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Intelligence Corps - The Soldier Behind the Medals
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On 1 August 1947, a photograph showing the bodies of two soldiers found hanging from trees in Palestine appeared on the front page the Daily Express newspaper: the two men were members of the Intelligence Corps. They had been abducted and then murdered by Irgun – the Jewish terrorist organisation - in retaliation for the execution of three of its members by British authorities. The soldiers were Sergeant Clifford James Victor Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Harold Paice.
[Remember this is a history page, so no ranting about politics, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, etc. Feel free to share to your own page and comment as you wish.]
In early May 1947, Irgun organised a mass prison break from Acre Prison, during which nine Jewish fighters were killed and five were captured. Three of the captured men were put on trial and sentenced to hang. In response, Irgun sought to capture members of the British forces in order to hold them as leverage in an attempt to have the death sentence against the three men converted. In late June, the group identified two members of 252 Field Security Section who operated relatively freely in the area of Netanya.
On the night of 11-12 July, the two young sergeants accompanied a Jewish friend (an agent of the terrorist group Haganah, an organisation that was in conflict with Irgun) to a café. When they left the premises just after midnight, they were bludgeoned, chloroformed, and bundled into a car. Clifford and Mervyn were taken to an underground cell that had been constructed under a discussed diamond factory – it was soundproof and airtight (oxygen bottles were provided). Although the area was cordoned and searched the cell was not discovered: even attempts by Haganah to find the men failed.
On 27 July, the authorities announced that the three terrorists were to be executed on 29 July. Despite appeals on both sides to stop the hangings and to release Clifford and Mervyn, the three men were hanged on the morning of 29 July, as scheduled. In response, Irgun decided to murder the two sergeants. It did not want to carry out the killings in public due to increased security, so a plan was devised to hang the men at the factory and then move their bodies to a public area afterwards.
That evening the two men were taken from the cell, separately, and hanged. On the morning of 30 July, their bodies were moved to a eucalyptus grove four kilometres from Netanya and hung from two separate trees with notes pinned to their bodies. The terrorists final act, was to booby-trap the bodies with an anti-personnel mine. The whereabouts of the bodies was soon discovered. Royal Engineers conducted a search of the ground below the men, but the bodies were not searched and the mine exploded as an officer cut one of the men down.
The murder of Clifford and Mervyn was conducted by Menachem Begin, who later become the sixth prime minister of Israel.
On 1 August 1947, the Daily Express carried the news of the murders which caused nationwide shock and outrage, resulting in five days of rioting in England during which 300 Jewish properties were attacked.
14076315 Sergeant Mervyn Harold Paice was born on 1 July 1927, in Bristol and 2547624 Sergeant Clifford James Victor Martin was born on 27 September 1926, in Cairo - both were just 20 years old when they were murdered.
Clifford and Mervyn are buried at the Ramleh War Cemetery in Israel, along with four other members of the Corps: a total of eight died during the troubles in post-war Palestine.

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