- Type of Memorial
- Board / Plaque / Tablet
- WMR Reference Number
- 99150
- Description
- Black rectangular plaque with gold-coloured text and a coat of arms of the London Borough of Hackney placed above the text.
The plaque is placed on a brick wall as well as placed quite low that the bottom of plaque touches the ground.
- Inscription
- 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./ (Hebrew translation)/ Psalms 141:3/
Hackney Council, Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation,/ Martin Sugarman (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women,/ Stamford Hill and Hackney Branch)