Host of Deception

One of the leitmotifs of the Second World War is deception: double agents, fake radio transmissions, a ghost army poised to go nowhere, inflatable tanks meant to mislead Axis strategists, a dead body handcuffed to phony plans detailing phantom troop movements to Greece and Sardinia. These are the elements of a parade of books and films that help keep the war from fading into a distant, murky past — even all these years later.

But one act of subterfuge is still virtually ignored by researchers, disregarded by ardent screenwriters, and consigned, if acknowledged at all, to footnotes rather than illuminated by footlights. The emergence of Operation Sparrow into general if not exactly mass-market attention is the result of an unlikely discovery at the archives of Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick, and the dedication of a philosophy professor at the University of New Brunswick.

Jason Bell encountered the Sparrows of this dossier of deception...