The real life Great Escape happened 70 years ago today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III_escape#The_.22Great_Escape.22

76 men escaped, and all but 3 were recaptured. 50 of the those recaptured were shot on the personal orders of Hitler. For me, if you do something that pisses off Hitler so much that he personally orders you shot.... well, you're just a Fucking Awesome Human Being.

*promote pissing off Hitler

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 24th, 2014 12:21pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter ChaosEngine.

In a beautiful example of synchronicity, I just last week discovered that my wife has never seen the movie. It's next in the Netflix queue.

Do not watch this movie with your wife!
She will leave you for the ghost of Steve McQueen. Sorry, but the science is incontrovertible..

Of that genre this is one of my all time favorites ... right up there with The Bridge on the River Kwai . Both movies had highly addictive theme songs as well. [uhoh, I feel an earworm or two coming on!]

The father-in-law of a fellow Toastmaster actually participated in the Great Escape. He was a penguin... responsible for distributing the dirt dug from the tunnels throughout the prison yard via pockets built into their pants. Fortunately, he was NOT one of the ones chosen to escape. Aside from the fact there were no Americans at the POW camp, he said the movie was reasonably accurate, i.e. three tunnels, the one used came up short of the treeline...
The camp commander was imprisoned after the war. Some of his POWs went to visit him to let him know that they bore him no ill will. They were all soldiers and they considered the base commander to be a fair man who treated them well under the circumstances.
He refused to see them. Via an intermediary he relayed to them that he simply couldn't face them. He said that he never felt more ashamed to be a Nazi as when he heard that the SS had executed the 50 escapees from his camp.
The most fascinating part of Jim Lang's story though was the story BEFORE he arrived at the POW camp. Too long to relay here but he was shot out of the sky when returning from an air raid. Spent a few weeks on the run in the Belgium countryside.
He has since died but I fortunately recorded his presentation... just a great slice of history.

Also, a little bit of trivia... Donald Pleasance -- who plays the forger who eventually escapes with Charles Bronson -- actually spent time in a similar POW camp during WWII.