American Military News– American soldiers joined their Polish counterparts in Zagan, Poland, for two days of festivities over the weekend commemorating the 75th anniversary of the daring escape from a prisoner-of-war camp located there during World War II.
Though 73 of the 76 men were recaptured after fleeing Stalag Luft III through 334 feet of tunnels on that late March 1944 night, the event has come to be known as the Great Escape and was hailed for causing the Wehrmacht to expend manpower hunting down the escapees.
It was the basis for a 1950 book “The Great Escape” by Australian fighter pilot Paul Brickhill and a 1963 Best Picture-nominated film adaptation that starred an ensemble cast, including Steve McQueen, James Garner and Charles Bronson. It’s also been made into more than one video game.
The celebration, which took place at a POW museum where the camp once stood, included a 10K run, static displays of Polish and U.S. military equipment, tours of POW barracks and groups of living history re-enactors bringing the past alive for the soldiers, the military said in a statement.
The U.S. troops on hand — members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division — were in Poland as part of a 9-month rotation to Europe to support Operation Atlantic Resolve, the ongoing mission to deter a resurgent Russia after that country’s 2014 annexation Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Bravo! When men were men.
“Bunk bunk whap. Bunk bunk whap.”
Baseball in the “Khuller”
Today, I am honored to be going to a 100th Birthday party. He is the father of my best friend and not only survived Pearl Harbor but the Battle of the Bulge as well! What a man!
One of the greatest assemblages of MEN in both the POW camp and the movie. The tunnel king for instance WAS a MINING engineer.
May the massacred rest in peace knowing their REAL Resistance co-patriots are remembering this day.
@Mrhanoverfist – I hear, “Da Dunk..kuh”.
Although the role of baseball loving motorcycle riding scrounging americans was written into the movie, and I’m glad it was!
Other than maybe the Dirty Dozen this is the epitome of american film making int the mid sixties.
A little trivia—-Donald Pleasance, Blythe the Forger, was actually in the RAF during WW2, shot down, and a POW in Stalag Luft I (The GE took place in Stalag Luft III). He served as aircraft wireless-operator with No. 166 Squadron in Bomber Command, with which he flew almost sixty raids against the Axis over occupied Europe.
He’s the only actor to be in both Great Escape and the Great Escape Part 2, the Untold Story; in GE 2, he played the Gestapo chief Dr. Absilon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Pleasence
By 2050, they’ll be streaming the movie “THE GREAT ESCAPE – USA” on Moslem/Gates TV.
I was 10 in 1963 and saw The Great Escape at the Lee Theater in Ephrata, Wa. for $0.25. The Lee theater is still there by the way, I deliver flowers to Ephrata on Sundays. Ephrata, Pa. pronounced Ef ra ta was the home of Major Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame, I only know that because we had pen pals from there when I was in 4th grade going into 5th grade and heard that Dick Winters was from there from reading about him. The Great Escape was and still is one of the greatest World War 2 movies ever made.
When Ives’the Mole’, the cell mate to Hilts in the cooler, was killed, THAT was one of the GREATEST scenes ever depicted. PERIOD.
Yes even BETTER than that momentous cycle jump!
@ Geof the Aardvark – not just best WWII movies, best MOVIES of alllllll tiiiiiime.
The movie indicates that the POWs were treated humanely, had recreational privileges, received Red Cross parcels.And actually could send and receive mail? The prisoners had been instructed to always try to escape, so were mentally geared to do so. Compared to What General Eisenhower had done to German “enemy combatants” (NOT designated “prisoners of war” to evade Geneva Convention rules), these “Escape” prisoners had a “picnic.” A majority of the escapees were executed, but it was a risk they knew they were taking. Whereas, Eisenhower’s prisoners were put in barbed wire fenced open fields and purposely allowed to die if they couldn’t survive such sadistic treatment. They were given no care, no shelter, no food, no latrines, absolutely nothing. Many thousands died. Where is the Hollywood movie about that? BTW, the Japanese treatment of prisoners was evil, too. Unit 731 torturers received very special privileges given by the US Military as rewards for their superior research obtained from using living humans as “lab rats.”
My Eisenhower accusations needs some references:
Eisenhowers Rhine Meadows Death Camps – A Deliberate Policy of Extermination (documentary)
[They included women and civilians]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssNQ-Va2Pjk
Eisenhower’s Death Camps
The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two
by James Bacque
Saturday Night
Sept 1989
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque1.html
An American Rhine-Meadows Camp Guard Speaks Out.
03-10-2018
https://ww2gravestone.com/an-american-rhine-meadows-camp-guard-speaks-out/