The submarine Seraph and her skilful captain, Bill Jewell, occupy an important niche in the history of the Second World War by reason of the series of clandestine operations with which they were repeatedly entrusted. Undoubtedly the most famous of these was Operation Mincemeat, the plan to persuade the German high command, with German defeat in North Africa imminent in the Spring of 1943, that the next blows would fall in Sardinia and Greece, and not in Sicily, as was the Allied intention. This extraordinary, and completely successful, deception involved the use of a corpse, carrying false documents, who has since become immortalised as “The Man Who Never Was” and was the silent hero of both a book and a film of that title.
But before this, Seraph had carried out many operations of great importance. In October 1942 Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, was imminent. The military and political situation ashore was complicated by the uncertain attitudes of the Vichy French, many of whom — particularly in naval circles — nursed a fanatical hatred of the British, born of a belief that they had been deserted on the Continent, together with resentment that much of their fleet, in the absence of an agreement to join the British, had been sunk at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar.
The American General Mark Clark, commanding the US Fifth Army, accompanied by Brigadier Lyman Lemnitzer and Captain Jerauld Wright USN (both in later years Nato Supreme Commanders) was perilously landed on the Algerian coast in collapsible boats by night from the Seraph. Three escorting British Special Boat Section commandos were instructed to keep a low profile; this was to be entirely an American negotiation with the French authorities in an attempt to secure neutrality and obtain useful intelligence about force dispositions and airfields. At one point the party had to be hidden in a dusty cellar to avoid a gendarmerie visit — the commando officer’s coughing fit assuaged by a piece of Clark’s chewing gum. The commando: “Your American gum has so little taste.” “Yes,” said the general, “I’d already used it.”
Jewell’s next mission had the same political cast. The popular and charismatic 63-year-old French General Giraud had been a prisoner of war in Germany and had adventurously escaped to unoccupied France where he was looked after by the Maquis who arranged for him to be evacuated from Le Lavandou on the Mediterranean coast. It was thought by the Allies that Giraud would make a useful figurehead in fostering a compliant attitude among those Vichyite French who could not accept the London-based de Gaulle as the voice of free France.
Giraud had specified that he was to be evacuated by an American submarine. Jewell therefore gave “command” to Captain Wright — this unique event being marked by a scroll containing “traditional command rules” which was handed ceremoniously to an apprehensive Wright who found, on unrolling it, a succulent pin-up from La Vie Parisienne. Although various Americanisms were instituted within Seraph, it is not clear whether Giraud was fooled, as he turned out to speak good English when he appeared on board after nerve-racking delays to a rendezvous that had been established by flashes with a torch from the beach.
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However, despite these political manoeuvres, much of the French Navy and Air Force still fought the Allies with desperate courage in a mistaken cause, inflicting substantial casualties while being virtually wiped out themselves. French local politics was ludicrously confused, with almost every senior officer being arrested by one or other of his compatriots. The American negotiations with Vichy succeeded in upsetting the Gaullists while Giraud, although appointed High Commissioner for the North African Territories after the assassination of Admiral Darlan by rightists, had, by the winter of 1943, faded as de Gaulle emerged the master of this complex political battlefield.
Seraph meanwhile had returned to the proper job of a submarine, sinking a number of Axis cargoes destined for Rommel’s army and surviving several counter-attacks. In December 1942 Seraph was in collision, while dived, with an Italian submarine and had to return home for repairs. Jewell’s book, Secret Mission Submarine written with Cecil Carnes and published during the war, does not mention this collision, nor many other details of a technical nature.
Nor does it mention Jewell’s next and most celebrated clandestine operation. On sailing from the Clyde in April 1943, Seraph embarked a mysterious container which was believed to contain “optical instruments” for landing on a Spanish beach. Off Huelva, secret orders were opened which revealed to a chosen few that the container held a body. This was “Major Martin, Royal Marines”, a man who had died of pneumonia and who had been attested by the famous pathologist Sir Bernard Spillsbury as exhibiting all the characteristics of drowning.
In uniform and equipped with a variety of convincing props that established a realistic identity — theatre ticket stubs, a stern letter from his “father”, one from his “girlfriend” and so forth — the body was chained by the wrist to a courier’s briefcase. This contained documents that were designed to suggest that Operation Husky, the impending invasion of Sicily, was in fact aimed at Sardinia in the west and Greece or the Balkans in the east, with Sicily as mere cover.
A letter from General Sir Archibald Nye, Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to General Sir Harold Alexander, the British commander in North Africa, set out the strategic position. A second from Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral Andrew Cunningham recommended Major Martin as a landing craft expert — with the cunningly telling admission that Martin had been right about the sanguinary Dieppe raid, while most of the Combined Operations staff had been wrong.
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Clearly, Seraph must deposit the body with its lifejacket and damaged RAF aircrew dinghy sufficiently far inshore to be picked up and not be detected herself, for failure might compromise the Sicily assault. Lieutenant (afterwards ViceAdmiral Sir David) Scott recalled that Seraph’s propeller wash as she backed off in very shallow water gave Major Martin a favourable start towards the coast, but that the container itself would not sink until punctured by repeated pistol shots. The body was recovered by fishermen and the briefcase was eventually returned through diplomatic channels apparently untouched. But the German intelligence services had thoroughly examined it, and bought the deception whole.
The principal author, Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu, by trade a lawyer, wrote a popular novel after the war which was made into a successful film, The Man Who Never Was (1955), starring Gloria Graham, Stephen Boyd and Clifton Webb.
When the Allies stormed ashore on Sicily, they caught the German and Italian defenders unawares with such defences as there were facing Sardinia. Meanwhile, Hitler ordered two Panzer divisions to move from the Russian front, where they were desperately needed, to reinforce Greece. Appropriately enough, Jewell and Seraph were also present in a clandestine role at the Sicily landings. Seraph was ordered to fix herself accurately off the beachhead and lay an acoustic buoy which could be heard underwater by approaching assault shipping.
On the night of the landing on July 9, 1943, Seraph was to surface and shine an infra-red light out to sea to mark the position. For this operation Jewell received a personal pat on the back from the US invasion commander and was subsequently awarded the US Legion of Merit.
After the Italian capitulation, Seraph landed British commandos on the northern coast near Genoa with a large cache of arms for Italian partisans. She returned home in December 1943 for a refit, having also sunk and damaged some 17,000 tons of Axis shipping. Jewell was appointed MBE and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and was awarded the DSC as well as the Croix de Guerre with Palm. He commanded the submarines Tactician, Trespasser and Sportsman, working in home waters until the end of the war in Europe, being promoted to lieutenant-commander in 1944.
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Norman Lisbury Auchinleck Jewell, always known as Bill, qualified in submarines in 1936, rising to second-in-command of the Otway in 1940. While in the Truant in the Mediterranean he was mentioned in dispatches, afterwards returning home to qualify as a commanding officer in May 1941. He joined Seraph in February 1942.
Jewell’s postwar service, in which he was promoted to commander and then captain, included a number of notable appointments. He had command of two further submarines and the Third Submarine Squadron. In 1954 he had a post on the Allied Control Commission under Flag Office Germany, which included command of the Rhine Squadron of motor torpedo boats. Later he was commandant of the Royal Navy’s staff college.
He retired in 1963 and for many years worked for Mitchell and Butler, brewers, of Wolverhampton, in charge of their cellars department. In 1998 he broke his neck in a bad fall and spent his last years as an undaunted quadriplegic in the Royal Star and Garter Home at Richmond, Surrey.
His wife Rosemary, whom he married in 1944, died in 1996. He is survived by their two sons and a daughter.
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Captain Bill Jewell, MBE, DSC, submarine captain, was born on October 24, 1913. He died on August 20, 2004, aged 90.