Last of the Great Escapees

THE last of the real-life Great Escape survivors has died at the age of 99.

Bomber pilot Richard “Dick” Churchill ended up in Stalag Luft III after being shot down during his 26th combat mission.

The Squadron Leader was among 76 men who crawled through tunnels in a bid for freedom in March 1944.

Only three made it back to Britain, while 50 of the escapees were shot on Adolf Hitler’s orders.

Churchill, who was found hiding in a barn after two nights on the run, believed his surname saved his life.

He was convinced the Nazis thought he was related to prime minister Winston and wanted him alive to use in negotiations.

The pensioner died on Wednesday, bringing an end to the prison break story immortalised in 1963 film The Great Escape. In previous interviews, he revealed he took part in 72 tunnelling plots to avoid being a “dope sitting out the war” in the camp in Sagan (now Zagan, Poland).

Speaking to the BBC last year, he said: “You fell into a certain category.

“Were you going to sit and enjoy the very few delights of a barbed wire prison camp until you were rescued by your comrades, if you were rescued?

“Or were you going to try and get out of the place and rejoin and drop something on them?”

Churchill had been, in his own words, “up to my neck” in the digging efforts.

He was given a Romanian name and fake papers and paired up with Squadron Leader Bob Nelson, who pretended to be Swedish.

They had wanted to reach Czechoslovakia before returning to Britain but were caught.

While in prison, Churchill watched as many friends were taken from the cells to be shot by the Gestapo.

Only fellow RAF pilots, Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller and Bram van der Stok from Holland, made it back to the UK.