My part in Dummy Day scam that fooled the Nazis

LAST week saw the launch of the film Operation Mincemeat (inset), the cunning plan in 1943 in which the British duped the Nazi High Command into thinking that when the Allies invaded southern Europe it would be via Greece rather than Sicily.

Hitler ordered his generals to mass their forces in Greece – entirely the wrong place.

But a year later, in the spring of 1944, there was an even bigger scam – which also worked brilliantly but has never been described in book or film to my knowledge. It involved the whole of east Kent where I was living, aged five, with my mum and dad.

The point was that we had to invade France… but where? The short route across the Channel between Dover and Calais or somewhere else?

Hitler had to be persuaded it would be the short crossing of the Pas de Calais. In fact, our landing forces were being hidden around Portsmouth.

The real crossing was intended into Normandy.

So all east Kent was crammed with troops, tanks, trucks, guns who were not going – but thought they were. Convinced they were never coming back, soldiers drank in, and wrecked, every pub within miles of Ashford where we lived.

There were American tanks on Dad’s beloved lawns and their crews hoisted me into the turrets and made a fuss of me while Mum brought them tea and home-made buns from our precious rations.

What really happened, on June 6, has been brilliantly filmed in The Longest Day and elsewhere.

Then the troops were gone, Kent was empty and we knew it had all been a trick. Only fields of parked tanks remained – and they were made of plywood for the Luftwaffe to photograph. Fraught times.