FLY FISHING

 

I would like to visit the fishing village of Palos de la Frontera, along the south facing Atlantic coast of Andalusia. This sun drenched region has been a crossroads of cultures since the Phoenicians. Over those thousands of years a lot of dead men have washed ashore - including one British Major William Martin.

The Romans mined copper here, and stained the Tinto River red with their industrial waste. 

In 1492 the unwilling citizens were pressed into service as crews for Christopher Columbus' ships. 

The beaches here even captured some of the flotsam of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, 1805. 

And at about 9:30 in the morning of 30 April, 1943, off Shady Point (Punta Umbria) (above), Frontera fisherman José Antonio Rey Maria pulled a body out of the sea, and secured a minor role in an adventure worthy of a James Bond thriller.

Ian Flemming (above), the man who invented James Bond, helped invent this adventure, too. Shortly after World War Two began in September of 1939, he and a friend named John Godfrey applied to join the Twenty Committee, so named because it's title in Roman numerals would be “XX”, which would also be its mission - double cross, as in fool your enemy into making a mistake. 

Their job application became known as the Trout Memo, because in it John Godfrey (above) compared espionage to fly fishing. It listed 54 possible ways to tempt the Nazi's to swallow false ideas. Number 28 was to drop a dead body carrying false papers from an airplane over Germany.  But that idea was rejected because the Germans would be suspicious of top secret papers carried over Germany, itself.

That objection became moot by the fall of 1941, after Nazi Germany had conquered all of Northern Europe, and, along with their Axis ally Italy, controlled most of the Mediterranean as well. The only land left unoccupied along that central sea was Spain, ruled by the German ally, fascist dictator Franco, Portugal, which was very neutral,  the outpost of Gibraltar,  the tiny island of Malta, and Egypt – the latter three tenuously occupied by British forces. 

And then the tide turned. By the winter of 1942 British and American forces had cleared Axis troops from all of North Africa. Their problem now was bluntly explained by Prime Minster Winston Churchill; “Anyone but a bloody fool would know” he said, that the western allies' next target must be Sicily.  How to fool Germany into thinking Sicily would not be next?

The object in fly fishing is not to get the trout to swallow the hook, but to follow its natural inclination and swallow the fly, which hides the hook. In this case the Twenty Committee considered what the world must have looked like to their fish - Adolf Hitler. 

He was obsessed with the east. The vast majority of his army was locked in battle with Russia, and the oil which powered his armies came mostly from eight refineries around the Romanian town of Ploisti (above).  An allied invasion of Greece made little sense to the western allies, but it would threaten both Hitler's oil supplies and outflank his armies in Russia. So the hook would be an Allied invasion of Greece. But where to cast the fly?  And what kind of fly to use?

Those questions fell to Twenty Committee member Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu (above), who chose Ian Flemming's invention number 28.  Montegu realized that an officer's  body found floating in the Mediterranean and carrying secret plans for an invasion of Greece would arouse suspicion.  

But Allied aircraft were required to fly around the Iberian peninsula to reach Gibraltar. 

And eighty miles to the north of that British outpost was the Spanish regional capital of Huelva (above), where a German agent, Adolf Clauss, had shown himself to be particularly ambitious and generous in bribing Spanish officials.  A fly disguising a hook dropped in front of Clauss would surely elicit a response. What Montagu  needed first, was the fly -  a dead body.

Having consulted pathologists, Montegu knew he was looking for a man in his mid thirties who had died of pneumonia. The body they drafted was that of a 34 year old Welshman, and only child, named Glyndwr Michael (above).  His father had died twenty years earlier, and his mother was three years passed. With no family, Glyndwr had become lost, alcoholic, and drifted into homelessness. 

He was found barely alive in an abandoned warehouse near the King's Cross station (above) on 26 January, 1943. He was rushed to the hospital suffering from walking pneumonia and “acute chemical poisoning”....

...probably from swallowing a large dose of “Battle's Vermin Killer” (above),  a commercially available rat poison. The poison attacked his central nervous system, eventually produced a coma, and then kidney failure. He died on 28 January. As he had no family, his body was drafted by Lt. Montegu, and kept chilled in the hospital morgue, until the fly could be prepared.

Glyndwr's corpse was to impersonate Captain (acting Major) William “Bill” Martin (above) - and he was a pure invention. 

The name was chosen because there were several Major Martin's in the Royal Marines whom Montagu's team (above) could use as camouflage. 

Martin was to be carrying a personal letter from Lt. General Sir Archibald Nye (above) of the Imperial General Staff, to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander 8^th Army Group, Alexandria, Egypt. Among a handful of other catty issues, the letter discussed landings to be made on two Greek beaches, under the code name Operation Husky.  It also mentioned a diversionary attack, “Operation Brimstone”, to be made against the island of Sardinia. 

The letter supposedly from General Nye began,  “We stand a very good chance of making the Boche think we are going for Sicily.” In fact, Husky was the actual code name for the invasion of Sicily, and it was used here in case the Germans intercepted communications using it. General Nye even rewrote this letter in his own hand, should anyone in German intelligence compare the penmanship.

But did the fly look convincing? Montegu invented a girlfriend for Major Martin, complete with photo (above), and love letters actually written by a young woman on the team. 

The team then included a bill for an engagement ring (above), ticket stubs from a London show dated 24 April, 1943, and notice of an overdraft in his bank account. 

He also carried a “pompous” cold letter from his invented father, and a St. Christopher's medal. And so the entire packet did not look too perfect, his membership card in the officers' club was out of date. Everything was checked and double checked, even down to his underwear.

With an OK from Churchill, on 19 April, 1943, the body of  Glyndwr Michael- Major Martin,  dressed in a uniform and trench coat, with the letters in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrists, was sealed in a metal tank with dry ice. Both Montague and Moffit drove a nondescript military truck (above) carrying the body 147 miles to the naval base at Holy Loch, Scotland.

There the tube containing Major Martin and the dry ice was loaded aboard the submarine HMS Seraph (above).

At 4:30 in the morning of 30 April, 1943, a mile off Punta Umbria, Major Martin was fitted into a life jacket and slipped gently into the cold Atlantic waters. 

As planned, the currents carried him inshore and about five hours later, José Antonio Rey Maria pulled the body on board his fishing boat. Once back on the beach Jose' handed the body over to a Spanish Army officer. 

That officer passed the corpse to a Spanish naval officer, who sent it to the morgue in the regional capital of Huelva, four miles up the Tinto estuary.

After waiting three days the British Vice-Counsel to Spain asked the local coroner, Eduardo Del Torno, to perform an autopsy on the corpse, and requested the return of the documents he was carrying.  The doctor reported Major Martin had drowned and that the body had been in the sea for from three to five days.

Since Major Martin was a Catholic, and Spain was a Catholic nation, just three days later, on 4 May, 1943, Major Martin was buried with full military honors about 2 miles outside of Huelva, in the "Nuestra Señora de la Soledad” cemetery - Grave number 14, San Marcos Section. 

All of the contents of Marjor Martin's briefcase and pockets were returned within days by the Spanish 

authorities.  But when the Twenty Committee examined the returned letters under a microscope, it was discovered they had been carefully refolded, indicating they had indeed been read. Now, had the trout really swallowed the hook with the fly?

After the war, British intelligence learned the briefcase and its letters had originally been passed to Spanish General Alto Estado Mayor, who appears to have lost them for awhile. Luckily for the British, ambitious Nazi Agent Adolf Clauss heard a rumor about the letters, and as expected he told his superiors. 

It was when the the head of the German Secret Service, Admiral Canaris (above), personally inquired about them, that the brief case and letters were searched for and found again and handed over to the Germans,  to be quickly photographed and returned. And the way they had almost been lost only made their contents more believable to the Germans.

Over the next two months three German armored divisions, one from France and two from Russia, were transferred to Greece, and placed under the command of Erwin Rommel (above), the Desert Fox who had driven the British mad for two years in North Africa. A squadron of coastal patrol torpedo boats were also sent to Greece, was were several hundred aircraft, Three new, large minefields were sown in the waters off Greek beaches. When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini expressed concern about the lack of German troops on Sicily, he was told by General Alfred Jodl, head of the German Army, “You can forget about Sicily. We know it's Greece."

Then on 9 July, 1943 Operation Husky landed 160,000 Allied troops on Sicily. The Germans did not accept it as the real invasion for another three days, by which time the only reinforcements they could provide was a single parachute regiment. Thirty days later the island was completely in Allied hands, at the price of less than 25,000 casualties, compared to 170,000 Axis forces killed, wounded and captured.

This story inspired the book and film “The Man Who Never Was”, but it was sixty years before the true identity of the the man laying in grave 14, under the the sun of Andalusia, would be correctly identified on his tombstone. But the principles of espionage (and fly fishing) have not change since. To catch a fish, you must merely encourage the fish to do what it wants to do.

It is something the George Bush administration ought to have remembered in the spring of 2003.

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TENNIS MATCH AT KOHIMA

 

I believe that all wars are evidence of failure; of diplomacy, of politics, of military strategy, of common sense.  And another million minor inconsequential and unintended mistakes must cumulatively go wrong for a great battle to occur.  As an example,  I present for you, the horrible battle for Kohima.

Officials in Fukouka Prefecture kept a close watch on the young males growing up in the towns and fishing villages of Kyushu, the southern most island of Japan. Often they would drop in for an unannounced visits, to check on the boys health and status. Then, sometime during the young men’s 20th year, in the middle of the night, their conscription notices would arrive. It was claimed this delivery in darkness was done for security reasons, but it was usually followed by a very public send off to basic training. More likely the military merely wanted to drive home their ability to reach into each individual house in the nation at its most vulnerable members.

During the first year of war with America and the British Commonwealth (1942) the Imperial Japanese forces suffered 2,672 men killed each week (on average), while in 1943 that appalling number increased to 3,563 each week.  And the future promised only exponential growth in those tragedies.  On 26 October, 1943, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito' admitted that his nation’s situation was “truly grave”.  It was accepted that 1944 would be Japan’s last chance to stave off defeat in a war they had started.  In the Pacific the navy planned a counter stroke when the Americans struck the Mariana islands.  In China the Army launched “Operation One”, a three prong attack by half a million men.  And against British India, the Japanese Army decided on Operation “C”, a strike at India from out of Burma, which they had conquered two years earlier. 

After their basic training and before leaving Japan, each of the 15,000 Fukouka soldiers wrote out his will and ceremonially gave his life to the Emperor.  By now the nation could no longer wait until their twentieth year.  By late 1943 the Japanese were inducting boys of 17 and 18,  and men up to 44 years old.  But whatever their age, from day one the soldiers were treated brutally.  Officers and non-coms often slapped and beat their men for minor transgressions.  Personal violence was so common that Japanese soldiers often beat each other. 

This brutality was easily transferred to civilians and prisoners of war,  particularly but not exclusively outside of Japan.  The effect on unit moral was devastating, and by 1943 even the army high command wanted to correct it.  But by then the violence had grown out of their control.

The men from Kyushu were formed into the 58th, 124th and 138th infantry regiments, and a Mountain Artillery, an Engineering and a Transportation regiment.. In late 1943 they were all assembled in Bangkok, Thailand and designated the 31st infantry division. 

Their irritable and dyspeptic commander was Lt. General Kotoku Sato.  He was of the opinion that his commanding officer was a blockhead, and openly told his staff that during Operation “C” he expected them all to starve to death.  Late in 1944 the division was moved by rail to the northwest corner of Burma, to the head of navigation on the Chindwin River. 

Each soldier was issued a 20 day supply of rice.  Their equipment and ammunition were carried on mules and elephants, but there would be no supply line back to the Chindwin. The plan was to move fast enough to capture British supply depots as they advanced, and use those to feed and arm their hungry soldiers.

On 15 March, 1944, the 31st division, operating on the extreme right wing of four other divisions, crossed the Chindwin River by boat and raft on a front 60 miles wide.  Moving quickly along winding jungle trails, their first objective was the tiny village of Kohima, 100 miles away and 4,000 feet up the 5,000 foot high Naga hills.  They planned to reach this objective by a forced march in three days and nights.  In fact it took them 15 days. 

The jungle was fetid, hot and sickening, filled with flies, ticks, mosquitoes and leeches big enough to crawl up your leg and suck your blood until they burst. The mosquito bites could cause septic sores. By the time the advanced elements of the 31st division reached the outskirts of Kohima the monsoon had begun, the trails were reduced to deep sucking mud, and the men of 31st division were strung out along the trials, exhausted and hungry.  Sickness and casualties had already reduced the Japanese force by 3,000 men.  

Still the remaining 12,000 Japanese soldiers had caught the British high command off guard, again.  The draftees from Fukouka Prefecture quickly surrounded the barely 2,500 Indian and British troops defending the Kohima Ridge. 

The ultimate goal for the 31st division was still 40 miles away; Dimapur, a British airfield, rail head and logistics base on the Brahmaputra River. From this depot a winding road climbed the Naga Hills, through a mountain pass along Kohima Ridge, and then ran southward to Impala. At Impala were three Indian divisions, commanded by British officers. The main Japanese thrust of four divisions was initially aimed at Impala. 

But if the 31st division could capture Kohima, those three Indian divisions would be cut off, and could be starved to death.  And if the 31st could capture Dimapur, the Japanese army would have enough food, ammunition and fuel to invade India itself.  Sato’s goal was to capture enough supplies at Kohima for the next forty mile march to Dimapur. 

In a first rush on the evening of 3 April , 1944, the men from Kyushu not only surrounded Kohima, they also captured British warehouses containing enough food to supply the 31st division for a year. But less than a month’s worth had been distributed when the Royal Air Force bombed the warehouses, and blew up the supplies.  When those initial captured supplies were used up each Japanese soldier received only one rice ball, some salt and a bottle of boiled water a day. 

Beginning on 6 April, under daily downpours and heavy mortar fire, the Japanese began a series of infantry attacks, squeezing the defenders back onto isolated hill tops along the ridge until the British  held only one, Garrison Hill.  

And atop that, at a 280 degree switchback in the Impala Road, was DC Hill, where in peaceful times the District Commissioner had built himself a summer bungalow, complete with a garden and a tennis court.  By 9 April, the the Japanese and British lines were separated only by the Tennis Court, and the entire battle for India and Burma had been reduced to a battlefield just 36 feet wide. 

Attacks and counter-attacks raged across the court (above, foreground), for day after day.  A British officer explained the battle this way. “We were attacked every single night... They came in waves…Most nights they overran part of the battalion position, so we had to mount counter-attacks...” Noted another source, “It was a very primitive battle. The Japanese had no air cover or air supply and attacked each night” 

Another British writer explained, “The defenders built barricades from the piled bodies of the attackers, the entire area eventually becoming a thick carpet of blackened and rotting corpses. When digging in, they found themselves often digging through the dead before hitting earth.” 

On the night of 13/14 April , the Japanese managed to manhandle a 75mm cannon onto a slight rise to fire point blank into the British trenches.  The British survivors were forced to retreat. 

One of the Indian troopers, Wellington Massar, set up a machine gun on the billiard table in the remains of the club house, and cut down the Japanese attackers.  A Lt. King led a counterattack which retook the trench.  But the British position had been cut in half.  With daylight the Japanese launched what was supposed to be the final annihilating attack, but it was repulsed. 

A British Officer told his commander, “The men's spirits are all right, but there aren't many of us left,”  He said that if relief did not arrive within 48 hours, the position would fall.  Five days later, no one had been relieved, and the battle for the “shattered corpse-covered tennis court” was still raging.

On the morning of 18 April, British artillery began to fall on the tennis court.  It was the advance effect of the arrival of the British 2nd division, which had been flown into Dimapur the week before, and had now fought its way up the road.  

On the 19th the reliving column reached DC hill. What they found was “'filthy, bearded, bedraggled scarecrows” defending “shallow muddy trenches, dismembered limbs, empty cartridge cases, ammunition boxes and abandoned equipment, the debris of numerous assaults, and the stench of so many things rotting. The most lasting impression was caused by the litter of war- piles of biscuits, dead bodies black with flies and scattered silverware from the DC's bungalow.”

Still the men from Kyushu did not give up.  Now outnumbered and heavily outgunned, and still unfed they contested every British advance, and were still holding an edge of the Tennis Court. 

As John Toland reported, in his book “The Rising Sun”, the 31st division was now eating “… grass, potatoes, snails, lizards, snakes – anything they could get their hands on, including monkeys”.  Harold Jones, one of the reliving solders, describe Kohima this way. “I was there about 10 days. It was a terrible place”

By 25 May most the Kohima ridge was back in British hands, and General Sato informed his despised commander that without food or ammunition his men could not survive past June First.  When his commander ordered the 31st division to “fight with their teeth” if they had no more bullets, Sato  instead ordered his men to withdraw.   It was the only time in the Second World War that a senior Japanese officer disobeyed a direct order while under attack, and ordered a retreat..

Toland tells what the Japanese retreat was like. “On the long trek back over the mountains in pounding rain, men fought one another for food.  Thousands of sick and wounded fell out of the march and killed themselves with grenades. The paths were seas of mud and when a man stumbled he became half buried in slime…Light machine guns, rifles, helmets, gas masks – anything useless – littered the trails.  Only the will to live propelled the survivors…and those who lasted out a day’s march huddled together for sleep that rarely came because of the constant downpour. Many drowned, too feeble to raise their heads above the rising water, and the Chindwin River itself, their goal, claimed the lives of hundreds more in its swollen waters….by the end of the year Japanese rule (of Burma) was on the point of collapse.” (pp 693) 

The 31st division had been destroyed. 67% of its precious 15,000 men were dead or wounded. The British counted 5,000 Japanese bodies on the Kohima battle field alone, and best estimates are that 7,000 of the men from Fukouka Prefecture were sacrificed in the attempt to take Kohima..  Fewer than 600 were taken prisoner.  

General Sato was relieved of his command, and sent sent home as unfit for duty because of wounds and physical wastage he suffered before Kohima.  The British poet JM Edmonds left the best epitaph on the battle, which appears on a monument at the British cemetery at Kohima, and which could apply to the sacrifice of both sides. “When you go home, Tell them of us and say, For their tomorrow, We gave our today.”

None of the Japanese counter strokes of 1944 worked. The Imperial Navy blundered into the “Great Marianas Turkey shoot”, which saw 3 Japanese air craft carriers sunk, and 633 air planes destroyed. The Japanese Navy never recovered. In China “Operation One” pushed the Chinese army back, and forced the American 20th Air Force to abandon their advanced bases, which prevented them from bombing Japan. But the Marinna's victory allowed the Americans to simply transfer the B-29 bombers to the Islands of Guam and Tainan, where they would prove even more effective at burning Japanese cities.

And Operation “C” had captured nothing and left 50,000 Japanese dead, and reduced the defense of Burma to an empty shell. And for all the treachery and villainy of the Japanese militarist in fermenting World War in the Pacific, their greatest victims were not citizens of the United States, nor the British nor even China. Their greatest victims were the people of Japan, like the young men of Kyushu, who gave their todays for a lie.

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