What really happened on the night of The Great Escape

Decades of research and extensive interviews with some 150 survivors shed new light on the wartime story that gripped the world.
By Charles Rollings, (edited by Joe Shute) Tuesday 22 March 2016

On the night of March 24, 1944 a total of 220 British and Commonwealth officers were poised to escape by tunnel from North Compound, Stalag Luft III, the main camp for allied aircrew prisoners of war at Sagan in Nazi-occupied Poland. The subsequent events, thanks to numerous books and the 1963 Hollywood epic The Great Escape, have become the stuff of legend. However the real story had nothing to do with Steve McQueen on a motorbike and over the top derring-do by a few men – in reality some 600 were involved. Despite being meticulously planned by the committee known as the X Organisation, the escape was a far messier affair than we have previously been led to believe. Events unfolded in chaos with numerous hold-ups and tunnel collapses. Some pushed their way in line; others fled their post altogether. Now, after corresponding with and interviewing survivors, and seven painstaking years of trawling through historical records in archives across Europe, prisoner-of-war historian Charles Rollings throws new light on the night of the ‘Great Escape’.


http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/great-escape/index.html



Excellent article