I was about to make a silly comment myself, it’s hard to resist isn’t it.
The Great Escape is a film that we’ve all become used to watching, snuggling up comfortably on the sofa on Boxing Day…..and forgetting what it was really all about.
I thought long and hard about making such a flippant post…..and was careful to make it about the film and about the use of the Great Escape as a subject for a book about project management.
I also took the trouble to find out from which hut (123) the first tunnel ‘Tom’ was dug and which direction it went (west); the film is wrong on the hut numbers (except 104) and the direction that the tunnels went (the tunnel ‘traps’ are also mixed up).
Much of the rest of the film is incredibly close to the actual events, although there is understandable ‘condensing’ of people, time and space, but this is not really surprising as the technical advisor for the film was ‘Wally’ Floody who built the original tunnels (and who found the filming experience so real he started having nightmares).
Perhaps the great success of ‘The Great Escape’ film is that it has managed to bring this brutal piece of history out of obscurity into our comfortable living rooms every Christmas…
…although few of us realise that the actual escape was made with snow on the ground!
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