The Beginning...

By the time Siobhan picked up the telephone to ask a favour of Lieutenant Craig Garrison, there had been a lot of political machinations taking place. If, dear reader, you are already familiar with what happened to set the scene for the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, please feel free to skip to the next chapter!

If you are still here, thank you! I preferred not to clutter my story with the politics, but neither could I ignore it completely.

Before we get to the fiction, here are the facts...

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The Third Washington Conference (codenamed Trident) was held in Washington, DC from May 12 to May 25, 1943. It was a strategic meeting between the heads of government of the United Kingdom and the United States. The delegations were headed by the British Prime Minister, Winston S Churchill and the US President, Franklin D Roosevelt, respectively. In what was described as a friendly and productive session the men discussed the plans for the Allied invasion of Sicily, the date for undertaking a cross-channel invasion in 1944, and the progress of the Pacific War.

The consequence of this conference was to appoint General Dwight D Eisenhower as the commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, and General Bernard Montgomery as commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces involved in the invasion. The coast of Normandy in north-western France was chosen as the site of the invasion.

Four months later, another conference took place, this time in Tehran, Iran. Between 28th November and 1st December 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill and the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met to discuss and co-ordinate their military strategy against Germany and Japan. The draft strategy was approved on 6 December.

The British and Americans finally committed to launching Operation Overlord, the invasion of Northern France, to be executed by May 1944. The Soviets (in return for a number of concessions) agreed to launch another major offensive on the Eastern Front that would divert German troops away from the Allied campaign in Northern France.

Meanwhile, from July 1943, a secret group of military officers, known as the London Controlling Section, began to devise a large-scale deception operation, codenamed Bodyguard. Bodyguard's key objective was to mislead the Germans about the timing and location of the Allied invasion of north-west Europe, namely that it would come later than was planned and would include attacks on a variety of locations, including the Pas-de-Calais, the Balkans, southern France, Norway and Soviet attacks in Bulgaria and northern Norway.

The Allies were assisted in the deception by 'Ultra', the intelligence received from Bletchley Park where a team of code-breakers had cracked the German secret coding system, and the Twenty Committee of MI5, the British intelligence agency.

The Twenty Committee (taken from the number twenty in Roman Numerals - XX - ie Double Cross), under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman, was responsible for providing disinformation that would be given to Nazi agents operating in Britain. The double-agents themselves were handled by Section B1(a) of MI5, established by Col T A Robertson (TAR).

Since 1940, British intelligence had been very effective at identifying German agents and either neutralising them or turning them into double agents. Over 60 were identified, some operating in Britain, others in Europe. They were an odd assortment of people, a convicted safecracker (ZigZag), a Yugoslavian playboy (Tricycle), a 'party girl' (Bronx), a failed chicken farmer (Garbo), amongst others. TAR was reputed to have something of a sense of humour and many of the code names reflected amusing aspects of each agent's personality.

For the invasion in Normandy to be successful, the Germans needed to be persuaded that the invasion would take place elsewhere. The double agents would be fundamental in selling the deception to their German handlers.

Operation Fortitude was the encapsulation of the Bodyguard plans related to targets in France and Norway. It was divided into two sub-plans, Fortitude North and Fortitude South. Both plans involved the creation of phantom armies, based in Edinburgh (threatening Norway) and the south of England (threatening the Pas de Calais).

The first plans for Fortitude South were presented in January 1944 by the LCS. They were not well received. They concentrated on giving the impression that a large invasion force would congregate in Kent whilst trying to disguise the forces that were gathering to the west. Montgomery would be responsible for managing both armies - an almost impossible task.

Colonel Strangeways, head of Montgomery's deception staff (R Force) was unimpressed and made it clear what he thought. After a power struggle between LCS and R Force, Strangeways prevailed - and rewrote the plans in their entirety.

The new plan didn't try to hide the fact that there would be a Normandy invasion, but it would be a decoy. The primary attack would be on the Pas de Calais (as Hitler expected).

A new field Army, the First United States Army Group (FUSAG), commanded by Lt Gen George Patton, would be responsible for the main Allied threat to the Germans, landing around Calais. The unit would consist of a series of fictional and real formations and radio traffic would support the fiction that a significant Army was being formed in Kent. Patton was a good choice as he was highly regarded by the Wehrmacht. It also left Montgomery free to concentrate on the Normandy invasion.

The northern deception was in some ways simpler, since German reconnaissance aircraft could not readily reach Scotland unintercepted. Radio traffic and reports from double agents sufficed to maintain the subterfuge, although in early spring of 1944 British Commandos attacked targets in Norway to simulate preparations for an invasion. They destroyed industrial targets such as shipping and power infrastructure as well as military outposts. Although the Germans were not fully convinced, they did not risk withdrawing the 13 divisions stationed in Norway to reinforce the French coast.

The Allies were even assisted, to some extent, by the rivalries within the German intelligence agencies (Wehrmacht, Abwehr, Reich Security Main Office (SD-Ausland), SS and the Fuhrer's HQ amongst others) that clogged German decision making and contributed to the success of the Allied deception plans.

The deception was so successful that even as late as 1st June 1944, Hitler was reputed to have told the Japanese ambassador 'I think that diversionary actions will take place in a number of places - against Norway, Denmark, the southern part of western France and the French Mediterranean coast,' then he added that he expected the Allies to attack in force across the Straits of Dover.

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And so, back to that favour. What help was Siobhan looking for, and why?