Meinertzhagen’s Haversack or L’Comedie of Deception

We had a request, from one of our loyal readers, to write a blog post about Meinertzhagen’s Haversack. Now, we must admit, we had no idea what that even meant. But after doing a bit of research, found that it was a pretty fascinating story – both for the person involved (Richard Meintertzhagen) and for the deception it created. Which brings us to this week’s blog post, a journey through the wacky and wonderfully bizarre world of historical deceptions. Tales of cunning trickery, audacious lies, mind-boggling historical hoodwinks, and the uncanny ability of some individuals to bamboozle entire generations.

We kick this off with enigmatic story of Meinertzhagen’s Haversack.

Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) was a British intelligence officer who was also one of Ian Fleming’s models for James Bond. In October 1917, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, he arranged for a courier to “lose” a haversack containing secret British battle plans in the Sinai Desert so they could be captured by the Ottoman Army. In reality, the documents in the haversack were fake, however this led to a British victory in the Battle of Beersheba and Gaza. (A haversack, by the way, is a small cloth bag on a strap worn over the shoulder and, originally referred to a bag of oats carried as horse fodder).

As impressive as this ruse was, it seems the deception was a bit deeper than imagined. Because it turns out that Meinertzhagen neither planned nor executed it. In his book The Meinertzhagen Mystery, author Brian Garfield proved that the idea was actually that of a Lieutenant Colonel J.D. Belgrave, and the rider who dropped the haversack was one Arthur Neate. Because Neate was an active military intelligence officer when a Times article was printed in 1927 describing the Haversack Ruse and Meinertzhagen's (fraudulent) role in it, he could not publicly refute the false claims without violating security protocol, though he did finally correct the record in 1956. The true author of the ruse, Lt Col Belgrave, had never contradicted Meinertzhagen's account because he was killed in action on June 13th, 1918.

So, Meinertzhagen’s deception within a deception led us to look back at some other audacious deceptions throughout history. Some humorous, some not so much. Some you’ve probably heard of before, some maybe not. And where better to start with than the BBC?!

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest: On April 1st, 1957, the BBC aired a three-minute hoax report on their current affairs program Panorama about a fictional Swiss spaghetti harvest, showing farmers harvesting spaghetti from “spaghetti trees”.

To quote from the broadcast – “Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I am sure, will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair”. The year’s bumper crop was credited in large part to the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil”. The segment fooled many viewers who called in asking how they could grow their own spaghetti trees.

Piltdown Man:

This paleoanthropological hoax truly deserves its place on the list of biggest deceptions in the whole of human history. The fossilized bones of a supposedly unknown early species of man were revealed as having been found in a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England in 1912 by archaeologist Charles Dawson - and were named as Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man"). For the next 40 years it was believed that this was an early species of man who had yet to be discovered. However, in 1953, it emerged that Piltdown Man was actually a huge fraud - he was in fact a fully-developed, modern human, believed to have died 600 years previously, whose lower jawbone had been replaced with that of an orangutan. It’s unclear who actually made the forgery. Dawson himself remains high up the list of suspects, although it appears a young museum volunteer Martin Hinton - whose box contained fossils stained in exactly the same way as the Piltdown Man - may have been the most likely.

The Central Park Zoo Escape:

In the 1870's the New-York Herald was one of the most widely read and influential papers in the world. It had recently won international acclaim when it financed Henry Stanley's successful quest to find Dr. David Livingstone in the interior of Africa. But it followed up this success with a stunt that was almost as widely denounced. On November 9, 1874, the Herald published a front-page article claiming that the animals had escaped from their cages in the Central Park Zoo and were rampaging through the city. A lion had been seen inside a church. A rhinoceros had fallen into a sewer. The police and national guard were heroically battling the beasts, but already forty-nine people were dead and two hundred injured. Panicked citizens took to the streets searching for the non-existent animals, causing chaos and confusion, even though the end of the article said that everything in it was not true. The authors later said they wanted to make people aware of weak safety precautions at the zoo and were surprised at the strong reaction to their story. You can read the full text of the Herald’s zoo-escape article here.

Pharaoh Ramesses’ Heroic “Victory”:

At the great temple in Abu Simbel in Egypt there remains, carved into the walls, a reminder of one of the greatest military lies ever told. Ramesses the Great - often regarded as the most powerful pharaoh to have ruled the ancient Egyptian Empire - embarrassingly led his men into a trap at the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittite Empire in 1274 BC. Forced to sign the first-ever non-aggression treaty in history instead of having his entire army wiped out, Ramesses saw his imperial expansion to the north halted in one fell swoop. However, the pharaoh - who his subjects saw as a god - lied to his populous and painted the embarrassing loss at Kadesh as a brilliant victory for the Egyptian Empire. So, naturally, Ramesses II - while building the great temple - had his imagined outcome of the battle depicted in indelible sunken relief around the inner walls. Ramesses is shown to be leading his army into battle himself in the stone carvings in Abu Simbel - as well as in further depictions at Luxor and Abydos - and scoring a brilliant victory. This lie remains, etched in stone, some 3,300 years after the event.

The Trojan Horse:

Possibly the most famous case of deception in human history - the legend of the Trojan Horse is an actual event which almost certainly occurred (in some capacity at least) to allow the Greeks to enter the city of Troy and end the siege of the city. In Homer's book "Odyssey", the tale of the Trojan Horse is told. In 1184 BC the Greeks, anxious to end the 10-year long Trojan War, pretended to sail away on their ships from Troy. However, a select force of Greek soldiers stayed behind, hidden inside a huge hollow wooden horse. In celebration at their "victory", the Trojans pulled the horse into the city, unaware of the occupants inside. As the city of Troy slept that night, the covert Greek soldiers jumped from the horse, opened the gates to the city and allowed the returning army to flood in and destroy the inhabitants - finally ending the war.

In Ponzi We Trust:

Italian Charles Ponzi was such a successful con-artist in the 1920s that he has even had a fraud scheme named after him. "The Ponzi Scheme" derives from his business dealings in North America, where he would promise clients a 50% profit within 45 days and 100% within 90 days - by pretending he was buying discounted postal-reply coupons in foreign nations and then redeeming them at face value in the US. In actual fact, Ponzi was simply paying earlier investors with the money given to him by his new clients. He managed to carry on the scheme for more than a year before the whole thing collapsed, forcing his clients to lose approximately $20million – over $300 million in today’s equivalency. Ponzi spent three-and-a-half years in a federal prison before serving seven years locked up at state level in Massachusetts. He was eventually deported to Italy in 1934.

The Great Moon Hoax:

In 1835 the New York Sun Newspaper published a series of six articles about the supposed discovery of life and a civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of that time, and a fictitious associate. The articles described animals on the moon including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers, and bat like winged humanoids (“Vespertilio-homo”) who built temples. The discoveries were supposedly made with “an immense telescope of an entirely new principle” (James Webb Telescope, eat your heart out!). The authors ended the six-part series by announcing that observations had been terminated due to the destruction of the telescope, by means of the sun causing the lens to act as a “burning glass”, setting the observatory on fire. According to legend, The Sun's circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained permanently greater than before, thereby establishing The Sun as a successful paper.

The Cottingley Fairies:

This is the case of a photographic hoax that even Sherlock Holmes would struggle to crack. Especially since it managed to dupe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. In 1917, a series of five photographs were taken by two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, aged 16 and 9, in Cottingley, England. Published in 1919, the pictures purportedly showed the girls playing with dancing fairies. A leader in the Theosophical Society, whose central belief is that humanity is undergoing a cycle of evolution towards increasing perfection, stated, “the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see fairies, which others had done, but had actually for the first time ever been able to materialize them at a density sufficient for their images to be recorded on a photographic plate, meant that it was possible that the next cycle of evolution was underway”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist, saw the pictures and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. In 1983, the cousins admitted that the photographs had been faked, using cardboard figures and supporting them with hairpins.

The Fake Martian Invasion:

On Halloween Eve, 1938, many people across the United States thought that Martians had landed in New Jersey and were in the process of destroying the east coast of the United States. In one of the most famous, or infamous, radio broadcasts of all time, Orson Welles presented an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds on his program The Mercury Theatre on the Air. Performed live over the CBS Radio Network, the episode is famous for inciting mass panic, though the extent of the panic is disputed. The first half of the program was presented in a “breaking news” style of storytelling, ending with a lone ham radio operator asking, “Is there anyone on the air? Isn’t there….anyone?” with no response. While the second half shifted to a conventional radio drama format narrated by a survivor of the carnage, played by Welles. The broadcast ends with Welles breaking the fourth wall, coming out of character to say that the show had been comparable to “dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo’!”

The following morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on front pages of newspapers from coast-to-coast along with headlines about the mass panic his broadcast had allegedly inspired. “If I’d planned to wreck my career,” he told friends at the time, “I couldn’t have gone about it better.” Of course, the exact opposite was true, and Welles is stilled hailed to this day as one of the most innovative, creative geniuses of 20th century film.

From phony news from Pharoah’s to fraudulent photos of fairies, from haversacks filled with fake plans to wooden horses filled with real live soldiers, how are we to make sense of all this, or anything for that matter? It’s astounding how easily we can suspend our disbelief when confronted with the extraordinary.

These are cautionary tales for those who blindly trust what their eyes behold and reminders that truth is often a delicate concept, easily manipulated and distorted by those seeking power, wealth, or simply a grand spectacle. While some historical deceptions leave us in awe of the sheer audacity displayed by their perpetrators, they also shed light on the fallibility of our collective understanding and the importance of critical thinking. By unraveling these complex webs of deceit, we not only uncover hidden truths, but also gain a deeper appreciation for the intricate tapestry that is the human experience.

It is through questioning, investigating, and unmasking that we can better discern fact from fiction, ultimately deepening our comprehension of the world around us. These tales of trickery serve to remind us to remain ever vigilant in the face of deception in our modern era. By learning from the audacious lies of the past, we can arm ourselves with the tools needed to navigate the treacherous landscape of information and, in turn, safeguard the integrity of historical knowledge for generations to come.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have ideas for future blog posts, let us know that as well.

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