Last year, in the lead-up to Remembrance Day, Joe and his wife of 73 years who survives him, British \u201cLand Girl\u201d Alma Durkin, invited The Auroran to their home at the Meadows of Aurora to share a story that only they could tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a powerful insight into the realities of war and the realities of coming back from the front when so many others didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sitting down with us, Alma smoothed Joe\u2019s hair while daughter Jennifer pinned on his beret and medals, photo-ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEarlier he said, \u2018All those boys who never came back. I wonder if it was worth it,\u2019\u201d said Jennifer of what transpired that morning. \u201cI said, \u2018Yes, Dad, it was worth it because you and all the other people basically saved Europe and the rest of the globe from Hitler running the world. Don\u2019t doubt that the sacrifice was worth it \u2013 and luckily you made it through, but those who didn\u2019t, their sacrifice was worth it because we reap the benefits every day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conversations of legacy would have been unfathomable to the men like Joe who, he said, simply felt like they were doing their duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a matter of \u2018wanting\u2019 to be,\u201d said Joe of becoming involved in the war effort. \u201cI was in the Welsh Guards and once you became 18 they got you and that\u2019s where I came in. I asked to get into the Navy \u2013 I just fancied the sea, really, and I went to a naval training camp and then onto the ships.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alma added his father thought he was \u201cdaft\u201d to join the Navy \u201cbecause there\u2019s no back door on a ship,\u201d but Joe persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirst it was training in Britain and then I was shipped to many different places, including the Far East,\u201d says Joe. \u201cI was scared to death. You\u2019re always meeting the enemy somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of his duties in his role as Stoker was to keep the ships firing as he and his crew sailed minesweepers into different European ports in the dark of night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time of what became known as D-Day, he was in a landing craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He and his fellow servicemen were not privy to what was planned until the morning of, he recalled, and as the hours ticked down, so too did the anticipation of learning what would be required of them \u2013 and Joe\u2019s tasks included operating an anti-aircraft gun to protect the landing troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As such, he wasn\u2019t among the first to make the landing, but he kept those who came before him as safe as possible until his turn came \u2013 and, just days after landing, he found himself next to Winston Churchill who made the journey across the Channel himself to see the success of the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Brock Weir Joe Durkin always questioned whether it was worth it \u2013 the \u201cit\u201d being international conflict. But, when he shared his unique story with people who couldn\u2019t begin to imagine his experience, he needn\u2019t have wondered after all. Durkin, who bore witness to history to one of the most pivotal moments of the Second World War […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/2023-10-05-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8KQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 23:15:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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