Editorial
Front Page - Friday, August 7, 2009
I Swear...
Vic Fleming
On May 3, 1944, the name of an American state, UTAH, appeared as an entry in the crossword puzzle published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph. This word’s seemingly innocent appearance would have repercussions that would reverberate through the years.
Val Gilbert, the Daily Telegraph crossword editor retold the story in a May 3, 2004, article.
In May 1944, Utah was the codename for the D-Day beach assigned to the Fourth U.S. Assault Division. A coincidence?
In the months leading up to May, JUNO, GOLD and SWORD (all code names for beaches assigned to the British) had appeared in the paper’s puzzles. But, he says, those were common crossword entries at that time.
UTAH? In England, not so common an entry.
Then, on May 22, 1944, came the clue “Red Indian on the Missouri.”
The answer? An American city, OMAHA, code name for the D-Day beach to be taken by the First U.S. Assault Division.
On May 27, OVERLORD, code name for the entire D-Day operation, appeared.
On May 30, it was MULBERRY, code name for floating harbors used in the landings.
On June 1, NEPTUNE, code word for the naval assault phase of the plan.
“With the landings five days away, alarm bells rang at MI5 [British Military Intelligence],” no stranger to Telegraph crosswords.
Two years earlier, on August 17, 1942, DIEPPE (a seaside resort on the English Channel) was in the puzzle. Thus, it appeared in the solution printed August 18. On August 19, a disastrous military raid took place on Dieppe.
The Canadian Army being the big loser in that raid, a Canadian intelligence officer was called on to investigate. He found it odd that DIEPPE was published in a puzzle grid the day before the raid.
He later commented, “We noticed the crossword contained …DIEPPE and there was an immediate and exhaustive inquiry…. But in the end it was concluded that it was just a remarkable coincidence…”
Well, that was one thing. But Juno, Gold, Sword, Utah, Omaha, Overlord, Mulberry and NEPTUNE—all D-Day code words—cropping up in 1944 was another thing altogether.
Two M.I. officers called at the home of Leonard Dawe, headmaster of Strand School, who moonlighted as the crossword guru for the Telegraph. He was the constructor of all the puzzles in question.
In 1958, when the BBC interviewed Dawe on this matter, he said, “They turned me inside out.” After leaving his home at Leatherhead, the investigators “went to [the home of] my senior colleague Melville Jones (the paper’s other crossword compiler) ... and put him through the works. But they eventually decided not to shoot us.”
“An explanation of how the code words came to appear in the paper emerged only in 1984,” wrote Gilbert, when “Ronald French, a property manager in Wolverhampton, came forward with further information.” French said that, as a 14-year-old student of Dawe’s in 1944, he had been responsible for the military code words finding their way into Dawe’s puzzles.
French said that Dawe occasionally invited pupils into his study and, as “a mental discipline,” he had them fill in the blank crossword grids. Dawe would later write clues for their words and submit the finished product as his puzzle of the day.
French said that during the weeks before D-Day, he easily learned all these code words from Canadian and American soldiers, who were camped close by the school, awaiting the invasion. Tune in next week for the rest of the story.
© 2009 Vic Fleming
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