For Honour's Sake - The AJEX Podcast

This episode takes a look at Cold Warrior David's service, bringing his civilian expertise as a surveyor to bear as part of BRIXMIS in East and West Germany, in the 1970s and 80s. He also developed expertise in IEDs in Northern Ireland, rigging up dummy (but still slightly kinetic) versions for training purposes. David also spoke very movingly of visiting the site of Bergen Belsen with a Wehr...

Now 100-years old, Maurice’s WWII service began manning anti-aircraft guns in London with the Home Guard, before joining the Royal Signals. Sent for parachute training, he broke his arm and missed his unit’s deployment to Europe. Instead, he threw himself into jungle training in the Norfolk fens, preparing to join the war in the east. While en route, the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and the...

Interviewed at her care home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Doris tells us about coming of age as WWII began, meeting husband Harry during the Blitz, her ATS service, and working for trade unions after the war. Like so many, especially women, who served on the homefront, she never claimed the medals to which she was entitled. So Dan put that right, at the end of the interview, presenting Doris with an origi...

It was a privilege to be welcomed into the home of 104-year old Mark Gerson, and to be joined by his daughter Jane. Mark served as an RAF radio operator and mechanic in WWII, flying in support of the British Liberation Army as it freed France, the Low Lands, and on into Germany. For him, all the way to the gates of Buchenwald. Mark tells Dan about growing up amid the rise of antisemitism in the tw...

This week, Dan and Jonny hopped over to Belfast to interview Sue Warner (and husband Julian). There’s not many people whose military career spanned both the Falklands War and Afghanistan but Sue served as a Royal Navy nurse in the first and in the same trade as a Reservist in the second. With an NHS career overlapping, too. We talked about leaving home at 16, the particular challenges of nursing o...

Born in 1927, Ken Smith was an evacuee who just missed the end of WWII but served for four years in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, in Italy and Germany, as the allies began rebuilding Europe and staking out the Cold War.  We discussed his military career, his childhood in Notting Hill, his evacuation in Wiltshire, and his experiences in the film industry, which included mixing with many movie stars....

Ruth Brook Klauber, born in Frankfurt in 1924, was just nine years-old when her family fled to Britain following Hitler’s rise to power. Now aged 101, she speaks with us on 'For Honour's Sake' where we also had the honour of presenting her with her UK War Medal and the UK Defence Medal in recognition of her service with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) during the Second World...

AJEX National Chair Dan Fox is joined by Henny Franks at Jewish Care ’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre. Henny was born Henriette Grünbaum in Cologne in 1927. Aged 15, she escaped to London on the Kindertransport with her 12 year old sister. Her father was to die in Sobibor but her mother went into hiding in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium.  By 1942, Henny was Pte Greenbaum of the Auxiliary Territorial...

AJEX National Chair Dan Fox is joined by Royal Engineers veteran Jamie Cooper-Morris and his wife Amba (with a guest appearance from Cooper-Morris Junior!) at their home in Kent.  They talk about Jamie's extensive operational army career, and his second calling in the Ambulance Service, a career introduced to him by Amba. They met through the Kent Army Cadet Force, in which they both serve as...

In Part II of our second episode, AJEX National Chair Dan Fox continues the conversation with Chelsea In-Pensioner Barrie Davey. Barrie chronicles his military service - and finding, and his attachment to, Judaism.  We also get a look into life at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and we are enormously grateful to them for their support in making this episode happen. Barrie is a regular at AJEX events a...

In our second episode, AJEX National Chair Dan Fox is joined by Chelsea In-Pensioner, Barrie Davey.  In this first of a two-part episode, Barrie talks about his early life growing up as World War II draws to a close, and life in post-war Britain.  It was an often idyllic but sometimes traumatic childhood (with recounting some listeners might find upsetting). This is a record of social history not...

In our first ever episode, AJEX National Chair Dan Fox is joined by Daniel Berke, author of 'Captured Behind Japanese Lines'. It is a story he felt compelled to tell: of his grandfather's experiences as a Wingate Chindit and Prisoner of War in Burma, in World War II. Frank Berkovitch was a Jewish tailor from Manchester, thrown into the most challenging and terrifying of circumstance...