PENGUIN BOOK OF THE GREAT ESCAPE

Pocket journal of Stalag Luft III hero nicknamed for sneaking out tunnel dirt in his trousers up for auction

- DAN WARBURTON

AN RAF book owned by a Great Escape hero one of the "'penguins" who helped the prison camp breakout by using their trousers to disperse excavated soil is being sold.

Flt Lt Paul Royle was among the 76 men who outwitted the Nazis by getting out of Stalag Luft ITI in one night during the Second World War.

The audacious jailbreak was immortalised in 1963 movie The Great Escape.

Paul began using the RAF pocket book in 1939. It was unearthed during a house clearance, and has been described as an "amazing discovery.

In March 1944, Paul was in a line of prisoners of war waiting to get out of the camp through a tunnel called Harry that was secretly dug by inmates.