A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

sages . Second , it involved meticulous analysis of the messages themselves , no

t only for the subtleties of linguistic translation but , in light of what was a

lready known of the sender and receiver , their branches of service , their pres

ent tactical situations and so on . Finally it involved the dissemination of thi

s `` Ultra '' secret information to specific commanders on a need-to-know basis 

, through the small number of liaison intelligence officers cleared for Ultra se

curity . In the early days of the war , with many ciphers still unbroken and man

y messages read only days later , largely for strategic value , these tasks abso

rbed the labors of only a few hundred people . But as the code-breaking process 

was perfected , and its machinery multiplied , so did Bletchley 's manpower need

s . By D-Day , some 6,000 clerks and 1,000 `` boffins '' had overflowed the esta

te 's dozens of prefabricated wooden huts and bombproof bunkers into auxiliary s

tations in nearby country houses and the London suburbs . Nearly one-fifth of th

e workers arrived in the final few months before the invasion , as the code-brea

kers geared up for the blizzard of messages anticipated as the destruction of Ge

rman land lines would force more and more Wehrmacht communiques onto the airwave

s , and as the code-breakers raced to read them in time to give them tactical va

lue . The speed was most needed to trace the moment-by-moment movement of German

 army units , particularly armored units , in the first hours and days of the in

vasion . Would Hitler sniff out what was really happening on the beaches of Norm

andy and move to crush it ? Or would he remain the psychological prisoner of the

 deception artists of the Allied cause ? The Allied deceptions of D-Day were bor

n from a wedding of desperation and guile and were incomparably British from the

 start . Many writers credit them to the country 's horrific losses in World War

 I and England 's subsequent desperate search for military measures other than t

he suicidal frontal assault . But Foot notes as well a rich tradition of decepti

on throughout British history , dating at least to William the Conqueror , who i

n 1066 had Viking allies stage a diversionary raid on Yorkshire so he could land

 in Sussex from Normandy almost unopposed . At the beginning of World War II , s

ays Hinsley , `` we simply had no alternative but deception . We were so weak we

 had either to outsmart the enemy or be defeated . '' Thus in the darkest days o

f 1940 , a tiny British force under Gen. Archibald Wavell literally inflated its

 strength with blow-up dummy tanks and artillery , and outwitted an enormous Ita

lian army in Libya , capturing 130,000 prisoners . It was nothing particularly n

ew for Wavell . He had once been part of a World War I operation in Palestine th

at captured Beersheba from the Turks by showering the tobacco-starved enemy from

 the air with opium-laced cigarettes and then walking to victory across their sl

eeping forms . Wavell 's Libyan success prompted a memo in which he argued convi

ncingly for a new concept of deception-a highly clandestine central clearinghous

e for all Allied deception plans , the London Controlling Section ( LCS ) , keye

d to orchestrating them into a single grand strategy . From that beginning , fue

led by the technical and analytical breakthroughs at Bletchley Park , grew `` Op

eration Bodyguard , '' the myriad deceptions that ultimately ensured the D-Day l

andings . Month by month , as U.S. and Canadian armies poured off ships in Brita

in for the long buildup to Operation Overlord , the LCS inflated Hitler 's pictu

re of the number that came ashore . For every dozen regiments that disembarked ,

 British-controlled Nazi agents would add one or two in their reports to Hitler 

. For every division of armor , Hitler would hear through diplomatic circles the

re were more . By May , Ultra intercepts showed German intelligence credited the

 Allies with having nearly double the 49 divisions they actually had in England 

. Most of the imaginary units , augmented by real units in other areas , were ev

entually united into the largest single deception of Operation Overlord , the 90

0,000-man First U.S. . Army Group ( FUSAG ) . Its purported leader was the one g

eneral who Bletchley intercepts showed Hitler feared more than any other : Georg

e S. Patton . Patton 's army , headquartered in Kent , just across from Calais ,

 was more than just a rumor . Its regimental names appeared in newspaper wedding

 and social announcements and even the occasional obituary . German wireless ope

rators picked up radio transmissions from its jeep and tank drivers . Radio disc

 jockeys dedicated big-band numbers to it from regimental girlfriends . Mythical

 divisions were described right down to their mythical shoulder patches . The wh

ole FUSAG , Hitler learned from a variety of sources , was destined to hit the b

eaches of France at the closest point to Germany 's vital industrial heartland ,

 the very spot Bletchley intercepts had shown Hitler betting on all along : the 

Pas de Calais . The timing was still uncertain , German troops were told by Berl

in . Maybe July . Any landing anywhere else before that would probably be just a

 feint . Several weeks before D-Day , Foot , an intelligence officer with the Br

itish Army 's Special Air Services Brigade , was ordered by his commanding offic

er to prepare a deception of his own . `` I was told the order had come down to 

parachute two groups of men into Normandy , '' he remembers . `` They would be a

rmed with light pistols and gramophones . '' The men two officers , two sergeant

s and six enlisted men in each group would all be volunteers . One group would b

e dropped between Le Havre and Rouen , the other behind Omaha Beach southeast of

 the village of Issigny-sur-Mer . They were part of the sound effects crew for `

` Operation Titanic . '' Titanic involved the dropping of thousands of dummy par

achutists in advance of the real airborne drops of D-Day . `` The dummies were a

bout three feet tall , but fully uniformed and fashioned quite to half-scale , '

' Foot says . `` In searchlights they looked exactly like real paratroopers . ''

 They were made of straw by professional toymakers ( `` there was a shortage of 

toys during the war because the toymakers were so occupied with deceptions '' ) 

and were designed to explode on impact . `` But in practice it had been discover

ed that they didn't always explode . Hence the need for more sound effects . '' 

Foot 's gramophonists were to be dropped in advance of the dummy paratroopers , 

so the doll landings would trigger the sounds of rifle fire , the rattle of mach

ine guns , the crump of mortar explosions , shouted orders and even a snatch of 

properly British profanity . The recorded battle was to last about 30 minutes . 

Then the sound effects men were to hide themselves until the invasion caught up 

with them . By most conventional measures , the airborne operations on D-Day wer

e a disaster . The weather was marginal for jumping and many planes lost their w

ay . Others were piloted by novices who panicked when they encountered flak and 

dropped their jumpers far off course . Many troops landed in flooded fields and 

drowned , and some landed in the English Channel . But with parachutes coming do

wn everywhere , some real , some dummy , the mobile German units called out to d

eal with the attack were hopelessly confused about which to pursue . Command cen

ters fielding numerous reports of landings were unable to deduce a pattern to th

e Allied attack . The chaos was furthered by the French underground , which , in

 accordance with longstanding LCS plans , began severing telephone cables , expl

oding junction boxes and dynamiting poles . Which in turn forced the confounded 

Germans onto the radio waves , where their frustration could be heard and savore

d in Bletchley Park . All the chasing around after parachutists distracted the G

ermans into thinking their quarry was inland . Few noticed that the previously i

nvasion-proof weather had suddenly improved . No one thought to look for what wa

s advancing on them from the sea . One enters a time warp on visiting Bletchley 

Park these days . The estate is owned jointly by the British government and Brit

ish Telecom , the once government-owned , now privatized telephone company , and

 for the past 50 years only a fraction of the buildings have been used , primari

ly as a place to train postal workers and air traffic controllers . The clock on

 the manor house has been stopped since anyone can remember . The bunkers and hu

ts that sifted Enigma and other ciphers wear the aura of timeless and banal util

ity that once cloaked the same sort of WWII buildings on the Washington Mall . T

o all intents and purposes the whole place appears frozen in 1945 . Three years 

ago , plans surfaced to level Bletchley Park to make room for housing and indust

ry . The plans prompted a small but fervent protest and the formation of a small

 but energetic historical trust that now holds regular open-house weekends here 

where visitors can view code-breaking machines , pace the empty , mildewed bunke

rs and learn something of the profound and long-secret history of the place .

 What 's wrong with this picture : A woman stands in front of a mirror , holding

 one arm over her head . Her fingertips press her bare breast in concentric circ

les . She looks for changes in her nipple , or on the breast itself . Pretty sta

ndard for breast self-examination , you say ? Not if you have arthritis and can'

t hold your arm over your head . Not if your muscle tone is poor . Not if your e

yes are dimming . Not if your fingers are less sensitive than they used to be . 

Not , in fact , if you are getting old . Breast cancer is vastly more common in 

women past menopause indeed , age is the single most powerful risk factor for br

east cancer , and the risk keeps rising as age increases . For example , a woman

 has a 1-in-10 chance of getting breast cancer by the age of 80 , but only a 1-i

n-2,426 chance of getting it by the age of 30 . Although lung cancer has exceede

d breast cancer as causing the largest number of cancer deaths in women , among 

older women breast cancer is still the No. 1 killer . Yet , says Joyce Guillory 

, most preventive information is aimed at younger women . For many older women w

hose health is beginning to fail , `` the standard breast-exam guidelines can be

 daunting , '' she says . Guillory , a nursing specialist in the psychosocial as

pects of cancer , is an assistant professor and director of the Cancer Preventio

n Awareness Project at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta . She did a surve

y in the Atlanta area of a group of 50 African-American women between the ages o

f 60 and 96 to determine what type of cancer-prevention techniques they use . Al

though white women have a higher rate of developing breast cancer , she noted , 

the mortality rate among African-American women is 19 percent higher . Guillory 

found only 18 percent of the black women in her study had regular mammograms , s

pecial X-rays used as a common screening technique to detect breast cancer . Not

 surprisingly , says Guillory , the women cited transportation , costs and fear 

of pain as barriers to getting mammograms . But more surprising to her was that 

80 percent of the women did not know the correct way to examine their own breast

s , a preventive measure that cancer experts have been advocating for more than 

a decade as one of the most effective means of discovering breast tumors . `` Th

ey were just sort of patting around , feeling for a lump , '' Guillory found . T

he standard breast self-examination ( BSE ) requires a woman to stand in front o

f a mirror and hold her arms over her head as she visually examines her breasts 

. Even examination lying down requires the arm to be raised . Palpation is done 

with the fingertips . So even learning the standard method of BSE didn't help ma

ny of these women because the effects of aging were an impediment . She found th

at 38 percent of the women had arthritis . `` And then , '' she noted , `` the o

lder we get , the more our joint range of motion diminishes as does the tactile 

sensation in our fingers . Shoulders , elbows and wrists get stiff . '' The wome

n assured Guillory that they would certainly examine their breasts if they were 

shown how they could do it efficiently . As a result , she devised mostly simple

 and common-sense modifications to the standard instructions and taught them to 

the survey group . Her six-step program and her survey results will appear this 

summer in the Journal of Women and Aging . Her program for older women includes 

these steps : If vision and dexterity are a problem , enlist a trusted friend or

 family member to help . If performing a self-exam alone , visually inspect the 

breasts using a magnifying mirror . Look for changes such as dimples , differenc

e in size between the two breasts , a lump , thickening roughness or a sore . Li

e down on the back , beginning the examination under the armpit . If fingertips 

are losing their sensitivity , use the palm of the hand . Palms are much more se

nsitive than fingertips , Guillory says . Letting the breast rest on one hand , 

stroke it with the palm of the other hand beginning at the chest wall and moving

 towards the nipple . Feel for changes in texture as well as lumps . Squeeze the

 nipple gently , looking for any discharge . Repeat the procedure on the other b

reast .

 The glory that is Rome , Barcelona and Seville is captured on three new volumes

 in the Museum City Video series released by V.I.E.W. . Video . The first three 

volumes in the series , which looks at great cities through the eyes of their ar

tists , architects and poets , focused on Florence , Venice and London . The Lon

don video was a finalist in the Special Interest Video Association Awards . Upco

ming releases include volumes on Vatican City , Jerusalem and Moscow . The video

s list for $ 19.98 each . Running time for the Rome cassette is 45 minutes . The

 other two run 40 minutes each . To order , call 1-800-843-9843 . `` Rome : The 

Eternal City '' is alive with views of its rooftop gardens , pink and ochre stuc

co glistening in the sun , and everlasting monuments and locations such as St. P

eter 's Basilica , the Coliseum , Trevi Fountain , Spanish Steps , Baths of Cara

calla , Sistine Chapel , Via Veneto , and Piazza Navona . There are people in Ro

me , too-people who sip espresso at sidewalk coffee bars , people who dine in ou

tdoor cafes scattered throughout the city , across the Seven Hills and along the

 banks of the Tiber River . The artwork in Rome is bountiful : jeweled mosaics ,

 glowing frescos , tapestries , vaulted ceilings and palatial rooms where master

works by Bernini , Michaelangelo and Raphael live on . `` Barcelona : Archive of

 Courtesy '' looks at a city that has been the vanguard for Spanish art and cult

ure for 2,000 years . Barcelona 's wonders range from the soaring spires of Anto

nio Gaudi 's Sagrada Familia to the winding streets of the Gothic Quarter and th

e modern works of Pablo Picasso , Joan Miro and Salvador Dali . The people in th

e region of Catalonia , between the waters of the Mediterranean and the slopes o

f the Pyrsenees , remain bound to their glorious past even in the art of futuris

tic Olympic City in Montjuic Park . `` Seville : Heart of Andalusia '' explores 

the city 's cathedral , the world 's largest Gothic building ; the Roman ruins o

f Italica ; the Moorish palace of Alcazar ; Santa Cruz and La Giralda , one-time

 center for the city 's Jews , who like the Romans , Visigoths , Muslims and Chr

istians , left their imprint on Seville .

 A new study calls into question the assumption that hospitals could save lots o

f money by forgoing or withdrawing treatment in futile cases . The study looked 

at more than 4,000 very sick patients at five major medical centers . Researcher

s calculated how much money would have been saved if life-sustaining treatment h

ad been withdrawn as soon as a patient was deemed to have less than a 1 percent 

chance of surviving two months . `` The public believes that valuable resources 

are ` wasted ' on terminally ill patients , although the data to support this co

nclusion are frail at best , '' said Joanne Lynn , a Dartmouth Medical School ph

ysician who presented the findings this month at the American Geriatrics Society

 's annual meeting in Los Angeles . Only 115 patients of the 4,301 studied had a

n estimated 1 percent or less chance of surviving two months . All but one of th

ose 115 died within six months , and 75 percent died within five days . But only

 27 would have died earlier if life-sustaining treatment had been withdrawn or w

ithheld . `` The vast majority of persons sick enough to qualify for a 1 percent

 threshold would save no more than a few days of expenses by dying early , '' sa

id Lynn . The patients were in the advanced stage of coma , acute respiratory fa

ilure , multiple organ system failure , chronic obstructive lung disease , conge

stive heart failure , cirrhosis , metastatic colon cancer or inoperable lung can

cer . All but 14 were on one of three types of life-sustaining treatment mechani

cal ventilator , blood-pressure booster or kidney dialysis . By forgoing or with

drawing such treatment for those patients , the study found , doctors would have

 saved 183 hospital days out of 1,688 days . The estimated dollar savings would 

be $ 1.1 million , or about 12 percent . Nearly 75 percent of the savings would 

have come from stopping treatment in five cases , including four aged 50 or youn

ger . Two had bone-marrow transplants , and one had a liver transplant . Not onl

y is it hard to identify patients likely to die within a few days , the study fo

und , but those who can be so identified often are not receiving life-prolonging

 treatment . Sixty-one percent had a do-not-resuscitate order written by the fif

th day of hospitalization , and 83 percent had one by the time of death . The st

udy included patients at five centers : Beth Israel Hospital in Boston ; MetroHe

alth Medical Center in Cleveland ; Duke University Medical Center in Durham , N.

C. ; St. Joseph 's Hospital in Marshfield , Wis. ; and the UCLA Medical Center i

n Los Angeles . Researchers from Dartmouth , George Washington and Johns Hopkins

 also worked on the project . More could be saved if treatment were withheld fro

m patients with a 5 percent or 10 percent chance of surviving two months . But u

se of such guidelines to forgo treatment , the study found , `` would result in 

only modest savings , and those only through what will seem to be inequitable an

d unpalatable curtailing of life support in a few young patients . ''

 Far fewer Americans are losing teeth now than a generation ago , with particula

rly impressive gains among older people , according to new research at the Natio

nal Institute of Dental Research in Bethesda , Md. . The use of fluorides , seal

ants , better nutrition and better consumer education have made a huge impact in

 the past several decades on limiting tooth decay and gum disease . The NIDR fin

dings , published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Dental Associa

tion , are another indication of a dramatic improvement in the oral health of Am

ericans in the past several decades . Much dental disease `` is concentrated in 

an increasingly smaller portion of the population , '' a JADA commentary conclud

ed . The percent of toothless Americans dropped from 9.9 percent in the early 19

70s to 3.8 percent in the mid-1980s , the research found . This represented a de

cline in the number of toothless adults from 7.3 million to 3.7 million , even a

s the working population increased by 24 million . The rate of toothlessness amo

ng those 55 to 64 years of age was cut in half , from 29.7 percent to 14.6 perce

nt . L. Jackson Brown , director of epidemiology and oral-disease prevention at 

NIDR , drew his conclusions from two surveys on tooth loss among employed Americ

ans , one conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics in 1971 to 1974

 and one done by NIDR in 1985-86 . The findings may indicate that Americans are 

keeping their teeth about a decade longer than they used to . People 35 to 44 in

 the 1980s survey had the same number of teeth as people 25 to 34 in the 1970s s

urvey , for example , Brown said . `` Prevention of tooth loss is extending to t

hat part of the population which is most at risk , '' Brown concluded , calling 

this `` perhaps the most encouraging finding '' of the study . Still , he said t

he conclusions could not be extended to unemployed adults nor to those over 64 ,

 who were not included in the analysis .

 Baseball may be more than America 's favorite sport . It may be one of its most

 dangerous , at least for Little Leaguers and their peers . Sports-medicine expe

rts and pediatricians have increasingly been concerned about baseball injuries a

nd have been lobbying for additional protective gear and safety equipment to be 

required for children 's leagues . They point to leg injuries sustained while sl

iding into bases and head or chest injuries received when hit by a ball or bat .

 That effort was underscored this month with the deaths of two children a 9 year

 old in Hershey , Pa. , who was hit in the chest with a pitched ball , and a 3 y

ear old in Texas who was hit in the chest while playing ball with his 6-year-old

 brother . Each child apparently died when the force of the ball threw his heart

 into wild arrhythmias , although medical specialists said they do not know prec

isely how or why this occurs . Experts estimate that 5 million youngsters aged 5

 to 14 years play baseball throughout the country , and many are never seriously

 injured . But in 1990 , more than 280,000 baseball players between the ages of