Free Republic

It may have been 67 years late but a replica of the Colditz glider finally took off from the castle yesterday .  .  . and promptly crashed. The original glider – nicknamed the Colditz Cock – was part of one of the most audacious escape plans conjured up by British prisoners of war held at the castle. After discovering a book on aircraft design in the library, the Second World War PoWs designed and constructed it behind a false wall in the attic. The glider was still under construction when the supposedly escape-proof PoW camp Oflag IV-C was liberated by American forces...

General Alain Le Ray, a leading figure in France's wartime Resistance who escaped from Germany's notorious Colditz Castle, has died, aged 96. He was reported to be the first man to have escaped from the Nazi high-security jail in eastern Germany. He was captured after the German invasion of France in 1940 and interned at the castle near Leipzig. But he escaped in April 1941, making his way to Switzerland before returning to France to join the Resistance. He was the first of only 18 allied officers to get away from the fortress, which the Nazis deemed to be "escape-proof"....