Dick Churchill was the last survivor of the ‘Great Escape’, the notorious escape through a tunnel at Stalag Luft III at Sagan.   Seventy-six men managed to get free of the camp but all but three were recaptured and the Gestapo murdered fifty of them.  Churchill had been shot down in early September 1940 and was initially incarcerated at Stalag Luft I at Barth on the Baltic coast.  He soon joined a team of determined escapers and he was involved in numerous tunnel projects.  He and  his colleagues were transferred to the Luftwaffe’s showpiece camp at Sagan in 1942 where Churchill continued his tunnelling activities.  On the night of 24 March 1944 the tunnel broke surface,
but short of the intended place in a wood.  Churchill and his partner were at large for almost three days before being recaptured.  Fearful that he might be a relation of Winston Churchill, he was spared in case he might be of further use.  He was not enthusiastic about the film ‘The Great Escape’.  He was 99 years old when he died on 13 February.

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