Every so often I start a column because there is something that has caught my interest, but it does not pan out to the full one thousand words demanded by the editor, a cruel taskmaster. This is not a column, this is a potpourri of columns that never were.
There was a movie, The Man Who Never Was, and with the recent release of government papers it has been updated into a fine book, Operation Mincemeat. The Allies were preparing to invade Sicily and Operation Mincemeat left the Germans wrong-footed. The body of a down and out was floated off neutral Spain and chained to the corpse’s wrist was a brief case containing invasion plans for Greece.