When a small lie becomes a big lie and ruins everything

There are those, like Godwin Grech, who for motives that are not yet clear, go as far as to concoct false emails to back up their lies.

There are plenty of people who lie to their wife or husband, and if they’re high profile, often lie to the public about those lies to their spouse.

And then there’s the people who lie their whole lives, about something so huge they get to a point they can’t turn back. They’re the most tragic liars of all.

One of them has just been caught red handed and has owned up to the Sydney Morning Herald, and it’s the saddest story. For 30 years Rex Crane has posed as a hero POW from World War Two, inspiring his family and “fellow” veterans, while receiving a total of $400,000 in a service pension.

When the newspaper confronted him with the evidence his elaborate story was made up he said: ‘It is me living a lie, isn’t it? Oh shit.”

He explained his actions as this: “When this all started, I went along to a POW Singapore day that was advertised … and they invited me in for afternoon tea, which I did. I suppose I thought this would be quite good.”

That was the beginning of decades of lying to everyone he knew, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

His granddaughters were in the paper yesterday saying they would cry with him about the horrors of what he said he went through and now “won’t be calling him grandpa anymore.”

The guardians of the legacy of our war veterans are understandably disgusted with Crane’s elaborate and long-running ruse.

It must make the blood of genuine veterans boil to have their stories stolen by people who were safely tucked up at home while they were in such peril.

The thing is, I believe him when he says it wasn’t about the money.

I suspect he wanted a story that made his life seem less ordinary, something that would make the people he loved look up to him - everyone wants that.

And once he started telling people, he couldn’t stop.

We’ve all got fantasies about what our lives could be like. It’s just that the rest of us make them happen, or keep them as just that, fantasies.

Rex Crane has probably lost a lot of his friends in the past couple of days. His family is devastated, and he’s got that little issue of the $400,000 service pension to deal with.

But I wonder if he feels better now he’s been sprung and he can finally tell the truth.