Officers march on 70th anniversary of Great Escape to remember executed British prisoners
SOLDIERS who were executed after tunnelling out of a Nazi prison camp during the 'Great Escape' have today been honoured on the 70th anniversary of the daring mission.
A group of 50 air force officers set off from the site of the Second World War escape and will now aim to walk more than 100 miles in four days.
The RAF personnel will walk from the camp in Zagan, Poland to a war cemetery in Poznan, where the fallen men are buried.
On March 24 and 25 1944, 76 prisoners of war emerged one by one from a 336 foot tunnel at the German Stalag Luft III camp.
Guards spotted the 77th man trying to escape and only three of the escapees made it home, with the rest recaptured.
At the orders of Adolf Hitler, fifty of them were executed while 23 were sent back to Stalag or to other camps, but survived the war.
The iconic 1963 Hollywood movie The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, tells the story of the daring attempts of Allied soldiers to break free.
Marek Lazarz, director of the Stalag Luft III Museum, said the memorial walk began in the pouring rain earlier today.
It started at a monument which marks the place the 76 Second World War soldiers emerged from their underground tunnel.
This week the soldiers involved in the walk met with two British former Stalag inmates, retired RAF airmen Andrew Weisman and Charles Clarke.
They were at the camp at the time of the Great Escape.
On Friday the soldiers will arrive at the war cemetery where the soldiers ashes were buried to lay flowers.
