My father, the real- life hero from Great Escape

never realise his true identity, as they would have legally been able to execute him as a traitor to his native Germany.”

For the next three years and eight months, his father was involved in many efforts to escape various camps through forging documents and even posing as a guard escorting prisoners out of camp.

“He had a massive advantage. He was, after all, a native- born German,” said Marc who spent months researching his father’s war.

He found that during one escape, a month after his capture in October The book, pilot Peter Stevens and his PoW card. Right, Garner in the movie 1941, his father jumped off a moving train and managed to make his way to Hanover, and his mother’s house, where he planned to ask her for food, money and civilian clothing.

Peter said: “Knocking on the door, he was told that sadly his mother had committed suicide in July 1939, rather than submit to the Nazis.”

The pilot got to Frankfurt before he was challenged and had to admit to being an escaped British offi cer. He was sent back to a PoW camp.

Once at Stalag Luft 3 the RAF pilot was in great demand for most escape schemes, owing to his German language skills and ingenuity. “When he wasn’t directly involved in escapes, he was always consulted by other prisoners who needed false documents prepared in German,” said Marc.

The RAF hero’s full legacy was discovered by his proud son in secret fi les, testimonies and war records. And Marc has published the story in a book Escape, Evasion And Revenge.

But Marc, who was 22 when his father died in 1979 age 60 after emigrating to Toronto, Canada, has just one regret.

“I only wish I had known all this while he was still alive, so that I could tell my father how proud I am of what he did during the war,” he said.