Eighty years after that audacious breakout from Stalag Luft III on 24 March 1944, the means of escape physical and mental - by prisoners of war and interned civilians in the UK, Europe and east Asia during the Second World War are being commemorated in an exhibition.
The stories of 30 individuals highlighted include those of the actor Peter Butterworth, of the Carry On films, who was a prisoner in Stalag Luft III. He participated in the Wooden Horse escape, daily exercising with others on a vaulting horse built with a false bottom to conceal the digging of a tunnel in 1943. Three prisoners escaped, with the story told in a 1950 film of the same name.
About 200,000 record cards of those incarcerated by the Germans have finally been catalogued and made available to the public through the National Archives in Kew, which is staging the exhibition Great Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives, from February.
The previously unsorted cards, some with photographs, include those of most of the 76 prisoners of the famed great escape, in which all but three were recaptured. Fifty were executed on Hitler's personal orders.
Exhibits include the intelligence report of the attempt written by Bertram "Jimmy" James, an RAF officer, who managed to avoid execution.
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