Bulldog spirit of escapers from the Nazis (UK Archives)

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Declassified files record repeated bids for freedom

Mark Townsend
Sunday January 2, 2005
The Observer

Peter Butterworth squirmed through the narrow tunnel. Ahead lay freedom, and with it the tantalising prospect of an early return to Blighty. Moments later, the young airman would emerge to breathe in the cool German night air: he would be free.
It was the summer of 1941 and the 25-year-old, who later attained fame as a comic stooge in the Carry On films, had escaped from one of the most notorious Nazi prison camps. For a further three days, he trekked stealthily across country until seized by secret police 27 miles from the tunnel entrance.

Butterworth's brief flirtation with liberation is one of 80,000 accounts from British Second World War captives contained in declassified government documents released to the National Archives in Kew, west London, today. Described by historians as a crucial insight into the trauma of wartime captivity, the most striking theme to emerge is the extraordinary culture of escapology.

Butterworth started another five tunnels after incarceration at Stalag Luft III. Fellow inmates who would secure similar levels of fame included Rupert Davies, who played the Parisian detective in the Sixties television series Maigret. Davies also made repeated attempts to escape; his greatest triumph came when he sprinted clear of the compound before being 'caught by three sentries'.

Ironically, another famous actor, whose best-known role was that of a prisoner of war bent on escape, never did try to evade his captors, although he did suffer 'hardships' during captivity, according to the for merly top secret documents. Twenty years after spending eight months in Stalag Luft I, Donald Pleasence would play the bespectacled document forger in the 1963 prisoner-of-war film The Great Escape .

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382052,00.html