Glyndwr Michael

Started on the anniversary of this hero's death.

Glyndwr Michael during his lifetime was known as an unfortunate man.  It probably all started with his name.  I mean, clearly, his last name should have been his first, not to mention the complete lack of consonants.

Glyndwr was born 4JAN1909.  He died 24JAN1943 from accidental ingestion of rat poison in an abandoned warehouse.  He was a semi-literate drifter who occasionally managed to find work as a day laborer.  His father committed suicide when he was 15, and his mother passed 3 years before he did.

In death, however, Glyndwyr saved the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

The Brits were planning an invasion of heavily fortified Sicily.  America had the support of the Sicilian mafia, who bribed, assassinated, and guerrilla-ed their route across the island to make their trip easier (another story altogether).

The Brits had Glyndwr.  Operation Mincemeat was a plan to let a fake intelligence officer wash up on a Nazi beach with vague intelligence on a planned invasion of Greece.  The stage was set, but they had one slight issue.  They needed a body.

Not just any body.  They needed a young-ish guy who could look like he died at sea and had no relatives who might ask annoying questions like, "Why do you need his corpse?"

So, when Glyndwr died, he disappeared and a couple months later, on the deck of the British submarine Seraph, Major William Martin was born.

The operation was successful, and the Nazi's pulled back troops from Sicily, making the British invasion less costly in time and lives.  Of course, on Stalin's advice, FDR decided to attack a heavily fortified beach in France (Gee, I wonder why a guy trying to own Eastern Europe would suggest that) instead of Churchill's plan of working from the awesome island that was now under Allied control and attacking a wider, less fortified stretch of sand, but again, that's another story.

William Martin (29MAR1907 - 24APR1943) is currently interred in Huelva, Spain.  In 1998, the British government released his actual identity, but hey, he was buried by the enemy with full military honors befitting a Major, so why disturb him?