This generation’s passing will hurt us more than we can imagine.
Hardened by war, joyed by victory, tempered by loss and educated by history.
Donald Pleasence was a WWII POW: "His acting career began in a production of Wuthering Heights, but was interrupted by World War II. He was at first a conscientious objector, but later changed his stance and was commissioned into the Royal Air Force, serving with 166 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command. His Avro Lancaster was shot down on 31 August 1944 during a raid on Agenville.[4] He was taken prisoner and placed in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he produced and acted in plays. Coincidentally, he later played Flight Lt. Colin Blythe in The Great Escape where much of the story takes place inside a German POW camp."
"The only actor to have appeared in both The Great Escape (1963) and its TV sequel, The Great Escape II: The Untold Story (1988) (TV). Ironically, he played one of the would-be great escapees in the first film and one of the German executioners in the second. Strangely he even played the role of the SS and Gestapo chief, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, in the film The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Heinrich Himmler was the one who ordered the secret murder of "the 50" POW's. Thus, Pleasence is likely to be one of only a few actors to have ever portrayed all three roles of murder conspirator, executioner, and victim! (although technically he was not among the 50. His character died earlier.)."
