Tributes to POWS killed after Great Escape

Most, Czech Republic – In a pivotal scene in The Great Escape, Steve Mcqueen, portraying fictional American prisoner of war Virgil Hilts, surfaces from the tunnel out of Stalag Luft III only to find that the exit is in plain view of a patrolling German guard.

As in the real escape, he sneaks out of the tunnel to a nearby line of trees, trailing a rope so that he can signal to the men in the tunnel when the guard is at a safe distance. But unlike Hilts, who is later depicted trying to jump the barbed-wire fence at the Swiss border on a motorcycle before his capture and safe return to the camp, the real prisoner was a British officer, who was imprisoned by the Gestapo, and murdered on Adolf Hitler’s orders.

Details of Flight Lieutenant Leslie Bull’s death alongside three of his fellow escapees killed in Most, a town in what is now the Czech Republic, emerged yesterday as a memorial to them was unveiled.

Research has uncovered a crem- ation order that, chillingly, appears to have been signed before the men were killed, and the last photographs of them alive, showing them in their escape kit.

The images, thought never to have been published, were found by Guy Walters, a historian writing a book about the Great Escape, in a war crimes file at the National Archives at Kew.

‘‘The photos show them as terrified men,’’ he said. ‘‘Within 24 hours of these photos being taken they were lying with bullet holes in their heads,’’ Walters said.

The film had given the impression that the 50 murdered escapees were shot together in a field, he said.

‘‘Actually, they were usually killed two or three at a time,’’ Walters said.

The cremation certificate, which disingenuously notes that the men were ‘‘shot during an escape attempt’’, was found by Michal Holy, a Czech airline pilot and amateur historian, in the Czech national archives. He was so moved by their deaths, for which no-one has ever been brought to justice, that he proposed the memorial.

Leslie Paus, Bull’s niece, who took her name from her uncle, was joined by about 100 people at a memorial service in remembrance of Bull, his Polish friend Flight Officer Jerzy Mondshein, and two Australian airmen, Squadron Leader John ‘‘Willy’’ Williams and Flight Lieutenant Reginald ‘‘Rusty’’ Kierath. Relatives of the escapees laid wreaths as a pair of Czech Air Force jets flew overhead.

Of the 76 escapees, three got away, 23 were put back in the camps and 50 were shot on Hitler’s orders. Thursday will be the 68th anniversary of the killing of Bull and his companions.

Paus said she struggled to hide her emotion at the memorial service, especially because so many local people had come to pay tribute.

‘‘I did shed a little said.

tear,’’ she