What he gave to the operation, or what was taken from him, was the basic physical fact of his existence and his death. His body was used because it was available. Major William Martin’s impressive military biography was built on a life that could not have been more different from it.
The postwar reckoning with this fact has been gradual. Montagu’s book gave the dead man the pseudonym “William Martin” and said little about who he actually was. The reason given was security, the real man’s identity was classified. But the security classification eventually lifted, and the historical reckoning followed.
The headstone in Huelva now carries both names. It tells the truth about what happened: Glyndwr Michael, a Welsh laborer born in Aberbargoed in 1909, whose life was difficult from beginning to end, whose death was undignified and lonely, served as the foundation for an identity that helped change the course of a military campaign and, arguably, a war.
That is an extraordinary thing. The mechanism by which it happened, the constructed identity, the planted documents, the Spanish chain of custody, the German analytical failure, the Allied military success, is documented and available to anyone who wants to study it.
The man is documented too, more fully than he was for most of the decades since his death. He deserves to be remembered by his own name.
His name was Glyndwr Michael.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Primary and key secondary sources used in this article:
Operation Mincemeat. Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat