What's A Conundrum?

According to the dictionary, “a riddle, the answer to which involves a pun or play on words” – or simply, a puzzle, I love wordplay, and cryptic crosswords. So here’s a conundrum for you “What connects Disney, a Dwarf, and D-Day?” Answer – PLUTO – the Disney cartoon dog, the dwarf planet, and the Pipe Line Under The Ocean.
In August 1942, a disastrous raid was made on the French Port of Dieppe [under German occupation] It was a fiasco – 5000 Canadians were killed, wounded or captured, the Navy lost 33 landing craft, and the RAF lost 106 planes. After 6 hours, there was a hasty retreat. Lessons were learned, and by 1944, plans were underway for a second invasion – to be known as Operation Overlord, and taking place on D-Day. Churchill had said that all operation names had to be selected at random – without suggesting their character, or anything disparaging - “do not enable any widow or mother to say her son was killed at Operation Ballyhoo or Bunnyhug”
After Dieppe, the ‘boffins’ had been busy – they had developed two  “Mulberry Harbours” – in effect, portable floating harbours which could be assembled on the beach to facilitate rapid off-loading of troops and supplies. They had the PLUTO which carried essential fuel for tanks etc., and all manner of weird and wonderful vehicles known collectively as “The Funnies” – amphibious Sherman tanks, “The Bobbin Carpet Layer” which laid matting across soft surfaces to enable vehicles to travel over without getting bogged down, and the Churchill AVRE – a modified tank which fired 40lb mortars known as “flying dustbins”By June 30, over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores. Fighting by the brave troops of the allied forces on the western front, and Russian forces on the eastern front, led to the defeat of German Nazi forces. On May 7, 1945, German General Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional surrender. This invasion had helped bring about a swift end to the War. We had the longest, straightest runway in Europe here at the RAF base in Swanton Morley, and many planes flew out to support the troops.
Back to the conundrums and crosswords – bizarrely the pipes for PLUTO were wound on huge steel drums – called conundrums. Even more bizarre, during the month before D-Day, answers to the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzles included the words Gold and Sword – then Juno, Utah, Mulberry, Overlord and Neptune. The first two initially considered a coincidence, but 5 more and MI5 smelled a rat! The compiler [Leonard Dawe, Head of a boys’ school in Surrey] was arrested and interrogated. It transpired that the school was next to a US/Canadian camp. Dawe had asked his pupils to suggest words for his puzzles, and they’d innocently repeated words they’d heard the soldiers bandying about [security clearly very lax among the Yanks!] MI5 let Dawe off with a strong caution [he very nearly lost his job]

There are very few D-Day veterans left – 23 will be going to Normandy with the King for the commemoration this year, and a further 21 will be at the National Memorial Arboretum event. We will be lighting a beacon tonight in the village. Let us not take their sacrifice for granted.
[btw the "D" just stands for day - so it is Day-Day!]