Operation Mincemeat The Hackney Mortuary played an important role in a British military operation during the Second World War (1939-1945), which helped save the lives of thousands of soldiers. In April 1943 Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu OBE KC RNVR, a British Jew, and Flight Lieutenant Charles C. Cholmondeley MBE RAF, a British aristocrat, planned Operation Mincemeat to misdirect German forces' attention away from the Allied invasion of Sicily. They brought the donated body of a man to the Hackney Mortuary where it stayed on ice for three months. Cholmondeley and Montagu transformed the corpse into a fictitious officer - Major William Martin. The body was taken to Scotland and then to a point off southern Spain, where it was placed in the water carrying false letters from senior Allied officers suggesting the Allies would invade Greece, not Sicily. When the body was found, the letters were shared with Nazi intelligence, misdirecting German forces, saving thousands of British and American soldiers' lives during the invasion of Sicily. Set a watch before my mouth Lord: and over the door of my lips. שיתה יהוה שמרה לפי נצרה על דל שפתי Psalms 141:3 Hackney Council, Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, Stamford Hill and Hackney Branch) Martin Sugarman (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, Stamford Hill & Hackney Branch)