It is one of the biggest mysteries of the Second World War. Under Operation Mincemeat, British intelligence deceived the Germans by dressing up a body as a British officer carrying fake invasion plans and casting it adrift off the coast of Spain, knowing the documents would fall into Nazi hands. Despite several claims, the identity of the body has never been established beyond all doubt. Today, Stuart Russell reports on a possible Hull link to The Man Who Never Was.
PROUD in his Royal Navy uniform, he posed for the camera, smiling despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead. Another young man conscripted to serve his country in the dark days of the Second World War, Tommy Martin was one of the 500 crew of HMS Dasher, a merchant ship converted in America for the very different role of escort aircraft carrier.
But for 24-year-old Tommy, whose home was in South Parade, Anlaby Road, Hull, the war would be a short one and he died when a mystery explosion tore Dasher apart in the Forth of Clyde on March 27, 1943, killing 379 of her crew, in what would be called one of the biggest catastrophes in British naval history.
Although he was officially posted dead, Tommy Martin's story may not have ended there. For 70 years after Dasher was lost, his name is linked by some researchers and historians one of the greatest deceptions ever carried out in wartime. Did he, in fact "die" twice and in so doing become known as The Man Who Never Was?
That was the popular name later given to an operation launched by British intelligence to lead the Germans into believing that the Allies planned to invade Europe through Greece and Sardinia when, in fact, the real aim was to land in Sicily. Officially codenamed Operation Mincemeat, the plot to release a body from a submarine into the sea carrying "secret" documentation about the invasion fooled the Nazis and subsequently led to the saving of thousands of Allied lives, paving the way towards ending the war.
Ever since the body was put into the sea off Huelva, Southern Spain – the Germans were led to believe he was called Major William Martin – his identity has remained a matter of debate.
The most popular theory holds that Major Martin was a Welsh vagrant Glyndwr Michael, 34, who had died after drinking rat poison. But others maintain that despite an official record released in 1998 naming "a Welsh tramp who had died in squalor" he was, in fact, Thomas J Martin of Hull.
Tommy, as his family knew him, was the brother of Hazel Henrietta Condrun, who died in March this year in Scalby, near Scarborough.
Hazel's cousin Jean Donkin, who lived with her husband John, 91, in Welland Road, Hull, died recently, the last surviving member of her family. Her husband John believes there is strong evidence to support the belief that the body washed up in Spain was that of Tommy Martin.
Mr Donkin said: "If the body was that of Tom Martin then we in Hull should be proud of the fact and be prepared to honour him in some way."
It is a theory, which attracted widespread attention in 2003, when after 14 years of research, former policeman Colin Gibbon made the claim in a TV documentary. In February 2001, Mr Gibbon, of Pontypridd, who spent 14 years investigating the real identity of "Major Martin" wrote to Hazel Condrun asking for any information she had. It is understood that she was not forthcoming, but the matter was never discussed with other members of her family. His investigation produced strong evidence to suggest that the body was not that of Glyndwr Michael.
The man responsible for Operation Mincemeat was Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, who wrote a best-selling book on the affair and consistently refused to name the body he used, saying it would remain a secret for ever. But, in later years, researchers came up with Glyndwr Michael's name and, for many, that has been regarded as the end of the controversy.
The mystery deepened when Montagu wrote a second book in which he referred to "my friend Tom Martin". And investigations have shown there was only one man with that name in Navy service at the time.
In their 1995 book, The Secrets Of HMS Dasher, John and Noreen Steele investigated the story of The Man Who Never Was and claimed the body used was that of John "Jack" Melville one of the dead sailors.
But in 2005 in a book entitled Peculiar Liaisons: In War, Espionage, And Terrorism Of The Twentieth Century, author John S Craig refers to Colin Gibbons' TV documentary produced two years earlier, which suggested Tom Martin's was the body used and says: "Gibbon found there was only one Tom Martin in the Navy and that was the same Martin who died on the Dasher. Gibbon learned from Martin's sister that her brother had always carried a crucifix and a St Christopher's medal in his wallet. The corpse carried a wallet containing a crucifix and a St Christopher's medal, items that may have been placed on the body at the request of the family."
The documentary, which formed part of the Dead Men's Secrets series, asked if the chance to use a genuinely drowned body following the Dasher tragedy rather than that of a tramp who had taken poison was irresistible for Montagu. Did the man behind the deception also deceive by replacing the original body in its Scottish grave? And if this was the case then who really lies in the Spanish grave with a tombstone bearing the name Glyndwr Michael?
During the many years he knew Hazel Condrun, Mr Donkin says the matter was never raised. She was a lady who enjoyed her privacy, but whether that included a desire to retain a secret known only to a handful of people at the heart of secret wartime operations will never be known.
"I remain very sceptical about the body being that of a Welsh vagrant and firmly believe there is very strong evidence that it was Tom Martin. Thanks to Mr Gibbon's daughter Karen to whom I have spoken several times and who sent me a copy of the TV documentary, I am sure her father, who died in March 2004, had considerable evidence that the Man Who Never Was came from Hull," he says.
The reality is, though, that definitive proof may never be available so all that remains is speculation as to the identity of the Man Who Never Was. It is a mystery, which may remain as such for ever.
