INTERVIEWED AT RANFURLY VETERANS’ HOME
MARCH 26 2010
 
We fought our war with a plug of jelly and a spanner,” says Joe Wilson, who served as an engineer with the New Zealand Army in North Africa, Greece and Crete. Joe was on Crete when German paratroopers invaded, blackening the sky. Despite putting up a fierce resistance, Joe was eventually captured and sent to a prison camp. However, he managed to dig under the wire and escape. “I spent nine months trying to steal a boat to get back to Egypt.” During this time Joe was sheltered by a young family on Crete. He was eventually discovered by a Greek police officer and a German Soldier who knocked on the door looking for cooking pots. Beaten by the Gestapo for a week, Joe was then sent to another camp, this time in Germany. While in the camp Joe swapped his identity with an RAF officer to give the pilot a better chance of escaping. When their ruse was finally discovered, the camp commander congratulated them for their skill in fooling him.
By the time Germany surrendered and Joe was released, he weighed just over 40kg. “We ate in a week what most people eat in a day.” Joe recently returned to Crete for the first time since World War II. He was happy to find members of the family who sheltered him – he had always believed they had been killed for concealing him – had survived the war and he was able to meet their grandchildren.
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