OBITUARY : Patricia Davies

16 Oct 2014

OBITUARY : Patricia Davies
--------------------------

Patricia Davies was the last of the team behind Operation Mincemeat, the
subterfuge which allowed the Allies to invade Sicily

Patricia Davies played a role in Operation Mincemeat during the Second World War

Patricia Davies : 'We were all in on the plot. We were enthralled by the whole
idea'

Patricia Davies, who has died aged 93, was the last surviving member of the
clandestine group in Naval Intelligence that in 1943 launched Operation
Mincemeat, a brilliant subterfuge that significantly altered the course of the
Second World War.

The plan of Operation Mincemeat, as told by Ben Macintyre in his book of the
same name and in a BBC documentary, was to drop a dead body in the
Mediterranean off the coast of Spain and hope the Nazis would find it. The
body was dressed as a Royal Marines officer, and was attached to a briefcase
containing a series of official-looking but faked letters indicating an Allied
plan to push back against Axis forces in southern Europe by invading Greece
and Sardinia — and not, as expected, Sicily.

The Nazis took the bait : believing the false information to be true, they
diverted massive forces to Greece, enabling a successful Allied invasion of
Sicily.

Patricia Davies ( née Trehearne ) was 18 when the war started and had just
left Roedean, the private girls’ school near Brighton, when a friend of her
father’s, a Royal Marines colonel, recruited her to work for Naval
Intelligence.

She worked in the Admiralty, first for Ian Fleming ( author of the James Bond
novels ), who was assistant to the Director, and later in a secret division
called 17M, located in a small stuffy room in the basement of the Admiralty
building.

A dozen people worked there, reading decrypted Axis communications sent from
Bletchley Park and preparing daily summaries for the top brass. “There were 12
people in that room,” she later recalled, “and there was enough air for six.
Everyone smoked, and the room was a sea of smoke. The room was lit by
fluorescent lights that made everyone look blue.”..../snip/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11167646/Patricia-Davies-obituary.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03075/davies_3075589b.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03075/davies2_3075606c.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03075/davies_group_3075601c.jpg


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article4212434.ece

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00771/39a58774-4022-11e4-_771511c.jpg

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00771/2e849136-4023-11e4-_771521c.jpg

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00771/381a4038-4023-11e4-_771522c.jpg