OBITUARY : Jean Gerard Leigh ( not exactly B.P. related, but interesting nevertheless...)

Friday 06 Apr 2012

OBITUARY : Jean Gerard Leigh
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Jean Gerard Leigh, who has died aged 88, was the woman whose photograph
was used to help trick the Germans into falling for one of the greatest
deceptions of the Second World War.

Operation Mincemeat, which was to inspire a film called 'The Man Who Never
Was' in the 1950s, was devised in the spring of 1943 by two intelligence
officers, Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and Commander Ewen Montagu of Naval
Intelligence. With Churchill planning to invade Italy through Sicily, a
ruse was required to make the Germans believe that the attack would take
place elsewhere.

Cholmondeley and Montagu devised the idea of planting false papers on an
"officer" and making it look as if he had died in a plane crash at sea.
Through the London coroner, they obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a
down-and-out who had killed himself by drinking rat poison. The body was
kept in cold storage while the plotters devised a cover story.
The body was given military papers, including a pass to Combined
Operations Headquarters, identifying him as Acting Major William Martin,
an expert in amphibious warfare. To make it as convincing as possible,
there was also a letter from his father, a warning about his overdraft
from his bank manager, a bill for an engagement ring, love letters - and a
fetching snapshot of his fiancée,"Pam", emerging from the Thames in a
one-piece swimsuit..../snip/


....The "Pam" of the photograph was in reality Jean Gerard Leigh (or Jean 
Leslie as she then was), a young MI5 clerk. But as Ben Macintyre revealed 
in his recent book 'Operation Mincemeat' ( 2010 ), the deception involved 
her for a short time in a bizarre game of role-playing which had little to 
do with the main business of bamboozling the Germans.

She first got caught up in the plot in February 1943, when the hunt began 
for a suitable "mate" for "Major Martin". The more attractive girls in MI5 
and Naval Intelligence were asked to supply photographs, and Ewen Montagu, 
who had already noticed the pretty 19-year old with wavy brown hair, asked 
Jean if she would oblige. She duly became "Pam", "Bill Martin's fiancé", 
a young woman working in a government office whom the major had met five 
weeks earlier and proposed to after a whirlwind romance. The job of 
drafting Pam's breathless billets doux was given to another woman in the 
department.

But Jean Leslie soon found that her duties went beyond the mere provision 
of a photograph. Montagu, whose wife Iris was sitting out the war with 
their children in America, decided to live the part of Major Martin : "He 
was Willie and I was Pam. He had the sort of mind that worked that way," 
Jean recalled. Clearly smitten, he began to court her, taking her out to 
clubs, films and dinner and writing her love letters signed "Bill". "Pam" 
enjoyed the make-believe, sending him a copy of the swimsuit photograph 
inscribed "till death us do part. Your loving Pam". At "Bill Martin's 
farewell party" at the Gargoyle Club, she turned up on Montagu's 
arm...../snip/


....In 1980 when a photograph of Jean appeared in The Times after her 
husband was appointed CBE, the 79-year-old Montagu wrote another letter : 
"Dear Pam, It was a voice from the past to see you in today's papers and I 
can't resist being another such voice and sending you congratulations. 
Ever yours, Ewen ( alias Major William Martin )."

But it was not until 1996 that Jean Gerard Leigh admitted publicly that 
she and "Pam" were one and the same. She came forward after The Daily 
Telegraph reported the true identity of the body used in Operation 
Mincemeat; it had been identified following years of painstaking research 
by Roger Morgan, a local council officer.

Jean Gerard Leigh's husband died in 2008. She is survived by her two sons 
and two daughters.

Jean Gerard Leigh born November 20 1923, died April 3 2012


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/9189418/Jean-Gerard-Leigh.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02186/leigh_2186744b.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fawbs/7049869645/lightbox/

http://announcements.thetimes.co.uk/obituaries/timesonline-uk/obituary.aspx?n=jean-gerard-leigh&pid=156873279