£3.2k for Great Escape badge
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TO BOOK OR TO REQUEST A BROCHURE QUOTE EXP A GOLD “Caterpillar Club” badge given to an RAF ace who made it to Britain after taking part in the Great Escape has sold – after a fierce bidding war.
Flight Lieutenant Bram van der Stok was one of 75 men who escaped from the notorious Stalag Luft III camp in the German province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan, about 100 miles south-east of Berlin. in 1944. Just three evaded capture.
Of those recaptured by the Germans, 50 were summarily executed on the orders of an enraged Adolf Hitler.
Their courage was immortalised in the 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. After leaving tunnel “Harry” in March 1944, Flt Lt van der Stok, who was Dutch, posed as a draughtsman on leave.
He made a daring dash across German-occupied Europe carrying forged papers, reaching Gibraltar.
Dutch, Belgian and French resistance fighters all helped him reach the Pyrenees and walk into Spain.
He was flown back to England and took part in further Spitfire raids before the end of the war. He received the gold Caterpillar Club badge – the informal RAF club for airmen who had baled out of a disabled aircraft – for parachuting from his Spitfire over France in 1942. He was captured and sent to Stalag Luft III.
At Suffolk auction house Lockdales the lapel badge eventually sold for £3,200, five times its £600 estimate.
Daniel Daley, of Lockdales, said: “Due to its personal connection to a wartime aviation hero… we had lots of worldwide interest.”
After the war Flt Lt van der Stok was awarded an MBE.