I have a personal interest in the Great Escape, by a strange set of coincidences. I sat at a dinner once next to a woman who had been widowed by the murder of one of the 50 - and let's not confuse murder and (legally justified) execution. Later on, one of the members of the Yacht Club of which I was Secretary died and we held his wake in the Clubhouse, and scattered his ashes from the Club pontoon. But for being in the "cooler" at the time, this Naval observer would have been in the tunnel. At the wake were three other former inhabitants of Stalag Luft 3. I shall never forget any of them, nor the sad story told me by the widow. Men of great courage, all of them.