…something not quite right there. Looks a bit fake…

I have to say that was my first thought; but apparently it is genuine.

The car still looks a bit ‘fixed’ to the front of the lorry to me. It just seems highly improbable that the lorry driver didn’t know that the car was there or would have kept going at that speed if he did know it was there. Imagine if the car slipped off at that speed and flipped over the central reservation!

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this turned out to be some sort of ‘viral’ advertisement; possibly for the company named on the tanker?

I think Bill Dean deserved a bit of a better obituary; they are usually much better than this in the Telegraph.

How could Bill Dean “help Colin ‘The Forger’ Blythe create fake passports” since Colin Blythe isn’t a real person but a character in a film? The number of escapees executed by the Nazis was fifty, not “at least fifty”. And, although I’m sure it was an arduous march in terrible conditions, could Bill Dean really have been forced to march 2000 miles between Stalag Luft III at Sagan (which was in Germany not Poland in 1944) and Luckenwalder which is about 100 miles away as the crow flies?

Also didn’t Bill Dean actually take part in ‘the Great Escape’ or is it more important that he “helped inspire” the making of a movie?

Good job this obituary writer wasn’t forging documents in a POW camp during the war! :rolleyes:

It’s mostly Stoddard solvent.

So it’s White Spirit then? That sounds even less likely to free rusted parts. :confused:

(And yes, I had to look up what Stoddard Solvent was.)

Americans did take part in planning and digging the tunnels, but were all moved to another camp weeks before the night of the escape…

I stand corrected. I suppose it could be argued that the ‘British’ are over-represented too and that the film’s main failing in this respect is that it under-represents those from other countries.

I also agree that to a certain extent history is being manipulated and that Britain’s cultural identity is becoming blurred by the easy transfer of US film and TV and that ‘something should be done about it’. We have the talent but as usual in Britain we lack the political will, the money, or both, and so are doomed to be governed by commercial considerations.

…when in fact no Americans took part in the actual escape…

I’m not sure that is true there were several Americans in the camp who were ‘involved’ in the escape and possibly one or two went through the tunnel.

Good luck and as and when you do have corroborative information please share it with us.

There was certainly some information about the activities of MI9 in ‘The Last Escape’ (which is about POWs being marched out of the camps) by Tony Rennell and John Nichol (who knows a thing or two about being a POW) but I fear my copy went to the charity shop in an over-zealous clear-out. I’ve just googled and notice that the same authors have written another book about POWs called ‘Home Run’.

If you’ve got an hour or two see the site below about the other ‘great escape’. I keep meaning to post something about it on the forum and have just missed the anniversary this year!

http://www.islandfarm.fsnet.co.uk/

Not what you asked but taking place during the Vietnam War ‘Bat 21’ is based on a true story.

I’m not really sure how it is possible to distinguish the two on the internet but I have read it on several different sites. I think the film only hints at the amount of assistance given to POWs by organisations such as MI9 for example and portrays ‘X’ as an organisation working in isolation within the POW’s numbers.

I’ve still got a bit of reading to do, particularly the book ‘Lie in the Dark and Listen’ by Flight Lieutenant Ken ‘Shag’ Rees.