the war. It’s also one of the most mistold stories of an undercover operation in history. What’s even more unbelievable was that it was the brainchild of a semi-religious Jew from the office of the British Admiralty. This is the true story of Ewen Montagu and Operation Mincemeat.

            Ewen Montagu was born in 1901 to a prominent Jewish family and was a machine gun instructor during World War I. He was educated at prestigious universities such as Cambridge and Harvard and was called to the bar in 1924. During World War II when London was bombarded with bombs coming from German planes, he had the rank of lieutenant commander in the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty.

One of the tasks given to the division was to think long term on how to protect Allied invasions. The idea to place corpses carrying falsified information wasn’t new. In August 1942, during the North African Campaign a corpse was found by the German 90^th Division showing British minefields. The mines weren’t there but the Germans went around the area and got bogged down in soft sand. In September that year, an American courier’s body washed up on the Spanish coast. He was carrying a letter that contained the names of spies as well as the dates for the American landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) but the Germans thought it was a plant and ignored it, even though this time it was real. When Montagu’s office was given the task of protecting the secret information they came up with a brilliant plan that was almost foolproof. They would also use a corpse but prepare it in a way that that it would reach the German High Command and Hitler himself.

Montagu worked closely with Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley who was the one who came up with the idea of dropping a corpse out of an airplane. There were problems with that plan so Montagu thought of the idea to launch the body out of a submarine. The corpse would have an attaché case containing highly sensitive documents outlining future operations. It would be launched off the coast of Spain near a town where the British Intelligence knew of a certain Abwehr (the German intelligence service) agent was operating.

Montagu put himself in the minds of the German counterintelligence agents and thought about what they would consider genuine and what was a plant. Therefore, in preparing the body and documents, Montagu paid attention to every detail. The body itself couldn’t be just any corpse. They searched and finally found a 34 year old man who had died of pneumonia (documents released recently reveal that he may have died of rat poison). A renowned pathologist was consulted and he said that it would appear to the Germans like the body had drowned or died of hypothermia and had washed up on the shore. The corpse was obtained from a coroner with the instructions from the family that his real name never be revealed. We now know that his name was Glyndwr Michael but he would have to be given a new identity. The division decided to make a Royal Marines so that way there would be reason for him to carry sensitive documents. However, the Royal Marines were a tight knit group and since most officers knew of one another, Montagu picked a surname that was common among the service. Thus the legacy of Major William Martin was born.

Now the team needed to outfit Major Martin. First they needed him to look like a young marine officer but important enough to be carrying vital information. He was dressed in battle uniform and not dress clothes like members of other service branches would be on this type of mission. Some of the personal effects included a snapshot of “his girlfriend” Pam (who in actuality was a clerk in the office), two love letters and ticket stubs to a London theater.

All of this stuff was easy to obtain, but his ID card was another story. Normally, navy or army personnel wouldn’t carry ID but Royal Marines did. Montagu decided to take a risk and give him a replacement card. This would show him as a bit careless and could make the Germans wonder why such a man would be given a sensitive document. However, if the Germans bought into it, then it would put a touch of reality to the situation and it would make him more believable. Then when putting together the ID card they realized they didn’t have a picture. They didn’t want to use a real picture of Michael because it would be shameful to his family. Instead, Montagu had a stroke of luck when he found someone who could have been the dead man’s twin. After putting the ID together, Montagu wanted to make it look used, so he rubbed it against his pants until it looked used.

The entire operation was put into motion to try to deceive the German into thinking that the Allied invasion was going to be at Corsica and Sardinia with another attack on Greece. The actual invasion site was the island of Sicily and the entire British team knew that just by looking on a map that it would be obvious to the Germans that it would be the site of the next invasion. Therefore, Montagu felt there was no harm to write in the deception letters that Sicily wasn’t the target. Some cautious officers in the British General Staff felt that it would tip the Allied hand even more and so the matter was brought before Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He was told that if the operation went wrong then the Germans could pinpoint Sicily to which he replied, “I don’t see that that matters. Anybody but a damn’ fool would know it is Sicily.” There was also the risk that a Spaniard would find the body and return it directly to the British instead of the Germans. Churchill was not worried about that either, “I don’t see that that matters either. We can always try again!” With the prime minister’s approval, as well as the go-ahead from American General Dwight Eisenhower who would be in charge of the invasion, the mission was put into action.

Montagu and his team prepared Major Martin for his journey and delivered the canister containing the major to the submarine HMS Seraph. The entire operation was so secret that most of the men onboard the sub were told that it was a meteorological device. The Seraph, commanded by Lieutenant Bill Jewell, left Scotland on April 19, 1943 and arrived off the coast of Huelva, Spain on April 30. With the enlisted men below deck, the officers, who knew about Major Martin, went about preparing him for launch. They fitted him with his clothing, inflated his Mae West (life preserver) and said a prayer. Gently they pushed him into the sea about a mile off the coast. The canister was sunk by machine gun fire and Jewell signaled “Mincemeat Completed”. The British had done their part and now it was in the hands of the Germans to see if the ploy had worked.

The deception plan went down like clockwork. José Antonio Rey Maria, a Spanish fisherman, found the body and soon it was reported to the local German Abwehr agent, Adolf Clauss. On May 3, the British Naval Attaché in Madrid signaled Montagu’s office that they had been informed by the Vice-Consul in Huelva that a body of a Major Martin had been found by a fisherman. The body was returned to the Vice-Consul for proper burial. Major Martin received a full military funeral in Huelva.

However, in the signal there was no mention of the briefcase which carried the deception papers. After a few inquiries that were made to sound genuine, Montagu found out that that the briefcase had been handed over to the Spanish Military and was now on its way to England intact. When it arrived and was examined it was determined that the two most important letters had been opened but were carefully replaced and resealed. After the war, it was learned that the letters had been copied and translated and made their way to the German High Command.

The question still remained; did the letters of deception do their job in fooling the Germans of the actual invasion site or did all of the effort go to waste? During the war, Montagu only found out a few facts. Operation Husky, the codename for the Sicily landings, had taken place on July 9, 1943 and it quickly discovered that the Germans had been expecting a landing on the northern coast and not on the southern beaches where they actually took place. Even if the Allies were to have landed on Sardinia and Greece they still would have needed to invade Sicily, but would have done so from the northern coasts. This clearly took the Germans by surprise, but the full effect of Mincemeat was not learned until after the war by examining captured German documents. Hitler had swallowed Mincemeat whole. He sent one of his best general, Erwin Rommel to spruce up the defenses in Greece (it’s a hot debate topic as to who was Hitler’s best and favorite general. Rommel clearly wasn’t the favorite as Hitler made him commit suicide). He also sent a squadron of R-boats, fast motor torpedo launches capable of hampering an invasion, and minelayers to the Greek coast. Panzer divisions were moved to Greece, away from the Russian front, which Stalin never fully appreciated, and far away from any fighting at the crucial moment.

Hitler and the German intelligence units were surprised when the landings took place on the southern coast of Sicily. They were so taken aback that they were so wary of another plant by the Allies that when the Allies did slip up and valuable documents reached the Germans, they weren’t believed. Mincemeat was more successful than anyone would have imagined when it was first suggested.

After the war, Ewen Montagu was the Judge Advocate of the Fleet for almost 30 years. He was also the president of the United Synagogue for several years. He wrote down this story in a book entitled “The Man Who Never Was” which was later made into a movie. An interesting side note to this story is Ewen’s brother, Ivor, who was a filmmaker and after the war was accused of spying for the Russians. 

Australian version of George Washington

            Usually a commander on the battlefield has been with troops through training, getting ready for battle and the actual fight itself. Sometimes a change is needed while the soldiers are in the trenches. The most famous cases of this is General Ulysses S. Grant taking control of the Union Army during the Civil War after five previous generals had failed to take the chances to win the war, and Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery taking control of the British 8th Army in North Africa to defeat Rommel’s Afrika Korps in WW2. In both cases, moral was sagging and the person who took over was well experienced and beloved (Montgomery was loved by the British and loathed by the Americans) and therefore were able to get the best out of their armies and win the battle. A third example of this is Australian General John Monash during the First World War.

            John Monash didn’t come from your typical military family. His parents were Jewish immigrants coming from Poland. They spoke German (probably Yiddish) and that gave rise to critics of Monash that he was a German spy. The irony was that his parent’s old home in Poland was near where German General Erich Ludendorff was born. As fate would have it, Monash and Ludendorff would soon be commanding armies on opposite sides during the Battle of Amiens.

            Monash was born in 1865 in Melbourne and he attended the University of Melbourne with graduate degrees in civil engineering, law and in 1921 a doctorate in Engineering. While in college, he joined the militia and slowly rose in rank and he became a full colonel in 1913 commanding the 13th Infantry Brigade. The military was only a side job that he took on. He was mainly a civil engineer and was a partner in a contracting business that was dissolved in 1905. For a few years, he deeply in debt but soon formed his own company and by 1912 he was a very rich and networked executive.

            World War I broke out in 1914 and because England was involved, Australia, a British colony, joined the war. Monash, who joined the army as a regular officer, was given command of the 4th Infantry Brigade, which was stationed in Egypt fighting the Ottoman Imperial Army. During the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 his brigade, fighting with New Zealanders, entrenched themselves in a valley that became known as Monash Valley. Even though they were decisively defeated, Monash made a name for himself as a great strategist, decision maker, organizational leader and a beloved commander.

            Later that year he was promoted to brigadier general. Even though the army had to evacuate the area, under Monash they were able to do so with only minor loss to men and the vital equipment that was need to mount another offensive quickly. They also retreated without alerting the enemy, so when a few hours later the Turks opened up a furious bombardment they attacked empty trenches.

            He was soon recalled to England to take command of the newly formed 3rd Australian Division. He trained it from the start and led them through many battles in France. Even though the division suffered heavy casualties his enthusiasm did not go unnoticed by the high command and he was promoted to lieutenant general (three stars). He was given command of the Australian Corps heading in to the pivotal and final year of the war.

            Under Monash, the Australians recaptured the town of Villers-Bretonneux in a battle that he called the turning the point of the war. The Battle of Hamel took place on July 4, 1918, with the Australian Corps coming under the overall command of the British 4th Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson. The army won the battle and because of the brilliance displayed by Monash he was praised by Rawlinson and sometimes was given command of servicemen from other countries. During the subsequent battles he led divisions coming from Canada, England, the U.S. as well as Australians.

            On August 8, 1918 the Battle of Amiens took place. It was one of the first major battles in history to see tanks used on a large scale. The Allied advance was led by the Australians under Monash and his brilliant strategy for attack. The key to the attack was armor and surprise and that is what led the Allies to victory and the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive that led to the end of the war. The German General Erich Ludendorff called it “the black day of the German Army.”

            Four days later, King George V knighted Monash on the battlefield, the first time a commander had been bestowed such an honor in over two centuries. He commanded over 200,000 troops past the Hindenburg Line and into Germany and on October 5 the Germans asked for an armistice.

            Monash returned to Australia a national hero. He took on several prominent civilian positions including the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand. He died in 1931 and there were about 250,000 people who attended his funeral. He was honored by having a suburb in Australia named Monash and being depicted on the $100 bill. Kfar Monash in Israel is also named after the great hero who is often called the Australian George Washington.