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TO PLAN THE RECONQUEST OF EUROPE

As Morgan surveyed his office in Norfolk House on the first day of his new assignment as COSSAC, he noted that he had taken possession of “a couple of desks and chairs … a few sheets of paper and a pencil that someone had dropped on the floor.”¹ He was starting from zero, which, under the circumstances, at least meant a fresh start.

Morgan was an enthusiastic “Westerner” who believed that an early reentry into the Continent starting in northwest France was the proper strategic direction. He did not agree with the more opportunistic approach of senior British leaders. While he believed the principle of “flexibility” can have many advantages, “especially when one’s resources are slender … [,] it is well to be flexible only if, [in the end] there is the firm intention to do something definite.” He went on to say that he and some of his colleagues suspected that the “British authorities had at this time no real plan for the day when they would have to stop being flexible.”² His approach made it easier to work with his American allies and to recruit like-minded officers from both the British Empire and the United States.

While he was temporarily reliant on the kindness of strangers for his clerical needs, he moved quickly to recruit the highest level of planners for the jobs at hand, trusting that they, in turn, would attract others with whom they had successfully served. Morgan had been in the Staff Duties Directorate in the War Office in 1936–37, so he knew or knew of most of the officers who might be both available and desirable for these positions. His long service in India would also be useful as fellow veterans of Indian service would make their mark. As he said, “When it came to creating the British Army portion of the COSSAC staff the War Office … [gave] me practically carte blanche, with the result that the British Army component was able to hit its stride in amazingly quick time.”³

He did have a fight with Brooke to get Maj. Gen. Charles West for operations (whom Morgan knew well from their long service together in India), and it took some time to get Maj. Gen. Nevil Brownjohn, who took over supply and came over from Paget at Home Forces. Brig. Kenneth McLean, the senior British Army planner, was another old friend of Morgan’s from India—he married the woman who had looked after Morgan’s children there. All three played important roles in creating OVERLORD. West and McLean were both engineers and combat veterans. According to Ray Barker, West had a “keen analytical, engineering mind that could analyze a problem and get to the roots of it … [,] an ability to reduce it to fundamental terms at first…. McLean was a hard, pragmatic Scot,” while West had a calmer temperament.⁴ McLean was described by Morgan as someone who knew all the tricks of the trade and was a “weaver of plots beyond compare and, moreover, an expounder of same, who appeared in the next few months before crowned heads and chiefs of state, justifiably earning universal applause.”⁵ He had previously spent time on the Planning Staff in Whitehall and at Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ).

Representatives from the other services of both nations, particularly the U.S. contingent, arrived more slowly and suffered from higher turnover rates for a variety of reasons. McLean noted that in the spring and summer, “the American Air Force and Navy came very little into the planning picture. They changed quite frequently and had little continuity in their work.”⁶ Barker agreed with this assessment, noting that the U.S. Army Air Forces sent over good men who didn’t stay for very long. Of the U.S. Navy’s representatives, Barker’s evaluation was that they didn’t send their best men.⁷

Morgan observed that while senior British officers were noticeably less enthusiastic about the project than their American counterparts, it was just the opposite among the more junior officers. The British officers signed on at once while some Americans didn’t see the point in associating with what looked like a predominantly British staff for a possible operation that could become a dead end. Still, most of those who joined soon shared the enthusiasm and sense of common purpose that comes from being part of a group that must produce something of importance and is given not quite enough time or resources to produce it.

General Brooke had discussed the organization of what was evolving into the COSSAC staff with Gen. Frank M. Andrews, commanding general of ETOUSA, on 26 March.⁸ This in turn led to soon-to-be major general Barker being designated as deputy chief of staff for COSSAC (or Deputy COSSAC, as he was called), although for a while he also continued as the operations officer at ETOUSA.

Barker and Morgan met for the first time at Norfolk House in early April. As Barker explained, “As a natural thing the small group that I had been working with on the planning for ROUNDUP—the ‘ROUNDUP Planners’ they called us—we just re-designated ourselves and were absorbed into COSSAC. And a group of Britishers moved in, and so the thing just flowed together without any formal thing.”⁹

The staff’s initial formation clearly had a certain air of informality to it. There were, of course, requests to British, British Empire, and American authorities for staffing, but there was also a tone that suggested the unconventional approach that Morgan enjoyed. Perhaps it helped that COSSAC took over Norfolk House, which is where many of the planners already worked. Still, because so many plans conceived there were stillborn, all it took was a mention that one worked at Norfolk House to evoke both pity and disregard from one’s audience. This was so noticeable that Morgan asked, unsuccessfully, if they could rename the building Suffolk House. This was not possible because of the history attached to the site. The old Norfolk House, a most palatial structure of the dukes of Norfolk and the birthplace of George III, dated back to the mid-1700s. The original building had been demolished in 1939 and replaced by the modern office building.¹⁰ Morgan took consolation in the fact that it made security easier—no one would expect something as dramatic as a cross-Channel assault to emanate from such a place. Security was a particular concern as COSSAC was explicitly forbidden to have contact with the many allied governments-in-exile located in London, and the French headquarters was also on St. James’s Square just a long block away from Norfolk House.¹¹

Thanks to Morgan’s friendship with Canadian general Andrew McNaughton, with whom he had served in World War I, COSSAC was able to gain meaningful support from a cadre of highly trained Canadian staff officers. South Africa was also well represented, as was Australia.

Morgan wanted his staff to be as small as possible—mirroring what he believed was the approach taken by Marshal Foch at the end of World War I—and to function more as a coordinating body, not duplicating efforts but taking advantage of the knowledge base that already existed. In this he was partially successful. Because COSSAC considered all aspects of a cross-Channel assault and the campaign that was to follow, the range and scope of issues to be addressed required that expertise be added to the staff, both formally and informally. There was no useful precedent for a multinational planning staff that was also intended to be the foundation of a coalition’s operational headquarters for the major campaign being planned. As Barker noted, “We didn’t start out with any table of organization…. There was no one to prescribe it for us. We had to develop it as we went along…. There was a certain amount of trial and error.”¹²

Morgan was well aware of the inherent political challenges of being the chief of staff to an unnamed supreme commander and having to report to the CCS, but through the British COS. His life now changed from that “of a simple British soldier to that of the international half-world wherein there is no simplicity. It had been one thing to serve as a British commander under foreign orders. It was quite another to owe primary allegiance, as [he] now had to, to an allied committee.”¹³

An early example of this allegiance was demonstrated when he received a memo from the British War Cabinet that sketched out an idea about applying “the whole united strength of Britain and the United States to the Mediterranean” and that asked Morgan to respond with the advantages of a northwestern European strategy compared with the Mediterranean. He understood that this represented just a late-night conjecture of the prime minister, but he was nonetheless obliged to answer. As COSSAC was an Allied staff, neither American nor British, he also felt obliged to share the memo with Barker, who in turn felt obliged to share the memo with ETOUSA. The net result, after everyone calmed down, was that it became clear that if “there should be anything that the British authorities deemed unnecessary for the American authorities to hear about, then they must not send it to COSSAC.”¹⁴

To be fair, there was at least one occasion when Americans in Washington, talking over a secure line to compatriots in London, exhorted their colleagues: “Don’t tell the British for God’s sake.” Which provoked laughter from the London end of the line as “every word had been keenly listened to by two British generals and one British admiral.”¹⁵ For Morgan, building trust among COSSAC’s staff as well as a strong sense of unit identity were among the highest priorities. In today’s parlance, it was clear from the very beginning that they “had each other’s backs.”

By the time of the first weekly staff meeting on 17 April, Morgan had gathered enough officers to fill in the top levels of the organization. It helped that he reduced the Combined Commanders’ planning structure from twenty-nine sections down to four, plus an administrative section.¹⁶

COSSAC was initially formed with an operations planning branch, with army, navy, and air force sections; an intelligence branch; and a logistics (administration, in British Army usage) branch. Major General West was the operations branch head. There were American and British components to each section, each headed by a principal staff officer or deputy chief of staff. For the British Army, that was McLean. The three components of the planning branch (army, navy, air force) were also split into three sections: one for broad concepts, one for cover plans, and one for detailed tactical planning, each with about four officers. There was a parallel American structure. The exception was the intelligence section, which was headed by a British Army officer and provided reports and analyses to all the operations sections. In addition, a central secretariat was established that served all the branches as well as Morgan.¹⁷

This arrangement quickly proved unwieldy, and modifications occurred along the way. By November Barker, in consultation with Morgan, completed the reorganization into an operational staff with the structure completely integrated, the principal staff officer of each section being either British, American, or Canadian on merit, without regard to national identities. As Barker wrote at the time, “In contemplation of the transformation of this staff from a planning to an operational headquarters, any division along national lines should be abolished.”¹⁸

Later, sections for civil affairs, press relations, and coordination with governments-in-exile (which was established after the Quebec conference) were created, among others. (On 6 June 1944 the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force [SHAEF], building on COSSAC’s foundations, had expanded to include the following sections: G1, G2, G3, G4, G5 [civil affairs], psychological warfare division, public relations division, signals division, engineers division, adjutant general, medical division, air defense division, political officers as well as naval and air staffs and a European Allied contact section.¹⁹)

In general, U.S. officers serving in all the sections and RAF officers seemed to rotate through more often than did British Army officers, with the Royal Navy having periods of stability. The shortest tour of duty was that of then rear admiral Sir Philip Vian, RN, who was present for the first COSSAC meeting and back in an operational command the next week, replacing a commander who died in an air accident. One of the most effective combat officers in the Royal Navy, Vian later became the Eastern Task Force Commander for OVERLORD.

He was replaced by John Hughes-Hallett, who retained command of a small amphibious assault force named Force J, located aboard HMS Vectis—the converted Royal Yacht Squadron facility on the Isle of Wight—while also being Admiral Little’s representative at COSSAC. Morgan noted that Hughes-Hallett, among his other credits, was well known for his motorcycling achievements on the London to Portsmouth road. Barker considered him to be excellent, combat experienced, and “intensely practical.”²⁰ McLean, the practical Scot, thought Hughes-Hallett to be “obstinate and determined. An exceedingly capable man who succeeded in getting everybody’s back up.”²¹ Another writer with knowledge of combined operations described Hughes-Hallett as someone “whose respect for entrenched rank when it was wrong was not conspicuous.”²² The discussions between McLean and Hughes-Hallett must have been interesting. Hughes-Hallett stayed at COSSAC for the critical initial planning period, being replaced by Rear Adm. George Creasy, RN, in the fall of 1943.

Hughes-Hallett gave an evaluation of the naval planners he encountered in Norfolk House in April 1943: “There was no officer with the authority, or indeed the knowledge and experience, to make even a provisional decision on where the landings should be made or how they should be followed up…. They had become rather cynical and had ceased to believe in the reality of their work.”²³ This cynicism could be found among many of the COSSAC planners as they started working with their new commander.

It was this serious morale problem that Morgan addressed head on in his first address to COSSAC staff in mid-April. He gathered everyone, including the cooks, on the ground floor of Norfolk House to let them know what was going on.

Until recently, of course, the initiative remained in the enemy’s hands. I think that we can now say that recently the initiative passed to us, although it must be confessed that hitherto there have not been many signs of our knowing exactly what to do with it now that we have it….

About a year ago it became possible to regard the invasion of Europe as a practical proposition, and attempts were made to define the problem in terms that really meant something. These were not entirely successful, and then, while they were still under discussion, came a sudden change of policy that brought about the campaign in North Africa that is now drawing to a successful conclusion in its first phase.

… I need not go into too much detail with regard to the many vicissitudes that have overtaken this planning. A large number of very able people have done an immense amount of work and have at least produced what is going to be very useful to us, an immense amount of invaluable data bearing on the job in hand. They have produced no plan worthy of the name, but that, I should like you to understand clearly, was no fault of theirs; it was simply because they lacked direction from above.

… I want to make clear that, although the primary object of COSSAC is to make plans, I am certain that it is wrong to refer to it in any way as a “planning staff.” The term “planning staff” has come to have a most sinister meaning—it implies the production of nothing but paper. That (which) we must contrive to do somehow is to produce not only paper; but ACTION!²⁴

Morgan then reemphasized that they were not a planning staff but the beginnings of an operational staff serving as the vanguard for a powerful army being gathered in the United States, which would join with British, Canadian, and American forces already in Britain. Their mission was not to plan another raid or just to cross the Channel. His job was “to plan nothing less than the re-conquest of Europe.”²⁵

He accepted that the planners were frustrated, but time was short, the work would be hard, the expected standards of performance were high, and he was depending on them. He made it clear that while the initial challenge was to get across the Channel, their goal was Berlin. As a reminder of the full scope of the effort facing them, Morgan announced that the map in his office would not be the routine view of the English coast facing northern France but one that featured San Francisco to the west and Berlin to the east.²⁶ He finished his remarks by showing everyone a draft organizational outline so each person could see where they fit in; he let them know that regarding both the plans and Morgan’s obligation to keep his superiors informed as to the progress of their work, “I rely entirely upon you.”²⁷

Morgan knew that while organizational charts were necessary, “the more highly coloured the better, for purposes of academic argument and for bulldozing the personnel-supply authorities, it is the chaps not the charts that get the job done.”²⁸ He worked hard to motivate “the chaps” and the women who joined COSSAC. Molding this disparate group into an effective, motivated team, and quickly weeding out those who couldn’t work in a multinational environment was one of his great accomplishments.

Morgan, Barker, and the senior officers worked six and half days a week, with Morgan sometimes sleeping next to his desk. As one might expect under the circumstances, there was no “routine” day for them. As Barker described it, they “free lanced.” They met each morning to share information. Barker might go to one of the British ministries or to ETOUSA, and Morgan might head for a meeting at the War Office or at COHQ. Both were well known at many of the ministries by this time, with Barker on a first-name basis with many British civilian and military officials. The schedule for one week of Morgan’s meetings in June shows him visiting HMS Vectis and Force J at Cowes for an inspection of a new landing craft, the LCI(S), and then meeting Admiral Little in Portsmouth; a visit to Gen. Ira Eaker, Eighth U.S. Air Force; meeting Lt. Gen. W. D. Morgan of General Headquarters Home Forces to discuss the relationship between COSSAC and Home Forces; meeting with Gen. Sir Ronald Adam, adjutant general, who told Morgan that it had been proposed to transfer four U.S. and three British divisions from the Mediterranean back to England for OVERLORD, adding veteran units for the assault; an interview with Sir Percy James Gregg, the secretary of state for war, to discuss civil affairs; a visit to the Civil Affairs School in Putney; an interview with the head of the French department of the Foreign Office; and a visit to Fighter Command headquarters to hear General Montgomery and Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst speak about air-ground cooperation in North Africa.²⁹ Some weeks were busier.

They also spent a great deal of time working with the planners “on the next lower level, giving them our ideas, checking on what they were doing.”³⁰ They worked late into the night, either working on a specific problem, on sets of figures produced by the planners, or “just having a bull session on how things seemed to be going—trying to size up the situation.”³¹

Out of many of those late-night conversations would come questions about the feasibility of a project or issue. Morgan and Barker would gather the people concerned and get their views. Then Morgan or one of the planners would draft a paper on the subject, which would be circulated for comments to the appropriate sections. As Barker said, “It was quite informal.” Even though Morgan and Barker were both experienced staff officers, they were still trying to find the most effective ways of making the machine work—which, they discovered, came from consultation, mutual respect, and a shared sense of purpose.

There was barely enough time to accomplish their three assignments: the feint attack across the Channel, the plan to cope with German collapse, and the cross-Channel assault. The reentry into the Continent in either guise was going to occur sometime in the first six months of 1944. The plans for both those operations were subject to evaluation and approval in slightly less than three months. In less than five months COSSAC also had to plan, organize, and execute the feint toward the Pas-de-Calais. The operation needed to be large enough so the Germans would feel compelled to respond and the German air force could be engaged and damaged, notwithstanding the fact that there were now fewer amphibious resources based in England than there were for the Dieppe Raid.

The feint was named Operation STARKY, which was part of a larger deception effort called COCKADE. The COS hoped that COCKADE would hold the German forces in northern France in place, preventing the reinforcement of the troops that would be facing the Allied invasion of Italy. The quick reentry across the Channel with whatever forces were on hand in case of German collapse was code-named RANKIN. The outline plan for the reconquest of Europe was initially called Operation RUDGE, but from 5 June 1943, when the report from the Washington conference (TRIDENT) reached COSSAC, they knew it as OVERLORD.

Morgan decided to take an approach that was the opposite of what had been attempted before. Earlier plans started by trying to estimate what it would take to conduct a successful landing against opposition, with SKYSCRAPER being the clearest and most detailed example of that method. After coming up with a plan, the planners would then be told resources on that scale were not available and their estimates of German opposition were off the mark. Consequently, the plan would be shelved. Morgan took the other approach: he demanded to know a specific force level up front as well as the intended date of its use. He then considered whether the assigned mission could be accomplished with that force and how it could best be employed. This way COSSAC arrived at a practical plan.

In addition to all this, the “shop” had to be established. All the daily details of a functional office needed to be organized. This led to at least one relatively lighthearted adventure amid the pressure to produce the plans that could change the course of the war in Europe. Space was at a premium in London. The COSSAC team was scattered in billets all over the city. The normal work-week was five and half days—more for Morgan and Barker. Additionally, the British and Americans had different work habits. The Americans preferred a workday that started at 9 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. The British would start at 10 a.m. and quit at 6 p.m. Rather than dictate a start and end time, Morgan allowed the Americans to keep to their schedule and the British to theirs.

For Morgan it was not about “control”; it was about motivating a remarkably diverse group to work together to produce a workable, “sellable” plan against the odds. One thing that would greatly help this process and that was clearly needed was a secure place for COSSAC personnel to relax and associate in their off-duty moments. Perhaps inspired by the successful mess that COHQ was running, Morgan decided he would create an eating-and-drinking establishment within Norfolk House.

Having found the funds to make the necessary changes to the top floor of Norfolk House (being joint and combined had the advantage of being able to call on almost every U.S. and British command for funding), Morgan then set about looking for the kitchen and dining equipment necessary for the task. “A high official of the Office of Works [and Buildings], a department not usually notable for its charitable outlook[,] … was apprised of our proposal. ‘Your proposal,’ said he, ‘is the most outrageous I have ever heard and appears … to involve total disregard of all our most cherished regulations. So, let’s do it. Incidentally, somebody will have to pay for it one day … with any luck it won’t be you or me.’ ”³² Not only were refrigerators, stoves, tables, chairs and the other requirements of an eating establishment procured but also a complete cocktail bar previously housed at Selfridge’s Department Store.

Morgan’s luck held in terms of catering staff as well. There was an official of one of the many newly created government agencies who lived with his wife in a small flat in Norfolk House. Her great passion was catering, and she had friends who shared her passion. There were members of the COSSAC staff whose civilian professions had given them the necessary knowledge to draw up contracts covering this sort of activity, “even when the contravention of countless government regulations was involved.”³³ Consequently, the kitchen was fully staffed almost at once.

While the difference in work hours did much to prevent overcrowding at mealtimes, the difference in ration sizes and in food preferences created challenges. “Luckily the management of our club seemed to be effectively in touch with unauthorized sources of supply. We took scrupulous care not to investigate this.”³⁴ Thus the COSSAC Club was born, contributing greatly to the morale of everyone in the organization.³⁵ While waiting on the answers to the questions regarding the timing of the assault and size of force for OVERLORD, the staff began work on the September feint. This introduced them into the world of deception planning, and while the particular operation that was mounted achieved little by itself, it helped lay the foundation for later successes.

STARKY was the one element of COCKADE that required substantial resources. The other two schemes were notional, using agents and wireless traffic but not requiring assets such as real units or ships. One (TINDALL) was pointed in the direction of Norway from bases in Scotland with British forces, and the other (WADHAM) was supposed to suggest a threat to Brittany and the port of Brest by U.S. forces.

COCKCADE was an attempt at deception and as such required Morgan to work with Col. John Bevan, head of the London Controlling Section, which coordinated all Allied deception efforts in Europe. Bevan and Morgan established a deception planning group within COSSAC with Maj. Roger Hesketh serving as link between COSSAC and the London Controlling Section. Hesketh, an Oxford-educated barrister and amateur architect, served in intelligence throughout the war and wrote an excellent postwar account of the FORTITUDE deception campaign that remained classified until the 1980s and was not published until 1999.³⁶

Deceiving the enemy is a bit of a black art, and Morgan needed to learn at least some of it for STARKY. As he discovered, the goal is not to make your enemy think something: it is to make your enemy do something specific that will help your plans. The more one understands the enemy’s worldview, beliefs, preconceptions, and strategic concerns, the more likely it is that the actions you persuade the enemy to take will be desirable ones. The enemy may or may not “actually believe in the false state of affairs that you want to project. It is enough if you can make him so concerned [about the possibility] that he feels that he must provide for it.”³⁷

The deceiver also has to choose which channels of information that lead to the enemy’s decision makers he or she is going to use. They must be channels that the enemy has established and trusts, that can be manipulated by the deceiver and can be monitored to measure success. As we will see, STARKY did not contribute to the Germans’ belief in an immediate Allied attack across the Channel, nor did it fully use the best communications channels for selling the story to the Germans.

Morgan’s outline plan for STARKY was finished within a week or so of his formal appointment with help from Bevan and the London Controlling Section. It was submitted to the COS on 3 June and approved on 23 June.

This was the first, but not last, instance of Morgan encountering the fundamental problem of his assignment. He was the chief of staff to a supreme commander who did not exist and for operations whose plans were not yet approved. As such, he had authority to plan; his command encompassed Norfolk House. He could not issue orders to combat units or operational commands—often commanded by officers senior to him. Additionally, the British Army at the time did not generally recognize the use of “by direction” authority in the same way as did the U.S. Army. In the U.S. military, a commander could delegate certain responsibilities to subordinate officers—the issuing of routine orders, for example. Additionally, the commander’s chief of staff could, on many occasions, act in the name of the commander, serve as an ambassador or envoy to other senior commanders or political decision makers, and issue orders in the commander’s absence. This is “by direction” authority, as the orders are signed by the subordinate with the notation “by direction.” In 1943 the British Army had no equivalent process; commanders issued orders, and staff officers did not.

Morgan could cajole, request, suggest, and plead, but he couldn’t order. Neither Bomber Command nor the Eighth Air Force diverted squadrons from their missions over Germany for STARKY—although some training missions were flown over France. The Royal Navy declined to provide two old battleships for shore bombardment purposes—their response to Morgan’s request was described as an “explosion that shattered the cloistral calm of the Chiefs of Staff committee room.”³⁸ Courtesy of Combined Operations, there were eight small commando raids carried out on the Channel coast in July and August, out of fourteen planned, that were intended to suggest that information of the sort needed just before an invasion was being sought.³⁹

“D-day” for STARKY included a major British Army exercise, HARLEQUIN, centering on an embarkation rehearsal and using troops from the British XII Corps and Canadian I Corps, a total of four divisions.⁴⁰ Morgan ordered that the troops be told that they were participating in an exercise, not the invasion. This drew strong protests from those responsible for propaganda directed at the Germans. They argued that telling troops the truth undermined efforts to persuade the Germans that an invasion might be imminent. Morgan “stood firm by his policy of telling the truth to the troops.”⁴¹

More than eighty squadrons of Fighter Command and Eighth Air Force fighters were assembled for the anticipated air battle. “The civilian economy of southeastern England was disrupted by pulling together the genuine light shipping needed,” real landing craft being in short supply. The necessary security measures restricting the movement of civilians and shifting troop locations were put in place for parts of the South of England starting in August.⁴²

Wednesday, 8 September 1943, was fine and fair. The troops for the operation gathered in their assembly points and were marched to the embarkation sites, where they were promptly turned around and marched back, as there were not enough assault ships or craft available for the trip across the Channel. The fifty-ship convoy that had been collected, commanded by Hughes-Hallett, formed up and headed toward Boulogne, mine sweepers in front. Squadrons of fighter aircraft roared overhead looking for the enemy. At the appropriate moment everyone turned around and headed back to England. It all worked perfectly. In short, everyone did their job … except the Germans, who were nowhere to be found and who apparently barely noticed the effort. What the Germans had noticed was what Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s staff called “somewhat too obvious preparations for attacking the Channel front, which are at the same time conspicuously slow in reaching completion.”⁴³ The fact that the little convoy was sailing at the same time as a series of landings in Italy were occurring, culminating with the amphibious assault at Salerno the next day, meant the Germans were paying much more attention to the Mediterranean.

If the goals of the operation were to create an air battle over the Channel and to hold German divisions in northern France, it must be ranked a failure. The other two components of COCKADE (TINDALL and WADHAM) achieved even less. It seems fair to conclude that the Germans had seen enough of these demonstrations to not be deceived by another convoy sailing in broad daylight in the general direction of the French coast without any of the preliminary “softening-up” attacks by air and naval forces. Additionally, as Hesketh pointed out, on 6 June 1944 the German air force was not committed to the battle until after the first landing had occurred.⁴⁴

Rundstedt, the German commander in chief in the West, expressed concern about the preparations going on in England in general and viewed STARKY as a very real rehearsal for invasion. However, the German High Command recognized that “the Schwerpunkt [main effort or primary focus] of the enemy attack on the mainland of Europe lies in the Mediterranean and in all probability will remain there.”⁴⁵ It pulled out ten of Rundstedt’s divisions between May and October. It wasn’t until 3 November that the highest levels of German command changed their mind with the issuing of Fuehrer Directive 51, which attempted to shift the emphasis for defense to the Western Front.

Furthermore, using the Pas-de-Calais as the target for a deception effort at the same time it was being presented as the intended site of the invasion was problematic. As Hesketh points out, “To conduct and publicise a large-scale exercise against an objective that one really intended to attack during the following year would hardly suggest a convincing grasp of the principle of surprise.”⁴⁶ There were, however, many benefits and lessons that accrued to operations in 1944, some of which did not directly affect COSSAC, as a result of STARKY.

The first was Barker’s introduction to Morgan of the offices and work of Sir Samuel Findlater Stewart, chair of the Home Defence Executive, located in the attic of Norfolk House and hitherto unknown to COSSAC.⁴⁷ Born in Largs, Scotland, he had joined the India Office in 1903 and spent the majority of his career there. He had been the permanent undersecretary of state for India from 1930 to 1940. In 1939 he was transferred on a temporary basis to become the director general for the Ministry of Information and in 1940 left the India Office to be the chair of the Home Defence Executive. It was in this capacity that he “became involved in the work of Britain’s intelligence agencies. In 1941, he was invited to join the Twenty (or XX) Committee, supervising British wartime deception policy.”⁴⁸

Stewart also chaired a committee under the COS, called the BOLERO Combined Committee, on which served representatives of ETOUSA, including Barker; Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces; Minister of War Transport; Minister of Home Security; and Combined Operations, among others. Subcommittees had representation from the Ministry of Production, Ministry of Supply, the Railway Executive Committee, the War Office Director of Movements, and other agencies.⁴⁹

Stewart had an unrivaled understanding of how Whitehall worked and was “apparently intimately acquainted with every individual in British Government employ and, with the aid of an absurdly small staff, able to adjust any matter needing coordination of any kind, however vast and complicated.”⁵⁰ Sir Findlater provided immeasurable support to OVERLORD throughout 1943 and 1944, notably by chairing an ad hoc committee on the security arrangements for the invasion.⁵¹

For the actual invasion, under Stewart’s direction, a secure area was created around the coast from Hull in the east to Penzance, plus the areas of Milford Haven in Wales and Portishead in the Severn estuary, near Bristol, as well as the estuaries of the Forth, Tay, and Clyde Rivers. This resulted in some 600,000 people being prevented from visiting the coast each month. In some places, this ban was kept in effect through August 1944.⁵²

In July of 1944 Stewart became responsible for deception operations against the Germans relating to the threat of the V-1, creating the impression that the bombs were overshooting their targets. He also chaired a committee that attempted to resolve disputes between the Secret Intelligence Service and Special Operations Executive. In 1945 he was asked to examine and make recommendations regarding the postwar assignments and structure of the Security Service.⁵³

Another lesson was that the value of the British Double-Cross System of agents run by the Twenty Committee was underscored. In particular, agent Tricycle was able to send a great deal of information about troop movements and other details gleaned from his notional network of agents in Britain during the STARKY period, elevating his status with his German handlers and relieving them of some anxiety about his qualities as an agent. Agent Garbo was also incredibly busy, sending reports from his fictitious agents and burnishing his reputation with German intelligence. Other Double-Cross agents were put into play as well, all helping build up the picture that London Controlling Station wanted Berlin to see. The creation of two fictitious armies in Britain for Double-Cross agents to discover and report on as part of the operation also paid dividends in 1944 as part of the FORTITUDE deception campaign, which was largely dependent on controlled agents’ reports.

An additional benefit to the Twenty Committee was the realization that extensive use of double agents for deception required a procedure that would ensure there was a standard method of handling the traffic that was produced. Each “story” that was created was broken down into a set of “serials.” Each “serial” then had an alternate story for the Germans along with a date on which it was to be provided to the enemy along with the real and notional evidence that would support the story. The evidence would then be “assigned” to the notional subagents that the Double-Cross agent was running, depending on their profile and location. This was used with particular success in the handling of agent Garbo.⁵⁴

Morgan had specifically identified the attainment of air supremacy as a prerequisite for the invasion. STARKY showed that feints and demonstrations in the Channel were not going to lure German day fighters into battle, and the British stopped trying. As a consequence, in COSSAC’s outline plan, emphasis was placed on the Combined Bomber Offensive’s potential to engage and destroy German fighters in large numbers. The task fell largely to the Eighth Air Force, whose daylight raids certainly attracted fighters. It also became necessary to solve the problem of long-range fighter escort for the bombers (which came from British-suggested modifications to the P-51 Mustang and adding increasingly larger drop tanks to Allied fighters). By the spring of 1944 the Allies controlled the skies over northwest Europe.

COSSAC also learned a valuable lesson in press relations. They had failed to properly inform reporters, and, consequently, a range of stories about the operation were written. Morgan noted after the fact that “we had to content ourselves with a very lame communique to the effect that an enjoyable time had been had by all and many useful lessons had been learnt.”⁵⁵ COSSAC and later SHAEF learned how to organize positive relations with the press, get their story out, and gain the trust of the reporters.

The second part of this press relations lesson was that whenever cover stories were put out in London or Washington, a sensitive awareness of the emotions, morale, and planned actions of the various resistance groups in occupied countries had to be maintained. Later, when COSSAC was able to communicate to the partisan groups, it was made clear to them that accurate information would only come from one source, and it wouldn’t be the daily newspapers.

The most important lesson from STARKY was the realization that the Allies needed to reconsider how best to deceive the Germans about Allied intentions and what channels of communication to manipulate. Bevan, Morgan, and the planners realized that they had to find a solution to the problem of “how do we work out a deception plan using the idea of a cross-Channel assault on one part of the French coast when our actual plan is—a cross-Channel assault against another part of the French coast?” They abandoned the concept of raids and demonstrations designed to distract and confuse the defenders in favor of the expanded use of the Double-Cross network of double agents to exaggerate the size of the assault, positioning forces so as to appear to threaten as many targets as possible, using visual misdirection (as opposed to camouflage), phantom formations and other measures, such as dummy radio traffic, designed to “induce the enemy to make faulty strategic dispositions in relation to operations by the United Nations against Germany.”⁵⁶ Their deception planning also included a timing component, trying to create an environment where the Germans would be caught off guard by the assault.

As we’ll see in chapter 11, COSSAC continued to work on the invasion’s deception plan, particularly from the period of September 1943 onward. That plan ultimately became the famously titled BODYGUARD (which included FORTITUDE North and FORTITUDE South), approved on 23 January 1944. Unlike STARKY, BODYGUARD was, in the words of British historian Sir Michael Howard, “perhaps the most complex and successful deception operation in the entire history of war.”⁵⁷