Sir, As your extracts from Ben Macintyre’s new book on Operation Mincemeat make clear, this important hoax was prepared with elaborate care, the unfortunate Welsh tramp being thoughtfully furnished with an officer’s uniform, bank account and even a girlfriend (“All’s fake in love and war”, times2, Jan 14).
I believe his underwear had previously belonged to the great H. A. L. Fisher, former Cabinet minister and at the time of his death in 1940 the Warden of New College, Oxford. Some astute officer insisted that no upper-class corpse would be convincing without appropriate underwear. Garments that had previously belonged to Fisher were given by his widow to her nephew, Courteney. He handed them over to intelligence officers (in circumstances that are not clear), who wisely removed the Cash’s name tapes.
I was first told of this unlikely detail by Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1978 and, doubting it, secured confirmation from Fisher’s late daughter, at that time the Principal of St Hilda’s College.
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Harry Judge
Brasenose College, Oxford