Corry, Joe

In 1990, British retiree Joe Corry published a book titled Towards the Dawn about his alleged wartime experiences. In it, he claimed, among other things that he had assassinated a German scientist with a crossbow, watched D-Day from a house on the landing beaches, rescued the nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer from Holland, attached limpet mines to U-boats, was shipwrecked off Newfoundland, and had worked with the future James Bond author Ian Fleming. The climax of his book, however, is when he and his secret “Special Service Unit” discover a hidden German extermination camp in a Dutch forest.

The problem is that none of it is true. There never was a secret “Special Service Unit,” Oppenheimer was in the U.S. throughout the war, there was no extermination camp hidden in any Dutch forest, and there were no British troops at the beach watching the invasion. (See Walters 2013 for more details.)