Huddersfield man recalls his seven tours behind enemy lines during the Second World War - Local West Yorkshire News - News - Huddersfield Examiner Huddersfield man recalls his seven tours behind enemy lines during ... Huddersfield Examiner Mr Joseph joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a top-secret unit carrying out sabotage, espionage and hit-and-run attacks across Nazi-occupied ...
Call me cynical, but it seems odd that a story like this only appears shortly after the death of MRD Foot ... Then there's the curious suggestion of seven missions "of up to three months", all apparently packed into one year between June 1943 and June 1944.
Oh, and this too: “I first went to Europe in June 1943,’’ he said. “I can’t say exactly where – all I can say was that it was in the region of Lille. Mr Joseph tried to get arms into the Warsaw Ghetto just weeks before the uprising in April 1943.
I too am rather sceptical about this article, but the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is not an invention. Best, Alan
The historian Patrick Hutton said, There is also the unfinished business of reckoning with the memory of the Second World War. The issue is poignant because we stand at the edge of the end of living memory of that war’s events. Within a few years all of its participants will have passed away and with them the existential memory of that traumatic upheaval.[1] I suppose it's only natural that people would want to include themselves in what has become a huge agglomeration of stories, tales, commemorations and of course myths - all part of history. See my post on Don Clark's story of shooting up a tank near St Nazaire in 1940 with an AA pom-pom. It's so difficult to gainsay what people will swear they remember doing. Fact-checking will always be seen as a criticism. I've interviewed a lot of people in my time working in television and it's all part of the process. If you're sloppy, you include it because the media are always desperate for a good story, if you omit it, the producer or director is on your back for taking out good material. But yes, wandering Germany disguised as an SS officer really does take the biscuit or perhaps a whole packet of digestives in this case? [1] Patrick Hutton, Recent Scholarship on Memory and History in `The History Teacher’, Vol.3, No.4 (Aug.2000)pp533-548
“I speak Yiddish which is 80% Germanic so it didn’t take them long to teach me enough German to get across what I needed to say,” he said. ... “There were certain people in Britain – Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh – who couldn’t take part because of their accents. Even if they spoke German, their accents would give them away.” Mr Joseph’s first tour was in northern France. Speaking Yiddish would help him blend into German occupied France perfectly. [In Germany] I was disguised as an SS officer finding out what they had where Yes, quite.
Generally, someone who is genuinely trying to deceive will at least attempt to make their account credible by aligning closely with actual events or with those facts difficult to check. This story defies belief in so many ways that one must question the mental competence behind the teller.
I have to say that it immediately occurred to me that the account was fiction. Its a pity that the Examiner did not conduct a few checks themselves.The veteran's army service,if any, could have been officially ascertained. But it happens in all walks of life.Once bought a property from an old retired gentleman.What had he done for a living?.Well he told me that he could not divulge his profession because of the Official Secrets Act. Later it transpired he was a retired civil servant,a cleaner in the offices of the Inland Revenue in an era when the IR did not outsource their office cleaning.
David Joseph during SOE operations http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/081/75a/08175a5a-2ba7-4f5d-ab98-d84a032fdc7b
This story defies belief in so many ways that one must question the mental competence behind the teller. And the competence of the reporter, surely.Mr Joseph was asked to join the SOE in 1942. “I volunteered for the Army when I was under age and I joined the Second Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, the City of London Battalion,” he said. “While I was stationed in Canterbury I was asked if I was willing to volunteer for the SOE.” If he is now 85, he was born in 1927. Should have been blindingly obvious that in 1942 he was a 15 year old kid and that 'under age' was stretching it a bit. Apparently in 1942 he had already completed his army training. At 16 he is in France, presumably impersonating a French schoolboy.
I am 85 and I was born in 1926 Yes, 1926 and 1927 are both valid. Depends on what month you were born in. It was 85 years and 5 months since 1927 when he was interviewed. Giving him the benefit of the doubt he would still be only 17 in June 1942, when he claims to have been sent to occupied France. It is simply not credible.
