Author Topic: RAF squadron leader who devised the REAL Great Escape is to be honoured where he was executed on Hitler's orders  (Read 657 times)

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Offline EC

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The architect of the Second World War prison break immortalised by The Great Escape is to be honoured with a plaque on the spot where Gestapo officers murdered him in 1944.

Daredevil skiier, ladies' man and multilingual Cambridge-educated barrister Roger Bushell helped 76 prisoners of war escape from Stalag Luft III, a Nazi camp in occupied Poland.

Just 33 at the time of his death, Squadron Leader Bushell - played by Richard Attenborough in the classic 1963 film - had been in enemy hands since his first day of combat, when he was shot down in a Spitfire during the Dunkirk evacuation.

Now Bushell, whose place of death was only established two years ago, will finally be remembered with a plaque and ceremony on July 1, according to The Times.

He was shot in the back of the neck and head on Hitler's orders on a then-empty stretch of road between Kaiserslautern and Landstuhl, which is now close to the US's Ramstein Air Base, five days after masterminding the escape.

More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4613262/Man-dreamed-REAL-Great-Escape-honoured.html
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Offline Smokin Joe

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Those fellows gave the Gestapo fits, God Bless them!
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis