Who2 Book review: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
By Ben Macintyre
401 pages / Harmony Books, 2010
I would like to present this book review of “Operation Mincemeat” in the form of the theme song to The Brady Bunch. There’s no connection between the show and the book, but it does help if you hum along.
Here’s the story
Of a crafty Major
With a plot to baffle Hitler‘s Southern force:
He’d tuck phony plans for Sicily’s invasion
Onto a rotting corpse.Here’s the story
Of a moldy body
With white phosphorous (rat poison) in its veins
He’d been a Welshman, named Glyndwr with no vowels,
But now was just remains.‘Till the one day when the Major met cadaver
And they knew that it was much more than a hunch
That this stiff must somehow trick the Nazis
That’s the way that they became the Mincemeat Bunch.The Mincemeat Bunch
The Mincemeat Bunch
That’s the wayyyyy
They becaaaame
The Mincemeat Bunch
(Note: Ewen Montagu, the Major, was actually a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy’s intelligence service. But “Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy” didn’t fit the Brady Bunch meter. Art requires compromises.)
Bottom line: highly recommended.