大象传媒

For those who don't know, William Joyce was a notorious traitor who fled to Germany in August 1939 and broadcast propaganda back to Britain by radio. He always started his messages by saying 'Germany calling' in a nasal accent which brought about his nickname of Lord Haw Haw.

My Uncle, Jimmy Evans, was with a group of six North East men who discovered William Joyce and his wife in May 1945.

The task of the battalion was to intercept all German troops making their way down from Denmark and Norway, disarming them and segregating war criminals and SS men.

At the tiny hamlet of Kuffermuille, on the Danish border, they came across a mysterious British couple living in one of the cottages. Suspicions aroused, Jimmy and his colleagues alerted the military in nearby Flensburg. Next day, two officers arrived in a jeep.

'Joyce was cutting a birch tree in the garden when the officers arrived,' recalls Jimmy. 'When they confronted him, he went for something in his pocket and one of the officers shot him in the thigh. The last we saw of him, he was being arrested and taken off to the military prison.'

In the house were two letters relating to Haw Haw's broadcasts as well as a few pages of manuscript in which he said he would be glad when he was caught as the suspense was getting on his nerves and he loved England.

Later, Joyce was brought back to Britain where he faced trial on treason charges. In January 1946 he was hanged at Wandsworth Jail. Few who experienced his cynical propaganda mourned him - including Jimmy.

'We heard him a few times and there was a great deal of hostility towards him among the troops, but it was the civilians back home who were affected most by his broadcasts.'

Jimmy is now 91 years old, and lives in a residential home in Newcastle upon Tyne.

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