A brief engagement of pedant mode regarding the Stalag Luft III programme. It was stated, twice I think, that all the inhabitants were shot down aircrew. Not actually so. The camp was for all commissioned RAF personnel. My father spent three years there after being captured at Heraklion during the invasion of Crete, where he was a codes and ciphers officer. (Flew in there on a Sunderland and out in a Ju. 52.) He was a commercial artist before the War and spent much of his time in Luft III as a forger, producing documents and passes, using potato prints and lino-cuts as well as rubber shoe soles to simulate rubber stamps. He mentioned a technique he developed for producing a fake glaze on altered photographs that involved copious applications of saliva, dried after each one, maybe rather like the reverse of birds’ nest soup.
Slight thread creep here. Flak and Ferrets by Walter Morison (published by Sentinel, ISBN 1 874767 09 2) covers an escape he and Lorne Welch made by walking out through the main gate of the camp, which ended when they were caught trying to start a Gotha 145 biplane to fly to Sweden. A fascinating read and available from the usual outlet.