Alan Hillgarth’s novels celebrated adventure and valor, reflecting his own extraordinary life. Aged 14, he fought in the First World War, was bayoneted before his 16th birthday, and was later wounded at Gallipoli. Small, energetic, and passionate about trees, Hillgarth became a novelist, military adviser in Morocco, and King’s Messenger before embarking on his defining adventure.

In 1928, Swiss adventurer Edgar Sanders convinced Hillgarth to join a treasure hunt in Bolivia. Sanders presented a document, allegedly from a Jesuit priest via Cecil Prodgers, locating the legendary Sacambaya treasure in underground caverns beneath an egg-shaped stone. Scientist Charles Gladitz claimed to have detected gold through photographic analysis of the site. The Sacambaya Exploration Company was formed, attracting investors with promises of enormous returns. Twenty-four men, including Serbian miner Joe Polkan and American engineer Julius Nolte, were recruited despite warnings of harsh conditions.

They sailed from Liverpool in March 1928 with 40 tons of equipment, including weapons for protection. After a grueling overland journey through Chile and Bolivia, they reached the mining town of Pongo, run by American Alicia O’Reardon Overbeck. The team spent five weeks hauling equipment over mountain tracks. For four months, they excavated 37,000 tons of rock while battling disease, injuries, and vampire bats. Their doctor coined the term “Sacambayaitis,” a psychological ailment from prolonged isolation, but Hillgarth remained cheerful throughout.

After flooding defeated the expedition, the company collapsed. Returning to Britain, Hillgarth discovered Sanders’s documents were forgeries and Gladitz had vanished. The experience taught him a crucial lesson: People can be persuaded to believe what they want through forged documents and wishful thinking. He later fictionalized the adventure in his successful novel The Black Mountain.

As British vice-consul and spy in Majorca, Hillgarth befriended Winston Churchill. During the Spanish Civil War, he negotiated the peaceful handover of Minorca to Franco, averting mass casualties. When World War II began, Hillgarth became naval attaché in Madrid, resisting Nazi influence, thwarting U-boat resupply, and collaborating with Ian Fleming on Operation Goldeneye, a contingency plan for German invasion. With Churchill’s approval, Hillgarth bribed Spanish generals opposed to Franco’s regime, channeling $10 million to senior military personnel and bureaucrats who provided inside intelligence until 1943. Hillgarth’s most valuable asset was Agent Andros, a senior Spanish naval officer. In 1943, when German SD officer Eugene Messig also recruited Andros, Hillgarth turned him into double agent “Blind,” feeding disinformation to the SS. Hillgarth operated while knowing that the embassy was under constant surveillance, finding the spy-versus-spy contest amusing.

In Spring 1943, Hillgarth was briefed on Operation Mincemeat. Hillgarth would coordinate the body’s reception in Spain, discover what happened to the documents, and maintain the fiction that crucial secrets had gone missing.

The German Abwehr maintained a vast intelligence network in Spain: 220 officers commanded roughly 1,500 agents. Thirty-four radio operators and 10 secretaries, including Adolf Clauss’s cousin Elsa, managed the intelligence flow to Berlin via direct teletype. Hillgarth had detailed knowledge of the Abwehr structure through a Spanish security official who established a section ostensibly to monitor German espionage for the Interior Ministry but secretly reported to Hillgarth. Germany’s Madrid station was led by Wilhelm Leissner, with subordinates including naval intelligence chief Hans Gude, agent runner Fritz Knappe-Ratey, and George Helmut Lang. Major Fritz Baumann, a sabotage expert and experienced forensic pathologist who had examined hundreds of corpses, was particularly notable.

Most intriguing to Hillgarth was Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal. From a wealthy military family and related to Abwehr chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Kühlenthal had served in the Condor Legion under intelligence chief Joachim Rohleder. By 1943, aged 37, he headed the Madrid section under the code name “Felipe,” coordinating intelligence from Britain, North Africa, and elsewhere. Tall, aristocratic, and dandyish with carefully manicured nails, Kühlenthal had effectively sidelined Leissner to become the de facto station chief. Heinrich Himmler personally commended his network’s work in England. MI5 assessed him as efficient, ambitious, and dangerous.

The reality differed dramatically. In May 1941, Spaniard Juan Pujol García offered to spy for Germany in Britain. Kühlenthal trained him in secret writing and sent him off under the codename “Arabel.” Pujol wrote from Lisbon, claiming to be in England, beginning a stream of fabricated reports. Pujol had decided to betray the Germans from the outset: Using guidebooks and newsreels, he created absurd intelligence from Portugal. Kühlenthal believed everything.

British code breakers were baffled by reports from this apparently clueless German agent operating in Britain. In early 1942, Pujol was identified and brought to Britain as double agent “Garbo.” With MI5 handlers, he created a fictional network of 27 subagents to support his production of misinformation. Kühlenthal passed all of Garbo’s fabrications to Berlin, expressing absolute trust in his star agent. Garbo’s messages combined pompous flattery with Nazi rhetoric. Kühlenthal failed to detect the absurdities. By 1943, running the Felipe network consumed Kühlenthal’s time. Through Ultra intercepts, British intelligence confirmed that Garbo’s reports received top priority in Berlin. Kühlenthal had become British intelligence’s mouthpiece.

Code breakers also discovered that Kühlenthal embellished Garbo’s reports before forwarding them, inventing his own subagents. MI5 concluded he fabricated intelligence to impress superiors. Other Abwehr officers suspected he embezzled funds.

Kühlenthal’s Jewish ancestry through his grandmother made him a target under Nazi antisemitic policies, forcing him to leave Germany. Canaris intervened, securing the Madrid post and having Kühlenthal officially “Aryanized.” Hard-line Nazis and the SD questioned this legal manipulation. When counterespionage chief Major Helm accused Kühlenthal of being a British spy, Canaris had Helm transferred. British surveillance noted Kühlenthal appeared nervous, knowing failure could prove fatal given the antisemitism within the Abwehr. Kühlenthal embodied the spy flaws of wishfulness and “yesmanship”: He was gullible yet trusted by superiors and prepared to deceive those above him to enhance his standing. 

Hillgarth recognized that reaching Hitler required getting information to Adolf Clauss in Huelva, who would pass it to Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, and then up the German command chain.

Ivor Leverton, whose family undertaking firm had operated since the French Revolution, felt guilty about being medically unfit for military service. When Police Constable Glyndon May requested him for a secret, unpaid job of national importance under the Official Secrets Act, Ivor eagerly accepted. At 1:00 am on April 17, he collected a coffin and met May at St. Pancras mortuary. They struggled to fit the tall corpse into the standard coffin. Ivor transported the body to Hackney Mortuary.

That evening, Bentley Purchase, Montagu, and Cholmondeley met to dress the corpse. After three months of refrigeration, Michael’s body showed jaundice and sunken eyes but reasonable preservation. They fitted a life jacket and attached the briefcase by its chain, simplifying the submarine crew’s task. A watch stopped at 2:59 am was fastened to the wrist. Fitting boots onto frozen feet proved most difficult. Purchase suggested thawing the feet with an electric fire, so Montagu and Cholmondeley engaged in the macabre task of carefully defrosting just the ankles while attempting to put on the stiff army boots. 

Major Martin’s wallet was placed in the breast pocket. The remaining pockets were filled with a pencil, change, and keys. In a last-minute addition, Cholmondeley inserted two ticket stubs from Sid Field’s variety show “Strike a New Note,” dated April 22. These proved Martin had been in London four days before the expected discovery date, making it obvious that he had gone by air to Spain. The Germans should reconstruct his final week: lunch with father on April 21, theater with Pam on April 22, checkout from his club on April 24, and a fatal plane crash.

Two photographs were taken of the body, the only known images of Glyndwr Michael. Visible decomposition raised concerns, and Purchase suggested wrapping the head in an army blanket to prevent facial damage during transport. The body was placed in the canister with dry ice.

St. John “Jock” Horsfall, an MI5 chauffeur and celebrated prewar racing champion, waited in a customized Fordson van. Recruited by MI5 deputy director Eric Holt-Wilson, Horsfall knew only that he was transporting a corpse for a trick on the Germans, a mission that appealed to his sense of humor. He maintained absolute discretion. After a brief stop at Cholmondeley’s flat for sandwiches prepared by his sister Dottie, they departed at 2:00 am. The journey was terrifying. Horsfall, myopic and driving without proper headlights, nearly crashed into a tram stop and shot over a roundabout. In the Scottish dawn, they photographed Horsfall drinking tea while perched on the canister.

At Greenock Dock, a launch transported the canister to where HMS Seraph lay moored. Commander Bill Jewell greeted them warmly. The following morning, the canister would be loaded along with a secret shipment of alcohol for Algiers. Jewell received final instructions and the sealed document envelope. After three months with their fictional creation, Montagu and Cholmondeley felt genuine affection for Bill Martin, and Montagu wrote cheerfully to Iris about his Scotland trip.

The canister was stored in the forward torpedo room, where crew members sleep. On April 19 at 4:00 pm, Seraph departed Holy Loch. During the 10-day journey, some crew members suspected the canister contained a body, joking about “John Brown’s Body” and “our pal Charlie.”

Commander Bill Jewell, who fought much of the war with a broken neck that was not diagnosed until 1946, never considered death. His early patrols had included being fired on by the RAF and destroying a whale he mistook for a U-boat. In October 1942, Jewell had transported American General Mark Clark to Algeria for secret negotiations. In November 1942, Seraph briefly became American to collect French General Henri Honoré Giraud from the south of France under Operation Kingpin. With an American captain, Jerauld Wright, nominally in command, the crew attempted American accents. Giraud, who spoke English, was not fooled but was too proud to acknowledge the deception. In December 1942, Jewell and US Ranger Colonel William Orlando Darby reconnoitered La Galite Island under Operation Peashooter. Darby, a fearless soldier, found underwater combat terrifying. 

Midway through the Mincemeat voyage, the crew heard nearby depth charge explosions but continued its mission. Jewell had strict orders to avoid combat, as this operation was more important.

On April 22, Ewen Montagu invited Jean Leslie to “Bill Martin’s Farewell Party.” Cholmondeley brought Avril Gordon, another secretary who had helped write Pam’s letters. Montagu had composed a fake obituary for Bill Martin, portraying him as a literary genius killed on active service, reinforcing the character’s reality in his own mind. The two couples attended “Strike a New Note” at the Prince of Wales Theatre. The cast included future stars Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, then unknowns. Sid Field’s variety show offered wartime escapism. After the show, they moved to the Gargoyle Club in Soho, a glamorous haunt of artists, writers, and spies, including Henri Matisse, Noël Coward, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean. As the night progressed, Cholmondeley toasted “to Bill” while the men anxiously checked their watches.

The next day, Montagu wrote to Iris. His flirtation with Jean Leslie ended after this night, likely prompted by Iris’s letter questioning the signed photograph of “Pam” on his dressing table after a report from his mother. Montagu arranged for a colleague to visit Iris in New York with explanations. Decades later, he still signed letters to Jean as “Bill.”

Anxiety rose in Room 13 as the drop date approached. Pat Trehearne recalled the tension. Operation Mincemeat was part of the broader Operation Barclay, a massive deception suggesting simultaneous invasions of Sardinia and Greece as a prelude to a Balkans campaign. Elements included a fake British “Twelfth Army,” dummy equipment visible to German reconnaissance, genuine sabotage operations, diplomatic rumors, and Greek troop training. If Mincemeat failed, the Barclay deception might collapse, revealing Sicily as the genuine invasion target.

Contingency plans existed for if the body washed up in Gibraltar: Documents should be sent unopened to Colonel Robertson at MI5. On April 28, Seraph rounded Cape St. Vincent and approached Huelva. Jewell briefed his officers on the mission’s true nature. One officer commented that carrying corpses was unlucky. On April 29, strong offshore winds forced the postponement. The morning of April 30 offered ideal conditions, so the submarine surfaced at its designated spot just after 3:00 am. The crew hauled the canister through the torpedo hatch and then sent it below. At 4:15 am, officers opened the canister. The body was badly decomposed and foul-smelling. Several officers recoiled, but Jewell, from a medical family, was unconcerned. He inflated the lifejacket, transferred documents to the briefcase, and placed the selected identity card. Lieutenant Scott grew anxious as dawn broke and realized the submarine was nearly aground in 14 feet of water with a 20-foot draft. Jewell recited a fragment of Psalm 39, and they gently pushed the corpse into the sea. Scott reversed the submarine at full speed; the propeller wash helped move the body shoreward. A half-mile south, they released the dinghy and single oar.

Twelve miles out, they attempted to sink the canister, but the double-skin design made it too buoyant. Firing on it failed, so with dawn approaching and fishing boats nearby, Jewell packed it with plastic explosives. This sank it, though Jewell recognized the risk of fragments washing ashore or fishermen witnessing the blast. He omitted this from his official report, revealing it only in 1991.

Seraph dived for Gibraltar. At 7:15 am, Jewell transmitted: “Mincemeat completed.” From Gibraltar, he posted Montagu a card: “Parcel delivered safely” (194).