One note on caution about the wallet litter: the specific detailed list above comes from multiple secondary sources, and individual items in various accounts differ slightly. The authenticated core of this material, the love letters, the photograph, the engagement ring receipt, the bank overdraft, the father’s letter, the club receipts, is well documented across multiple serious historical accounts. Specific minor items may vary between sources.
G. WRITING THE MISLEADING MILITARY CORRESPONDENCE
The two primary deception documents in Martin’s briefcase were written by senior serving British officers. This was not merely a practical decision, that their actual signatures and their actual letter-writing styles would be harder to fake. It was a strategic one. If German intelligence analyzed the documents and found them authentic, which was the goal, the authentication would rest partly on the genuine production of the paper itself.
Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, wrote the main letter. It was addressed to General Sir Harold Alexander, who commanded British forces under Eisenhower in the Mediterranean. The letter was dated April 23, 1943.
The letter’s strategic deception was built into its language with considerable care. It did not announce a Greek invasion. It referred to planning discussions that appeared to be ongoing, used the shorthand abbreviations that characterized real military correspondence, and mentioned specific geographic points in ways that implied familiarity with plans already understood between the correspondents.
The letter discussed reinforcements for assault operations and referenced “the beach south of Cape Araxos” in Greece. It mentioned a location near Kalamata, also in Greece. The Dodecanese islands were referenced. These geographic references, embedded in the normal bureaucratic language of inter-military correspondence, pointed directly toward the Greek coast as the primary invasion target.