When General George C. Marshall visited London in April 1942, the new chief of the British Combined Operations Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced him to a “very odd-looking individual … [who] talks well and may have an important contribution to make.”
The man in question was Geoffrey N. Pyke, a bearded, unkempt maverick and former journalist, philosopher, and inventor who had joined Mountbatten’s coterie of civilian strategists. Just weeks before Marshall’s visit, Pyke had conceived a plan called Project Plough, which envisioned specially trained troops on motorized, armed sleds attacking vital hydroelectric plants in Nazi-occupied Norway, traversing mountain passes from Italy into Germany, and sabotaging enemy targets in Romania. Mountbatten viewed it as “probably the most bold and imaginative scheme of this war.”
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