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RIP Jack Harrison. You’re finally going to be reunited with the rest of your hero colleagues, in a place with no wire and no guards.

I remember reading The Great Escape and being utterly fascinated by it. When I told my Dad about it, he said, “Oh, they made a movie of that - you’ll love it.” I have, all the many times that I’ve seen it. Thanks for all that you gentlemen did for us.

If you liked the book about the Great Escape try reading Escape from Colditz. Castle Colditz was where the Germans sent you if you had caused trouble or escaped from another POW camp. While it did make it easier to guard, putting that much escape obsessed talent in one place probably wasn't a good Idea. They had one Dutch guy, who because he spoke German without an accent, kept walking out the front door. The French POWs started a tunnel from the top of a bell tower (you have to admit you wouldn't look for a tunnel entrance there). The Brits built a glider and at one point had guys dressed as guards with fake guns relieve the Germans on the wire.

The book is also interesting as it has two authors, with rather different styles. The first author carries the story from capture in the battle to France until he breaks out and gets back to England. The second author picks up the story of the camp after his escape and carries the story through to the castle's relief by the Americans.

The Colditz author's comments on the great escape are telling. They were quite harsh as their goal was to maximize the home runs. So they did a smaller number of escapes, but with phenomenal prep work and documentation. They also took great pains to ensure that the Germans wouldn't miss the escaped prisoners for as long as possible. This included "Fake" escapes where they just hid guys for use later after a real escape, and manikins to throw off the German's prisoner counts. If the Germans didn't know somebody had escaped they didn't alert internal authorities and didn't watch train stations. Unless you had bad luck, if you got past the wire you could almost always make it to the frontier. In contrast in the Great Escape they put so many guys under the wire that it couldn't be hidden. And it alerted the Gestapo resulting in the capture of all but 3 POWs and the shooting of 50 POWs.