During World War II the daily newspapers were at their
most popular …even though they consisted of only a few
pages. People throughout Britain could find out what was
happening in the parts of the world where our troops
were engaged in the fight against Hitler and the Nazis
.
At the beginning of
the war, the news was mainly bad with the German
blitzkrieg advances throughout Europe, but as the years
rolled on, the news slowly became better …and in October
1942 British morale was greatly bolstered by General
Montgomery’s famous success at El Alamein in North
Africa.
But it wasn’t just
the news that was eagerly sought in the papers; there
were other matters of interest. Nearly all newspapers
had crossword puzzles in them and they were very popular
as they helped fill in the hours spent in the Air-Raid
Shelters, waiting for trains or just simply engaged in
that great British tradition of queuing.
One of the popular
‘Dailys’ of the time was the Daily Telegraph, and so too
was its crossword puzzle.
It was in January
1943 that the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and American President Franklin D Roosevelt met and
agreed that the future of the war must include an
invasion of northwest Europe or a ‘return to the
Continent’.
Planning
for the invasion started almost immediately, and after
extensive research it was decided that the sheltered
Normandy coastline with its wide sandy beaches presented
the best option for the surprise attack that was to be
the D-Day landings. The assault was code-named
Operation Overlord by Churchill himself.
The US General
Dwight D Eisenhower was made overall commander of
Operation Overlord in December 1943, with the
British hero General Bernard Law Montgomery assuming
control of ground troops. It was in early May 1944 that
Eisenhower decided that D-Day would fall on 5th
June 1944.
A huge security
blanket had been thrown over all aspects of the
operation, including the place and exact date of the
landings, in order to maximise the element of surprise
and minimise casualties. One US major-general was even
demoted and sent home for simply speculating at a
cocktail party on the date of the invasion.
But while some
members of MI5, Britain’s counter-espionage service,
were whiling away their spare moments in May 1944 by
doing the Telegraph Crossword, they noticed that vital
code-names that had been adopted to hide the mightiest
sea-borne assault of all time, appeared in the
crossword.
They noticed that
the answer to one clue, ‘One of the USA’, turned out to
be Utah, and another answer to a clue was
Omaha. These were the names, given by the Allies, to
the beaches in Normandy where the American Forces were
to land on D-Day.
Another answer that
appeared in that month’s crossword was Mulberry.
This was the name of the floating harbour that was to be
towed across the Channel to accommodate the supply ships
of the invasion force. Neptune another answer,
referred to the code-name for the naval support for the
operation.
Perhaps the most
suspicious was a clue about a ‘Big-Wig’, to which the
answer was Overlord. This was the code-name given
for the entire operation!
Alarm bells rang
throughout MI5 …was the crossword being used to tip-off
the Germans?
Two officers were
sent immediately to Leatherhead in Surrey, where a man
called Leonard Dawe lived. He was the crossword
compiler, a 54 year-old teacher.
Why, the officers
demanded to know, had he chosen theses five words within
his crossword solutions?
“Why not?” was
Dawe’s indignant reply. Was there a law against choosing
whatever words he liked?
MI5 eventually
became convinced of Dawe’s honesty and he managed to
convince them that he had no knowledge of the coming
D-Day invasion.
His crossword
solutions it appears were perhaps just another of life’s
astonishing coincidences!
