In early 1943, British naval intelligence officers Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley devised Operation Mincemeat, a plan to deceive the Axis powers into believing the Allies would invade Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The centerpiece of the deception was a corpse carrying a locked briefcase filled with fabricated top-secret invasion plans. However, executing this trick required solving a dark logistical puzzle: obtaining a recently deceased body whose cause of death could pass as a drowning victim without raising the suspicions of Spanish pathologists.
The officers secretly acquired the body of Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welshman who died in London after ingesting rat poison containing yellow phosphorus. Because phosphorus poisoning leaves few obvious external marks and mimics pulmonary edema, pathologists concluded his death could plausibly pass as hypothermia and drowning from an aircraft crash at sea. Maintaining secrecy required absolute cold chain preservation.
Michael's body was stored in a dry ice freezer at St Pancras Mortuary under strict military guard for three months. Meanwhile, intelligence officers meticulously forged a complete identity for him: Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. They packed his pockets with personal paraphernalia—a photo of a fictitious fiancée named Pam, unpaid bills, theater stubs, and a handwritten letter from his bank demanding payment.
In April 1943, the corpse was sealed inside a steel canister packed with dry ice and transported via submarine HMS Seraph to the coast of Huelva, Spain, where it was released into the current to alter the course of World War II.