SOMERTON MAN: A 'PRECIOUS TRUTH'?

 

..Apart from this famous gesture (which he apparently made by mistake when this photo was taken), Churchill was renowned for his sharp wit and great quotes. The quote in question today is regarding Truth..

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

For those who believe that Australia and other countries were not at 'war' in 1948, perhaps you would do well to rethink that position.

The war was very much a Cold War, a full-on arms race coupled with an intelligence war without parallel in those years and, in Australia at least, rumblings of an insurrection organised, coordinated, and paid for by the Soviets in league with the Communist Party Of Australia.

There were casualties, many died in this war, mostly discretely and without fanfare, a Spy Versus Spy affair that went on for some years.

Those who have spent any time reading through the Milliers Hat, the story that it is said gave Ian Flen=ming the idea for Operation Mincemeat, could draw some but not that many parallels with that operation and the case of the Somerton Man. The relatively recently released files by UK Archives provide quite some detail but sadly it is not a digitised offering.

Amongst things that we may learn from it include the comparative ease in which a Coroner and a pathologist were drawn in to 'help' with the provision of a body and all that that entailed, the meticulous attention to detail in setting up the documentation that was to accompany Glyndwr on his final journey was astounding, the work was so good that the case didn't have a hint of being an organised 'litter' job. 

In common were the two bus tickets, the matches, the cigarettes, and small change we can tick off. No watch for our Somerton Man nor a Love Letter from a lady named Pam. But the essentials were there except the missing soap and a flannel.

A comment was made about the condition of the body after it had been kept on ice for around 3 months, apparently, there were several power cuts and thus there would have been defrosting and refreezing that would have had an effect on the condition of the body which was meant to have been so bad that rumours spread amongst those in the know that the body was swapped at the last minute. That raises the question brought up in an earlier post as to whether or not there were power cuts that would have affected the condition of the body of the Somerton Man during its stay at the morgue.

One story is that Glyndwr's sister turned up to claim the body, her story was that Glyndwr had been mentally ill for some time. Shades of Paul Lawson's thoughts on the Kangaroo Island connection and the SS Warrawee, the Captain of that ship was a certain Captain Harkness I understand,

What can we get from this example? The involvement of officialdom during the war years, the clever and well-thought-out creation of the cover story including the pocket and suitcase litter. An unknown/undetectable cause of death, in Glyndwr's case he had taken rat poison which, according to accounts would be hard to detect in the body after death.

Having spent some years studying the SM case and having read widely on the subject added to my own earlier Police experience, whatever actions the Police may or may not have taken were planned actions. They had a job to do and they did it without question. Bear in mind that these men who were involved in the case had just come through WW2 and their job was to be the front line for Intelligence services who were well truly stretched in those years. It's well and good for the armchair gurus to make their rather unpleasant and often nasty comments about these men, but these same gurus were not there at the time and do not speak from experience. Relatives and descendants of these men read the blogs and we all should respect their feelings.

A last thought, Cholmondeley, a senior member of the XX team, remained in SOE until retirement in 1962. No doubt his expertise would have been called on whenever a body was to be used.