Overview

The Men of 'The Great Escape' is a companion volume to the author's The Great Escape: A Reassessment - the latest, and most accurate and comprehensive, account of the famous mass break-out from North Compound, Stalag Luft III, in March 1944 and its tragic aftermath: the murder of fifty of the escapers by the Gestapo. Most of the books have identified only a small proportion of those involved in the escape, which took a year to prepare, while the Hollywood movie focuses on only a handful of protagonists, whose identities are telescoped to such an extent that they are almost unrecognisable. Who, in fact, was 'The SBO'? Who was 'Big X'? Who were the 'Tunnel Kings', 'The Forger', 'The Surveyor' and 'The Manufacturer'? Who was really in charge of 'Intelligence' and of 'Dispersal'? Was there really a 'Scrounger' - and was there really a 'Cooler King'? at Escape'. In this unique book, Charles Rollings identifies almost every one of the men who entered North Compound from the time it opened on 29 March 1943 and the night of the 'Great Escape' on 24 March 1944 - British, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Czechs, Poles, Danes, Norwegians, Dutchmen, Belgians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Lithuanians, and Americans; Air Force, Fleet Air Arm and Army; those who assisted in the escape, and those who did not. Accompanied by more than a hundred illustrations, The Men of 'The Great Escape' is nothing less than an enquire-within-upon-everybody who had anything to do with this famous and ultimately tragic enterprise - and upon those who had nothing to do with it, but also served by standing and waiting.

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9781781590201

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Charles Rollings was born in Kent in 1959. Since graduating in 1984 he has been a regular contributor to Book & Magazine Collector, specialising in crime books and military history. His articles include definitive surveys of books on First World War POWs, Colditz, the Great Escape, the Commandos and W R Burnett. From 1987 to 1994 he worked for Hatchards in Piccadilly, where he ran the military history department, while teaching journalism part-time to evening classes and writing articles and reviews for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent amongst others. He was also a historical adviser on Going Underground: The Great Escape, a documentary shown on the BBC in 1994, and co-wrote, co-edited and appeared in Prisoner of War, a documentary made by Classic.

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