Plumber finds Great Escape hero’s swagger stick in airing cupboard
A SWAGGER stick belonging to a Great Escape mastermind has been found gathering dust in an airing cupboard.
The regimental cane was owned by Marcel Zillessen, who helped plot the breakout of 76 men from the Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in 1944.
It was rediscovered by the seller, who had forgotten about it for 20 years, and a plumber when the cupboard was cleared for a boiler repair in Ticknall, Derbyshire.
Before that, the owner’s baby son played with it like a toy.
The military symbol of authority is expected to sell for £150 but could fetch much more when it goes under the hammer on May 15.
It belonged to Zillessen when he attended Gresham’s School Officer Training Corps as a teenager from 193033 and his name is scratched on to its malacca palm wood.
The RAF pilot – the last man in the queue for the tunnel named Harry – inspired one of the characters in the 1963 film The Great Escape and was played by James Garner.
As a fluent German speaker, Zillessen helped get materials to forge documents for Allied air personnel for the escape from the PoW camp. But ultimately his life was saved because he never made it out, dying aged 81 in 1999.
Most were recaptured in days and 50 were executed. Only three got away.
The anonymous seller said: “The swagger stick came from my mother-inlaw’s friend in the 1990s. It was her late husband’s. Whilst visiting her with my eldest son, then a tot, she gave it to him to play with. I guess she had no use for it.
“It recently turned up at the back of the airing cupboard. ”
Matt Crowson, at Hansons Auctioneers which is selling it in Etwall, Derbys, said: “What a find. It is a memento of a man who will never be forgotten.”
He speculated it was given to a pal at Gresham’s in Norfolk, adding: “Whatever the circumstances it is amazing it turned up as the world marked the 80th anniversary of the Great Escape.”